In the past month or so, federal prosecutors in Washington have been repeatedly embarrassed as nearly a dozen grand juries have rejected their efforts to secure indictments against people caught up in President Trump’s plan to use federal troops and agents to crack down on local crime.
As unusual as all of this has been, there was a new and even more unusual twist to their setbacks this week: On Monday, a magistrate judge pre-emptively refused to accept an indictment after learning that prosecutors had performed what he described as an “end run” around the normal course of justice. After failing to secure an indictment from a federal grand jury, prosecutors took the federal charges to a local grand jury, which returned an indictment.
In a scathing order filed in Federal District Court in Washington, the magistrate judge, Zia M. Faruqui, told prosecutors that he had never heard of such of thing, saying that what appeared to be an example of grand jury forum shopping had broken “decades-long norms and the rule of law.”
“At a minimum, this is very unseemly,” Judge Faruqui wrote. “More than likely, it is unlawful.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Judge Faruqui, who once worked as a prosecutor in the office, has had extremely harsh words for his former colleagues several times in recent weeks. He has accused them of overcharging people ensnared in Mr. Trump’s local crime initiative and bowing to pressure to bring criminal cases at the expense of protecting defendants’ legal rights.
But the judge appeared to be particularly shocked by the grand jury switch-up, saying it had further eroded the traditional bonds of trust — known in legal jargon as the presumption of regularity — that courts have long conferred on government lawyers.
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The post In Unusual Move, Prosecutors Secure Federal Charges From Local Grand Jury appeared first on New York Times.
