Op-ed: Lawfare reaches the jury level, ‘the very soul of this nation’

Felony charges were dismissed by a special prosecutor against Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill in New Orleans this week, demonstrating a growing trend of jury-induced malicious prosecution and nullification.

Murrill’s crime?

She warned New Orleans’ Democrat mayor and city council members that their actions in calling an illegal special election may ultimately implicate them in a crime.

She urged office holders instead to wait for the issue to be settled by the courts.

The mayor and council members were miffed that the Republican state Legislature abolished the Orleans Parish’s Office of the Criminal Clerk of the Court and had it absorbed by the Civil Clerk of the court.

Despite being cautioned, municipal officials tried an end-around by calling a special election to fill the position anyway.

And then, by magic, an indictment against Murrill appeared claiming she was trying to intimidate the officials.

The state’s Supreme Court ultimately intervened and quashed the indictment.

This comes even as participants such as the special prosecutor, the city district attorney and the elected officials seek to put distance between themselves and how a progressive jury returned an indictment against the attorney general in the first place.

The episode demonstrates that lawfare has worked its way down to the grassroots, as juries made up of ordinary voters become more willing to play an active part in politics, rather than justice.

Orleans Parish is not alone.

Despite the fact grand juries only need to conclude whether probable cause exists a crime has been committed, liberal grand and petty juries are becoming reluctant to prosecute cases aligned against their progressive ideology.

In Northern Virginia, grand juries repeatedly failed to reindict Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James after her original mortgage-fraud indictment was dismissed on a technicality.

James was the prosecutor who campaigned on convicting Trump for mortgage fraud, and ultimately succeeded.

The failure to reindict is stunning because even liberals at The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org didn’t claim no crime was committed in the James case. They instead argued that it was rarely prosecuted.

But in other ways, it’s unsurprising.

The Eastern District of Virginia is anti-Trump territory.

The James indictments failed in Norfolk, which voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, 54.4% to 44% and also failed in Alexandria, where the vote was more lopsided: Harris 65% to Trump’s 35%.

Similarly, in progressive-dominated Washington, D.C., a federal grand jury declined to indict former Department of Justice employee Sean Dunn on felony assault charges despite widely circulated video showing him throwing a sandwich at a federal officer.

“F*** you! You f***ing fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” he shouted.

Even liberals see the basis of the crime, although they might disagree about it being prosecuted.

“You actually aren’t allowed to throw a sandwich at a cop,” admits Molly Roberts, who once argued that crusades against political correctness were out of line.

Assault is okay, she seems to be saying, depending on your politics. But darn it: don’t be rude.

Other D.C. grand juries reportedly rejected felony charges against anti-Trump protesters accused of assaulting federal officers.

The giggling stopped, however, on Jan. 7, 2026, when protestor Renee Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, who sustained internal injuries reportedly after being struck by Good’s car.

Where might Good be today if liberals had treated assault against officers more seriously?

More recently, in heavily-Democrat Chicago, grand juries repeatedly failed to indict six progressive, pro-illegal alien activists who instantly became known by the made-for-TV movie title the “Broadview Six.”

Prosecutors eventually obtained an indictment only to have it quashed after the defense team, a member of which was related to one of the prosecutors, obtained evidence of the secret grand jury proceedings that indicated prosecutors may have unduly influenced the jury.

The outcomes cannot all be dismissed as unrelated curiosities. The messaging has worked down the judicial level.

Consider Chief Judge James Boasberg’s handling of the “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” case.

Pro-life demonstrators were arrested for writing their message in washable chalk while police tolerated Black Lives Matter graffiti.

The D.C. Circuit reversed Boasberg after finding he applied the wrong legal standard to the protesters’ First Amendment claim.

Yet, Boasberg again prevented the claim from reaching a jury.

The message to Democrat voters is clear.

Enforcement depends on whether juries and judges approve of the actor.

A political and judicial establishment that has spent years teaching citizens the law should serve the proper ideological outcome is as perverted as one that’s corrupted in any other way.

When sentencing Jimmy Hoffa in 1964 for tampering with a jury federal, Judge Frank Wilson warned that the jury system is the foundation of the nation and civilization, that when it dies, “nothing else would be possible in this country.”

“You stand here convicted of having tampered, really, with the very soul of this nation,” he said.