DOJ’s Losing Streak Continues Because Federal Officers Just Can’t Stop Lying
I’ll take my joy where I can. And this iteration of the Trump DOJ continues to provide bright bursts of schadenfreude-tinted sunshine.
Any competent DOJ can close cases. Any barely competent prosecutor can push a case past a grand jury. Any sufficiently slippery solicitor (mixing in some British for the sheer alliteration of it all) can convince a judge that the lies told by officers were merely good faith blunders not worthy of anything more than a judicial “no one’s perfect” shrug.
This DOJ fails at every single level. It can’t secure indictments. It can’t convince grand juries that vindictive prosecutions are legitimate prosecutions. And its prosecutors are constantly undermined by (1) prejudicial, fact-free social media posts and public statements by administration officials, (2) the illegal actions of federal officers, (3) their own ineptitude, (4) the lies told by federal officers, and (5) any or all of the above.
High-level prosecutors keep getting sidelined because they’ve been illegally appointed. Other prosecutors have refused to engage with the administration’s vindictive plans, resulting in most of them retiring or being fired. Consequently, there’s a shortage of qualified, experienced prosecutors. The void is being constantly refilled by some of the emptiest people ever to leverage MAGA loyalty into federal employment.
It took less than a year for the Trump DOJ to almost completely destroy the “presumption of regularity” — the legal concept that the government is acting in good faith, even if its legal arguments aren’t the best. It took less than a year for the Trump DOJ to turn grand juries into coin flips.
I mean, this is how it went for years prior to Trump 2.0:
In 2016, the most recent year for which the Justice Department has published data, federal prosecutors concluded more than 155,000 prosecutions and declined over 25,000 cases presented by investigators. In only six instances was a grand jury’s refusal to indict listed as the reason for dropping the matter.
Six times in a one year over 25,000 declined cases. Trump’s loyalist US Attorney pick, Lindsey Halligan, put her insurance law background to work and… managed to do this twice during a single (attempted) prosecution.
When prosecutors aren’t shooting themselves in the foot (or being shot in the foot by their employer), they’re losing cases because the people they expect to back up their cases — the federal officers claiming to have been assaulted, etc. — can’t even back up their own narratives when testifying in court.
This was already a problem by late summer of last year. The Guardian reports that things appear to have gotten even worse.
The most recent significant fumble came from Minneapolis prosecutors, who last week dismissed felony assault charges they had filed against two Venezuelan men accused of “violently beating” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer “with weapons” on 14 January.
According to the early government narrative, federal officers were assaulted by “violent criminal illegal aliens” during a stop of an undocumented Venezuelan. The officers claimed two other men came out of a nearby apartment and attacked an officer with a “snow shovel and broom handle.” That case is now dead because… well, the testifying officers lied.
[O]n 12 February, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss both men’s cases, saying: “Newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations in the complaint affidavit.”
[…]
ICE director Todd Lyons said ICE and the DoJ had opened an investigation into the case after videos revealed “sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements”, marking a rare acknowledgement of possible wrongdoing by DHS officials.
It’s extremely rare for the government to dismiss its own prosecution with prejudice, meaning it can’t ever seek to refile these criminal charges against the alleged perpetrators. And I don’t know if Todd Lyons just misspoke or if he actually tried to use the exonerative tense while simultaneously stating these officers lied. “Sworn testimony… appears to have made untruthful statements” sounds like the courtroom version of a government official discussing a shooting by an officer with the phrase “the officer’s weapon discharged,” suggesting no one actually pulled the trigger.
Whatever the case, there’s definitely a trend here.
In Chicago, of 92 people arrested for assaulting or impeding officers last fall, 74 cases have resulted in no charges; in 13 cases, charges were filed and dismissed; and five charged cases were still pending, a recent investigation by Fox 9, a Minneapolis-based station, showed. As of the end of January, there have been no convictions.
In LA, the federal public defenders have won all six cases filed against ICE protesters that have gone to trial since June, the LA Times recently reported. Fewer than 1% of federal criminal defendants were acquitted across the US in fiscal year 2024, with US prosecutors traditionally having a roughly 90% conviction rate, the paper noted.
Juries have also issued not guilty verdicts for people accused of assaulting ICE or similar charges in Louisville, Kentucky, Seattle and Washington DC.
I assume the DOJ bloodshed will continue. Trump hates losing and he hates people who lose in his name even more. But replacing talent with loyalists isn’t going to end this losing streak. If nothing else, this iteration of the DOJ has the chance to go down in history as one of the worst ever assembled, even if we consider nothing else but its win-loss record.
It doesn’t mean the DOJ is harmless, however. It’s still more than willing to engage in vindictive prosecutions, ignore court orders, and take bite after bite of the apple (so to speak) until it finally manages to at least pierce the skin. And that means a lot of people are going to have their lives upended, even if only temporarily, just to please a tyrant who thinks anything or anyone presenting even the most minimal of opposition should be subjected to punishment.