Image by Mariakray from Pixabay
Image by Mariakray from Pixabay
Fascism is turning out to be more complicated than Trump and his minions thought. It turns out that the people have a voice, and they don’t like it when Trump tries to rig the justice system against them.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
The federal government in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, California, has been having some serious problems when grand juries have been empaneled to hear evidence of crimes for which the Department of Justice is seeking indictments. The most famous example of what might be called a recalcitrant grand jury recently was the case of Sean C. Dunn, a former Justice Department paralegal who was charged with felony assault for throwing a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Patrol agent on the street. Dunn yelled at the agents, “Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city,” and called them fascists before throwing the sandwich at the agent’s chest. The agent was wearing a bulletproof vest at the time of the incident.
Dunn was arrested at the scene after a brief chase and charged with assaulting the federal agent. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia took the case to a grand jury and presented video evidence showing Dunn throwing the sandwich. An agent testified to the grand jury that Dunn had said, “I did it. I threw a sandwich,” when questioned later.
The grand jury voted “no true bill,” a refusal to indict Dunn for the crime of assaulting a federal agent. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney, was forced to reduce the charge against Dunn to a misdemeanor.
Two more cases had to be dismissed after a D.C. grand jury had refused to issue federal indictments. Both cases involved persons who had allegedly made threats against President Trump. Evidence was presented to the grand jury that they were emotionally disturbed or had intellectual disabilities and mental illness.
The L.A. Times reported recently that the U.S. Attorney had attempted to indict anti-ICE protesters for various offenses after protests in Los Angeles. The grand jury returned only seven felony indictments against 38 protesters who were charged by the U.S. Attorney with felonies. The charges were either dismissed altogether or reduced to misdemeanors.
Legal experts have expressed astonishment that there have been so many instances of grand juries refusing to indict suspects charged with federal crimes by the Trump Department of Justice. Barbara L. McQuade, a former U.S. attorney in Detroit who teaches at the University of Michigan Law School and appears regularly to discuss legal matters on MSNBC, told the New York Times, “I have seen this maybe once or twice in my career of 20 years, but this is something different. It is exceedingly rare for any grand jury to reject a proposed indictment because ordinarily prosecutors use discretion in only bringing cases that are strong and advance the interests of justice,” McQuade said. “My guess is that these grand jurors are seeing prosecutorial overreach and they don’t want to be part of it.”
Click here to read the complete article.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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