A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., declined on Thursday to indict Letitia James, the New York attorney general, the second time in a week that jurors had rejected the effort — a rebuke of President Trump’s effort to order up prosecutions against his political enemies.
The jury refused to charge Ms. James, who had brought a civil case against Mr. Trump, in connection with making false claims on a mortgage application, 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 Trump’s foes.
Nothing bars the U.S. attorney’s office in Eastern Virginia from trying again to indict Ms. James, though a judge might look askance at multiple juries’ having rejected the charges.
A former White House aide whom Mr. Trump had named U.S. attorney in Eastern Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, succeeded in securing charges against Ms. James in October. But late last month, 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 the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey.
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 defense, that’s a pretty strong sign that you don’t have a tryable case,” he said.
A lawyer for Ms. James, Abbe D. Lowell, said in a statement that the second rejection “makes even clearer that this case should never have seen the light of day.”
“This case already has been a stain on this department’s reputation and raises troubling questions about its integrity,” he said. “Any further attempt to revive these discredited charges would be a mockery of our system of justice.”
A spokesman for the Eastern District of Virginia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The rejection on Thursday 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. It is vanishingly rare for grand juries to decline to indict a case, but in cases of people arrested after Mr. Trump’s deployment of federal agents to patrol city streets, grand jurors have repeatedly refused to do so.
Grand jury proceedings are conducted in private, meaning it is unclear what exact charges prosecutors sought to bring on Thursday or a week earlier in Norfolk, Va. But a person familiar with the matter said that Roger Keller, a federal prosecutor brought in from Missouri after career lawyers determined the evidence was too weak to support charges, presented the case before grand jurors on Thursday. Mr. Keller also presented the case in Norfolk.
The original indictment against Ms. James accused her of having intentionally misled financial institutions about her intent for a home she bought in Norfolk in 2020. Though she indicated that she would use it as a secondary residence, prosecutors said that she always knew that she would use it as a “rental investment property.” They have said she stood to gain $18,933 in favorable rates from the false claim.
Ms. James pleaded not guilty to the charges and repeatedly called them “baseless.” The property has been occupied for years by Ms. James’s great-niece, who told a Norfolk grand jury over the summer that she did not pay rent. Ms. James herself has only reported receiving $1,350 in rent, though she listed the home as an “investment property” on official disclosures with New York State.
No judge has reviewed the substance of the case.
Career prosecutors in Ms. Halligan’s office had cast doubt on the case and the burden of proof, if charges were to be secured again, would be high.
But the burden for an indictment is far lower; jurors need only find that there is probable cause to believe a crime may have been committed.
Mr. Trump and Ms. James have clashed for years, in part because of the civil suit she brought against him, his company and his family members. The suit led to a trial at which a judge found Mr. Trump had conspired to exaggerate his net worth to garner favorable treatment from lenders. The case is being considered by New York’s highest court.
Mr. Trump has vowed revenge. In September, he pushed out his U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik S. Siebert, after Mr. Siebert told Justice Department officials he believed that the evidence did not support criminal charges against Ms. James or Mr. Comey.
In Mr. Siebert’s place, the president installed Ms. Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience. The following month, Ms. James was indicted on charges of bank fraud and lying to financial institutions to secure better terms for a mortgage on a home in Virginia.
The Justice Department’s efforts to seek a new indictment against Mr. Comey have also stalled.
Over the weekend, a federal judge in Washington barred prosecutors in the case from gaining access to evidence they had used to obtain the first indictment against Mr. Comey. That evidence largely consisted of communications between Mr. Comey and one of his confidants, Daniel C. Richman, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Columbia University.
Mr. Richman, in an emergency request to Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, claimed that prosecutors had violated his constitutional rights by failing to get a search warrant for the materials before they used them to seek charges against Mr. Comey.
The judge’s order barring prosecutors from using from Mr. Richman’s files is set to expire at midnight on Friday.
Alan Feuer, Aishvarya Kavi and Minho Kim contributed reporting.
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in the New York region for The Times. He is focused on political influence and its effect on the rule of law in the area’s federal and state courts.
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