No grand jurors found the Trump DOJ met low probable cause threshold in failed indictment of Democratic lawmakers

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The DOJ could not get even one of the 23 grand jurors to agree to indict this "ham sandwich" of a case.

No grand jurors found the Trump DOJ met low probable cause threshold in failed indictment of Democratic lawmakers

www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

— Ryan J. Reilly “paints a vivid and urgent portrait of… disarray” (@ryanjreilly.com) 2026-02-11T15:46:05.188Z

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/live-blog/trump-bondi-epstein-congress-netanyahu-iran-dhs-ice-poll-live-updates-rcna257992#rcrd99859

None of the D.C. grand jurors who heard the Trump administration’s pitch on why they should indict Democratic lawmakers over a video urging members of the military and intelligence communities to uphold their oaths believed the Justice Department had met the low threshold of probable cause, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

It’s exceedingly rare for a federal grand jury to reject prosecutors’ attempts to secure an indictment, since the process is stacked in the government’s favor. Federal grand juries need a minimum of 16 members to have a quorum, and they max out at 23 members. Just 12 grand jurors need to agree that the government had probable cause to indict, a threshold much lower than the unanimous “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard that a petit jury needs to convict.

In 2016, the Justice Department investigated more than 151,000 suspects, but grand juries returned just six “no bills,” per DOJ statistics. The vast majority of assistant U.S. attorneys will go their entire careers without being rejected by a grand jury like this. As NBC News previously reported, the lawyers who attempted to bring the case are political appointees, not career prosecutors.

It’s unclear if the office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro will push forward and try to indict the Democratic members again.

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1. Deadline Legal Blog-Grand jury's refusal to indict Democrats joins a stunning pattern of DOJ rejections

The decision to not approve charges against Democratic lawmakers was remarkable in its own right but is only the latest grand jury rejection in Trump’s second term.

Link to tweet

https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/grand-jury-rejection-trump-doj-kelly-slotkin-dunn-lemon

The most important story of Donald Trump’s second term just might be one that has been unfolding quietly behind closed doors, as grand jurors have been rejecting some of his Justice Department’s most politicized charges, preventing them from even making it to trial.

So, while the rejection of charges against Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday was remarkable in its own right, it was only the latest data point in a stunning pattern that has emerged over the past year.

The Trump DOJ’s failure to secure an indictment in Washington against Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich.; Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.; and others follows its failure to convince grand jurors in Virginia to revive charges against another Democrat, New York Attorney General Letitia James. Slotkin, Kelly and other Democratic lawmakers had released a video urging soldiers not to follow illegal orders, after which the Republican president accused them in a social media post of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

Through their refusal to indict, the grand jurors in D.C. effectively said the senators’ actions shouldn’t be punishable at all.

Just as importantly, the grand jury rebuffs haven’t only come to the aid of prominent figures. Grand jurors also have stood up for everyday people whom the Trump DOJ has sought to charge with assaults on law enforcement officers carrying out his federal occupation in Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles. Think sandwich thrower Sean Dunn — or Sidney Reid, whom grand jurors refused to indict a whopping three times. In both Dunn’s case and Reid’s, prosecutors plowed forward to trial on misdemeanor charges — which didn’t require grand jury approval — and the D.C. trial juries returned not guilty verdicts....

Against that backdrop, it’s unremarkable that federal prosecutors could get an indictment against Lemon or anyone else they set their sights on. Grand jury presentations are typically the start of a case, not the end. Therefore, securing an indictment in a given case doesn’t say a whole lot about the case’s prospects, with trial juries still standing in the way of any prosecution that makes it that far, where the government needs to prove its case to everyday citizens beyond a reasonable doubt.

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2. MaddowBlog-Democrats want to turn the tables on Pirro following failed indictment effort

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described this week’s circumstances as “a constitutional crisis.” There’s every reason to believe he was right.

The DOJ tried to charge sitting members of Congress, who’d done nothing, with felonies that would’ve sent them to prison for decades.

Despite the gambit's failure, Schumer characterized the effort itself as “a constitutional crisis.” I don’t think that’s hyperbolic. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-02-12T16:53:14.847Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/democrats-want-to-turn-the-tables-on-pirro-following-failed-indictment-effort

This marked the latest in a series of embarrassments for Pirro and Donald Trump’s unraveling Justice Department, but the “no bill” failure, overseen by prosecutors with unfortunate backgrounds, did not close the book on the fiasco.

On the contrary, some of the targets of this ridiculous gambit appear eager to turn the tables on those who went after them. Politico reported:

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) on Wednesday demanded U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro preserve all evidence related to her unsuccessful effort to bring charges against him and five other Democratic lawmakers. […]

In a letter sent Wednesday to Pirro’s office, Abbe Lowell, Crow’s attorney, called the effort to indict Crow and the other Democrats involved in the video ‘a breathtaking and unprecedented level of prosecutorial overreach and misuse of power.’

A week earlier, after Sen. Elissa Slotkin told the Justice Department that she wouldn’t cooperate with its baseless investigation, the Michigan Democrat’s lawyers also requested that Pirro preserve all documents related to the matter for “anticipated litigation.”

Time will tell what, if anything, comes of this, but it’s also worth pausing to appreciate the larger context. After the grand jury dismissed the case as nonsensical, it was easy to mock Pirro and her assigned prosecutors over their humiliating failure, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees: Federal prosecutors wanted to bring serious felony charges against sitting members of Congress who’d done nothing wrong. If successful, the charges would have sent lawmakers to prison for many years.

That’s more than just bonkers. It’s also a dangerous step down an authoritarian path.

.....“I say to my Republican colleagues, if the executive branch can merely attempt to prosecute members of the legislative branch for simply exercising free speech, that is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem, it is a constitutional crisis,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday.