A Grand Jury Again Declines to Re-Indict Letitia James
It was a striking rejection of the administration’s retribution campaign.
nytimes.com
A grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s effort to bring new charges against Letitia James, the New York attorney general, according to people familiar with the matter, exactly one week after another set of jurors did the same.
The back-to-back failures by prosecutors to secure an indictment amounted to a striking rejection of the administration’s retribution campaign. It highlighted the Justice Department’s unusual strategy of pursuing second indictments despite earlier failures in court and suggested the department would face major hurdles in bringing charges against President Trump’s foes.
Nothing bars the U.S. attorney’s office in Eastern Virginia from trying again to indict Ms. James, though a judge might look askance at multiple juries’ having rejected the charges.
Bruce Green, who teaches legal ethics at Fordham Law School in New York, said there was no constitutional provision forbidding the repeated presentation of the same case to different grand juries, though he added that most prosecutors “would take a hint” after being rejected once or twice.
“If a grand jury isn’t indicting and you don’t even have a lawyer on the other side presenting a defense, that’s a pretty strong sign that you don’t have a tryable case,” he said.
A lawyer for Ms. James, Abbe D. Lowell, said in a statement Thursday that the second rejection ”makes even clearer that this case should never have seen the light of day.”
“This case already has been a stain on this department’s reputation and raises troubling questions about its integrity,” he said. “Any further attempt to revive these discredited charges would be a mockery of our system of justice.”
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