Prosecutors informed a judge Thursday that they were withdrawing federal charges against a man they accused of threatening to kill President Donald Trump, marking another embarrassing setback for Trump ally and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro amid Trump’s D.C. crime crackdown.
The office of Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, had alleged that Eduardo Alexander Dana broke a light fixture outside a D.C. restaurant on Aug. 17 and, while in police custody, said he would kill the president. Dana was drunk and singing while in the police car, according to court files, and his attorney argued his remarks amounted to idle rambling and not “true threats.”
It was one of many cases brought during Trump’s federal takeover of D.C. law enforcement that defense attorneys have described as prosecutorial overreach unworthy of a federal court’s time.
“In a Thursday court order, a federal magistrate judge ripped Pirro’s office for what he called ‘inexcusable actions’ in the apparently weak case against Dana.”
A grand jury of D.C. residents apparently agreed Dana wasn’t serious about taking out Trump since it recently declined to indict him — even though it’s supposed to be easy for prosecutors to secure a grand jury indictment. That courtroom loss prompted Pirro’s office to drop their federal case and pursue misdemeanor charges against Dana in city court.
In a Thursday court order, a federal magistrate judge ripped Pirro’s office for what he called “inexcusable actions” in the apparently weak case against Dana. He demanded to know what was being done to “remedy what happened to Mr. Dana,” including expunging his arrest record.
The judge, Zia M. Faruqui, went so far as to quote the Justice Manual for U.S. Attorneys, noting that prosecutors shouldn’t pursue federal cases unless they believe the defendant is likely to be found guilty.
“Given that there have been an unprecedented number of cases that the U.S. Attorney dismissed in the past ten days, all of whom were detained for some period of time, the Court is left to question if this principle still applies,” Faruqui wrote.
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In a courtroom hearing on the case Thursday, Faruqui went further, saying “we’re past the point of Constitutional crisis,” according to CBS News.
After declaring a crime emergency on Aug. 11, Trump diverted law enforcement from federal agencies so they can help patrol D.C. streets alongside the local Metropolitan Police Department, leading to an unusual number of encounters between city residents and federal agents. Several cases have fallen apart due to the scrutiny of grand juries and judges like Faruqui.
Grand juries have declined to indict in at least seven times in five cases during Trump’s D.C. crackdown. In several of them, prosecutors claimed the defendants had “assaulted” federal officers, but jurors apparently disagreed there was sufficient evidence to indict them.
In one high-profile case, a former Justice Department employee threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer. The man is now facing potential misdemeanor charges after Pirro’s federal case against him went nowhere.
In another case, prosecutors claimed a D.C. woman assaulted a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent while Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were carrying out an inmate swap. But grand juries declined to indict the woman not once but three times.