Grand Jury Said to Decline to Re-Indict Letitia James

After a judge dismissed the Trump administration’s first attempt to indict the attorney general of New York State, a new grand jury effort failed, according to people familiar with the matter.

A grand jury in Norfolk, Va., declined on Thursday to re-indict Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, according to people familiar with the matter, rejecting efforts to revive a criminal case that had been sought by President Trump.

The decision dealt another embarrassing setback to the president’s efforts to exert greater control over the Justice Department, highlighting how judges and jurors have acted as a check on Mr. Trump’s desire to use the criminal justice system to punish his political foes.

But the unsuccessful attempt does not necessarily end the administration’s efforts to put Ms. James on trial. Nothing in the law prevents the Justice Department from trying again to indict her.

Still, the grand jury’s rejection came more than a week after a federal judge dismissed an earlier indictment against Ms. James, ruling that Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor handpicked by Mr. Trump to bring the case, had been unlawfully appointed.

The Justice Department declined to comment. In a statement, a lawyer for Ms. James, Abbe D. Lowell, called the grand jury’s refusal “a decisive rejection of a case that should never have existed in the first place.”

“This should be the end of this case,” he said. “If they continue, undeterred by a court ruling and a grand jury’s rejection of the charges, it will be a shocking assault on the rule of law.”

In a statement, Ms. James thanked the members of the grand jury, saying, “It’s time for the weaponization of our justice system to stop.”

The case in Virginia is not the only one Mr. Trump’s Justice Department has opened into Ms. James, underscoring the president’s longstanding enmity toward her. Ms. James has been in the president’s cross hairs largely because of her yearslong civil case in which she accused him of exaggerating his net worth by billions of dollars.

The original indictment centered on Ms. James’s purchase of a home in Norfolk in 2020 and whether she lied to financial institutions to get a discounted mortgage rate for the property.

Roger Keller, a federal prosecutor brought in from Missouri to handle the case after career lawyers determined the evidence was too weak to support charges, presented a new version of the indictment on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe events intended to be kept private.

Shortly after 9 a.m., grand jurors convened on the fourth floor of the Walter E. Hoffman courthouse, a marble-halled building in downtown Norfolk. A court security officer guarded the room where they met.

Their deliberations seemed to be brief and uncomplicated, and by lunchtime, the jurors appeared to have adjourned.

In September, Mr. Trump forced out his own choice for U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik S. Siebert, after Mr. Siebert concluded the evidence did not warrant criminal charges against Ms. James or another of Mr. Trump’s frequent targets, the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey.

The president installed Ms. Halligan, a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience, in Mr. Siebert’s place. Days later, Ms. Halligan secured a grand jury indictment against Mr. Comey and, weeks later, against Ms. James.

Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled in late November that Ms. Halligan’s interim appointment was invalid, because such appointments were meant to last no more than 120 days, a period exceeded by the previous interim appointee, Mr. Siebert. And because Ms. Halligan was the sole prosecutor who had secured charges against Mr. Comey and Ms. James, Judge Currie ruled, the indictments had to be thrown out.

Judge Currie did not weigh in on the evidence against Ms. James, which career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia had viewed skeptically.

Ms. Bondi quickly vowed to appeal the decision.

Even as a federal grand jury in Virginia voted down a new indictment, lawyers representing Ms. James’s office appeared before a federal judge in Albany, N.Y., where the Justice Department is pursuing a separate civil rights investigation into her work as the state’s top lawyer. Lawyers for Ms. James’s office are seeking to block the investigation.

That appearance also appeared to have gone poorly for the government. The judge, Lorna G. Schofield, expressed skepticism about whether the interim U.S. attorney overseeing that case was lawfully appointed by the administration — an issue that is becoming increasingly difficult for the president in his quest to use the Justice Department to seek retribution.

While the government sought to argue that the unusual appointment of that U.S. attorney, John A. Sarcone III, was a technicality, a lawyer for Ms. James’s office, Hailyn J. Chen, strongly disagreed, quoting a concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas about the importance of following the law with appointments.

Federal judges have repeatedly ruled against Mr. Trump’s use of interim appointments to skirt the Senate confirmation process required for U.S. attorneys, as Ms. Chen pointed out to the judge in Albany on Thursday.

A three-judge appeals court panel in Philadelphia ruled on Monday that the Trump administration’s efforts to extend the tenure of Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney in New Jersey and a former personal lawyer for Mr. Trump, were also unlawful and invalid.

Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting from Norfolk, Va.

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