A US grand jury again declines to re-indict New York attorney general Letitia James

WASHINGTON – A grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, on Dec 11 rejected the Trump administration’s effort to bring new charges against Ms 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 Donald Trump’s foes.

Nothing bars the US attorney’s office in Eastern Virginia from trying again to indict James, though a judge might look askance at multiple juries’ having rejected the charges.

Prof 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 defence, that’s a pretty strong sign that you don’t have a triable case,” he said.

A lawyer for Ms James, Mr Abbe D. Lowell, said in a statement on Dec 11 that the second rejection “makes even clearer that this case should never have seen the light of day”.

A former White House aide whom Mr Trump had named US attorney in Eastern Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, succeeded in securing charges against Ms James in October. But late November, a judge ruled that Ms Halligan’s appointment had violated a federal law that dictates the procedure of filling high-level federal vacancies.

That ruling led to the dismissal of the case against Ms James, as well as another against former FBI director James Comey.

A spokesperson for the Eastern District of Virginia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The grand jury’s rejection of the charges on Dec 11 was reported earlier by ABC.

The rejection was particularly remarkable given that it was the third time in just over two months that prosecutors had sought to lodge charges against Ms James. NYTIMES