Federal grand juries in the nation’s capital have refused to indict suspects in at least seven cases tied to President Donald Trump’s federal crime crackdown, including individuals accused of threatening to assassinate the president and assaulting law enforcement officers.

The string of refusals has raised concerns among legal experts and United States Attorney Jeanine Pirro about whether Washington jurors are engaging in jury nullification, or using their votes to express political opposition to the Trump administration’s aggressive law enforcement tactics in the District of Columbia.

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Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C. appointed by Trump, said this week that a grand jury’s refusal to indict a woman accused of traveling to the capital to carry out threats against Trump represents “the essence of a politicized jury.”

“A Washington D.C. Grand Jury refused to indict someone who threatened to kill the President of the United States,” Pirro said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Her intent was clear, traveling through five states to do so. She even confirmed the same to the U.S. Secret Service. This is the essence of a politicized jury. The system here is broken on many levels.”

Threats, assaults, and no bills

Two of the most serious rejections involved death threats against Trump.

In one case, a grand jury declined to indict Nathalie Rose Jones, a 50-year-old Indiana woman who allegedly posted on Facebook that she would “sacrificially kill this POTUS by disemboweling him and cutting out his trachea.” According to prosecutors, Jones repeated the threats during an interview with Secret Service agents, saying she hoped to remove Trump peacefully but would “kill him out at the compound if I have to.”

The following day, prosecutors disclosed that a separate grand jury declined to indict Edward Alexander Dana, who allegedly told a police officer while in custody that he would “protect the Constitution by any means necessary,” including “killing the president.” The threat was captured on a body-worn camera, prosecutors said.

“Instead of the outrage that should be engendered by a specific threat to kill the president, the grand jury in D.C. refuses to even let the judicial process begin,” she added. “Justice should not depend on politics.”

In both cases involving threats against Trump, Pirro can refile for an indictment or choose to charge them with lesser misdemeanors, which do not require a grand jury to indict.

Other rejected cases involved physical confrontations with federal agents and have met similar fates.

A government attorney who allegedly threw a sub-style sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer during a confrontation captured on video was not indicted by a grand jury. Pirro’s office later refiled the case as a misdemeanor.

Three separate grand juries voted against indicting a woman who allegedly assaulted an FBI agent outside the D.C. jail during a July protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Pirro’s office has since charged her with lesser misdemeanors.

And a man arrested by U.S. Park Police, with assistance from National Guard troops, was also not indicted, despite being charged with assaulting an officer.

In each case, magistrate judges had already found probable cause to proceed with the charges forward, yet jurors opted not to return indictments.

A pattern emerges

Mike Davis, founder of the conservative Article III Project, said the jury resistance is no accident in a city that votes overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates and causes.

“The jury pool in D.C. votes 95% Democrat, and there are countless enablers on the judicial bench in D.C.,” Davis said. “Trump should legally move every government job he can out of D.C., and it will immediately counteract a significant amount of the leftism seen in the D.C. jury pool.”

“Ordinary citizens have had enough of the crime that’s overtaken D.C. that President Trump is working overtime to fix,” Davis added.

While Davis’s proposal might not be helpful in the short term, it underscores prosecutors’ frustrations as the Trump administration turns up the heat against lawlessness in the nation’s capital. Legal experts say a clear trend is forming due to the number of refusals to indict in such a short time. 

Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law, said the trend is notable because many cases involve on-camera evidence that should be easily provable in a court of law. “They have them dead to rights — throwing cameras, spitting, throwing sandwiches. These are not close calls,” he said.

“Maybe it’s not a trend when one grand jury declines, or two. But once you get to three, four, five — this is a pattern,” Blackman told the Washington Examiner. “These jurors are overwhelmingly liberal. They’re not disputing that the defendants committed the acts — they’re saying they don’t agree with the charges.”

Although grand juries are intended to provide a check on prosecutorial power, Blackman said that check can become a shield against justice when used this way.

“What happens in the grand jury room is secret. But unless prosecutors can bring the charges elsewhere, you basically have a lawless situation,” Blackman added.

Overcharging and nullification?

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani offered a different interpretation of the ongoing dilemma, saying that jury nullification is a real possibility, especially when politics is involved.

“It happens when there is a very likable defendant or an unlikable victim,” Rahmani said. For Trump’s criminal crackdown, “he’s so polarizing that there’s just a significant percentage of the American people that do not like him and do not support what he’s doing.”

Rahmani, who said he has managed over 1,000 cases that resulted in prison sentences, also criticized the strength of some of the government’s filings, while emphasizing that he doesn’t believe anyone should condone assault.

“[But] some of these are just terrible cases. The sandwich case? That’s not a felony — not even close,” he said. “I never once got a grand jury no-bill in my career. But I also would never bring some of these cases.”

Rahmani said that while the conduct might be inappropriate, it often doesn’t rise to felony assault, noting that shifting to filing more misdemeanor cases when warranted might reduce the current streak of failed indictments Pirro is encountering.

“You’re asking jurors to spend weeks listening to cases that shouldn’t be federal in the first place,” Rahmani said.

A serious case on deck: National Guard assault

One recent assault incident could serve as a bellwether for how far the resistance extends. Federal prosecutors have charged Omari Juan Beidleman with assaulting two members of the Mississippi National Guard during a patrol at the Capitol South Metro station.

According to an affidavit, Beidleman had been stealing hats from train passengers before he spat in a Guardsman’s face, grabbed at his firearm magazines, and successfully unlatched the holster hood of the soldier’s sidearm. A second Guardsman who intervened was injured during the struggle.

A complaint detailing the offense accused Beidleman of a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a), though it is not clear whether prosecutors are asking to indict on a felony or misdemeanor charge.

As the D.C. crackdown continues with upwards of 1,700 arrests since the federal takeover began last month, this case will be one to watch to see whether Pirro’s office will ask for a felony indictment — and whether a jury will oblige.

Jan. 6 in the backdrop

The same courthouse handling these cases oversaw hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions, most resulting in jury convictions. But in one of his first acts after returning to office, Trump signed a clemency order erasing all of those cases, a move that was seen as controversial despite the Biden DOJ getting knocked down by a Supreme Court ruling last year that curtailed the use of obstruction charges filed against dozens of protesters from the riot in January 2021.

Due to the opacity and unknown circumstances concerning grand jury proceedings, it remains unclear whether some local jurors are protesting Trump’s efforts to clean up D.C. crime, or whether they see the government’s charging requests as overbroad or extreme.

“Grand juries, judges — we will not simply go along with the flow,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said during a recent hearing, according to the Associated Press.

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Pirro, meanwhile, said her office would keep pursuing charges where warranted but warned that politics should not be the reason people walk free.

“Justice should not depend on politics,” she said.