Grand Juries Push Back as Trump Politicizes Justice Department

Federal grand juries — long derided as rubber stamps for prosecutors — are increasingly refusing to indict cases brought by the Trump administration’s Justice Department, as judges accuse prosecutors of misconduct and an erosion of trust threatens the normal functioning of the criminal justice system, according to a New York Times report published Tuesday.

In what legal experts describe as an unprecedented development, grand juries across the country have issued a flurry of “no true bills” — refusals to indict — in cases that would have been routine in prior administrations. Historically, grand juries refuse to indict in only about 0.0068% of cases, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics data cited by USA Today. Under President Donald Trump’s second term, that dynamic has shifted dramatically.

The Erosion of Trust

The crisis centers on what legal scholars call the “presumption of regularity” — the legal doctrine that courts operate under the assumption that prosecutors and government officials are acting in good faith. That presumption, multiple judges have now declared, has been broken.

“It’s not fair to say they’re losing credibility. We’re past that now,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui of Washington, D.C., said during a September 2025 hearing, as USA Today reported. “There’s no credibility left.” Faruqui accused the department of “playing cops and robbers like children.”

In Chicago, U.S. District Judge April Perry delivered an even more scathing rebuke in the case of the “Broadview Six” — protesters charged after demonstrating at an ICE facility. After reviewing unredacted grand jury transcripts, Perry said she had “never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury” that she witnessed in those documents, according to CBS News Chicago.

“The trust has been broken,” Perry said from the bench on May 21, 2026, before dismissing all remaining charges. “Mistakes happen. They happen to all of us. But as I tell my children, you own it. You admit to it. You apologize for it, and you move on. What you do not do is hide it.”

A Pattern of Misconduct

The NYT report, written by veteran Justice Department reporter Alan Feuer, documented that federal judges have admonished DOJ prosecutors at least three times since November 2025 for misconduct, including improper communications with grand jurors, prosecutorial vouching, and redacting grand jury transcripts to conceal errors.

The Broadview Six case exemplified the pattern. Prosecutors spoke to grand jurors outside the grand jury room — a major breach of protocol — improperly coached them that the evidence was particularly strong, and removed grand jurors who had voted against them, according to court records detailed by Law & Crime. Prosecutors then redacted transcripts to hide these actions.

Chris Parente, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said the conduct should “shame every American.”

“I’m sick to my stomach as a former prosecutor. I’m sick to my stomach as a U.S. citizen who has to live in this country with this Department of Justice that is acting this recklessly,” Parente said, as CBS News Chicago reported.

High-Profile Cases Collapse

The erosion of trust has had tangible consequences for some of the administration’s most politically charged prosecutions. The case against former FBI Director James Comey was dismissed after a judge ruled the prosecutor was improperly appointed. Grand juries subsequently refused to re-indict Comey on the original charges. The DOJ later brought a new indictment over an Instagram post of seashells spelling “86 47” — a case legal experts across the political spectrum have called fundamentally weak, according to Yahoo News.

Similarly, charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James were dismissed due to improper appointment of the prosecutor, and grand juries repeatedly refused to re-indict.

In Washington, D.C., more than one out of every five criminal cases brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office has been dismissed — compared to 0.5% in the previous decade, the NYT reported. Grand juries there have refused to indict defendants in multiple high-profile cases, including a man accused of threatening to kill the president and another who threw a Subway sandwich at a federal agent.

Institutional Decay Meets Political Pressure

Legal experts identify two interrelated causes for the crisis. The first is political pressure from the White House to prosecute Trump’s perceived enemies, leading prosecutors to bring weak cases. The second is institutional decay: the DOJ has experienced a mass exodus of experienced attorneys, some resigning in protest and others fired for refusing to participate in politicized prosecutions.

Randall Eliason, former Chief of Public Corruption at the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, wrote on his Sidebars blog that the grand jury is finally serving its intended constitutional purpose — acting as a check on executive power.

“It’s hard to over-emphasize how rare it is for a grand jury to return a no true bill when prosecutors ask for an indictment. It almost never happens,” Eliason wrote. “In my twelve years as a prosecutor in that same D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office I never had a grand jury return a no true bill.”

What’s Next

The implications of the crisis extend far beyond individual cases. The erosion of trust between the judiciary and the executive branch raises fundamental questions about the rule of law and the independence of the Justice Department from White House political influence.

Judge Perry has floated the possibility of sanctions against the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago for the Broadview Six misconduct. Defense attorneys have indicated they will seek financial relief for their clients through the DOJ’s newly created $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund — a development critics note is deeply ironic given the administration’s own conduct.

With a midterm election approaching, the politicization of the Justice Department is likely to become a major political issue. For now, the grand jury — an institution dating back to the Magna Carta — has emerged as an unlikely bulwark against what critics describe as executive overreach.

As Eliason put it: “Let’s be grateful for the wisdom of the framers — and for the critical role of the much-maligned federal grand jury as a safeguard against government abuse of power.”