Going to war with the magistrate judges is a weird move for a prosecutor. But Jeanine Pirro, the improbable US Attorney for the District of Columbia, is kind of a weirdo. And, of course, these are very weird times. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Pirro finds herself unable to indict the proverbial ham sandwich and crosswise with the judiciary.
“It is without a doubt the most illegal search I’ve ever seen in my life,” Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui rebuked prosecutors in August as he tossed gun charges against a Black man intercepted at Trader Joe’s with a bag that “looked heavy.”
“I’m absolutely flabbergasted at what has happened. A high school student would know this was an illegal search.”
In a separate case, Judge Faruqui excoriated the DOJ for holding a woman in custody for two days before charging her, not requesting detention, then actually failing to release her.
“What is especially troubling is that this is not even the first time in the past four months that the Court has encountered this same problem of false imprisonment,” the magistrate noted.
The courthouse chaos isn’t happening in a vacuum: The streets of the nation’s capital are flooded with troops. Half the attorneys in the federal prosecutors’ office, which handles felonies for the District, were fired or quit. And meanwhile, Pirro is demanding that prosecutors upcharge everything.
“In line with President Trump’s directive to make D.C. safe, U.S. Attorney Pirro has made it clear that the old way of doing things is unacceptable,” her spokesman Tim Lauer barked to the New York Times. “She directed her staff to charge the highest crime that is supported by the law and the evidence.”
But after weeks of military occupation, grand juries made up of local citizens are telling prosecutors to get bent, returning at least seven no-bills in the past month. That includes Sean Dunn, the man caught on camera throwing a sandwich at an ICE agent. Pirro, who moved to the District in May, insists that this is because its residents don’t actually know what’s going on in their own city.
“There are a lot of people who sit on juries, and they live in Georgetown or in Northwest, or in some of these better areas, and they don’t see the reality of crime that is occurring,” Pirro burbled on Fox. “And my office has been instructed to move for the highest crime possible consistent with the law, the statute and the evidence.”
Her record is … mixed. After three separate grand juries refused to indict a woman named Sidney Reid for feloniously assaulting an ICE agent and causing him to bruise his knuckles while roughing her up, the DOJ was forced to convert her case to a misdemeanor. The same thing happened with “Sandwich Man” Dunn, although the DOJ cut its losses before striking out with three grand juries. In multiple cases, Pirro’s office seems to be trying to save face by securing a dismissal without prejudice, allowing it to refile charges after further rumination. (We hear one or 12 Bota boxes can really get those creative legal juices flowing!)
Indeed, in the case of a man named Eduarda Dana, they appear to have skipped the rumination and the dismissal, and instead charged him in DC Superior Court with his federal case still pending. Judge Faruqui hit the roof.
On September 4, 2025 at 12:30 p.m., the parties appeared before the Court for a Preliminary Hearing. At 12:04 p.m. the government emailed the Court stating that “a short time ago” they filed misdemeanor charges in D.C. Superior Court against Mr. Dana. Based on this, the government stated that it “no longer intends to pursue the federal charge that is at issue.” The government concluded that it “anticipate[s] filing a motion to dismiss the federal case before the close of
business today.” The government sought to cancel the hearing before the undersigned based on this. However, doing so would have precluded any oversight of the government’s inexcusable actions.
He pointed out that the DOJ’s practice manual precludes bringing cases which the US Attorney does not believe she can win, observing dryly: “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.”
Judge Faruqui instructed prosecutors to show cause why they shouldn’t be required to dismiss the case with prejudice and expunge the criminal record of Defendant Dana, a man with longstanding mental health and substance abuse problems who allegedly slurred out threats to the president in the back of a police cruiser … after explaining that he was descended from Huguenots, affiliated with the Russian mafia, and was going to have Putin bomb America.
Judge Faruqui was not impressed, predicting that magistrate judges will have so little faith in DOJ declarations that they’ll refuse to issue warrants without cross examining declarants themselves.
“This is not going to work. Complaints will not be signed. We’re past the Rubicon,” he said during Dana’s hearing, according to the Washington Post.
But US Attorney Pirro knows that Faruqui, a 12-year veteran of the office she now leads, is just a pinko with an agenda.
“This judge took an oath to follow the law, yet he has allowed his politics to consistently cloud his judgment and his requirement to follow the law. America voted for safe communities, law and order, and this judge is the antithesis of that,” she blustered.
Wait ’til she finds out that petit juries have to be unanimous …
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.