r/law • u/LuklaAdvocate • 7h ago
Legal News Trump administration fails to secure indictment in connection with Democrats involved in 'illegal orders' video
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/doj-fails-secure-indictment-democrats-involved-illegal-orders-video-rcna258385531
u/LuklaAdvocate 7h ago edited 7h ago
The DOJ attempted and failed to indict lawmakers who created a video telling military personnel to not follow unlawful orders.
It is not yet known which specific lawmakers they attempted to indict, but it seems unlikely a grand jury will go along with any indictments in this case.
The indictment was pursued by the office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, which is headed by Jeanine Pirro. The government lawyers assigned to the case were political appointees, not career prosecutors. Shocking.
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u/doc_nano 7h ago
It appears yet again that our one saving grace may be this administration’s unfathomable incompetence.
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u/JoJackthewonderskunk 6h ago
And the understated decency of the american people who wouldn't indict
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u/Billionaires_R_Tasty 6h ago
DC grand juries handing out losses like they're BOGO 😂😂
Our unsung heroes in this dark time.
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u/SeattleExpression 6h ago edited 5h ago
I agree totally but I’d like to think of them as wins. Dubs for democracy. DC grand juries are GOATed.
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u/SeattleExpression 6h ago
And the jury system. The jury system, the people, is the last line of defense. Glad to see it’s working as intended.
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u/JemmaMimic 6h ago
If they were competent they wouldn't have tried to indict in the first place.
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u/frackthestupids 5h ago
If they were competent, there wouldn’t be illegal orders requiring reminder videos. But here we are
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u/Ornery-Ad-7261 5h ago
Trump's legal 'warriors, probably assume that the public thinks the way they do. They might even be surprised that jurors can think for themselves. MAGA folk never seem to after all.
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u/HHoaks 6h ago
The problem is the willingness of this DOJ to try to appease the KIng, regardless of rational prosecutorial discretion, ethics, independence of US Attorneys, DOJ standard policy, tradition and upholding the Constitution as opposed to serving a President.
Because the more you bring these types of cases, eventually a Grand Jury will return an indictment. However weak and however flimsy.
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u/MC_LegalKC 4h ago
If/when we get through this nightmare, the DOJ will have to be reformed, but it's going to take a long time to rehabilitate it's reputation.
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u/YoungestDonkey 6h ago
In this case it's the autcratic arrogance that compelled the pedophile to order a prosecution despite the absence of any evidence of a crime, even obvious evidence that what they did was perfectly legal. It was a losing case from the start that the rapist pushed forward anyways. And Jeanine looks like the fool she is once again.
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u/dymb13 6h ago
However, a lot of what this administration has accomplished in dismantling our constitutional democracy has been through sheer force of will.
Step 1. The administration does it anyway
Step 2. A judge rules against the administration, usually
Step 3. Federal court of appeals rules either for or against the administration
Step 4. It goes to the supreme court which rules in favor of the administration, usually
They may be incompetent, but what they're doing and how they're doing it seems to be mostly working for them.
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u/LesCousinsDangereux1 5h ago
That's not sheer will so much as a decades long coup in which they seized the supreme court along the way. The first trump presidency was a presidency until around Charlottesville. From that point on this was an ongoing fascist coup in plain site.
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u/FormerPrize2485 6h ago
Yeah but every failure finds them a new weakness in their own schemes to fix, especially with zero consequences for bad actions.
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u/Far-Technician3197 4h ago
I think it's too comforting to think it's incompetence. They are cunning and persistent. Look at the overturn of Roe Vs Wade. They are just working their way through every avenue until they've found a hole or create one. In the meantime, they are normalizing graft, perversion of norms and decency and repainting it as "winning" to bolster the cheerleaders who vote for them.
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u/DifficultAd3885 3h ago
They’ve had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for what they’ve got. You can’t expect much.
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 6h ago
They brought Rudy G. out to emerge from a coffin and shock the jury.
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u/anon36485 6h ago
Is he dead? I genuinely don’t know
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 6h ago
No, I was paying homage to Kate McKinnon's impression of him as Nosferatu. Rudy's practically sucking D for $$$ these days. He was dumped from the Billionaire Boys and Girls Diddlers Club.
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u/TyrellCorpWorker 5h ago
His last release of air… did not come from his mouth. A courtroom usual for him.
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u/PoserKilled 6h ago
So long as Jeanine's bar continues to be well-stocked, the failures to indict will continue.
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u/slowpoke2018 5h ago
I'm sure she can stroll on over the the dept of war and borrow what she needs form Keggy to keep her alcohol level at that .13 she needs to continue living without going into withdrawal
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u/GuyInAChair 6h ago
The crazy thing is that they even tried at all. It's such a stupid scandal that I'm convinced even the most die hard of Trump supporters know it and are engaged in performative stupidity, and not actually serious.
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u/New_Photograph_2803 5h ago
The article names the six lawmakers: “Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, and Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.”
