A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., has for the second time this week determined in opposition to indicting a defendant accused of threatening President Trump.
Public defender Elizabeth Mullin confirmed to The Hill on Tuesday {that a} grand jury returned a “no bill” in opposition to her shopper, Edward Dana, which means the panel of District residents determined that the proof in opposition to him was not adequate to indict.
Dana was arrested after he was seen damaging a light-weight fixture by pulling it off the outside wall of a restaurant in northwest D.C., in response to an FBI affidavit. When approached by Metropolitan Police Division (MPD) officers, he allegedly described himself as an individual with “intellectual disabilities” and expressed he didn’t know why he was being arrested.
As soon as in an MPD car, Dana stated he was intoxicated and commenced making escalating threats, from further property destruction to threats in opposition to the officer and the president, in response to the affidavit.
“I’m not going to tolerate fascism … And that means killing you, officer, killing the president, killing anyone who stands in the way of our Constitution,” Dana allegedly stated. “You want to stand in the way of our Constitution, I will f—ing kill you.”
The MPD officer then advised his station that Secret Service must be notified Dana had threatened to kill Trump, in response to the affidavit.
Dana faces one depend of threats in opposition to the president. WUSA9 first reported that federal prosecutors didn’t safe an indictment.
The grand jury’s determination to not indict Dana provides to a mounting document of refusals, because the Washington residents on the closed-door panels appear to quantity to a rejection of the administration’s bid to get powerful on native crime.
U.S. Lawyer for Washington, D.C. Jeanine Pirro instructed her workplace final month “charge the highest crime that is supported by the law and the evidence” as a part of the president’s crackdown, in response to The New York Occasions.
The grand jury’s refusal to indict Dana comes a day after a grand jury “found no probable cause” to indict Nathalie Rose Jones, one other defendant accused of threatening the president. Jones was charged over a sequence of threats made in opposition to Trump on-line, together with to “sacrificially kill” him.
“On condition that discovering, the load of the proof is weak,” Jones’s public defender, Mary Manning Petras, wrote in court docket filings searching for to change her circumstances of launch to that of private recognizance. “The government may intend to try again to obtain an indictment, but the evidence has not changed and no indictment is likely.”
There are at the very least 5 different situations the place grand juries have refused to rubber stamp prices introduced by federal prosecutors as a part of Trump’s crackdown.
Grand juries declined to indict former Justice Division worker Sean Dunn, who allegedly threw a sub sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Safety agent, making him a logo of opposition within the metropolis; Alvin Summers, who confronted a depend of assaulting, resisting or impeding federal regulation enforcement after fleeing a U.S. Park Police officer; and Sidney Lori Reid, whose federal assault cost tied to a tussle with an FBI agent was handed up for indictment by three grand juries.
