Sorry about the length.
Take Home:
Trump's U.S. attorney for the Central District of California filed felony cases against at least 38 people for alleged misconduct in June over ICE / Border Patrol protests, the grand jury flat rejected 31 of them. Apparently, this is not the first time. There's only one reason this is happening, the grand juries, drawn from the same Federal jurisdiction where the alleged offenses took place, know lying shite when they see it. It's that bad.
The standard for a grand jury is only "probable cause". This failure rate is unprecedented.
MAGA: "UNPRECEDENTED! Trump wins again! He can't stop winning. He really is the best."
The rest of the story...
On May 26th 2021 CNN’s senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig mentioned the following in a background piece outlining the basics of a US [Federal] Grand Jury:
It is a one-sided presentation; it’s only the prosecutor, the grand jurors, and a court reporter. There’s no judge, there’s no defense lawyer. So it is extremely one-sided; you hear this expression ‘the grand jury would indict a ham sandwich’ there’s some truth to that; it’s not an adversarial process like you’d have at trial.
and the origin of the 'ham sandwich' reference is mentioned in Wikipedia's
Grand Juries in the United States; Rubber Stamp for the Prosecution:
[...]Grand jurors also often lack the ability and knowledge to judge sophisticated cases and complicated federal laws. This puts them at the mercy of very well trained and experienced federal prosecutors. Grand jurors often hear only the prosecutor's side of the case and are usually persuaded by them. Grand juries almost always indict people on the prosecutor's recommendation. An unnamed Rochester defense lawyer was quoted in a 1979 newspaper article claiming that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to "indict a ham sandwich", a saying subsequently repeated by the chief judge of New York State's highest court, Sol Wachtler. And William J. Campbell, a former federal district judge in Chicago, noted: "[T]oday, the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury."
Worth repeating:
"...a former federal district judge in Chicago, noted: "[T]oday, the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury."
Grand juries don't operate on a preponderance of the evidence standard, and certainly
not beyond a reasonable. The sole evidentiary standard in a grand jury proceeding is the lower "probable cause" standard. Likewise, lots of evidence which would not be admissible in a criminal trial is admissible in a grand jury proceeding. The main kind of evidence not admissible in a grand jury proceeding is evidence which is "privileged" against court disclosure.
Pepperidge Farm remembers MAGA complaining bitterly that the January 6th tourists could not get a fair shake in D.C. (Article III of the Constitution requires defendants to be tried in the venue they committed their crimes] because D.C. is 95% Democrat-voting, thus the jury pool is, for that reason, "tainted."
MAGA has yet to realize, that Trump's / Ratcliffe's / Gabbard's accusations require Obama et al to be tried in Washington. We aren't even going to get to the bit were Obama's lawyers
depose Marco Rubio, Richard Burr, Lindsay Graham, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard. Trump may or may not be immune for this of that whatever the point is that if Trump
is immune, he cannot plead the 5th. Oh well.
This smells like rebellion in the face of Trumpian lies and attacks on substantive and procedural due process. Can't have that spreading.
Trump appointee struggles to indict LA protesters. Anti-ICE demonstrators evade felony charges in ongoing legal battles.
www.commondreams.org
The Los Angeles Times reports that Bill Essayli, who was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this year to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, recently became "irate" and could be heard "screaming" at prosecutors in the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles when a grand jury declined to indict an anti-ICE protester who had been targeted for potential felony charges.
And according to the
LA Times' reporting, this failure to secure an indictment against demonstrators was far from a one-off.
"Although his office filed felony cases against at least 38 people for alleged misconduct that either took place during last month's protests or near the sites of immigration raids, many have been dismissed or reduced to misdemeanor charges," the paper writes. "In total, he has secured only seven indictments, which usually need to be obtained no later than 21 days after the filing of a criminal complaint. Three other cases have been resolved via plea deal."
It is incredibly rare for prosecutors to fail to secure indictments from grand juries, which only require a determination that there is "probable cause" to believe a suspect committed a crime and which do not hear arguments from opposing counsels during proceedings.
Meghan Blanco, a former federal prosecutor and current defense attorney representing one of the anti-ICE protesters currently facing charges, told the
LA Times that there's a simple reason that grand juries aren't pulling the trigger on indictments: Namely, prosecutors' cases are full of holes.
In one case, Blanco said she obtained video evidence that directly contradicted a sworn statement from a Border Patrol officer who alleged that her client had obstructed efforts to chase down a suspect who assaulted him. When she presented this video at her client's first court hearing, charges against him were promptly dropped.
"The agent lied and said he was in hot pursuit of a person who punched him," Blanco explained. "The entirety of the affidavit is false."
One anonymous prosecutor who spoke with the
LA Times similarly said that ICE agents have been losing credibility when their actions and statements are put under a legal microscope.
"There are a lot of hotheaded [Customs and Border Protection] officers who are kind of arresting first and asking questions later," they said. "We're finding there's not probable cause to support it."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, was floored by the failures to secure indictments against the anti-ICE demonstrators.
"Incredible," he
wrote on social media website X. "Federal prosecutors are seeing many cases of people accused of assaulting Border Patrol agents being turned down by grand juries! Los Angeles federal prosecutors are privately saying it's because CBP agents are just 'arresting first and asking questions later.'"
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) similarly bashed prosecutors for using easily discredited statements from ICE officers to secure indictments.
"I'm a former prosecutor and can confirm that any prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich," he
wrote. "Except the top prosecutor in L.A. Why? Because this article points out ICE AGENTS ARE MAKING SHIT UP. You want your agents respected? Tell them to stop lying."
In other news, yesterday, Mike Gordon, who prosecuted dozens of peaceful Trump tourists who just got lost on Jan 6th, says he was fired from his position without warning or cause – despite receiving the highest possible performance reviews from the DOJ just
two days before his termination. Gordon is now suing the Trump administration, noting in his lawsuit that he “was fired on the same day as two other Assistant U.S. attorneys who had previously worked on the prosecution of January 6th defendants, indicating that Mr. Gordon’s termination was retaliation for prosecutions that were perceived as politically-affiliated.”