As Trump Politicizes Justice Dept., Prosecutors Struggle With Grand Juries (New York Times Gift Article)

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Judges and grand juries have increasingly lost faith in the Justice Department as the president uses it to reward his friends and go after his opponents.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/us/politics/trump-justice-department-grand-juries.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lVA.VQWU.zHLKWrAqZOCg&smid=bs-share

In the past several months, prosecutors have repeatedly failed to persuade grand juries that the cases they have brought warrant criminal charges. And if it were not unusual enough, they have also been admonished at least three times since last November by federal judges who have accused them of misconduct.

The latest setback came in Chicago, where a judge cited a remarkable list of grand jury errors in a case that was dismissed against four Democratic activists about to face trial for impeding the police during a protest last fall at a suburban immigration detention facility.....

The prosecutors also stacked the deck in their own favor by removing from the panel some grand jurors who had voted against them when considering an earlier version of the charges. Making matters even worse, they tried to hide these maneuvers by redacting the grand jury transcripts — that is, until Judge Perry ordered them to give her the full copies.

The government’s missteps were bad enough to necessitate tossing out the case against the critics of the president’s immigration plan just days before it was supposed to go to trial.....

There are almost no statistics that gauge how often prosecutors fail to secure indictments or are chastised by judges because of their grand jury presentations, if only because such events used to be rare. Legal experts say it is just as uncommon for jurists like Judge Perry to shine a spotlight on grand jury proceedings, which are held in secret, although that, too, has been happening more often.

Barbara L. McQuade, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said that in her 20 years in the Justice Department, she had never worked on a case — or even heard of one — in which a judge had examined grand jury transcripts because of concerns about misconduct.

“Courts almost never do that, mostly because they trust that the government is acting honestly,” Ms. McQuade said. “But if the department demonstrates that it isn’t worthy of that trust, then it invites judges to look under the hood.”....

Part of the problem, legal experts say, is that Mr. Trump has hired inexperienced loyalists to fill senior roles in the Justice Department even as hundreds of career prosecutors have departed — either by their own choice or because they were forced out for having worked on cases that ran afoul of the president.

Junior prosecutors typically attend a weeklong course on the ins and outs of working with grand juries, and often trail more seasoned colleagues before they take the lead in presenting cases. But leaders in politically appointed posts do not get the same kind or amount of training.....

But over the past year or so, there has been a flurry of no true bills in federal courts across the country. Most have occurred in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, where grand jurors have rejected several cases involving people accused of protesting the administration’s immigration crackdowns and surges in federal law enforcement.

Other high-profile failures have involved grand juries hearing cases against Mr. Trump’s political foes — among them, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and the six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video reminding military and intelligence personnel of their obligation to disobey illegal orders.

This is a great article on the issues being raised about trump's attempts to subvert the grand jury process. Grand juries serve an important role and trump's DOJ is resorting to fraud to get true bills.

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2. MS NOW-The DOJ's deeply unimpressive bench of MAGA lawyers is failing the easy part

It used to be unthinkable for so many grand juries to reject Justice Department cases — and judges are taking notice.

The DOJ’s deeply unimpressive bench of MAGA lawyers is failing the easy part
It used to be unthinkable for so many grand juries to reject Justice Department cases — and judges are taking notice. www.ms.now/opinion/doj-...

— US News Now - World’s leading Liberal Voice (@democracyblue.bsky.social) 2026-05-27T11:46:49.278Z

https://www.ms.now/opinion/doj-grand-jury-charges-misconduct

We’re witnessing a downward spiral precipitated by the Trump administration prioritizing loyalty to the MAGA agenda over hiring and retaining qualified legal candidates. Many of the lawyers who are now serving under acting Attorney General Todd Blanche have little to no courtroom experience under their belts. As a result, even what is normally considered the easiest part of a criminal case has become a minefield of uncertainty and hotbed of misconduct.....

Days before the trial was to begin, as The New York Times reported, the judge called in the prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, to call him to task:

The blunders shocked the judge, April M. Perry, who recounted from the bench on Thursday how prosecutors had spoken to grand jurors outside the grand jury room — a major breach of protocol — and had improperly coached them that the evidence they had presented was particularly strong.

The prosecutors also stacked the deck in their own favor by removing from the panel some grand jurors who had voted against them when considering an earlier version of the charges. Making matters even worse, they tried to hide these maneuvers by redacting the grand jury transcripts — that is, until Judge Perry ordered them to give her the full copies.

The situation was even worse in Wyoming, where a panel of three federal judges tossed nine indictments from U.S. Attorney Darin Smith, who had never held a prosecutorial role before his appointment last August. As their ruling noted, Smith told grand jurors before presenting any evidence that the people he was charging were all “‘bad guys,’ ‘murderers,’ ‘bad people’ and ‘not run of the mill criminals seen in state court” — but only one of the defendants was indicted for murder. During a break, Smith then handed out his business card and, according to his own court filing, “invited the grand jury panel members to reach out to him.”,....

In some ways, the struggle the DOJ is facing is unsurprising — and can still be plenty harmful. When autocracies purge experienced leaders and experts, the vacuum is mostly likely to be filled with mediocrity. New research from German political scientists Adam Scharpf and Christian Glassel examined the motivations for government officials during Argentina’s “Dirty War” in the 1970s and ’80s. Their work illustrates how many of the midlevel figures carrying out the regime’s orders weren’t extremists or victims but instead, as The New York Times’ Amanda Taub framed it, “middling workers trying to get ahead.”.....

It’s troubling that several judges have already told federal lawyers that they have lost the “presumption of regularity,” the assumption that the government is telling the truth in court. It is likewise concerning that grand juries can no longer accept that they are being told the truth when presented with evidence of a crime. While there’s some bit of hope — not to mention schadenfreude — that comes from seeing this Justice Department fall on its face, each failure on its part helps erode faith in the legal system. It will be a long, hard road to rebuilding the trust that the Trump administration has squandered with its reckless, baseless persecutions.