Grand jury said to decline to reindict Letitia James

A grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia, declined Thursday to reindict Letitia James, New York's attorney general, according to people familiar with the matter, rejecting efforts to revive a criminal case that had been sought by President Donald Trump.

The decision dealt another embarrassing setback to the president's efforts to exert greater control over the Justice Department, highlighting how judges and jurors have acted as a check on Trump's desire to use the criminal justice system to punish his political foes.

But the Justice Department could try again to indict her.


The grand jury's rejection came more than a week after a federal judge dismissed an earlier indictment against James, ruling that Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor handpicked by Trump to bring the case, had been unlawfully appointed.

The Justice Department declined to comment. In a statement, a lawyer for James, Abbe Lowell, called the grand jury's refusal "a decisive rejection of a case that should never have existed in the first place."

The case in Virginia is not the only one Trump's Justice Department has opened into James, underscoring the president's long-standing enmity toward her. James has been in the president's crosshairs largely because of her yearslong civil case in which she accused him of exaggerating his net worth by billions of dollars.

The original indictment centered on James' purchase of a home in Norfolk in 2020 and whether she lied to financial institutions to get a discounted mortgage rate for the property.

Roger Keller, a federal prosecutor brought in from Missouri to handle the case after career lawyers determined the evidence was too weak to support charges, presented a new version of the indictment Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe events intended to be kept private.

Shortly after 9 a.m., grand jurors convened on the fourth floor of the Walter E. Hoffman courthouse, a marble-halled building in downtown Norfolk. A court security officer guarded the room where they met.

Their deliberations seemed to be brief and uncomplicated, and by lunchtime, the jurors appeared to have adjourned.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.