Trump & Judge Jeanine dealt “UNPRECEDENTED” humiliation in court

You're watching the legal breakdown. Glenn, it looks like the Trump administration is in something of a crisis in Washington, D.C. as they continue to use the U.S. attorney's office and the DOJ to try and crack down on their political opponents. Can you explain what just happened in D.C.?

Yeah, Brian, six times now, D.C. grand juries have told Jeanine Pirro, that would be Donald Trump's U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Six times, grand jury told her no to felony charges. She was seeking felony indictments of four different defendants, and her prosecutors presented those four cases a total of six times. We can break down the numbers in a minute, and in what has got to be an unprecedented

turn of events, the grand jury said no six times. You know, they will not buy in to Jeanine Pirro's overreach, to her abuse of the grand jury or to her outright prosecutorial misconduct. And I think, you know, crisis is probably a good word. Let's face it, the people of the District of Columbia will not go gently into the good dictatorship

that Donald Trump is trying to create by militarizing the streets of Washington, D.C., and it looks like it is reverberating inside grand jury rooms. So let me just break down what's gone on here. You know, our viewers are probably most familiar

with the guy who tossed the Subway sandwich at a police officer and Jeanine Pirro went into the grand jury, ordered her prosecutors to go into the grand jury and seek a felony indictment. Eight years in prison, max punishment for throwing a sandwich at a police officer, and

the grand jury said, oh, hell no. And that case got broken all the way down to a misdemeanor. So that case may end up in trial as a misdemeanor charge. Then there was a woman named Sydney Laurie Reed. She is someone who stepped in between an ICE agent and an FBI agent who were trying to take into custody somebody because of their immigration status. There was some pushing and shoveling and a minor scuffle.

And Jeanine Pirro sent her people into the grand jury to try to indict Sidney Laurie Reid for a felony assault on a police officer. And again, the grand jury said, oh, hell no. And it looks like that case may proceed by a misdemeanor. Now, it's important to know she presented the Sidney Laurie Reid case to three different grand juries, which I view as a career prosecutor as an abuse of the grand jury process.

All three grand juries said no. So now we have two new entrants into, you know, the the resistance that, you know, is being shown by the grand jury. There's somebody named Natalie Rose Jones who allegedly threatened Donald Trump. She came here, she protested, she may have posted some threats on Instagram or on Facebook. She was arrested and again, Jeanine Pirro sent her prosecutors into the grand jury seeking felony indictments and the grand jury said no.

So Natalie Rose Jones is not presently indicted. Now there's a fourth defendant. Guy named Alvin Summers. This one comes with a little bit of a twist. He was alleged to have engaged in some kind of an assault. I'm not sure if it was during a protest or otherwise, on a police officer. And again, the grand jury refused to indict Alvin Summers. Here's the interesting twist, Brian. After the US Attorney's Office in DC, headed up by Jeanine Pirro, could not get a felony

indictment on Alvin Summers, they moved to dismiss the case. They moved to dismiss it without prejudice, which means Jeanine Pirro, anytime she was feeling like it, could try to gin up those charges again and put them back before a grand jury. But Alvin Summers' lawyer just filed a motion

seeking to have that case thrown out with prejudice, meaning Jeanine Pirro could never try to bring it again before a grand jury. And I just pulled this up off the court docket. The judge ordered Janine Pirro's prosecutors to respond to Alvin Summers' attorney's motion to dismiss it with prejudice by September 5th. So it looks like we may have some litigation about just how cruddy Jeanine Pirro is being,

how abusive, how much overreach she is engaged in by repeatedly trying to get felony indictments when it's pretty clear the evidence does not warrant those felony indictments.

We've heard the saying that any prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich and so how unorthodox is it that not just one, not just two, not just three, but in four separate instances we have seen these grand juries push back. Well, more than that, I mean six because one of those instances was three separate attempts by Jeanine Pirro, but we've seen in six separate instances these grand juries push back on what should otherwise be a pretty routine indictment at the hands of you know these attorneys, these

these prosecutors. Brian I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it is entirely unprecedented. One of the things I did is I reached out to a number of my former colleagues who were also career prosecutors, some of them longer than me, 135 years at the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Columbia. You know, people generally can't even remember one grand jury voting no. We call that no billing the case. They can't even remember one no bill.

Somebody did recall one, but you know, to have six no bills in the span of just a few weeks or a month or so, I can't imagine that has happened in any jurisdiction anywhere in the country. But here's what our viewers need to know. You know, part of what might be going on is not just the grand jurors, you know, taking their oath very seriously to indict only if the evidence and the law supports a felony indictment.

They take an oath to do so without fear or favor. And let me tell you, Brian, they are performing an important civic duty, an important public service making sure that they are a check against prosecutorial overreach and abuse. And you know, they give up literallyreach and abuse. And you know they give up literally weeks and months at a time when they're called to serve on grand juries. There are two kinds of grand juries in DC. One grand jury, if

you're called for grand jury duty, you sit in that grand jury in that windowless room for six weeks, five days a week. That's the Superior Court grand jury. The Federal Court grand jury, you're on it for 18 months, eight days a month, for 18 months. Brian, these people give up their jobs for that period of time, they're away from their families if they happen to be stay-at-home moms or dads, they have to arrange for child care. This is an enormous ask of these people to perform this important civic

duty and I don't you know I hope our viewers are sitting down because let me tell you how Jeanine Pirro just publicly berated the grand jurors who refused to bend to her will and Donald Trump's will. Here is what Jeanine Pirro said on a Fox News appearance remember you know her qualifications for being United States attorney is that she used to be a Fox News host and she sat down with a fellow Fox News host. Here's what she said about the DC grand jurors.