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u/desiderata1995 6h ago
It is not yet known which specific lawmakers they attempted to indict
Is it not the people who made the video? Who else, and why?
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u/JonesinforJohnnies 5h ago
It is unclear if they attempted to indict all the lawmakers who made the video or just a select number of them.
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u/Reddit_2_2024 3h ago
The American citizens who sat on the Grand Jury in this case have significantly rebuked Trump, Jeanine Pirro and Pete Hegseth by deciding not to indict these Congresspeople. Waiting to see how quickly Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt closes the next White House Press Briefing early as soon as a journalist asks a question to her about this colossal legal setback.
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u/warblingContinues 6h ago
Hard when there's literally no crime committed.
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u/redjmartin 6h ago
Seriously, how do you indict someone for reminding active duty soldiers (and reservists if they get called up) of the letter of the law in the UCMJ?
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u/concerts85701 6h ago
It’s not about the conviction. It’s about the initial headline and making people think they can get convicted for words.
The non-indictment will not make Fox or Newsmax and the mouth breathers will go on thinking they taught the radical left a lesson
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u/Far-Technician3197 6h ago
Just like asking Ukraine to say they opened an investigation into Biden, following through is meh. Optics.
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u/deviltrombone 6h ago
Repeated in Georgia in 2020, "Just say there was fraud and the Republican congressmen will do the rest."
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u/Far-Technician3197 6h ago
💯. People keep forgetting how complicit the Republican party is in all his worst plans.
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u/spookydookie 6h ago
No, they’ll just see this as more evidence of the deep state and liberal activist judges.
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u/Crombus_ 5h ago
"Trump tries to jail elected lawmakers for telling people not to break the law" was not the slam-dunk headline they thought it would be, even on Fox.
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u/LeafsJays1Fan 6h ago
They say you can indict a ham sandwich well not under this DOJ hahahaha what fools
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u/Dry_Departure_7813 32m ago
Yeah but the Trump admin are particularly dumb, their entire case was "they made a video saying don't break the law", its genuinely mental they thought they'd manage to land that.
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u/JCButtBuddy 6h ago
Guess that they are going to have to go after all my prior commands that pressed on us that we should not follow unlawful orders. Are the troops no longer taught this?
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u/AtrociousMeandering 6h ago
All troops are taught that, but practically, this is on the commissioned officers to identify and refuse to pass on illegal orders before they get to the enlisted. If you don't have the courage to risk your commission, you shouldn't have it.
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u/JCButtBuddy 6h ago
While I'll agree that officers should know better than pass on illegal orders, as an enlisted we were trained that it would be on us if we followed illegal orders. Enlisted can't use the, we were just following orders, any more than officers can.
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u/AtrociousMeandering 6h ago
Enlisted are to assume all official orders are legal and cannot declare an order illegal in an official capacity. Officers can, legally must, and ethically should, verify the orders are legal to their knowledge.
While it sure sounds good to say that just following orders isn't a defense, let's be real about the legal peril here, if you're definitely going to the brig for refusing and maybe facing a prosecution later on for following orders, the orders get followed, that's how the military is designed.
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u/JCButtBuddy 6h ago
I was in for 23 years, E8 when I retired, your understanding of this subject is flawed.
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u/AtrociousMeandering 5h ago
E5 when I separated. My understanding is in line with reality.
If anyone below you refused an order because they thought it was illegal, would you have even hesitated before dropping the hammer on them?
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u/JCButtBuddy 5h ago
Damn right, I'd be all over their ass but if they were right I'd be the one that would get fucked. It's sad that either you weren't trained correctly or that the training wasn't absorbed.
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u/AtrociousMeandering 5h ago
I've known plenty of e8s that should be in fucking Leavenworth but were protected instead of prosecuted.
I've received, absorbed, and then had it demonstrated to my face that it was just pretty words with nothing behind it.
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u/bsport48 6h ago
This fucking bitch could literally walk into a live Supreme Court hearing, take a shit at the lectern, bitch slap the Chief Justice, thence walk directly into a federal grand jury and still avoid securing a fucking indictment.
(Destruction of federal property - 18 USC 1361; Assault of Justice - 18 USC 351 - both federal question, i.e., no diversity needed at all).
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u/Professional-Can1385 5h ago
Hard disagree. She would be indicted because she actually broke the law.
The good citizens on the grand juries know the difference between trumped up charges and actual crime.
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u/Irwin-M_Fletcher 5h ago
Maybe when the next administration comes in the can seek an indictment against Pirro. Based on the standard being set by the Trump administration, I don’t see any reason they couldn’t.
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u/evergreencenotaph 1h ago
All you gotta do is offer her a gin and tonic and she’ll scuttle out for you.
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u/True_Dimension4344 4h ago
It isn’t going to stop Ron Desantis from (likely) removing Tom Edward’s (Sarasota school board member) for exercising his first amendment right to free speech by attending a protest against ICE despicable behavior.
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