As Trump Politicizes Justice Dept., Prosecutors Struggle With Grand Juries

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/us/politics/trump-justice-department-grand-juries.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lVA.zB68.xFBSDGb-Ardi&smid=url-share

As Trump Politicizes Justice Dept., Prosecutors Struggle With Grand Juries
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.

Grand juries are the heart of the criminal justice system, the inner sanctum where prosecutors, working unchecked and in secret, have enormous power to indict their fellow citizens.

But under President Trump, the Justice Department has had serious difficulties presenting cases to grand juries, running into problems that would have seemed unthinkable a year ago.

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.

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1. 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.

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2. "When autocracies purge experienced leaders and experts, the vacuum is mostly likely to be filled with mediocrity."

Same with DOGE terminating all those govt employees