• Prosecutors failed to secure an indictment against six Democrats who posted a video reminding military members to refuse illegal orders
• The rejection is a remarkable rebuke from a grand jury
• Department of Justice seems to need remedial Con Law 1 classes

For a president that ran on telling people they'd get tired of winning, his Department of Justice appears to display fentanyl-like addiction to losing. Sol Wachtler, Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, famously remarked that "any good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich" to illustrate how often grand juries agree to "true bills" without rigorous evidence. A quip that has merit. Over 99% of the time grand juries approve prosecutor requests for indictments. It turns out these lawmakers are not ham sandwiches.

This loss comes on the heels of failing to secure indictments against James Comey and Letitia James because the insurance attorney turned almost DoJ prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, completely blew basic grand jury practice.

This case also underscores a basic strategy of this Admin is to try to use the DoJ to silence opponents. If you blow the whistle expect it to act more like a game-on-to-start-frivolous-legal-proceedings whistle than an all-traffic-must-stop whistle.

The 2025 case Zaid v. Executive Office of the President demonstrates a systematic pattern of presidential retaliation against attorneys representing government whistleblowers. Attorney Mark Zaid, who represented the Ukraine whistleblower that led to President Trump's first impeachment, had his security clearance summarily revoked through a presidential memorandum targeting "lawyers and law firms—specifically ones that in one way or another, did not bow to the current presidential administration's political orthodoxy."

The D.C. District Court found that Zaid's representation of whistleblowers constituted protected First Amendment activity, and that the President's public statements calling Zaid a "sleazeball" and suggesting he should be sued for "treason" established a clear causal connection between protected speech and retaliatory action. The court granted preliminary injunctive relief, finding that "Zaid's representation of whistleblowers and other clients adverse to the government was the sole reason for summarily revoking his security clearance."

As the President you can't punish people for lawfully speaking up. The First Amendment isn't limitless in what it protects but these sorts of things are basic. And as a government attorney trying to punish a Senator for saying something as simple as "don't break the law" it apparently comes off to a grand jury less like a request to indict a ham sandwich and more like the rantings of an Arby's School of Law drop out.