These are people that she has sworn to protect and serve in her capacity as US attorney for the District of Columbia. She said she blamed the jurors for failing to grasp the reality of the crime that is occurring because they, the grand jurors, live in Georgetown or other affluent neighborhoods. Brian, that's stone cold bullshit. I spent decades inside those grand jury rooms and grand jurors are summons from all of the quadrants all of the neighborhoods of DC and they're not just the affluent

Georgetown types. I suspect Jeanine Pirro has never been inside a DC grand jury room but it gets worse. She said my office has been instructed to move for the highest crime possible consistent with the law the statute and the evidence and in that one Case referring to the guy who threw a subway sandwich We were on point, but the grand jurors don't take it so seriously. They're like, ah You know

Whatever that's a quote Well said Janine and then she disses them one more time by saying the following, you know, DC residents are so used to crime that crime is so normalized in DC that they don't even care

about whether or not the law is violated. Closed quote from Jeanine Pirro, publicly berating, disrespecting, and demeaning the grand jurors in Washington, D.C. Brian, you know, Brian, D.C. may be a big city, but it's also a very small town.

Word will spread that this is what Jeanine Pirro is saying about jurors, grand jurors, trial jurors, and things are likely to get a whole lot worse for Jeanine Pirro in her attempt to bring charges that are not supported by the evidence.

That's actually what I was just going to ask you about is, is what are the downstream effects? What could be the, the subsequent ramifications of the continued and failing weaponization of government as it relates to not just the jurors, and I want you to talk about that, but also the legal system more broadly. Like, is there ever a point at which judges step in

or defense attorneys step in and use the fact that we have seen such overt weaponization to actually undermine subsequent cases that the government brings?

Yeah, it's a great question, Brian. Defense attorneys will absolutely use this to maximum advantage, maybe not as it directly impacts the case of their client, but kind of the atmospheric impact. Grand jurors are supposed to do their work

without fear or favor, based only on the facts and the law. And if Jeanine Pirro is starting to berate them and maybe even implicitly or tacitly threatening or intimidating them, you know, you better indict the felony charges we say to indict or we're going to continue to publicly berate you while you're performing this important civic duty, that can definitely have tentacles

that will reach out into any number of cases that make their way into court. The other thing that might end up happening, you know, I still think the D.C. grand jurors will take their oaths seriously and they won't necessarily let Jeanine Pirro's horrifically inappropriate comments infect their work as grand jurors. But it might result in, for example, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice trying to find other venues. You know, often, like if you make a threat in interstate commerce, meaning you post it

online so it travels to other states. You know, sometimes the Department of Justice can pick and choose where it might try to indict a case. And I predict that you're gonna start to see cases that are more appropriately presented to a grand jury in DC, perhaps being taken in other jurisdictions,

like right across the river from DC at the Eastern District of Virginia, U.S. Attorney's Office and federal court and grand jury. So I think they're gonna try to get a little bit slippery and maybe find ways around having grand juries that are properly empowered to hear a case maybe trying to take those cases away from that grand jury. But listen, anytime a public official, the top prosecutor in DC who is sworn to protect

and serve the people of DC starts to publicly berate them, you know, that is a recipe for the further disintegration and disruption of the criminal justice system as it operates in DC.

And so is there any concern now that we're gonna see a way to pervert this so that they can get a more favorable venue in terms of bringing these cases forward?

You know, it's gonna be hard to get around. So the venue question is, you know, in what court should this case properly be brought? Where did the brunt of the crime occur? And it's gonna to be, you know, tough if you have if you have protests or you have citizens who are,

you know, kind of being very vocal, very forward-leaning when it comes to the either the military troops or the federal police officers who are being deployed to the streets of Washington, D.C. really designed to kind of intimidate the citizenry, in my estimation at least, in part. If an attempted assault of a police officer occurs in the District of Columbia, I don't think there's any way to legitimately bring that case in another venue, in another jurisdiction,

unless there is some interstate component to it, like somebody traveled across state lines intending to assault or level a threat against the president. But this is going to be a mess. What I do think is that the federal courts will continue to be up to the task. The federal judiciary is actually responsible for overseeing the grand jury process.

People think the grand jury is an arm of the executive branch of the prosecutor's office. Not so. It's an arm of the court. So the court has significant supervisory responsibility over grand juries. And that is a good thing given the way Jeanine Pirro is conducting herself.

Well, look, we will continue to stay on top of any news that breaks as it relates to these attempted and failed indictments of the political opponents of this administration. For those who are watching right now, if you'd like to support our work, please make sure to subscribe. I'll put the links to both of our channels right here on the screen. Great way to support us, it is completely free, and a great way to support independent media. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen.

I'm Brian Taylor Cohen.

And I'm Glenn Kirshner.