Lawyers in the District of Columbia revealed on Sunday how President Donald Trump’s U.S. Attorney in the area has affected their ability to do their work, according to a new report.
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U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has billed herself as a tough-on-crime prosecutor in D.C., but her actions inside the grand jury room have caused headaches for other lawyers in the District, The Washington Post reported. Pirro’s pursuit of overtly political cases, like prosecuting a former Justice Department paralegal for assaulting a Border Patrol agent after he threw a sandwich at the officer, and a slew of other cases that have resulted in acquittals or mistrials, have made grand jurors more skeptical of government cases and could lead to more hung juries in the future.
Eugene Gorokhov, a long-time defense attorney, told the Post that he has seen a noticeable shift in how D.C. residents disclose their biases during jury selection.
“I’d never had a case with so many people coming in the door saying, ‘I’m going to have a hard time believing the feds,’” Gorokhov told the outlet about a case that ultimately ended in a deadlock.
There is one case in particular that illustrates the problems Pirro has caused in the District, according to the report. Days after Pirro took office, a jury convicted four-star Navy Admiral Robert P. Burke of government contracting abuses that were described by prosecutors as a “stunning abuse of power.”
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However, Pirro’s office failed to secure convictions against two executives of a New York-based company involved in the bribe, which the Post noted was “the only known case in which a public official was behind bars for collecting a bribe that no one was guilty of paying.”
“Two juries that heard the full evidence could not convict the alleged bribe payers, yet Admiral Burke remains in prison,” Burke’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, told the Post. “This incoherent result speaks for itself.”
A spokesperson for Pirro’s office told the Post in a statement that the criminal justice system is working “exactly as designed.”
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