US Politics
Trump ally Jeanine Pirro tapped prosecutors with scant federal experience to lead failed indictment on Democrats over ‘illegal orders’ video
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The Justice Department reportedly turned to two lawyers with minimal federal prosecution experience to lead a potential case against the six “illegal orders” Democrats, a prosecution attempt that reportedly failed this week when a grand jury in Washington, D.C., declined to bring an indictment.
The US Attorney’s Office for Washington, led by former Fox News host and prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, reportedly tapped attorneys Steven Vandervelden and Carlton Davis to help bring about the indictment, Bloomberg Law reports.
Vandervelden has no prior DOJ background, though he served alongside Pirro as a local prosecutor in Westchester County, New York, while Pirro was district attorney there, according to the outlet.
He reportedly maintained an active photography studio as the prosecution was playing out, Bloomberg Law reported.
Carlton reportedly briefly served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia and held a post working for House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer.
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In a statement to Bloomberg, Pirro’s office defended both officials.
“Steven Vandervelden is one of the best prosecutors and best investigators that I have worked with in well over three decades in the criminal justice system,” the statement reads.
The statement added that Davis has been an “investigator at the highest levels of our government.”
The case against the Democratic lawmakers over their November video was already an unusual one before the alleged grand jury process took place.
In the wake of the clip, which featured lawmakers with intelligence and military backgrounds urging service members to ignore orders from the Trump administration if they were illegal, the Defense Secretary pushed to potentially court-martial and cut Sen. Mark Kelly’s retirement rank and pay.
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Kelly, a former NASA astronaut and naval officer, said Tuesday the reported grand jury process was an “outrageous abuse of power.”
“It wasn’t enough for [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth to censure me and threaten to demote me, now it appears they tried to have me charged with a crime — all because of something I said that they didn’t like,” he said. “That’s not the way things work in America.”
Failures to secure federal grand jury indictments in high-profile cases are rare, as are such cases being led by relative outsiders rather than career line prosecutors.
The Trump administration, however, has been marked by failures in court and chaos within the ranks of top federal prosecutors.
Since Trump took office, more than 5,000 DOJ officials have reportedly quit, taken buyouts, or been fired, according to a monitoring group.
Pirro’s office alone lost at least 90 prosecutors, the Washington Post reported.
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In recent weeks, scores of prosecutors have left a U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, reportedly in part out of frustration over the Trump administration’s decision not to launch a civil rights investigation into an ICE agent fatally shooting Minneapolis protester Renee Good.
The Trump administration has also failed to secure charges in high-profile cases.
Last year, in the case of a protester who threw a sandwich at a federal officer, Pirro’s office failed to secure a grand jury indictment and was not able to convict on a misdemeanor assault charge.
In January, Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s one-time personal lawyer, stepped down as a top federal prosecutor in Virginia, after a court found she was unlawfully remaining in the role after an interim appointment.
Halligan, installed after her predecessor resisted pressure to bring indictments against officials like former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, was ultimately unable to carry off the cases against the officials.
Both were stymied in court last year based on issues with Halligan’s appointment, and in December, a grand jury reportedly declined to issue a new indictment against James.
That month, Trump’s former personal attorney Alina Habba announced she would step down as US Attorney for New Jersey, after judges found she was unlawfully serving in the role.
