Federal judges ain’t stupid….
People ain’t stupid…..
Rookie Justice Dept. Lawyers….
Weak cases…
Strong political cases…
Sloppy work….
Let both groups above act as a guard rail against the US (Trump) Justice Dept. trying to punish people for opposing Donald J. Trump’s actions….
Proving that despite the media?
The American government DOES work on some levels even against a criminal President…..
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 dismissedagainst four Democratic activists about to face trial for impeding the police during a protest last fall at a suburban immigration detention facility.
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 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.
But the mistakes also pointed to a more important problem: As Mr. Trump has demanded more and more charges against those he perceives as his opponents, prosecutors have felt pressure to push weak cases through grand juries. And that, in turn, has led to an erosion in faith in the Justice Department by both the grand jurors themselves and the judges considering the cases.
“Your sole goal is to do justice. Your client is justice itself,” Judge Perry told Andrew S. Boutros, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who appeared in court to apologize for his subordinates’ mistakes. “I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken.”….
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Such failures — known as no true bills — used to be essentially unheard-of, given the amount of sway that prosecutors have in the grand jury room and the department’s adherence to a tradition of seeking charges only in cases with strong evidence.
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….
Note….
Across the government t Trump MASS firing of ‘expert’s’ and seasoned US Govt. workers HAS had a effect….
Those career workers have been replace the political ‘loyalist’s’ that simply,y do NOT know WTF they are doing….
And?
Thank Goodness their efforts to do damage have failed ……
It will be up to the next Democratic President to put things back, in somewhat of order…..
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