The Justice Department walked into the grand jury room with a rebooted case, hoping for a different ending. Instead, the panel delivered the same verdict as before: No thanks.
The attempt to resurrect criminal charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James — a figure who has spent years in the political splash zone for her pursuit of Donald Trump — collapsed for the second time, according to people familiar with the closed-door session.
The original case had already been tossed out after a judge ruled that the prosecutor who obtained the indictment had no lawful authority to do so. This latest attempt was supposed to be a fresh start. Instead, it became another misfire in a string of high-stakes stumbles by federal prosecutors targeting Trump’s adversaries.
Despite the setback, insiders say prosecutors are preparing to take one more run at an indictment. The Justice Department is keeping its public silence; James’ legal team is not. They blasted the persistence as a “shocking assault on the rule of law,” calling the repeated attempts a strike at the justice system’s credibility.
Grand juries rarely turn down prosecutors — it’s widely said that the government can get an indictment on almost anything short of a ham sandwich. Yet during Trump’s second term, several proposed indictments have fizzled out. None have been as prominent as this one.
James, unwavering in her response, said she has called the charges baseless from day one and urged an end to what she called the weaponization of legal tools.
The now-rejected case accused her of padding mortgage paperwork to secure better loan terms for a property in Norfolk, Virginia. She had pleaded not guilty before the case was thrown out the first time. She’s not alone in this spotlight: two other longtime Trump critics — a former FBI director and a former national security adviser — have also faced criminal charges in recent months, though one of those cases met the same fate due to the same improperly appointed prosecutor.
This legal drama unfolds against the backdrop of James’ landmark civil fraud push against Trump, which once saddled him with a towering penalty topping $450 million before an appeals court wiped it away — though it upheld the judge’s finding that he committed fraud. The battle isn’t over; both sides are now fighting it out before the state’s highest court.
And so the cycle continues: prosecutors regrouping, James defiant, and the courtroom spotlight showing no signs of dimming.
