Pirro's serial failures
Jeanine Pirro did her boss's bidding and brought assault charges against Sydney Lori Reid, 44. The ex-Foxer tried for a felony indictment three times. No soap. Each time, the Grand Jury rejected the case. Thus proving that Pirro's case was weaker than a ham sandwich.
Not chagrined by her abject failure, Pirro tried for a misdemeanor indictment. That she got. However, it was her high-water mark. After hearing the evidence, the trial jury found Reid not guilty.
This failure is hardly surprising. According to attorney Christopher Macchiaroli, who previously served as an assistant US attorney in Pirro's current office:
"Seeking an indictment for a third time is extremely rare and usually only reserved for the most serious of crimes.
If a governmental entity cannot convince a super majority of grand jurors that there is a fair probability that a crime was committed, it is virtually impossible to believe that twelve jurors in the same relevant jurisdiction could unanimously at a future date find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest standard of proof under the law."
The case
In July, Pirro's office (US Attorney DC) filed a complaint outlining Reid's "crime." While she was filming the arrest of two "alleged members of the violent transnational 18th Street gang" by ICE, a press release states that:
"After multiple commands to step back, Reid tried to go around the ERO [ICE] officers, placing herself between FBI agents and one of the suspects being transferred into their custody.
As Reid tried to impede the transfer, one of the ERO officers pushed her against the wall and told her to stop. Reid continued to struggle and fight with the officer. The FBI agent tried to help the officer control Reid who was flailing her arms and kicking. During Reid's active resistance to being detained, the FBI agent's hand was injured from striking and scraping the cement wall causing lacerations while the FBI agent was assisting ICE ERO officers.
Pirro's office produced one witness — the FBI agent Eugenia Bates. She didn't help the prosecution when texts in evidence revealed Bates had called Reid a "libtard." No doubt the jury questioned Bates' objectivity.
The FBI agent further discredited herself when she didn't turn over additional text message evidence until early Wednesday morning (on the trial's start date). Then, in the middle of cross-examination, Reid's defense lawyer, assistant federal public defender Tezira Abe Abe, discovered one message was missing.
It wasn't the prosecutors' only sin, WUSA9 reported that:
In addition, US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan grew increasingly frustrated with prosecutors throughout the day as issues with evidence continued to crop up in the trial of Sidney Lori Reid. Sooknanan had already reprimanded them Tuesday for missing surveillance videos that surfaced the night before trial.
Leaving aside the prosecution's incompetence or deliberate foot-dragging, the case itself was pathetically weak (see grand jury rejection above). The report added:
While he [the ICE officer] was struggling with Reid, Bates got involved. Prosecutors argued that though there was no contact, a jerk movement that Reid made with her knee near Bates' groin during that struggle constitutes simple assault.
Dear God, the Justice Department is now trying to get criminal convictions of American citizens for non-contact knee jerks. I thought FBI agents were proud and tough — it turns out that some are crybabies.
During closing arguments, assistant federal public defender Tezira Abe painted the group of ICE officers and FBI agents as a "goon squad" that thinks they are above the law. "You should be livid that the government brought this case," Abe told the jury.
I don't know if the jury was livid, but they didn't rebut Abe's contention with a guilty verdict. I also hope that Reid and every other victim of this administration's use of the law as a sledgehammer to chill dissent bring malicious prosecution suits against the administration.
Criminal injustice in the Trump era
Federal prosecutors used to have gaudy winning percentages. Why? Because they typically only tried cases they were positive would end in a conviction. Not anymore. In the age of MAGA, the point is not to secure convictions. It is to make life expensive and miserable for anti-MAGA protestors and former officials who tell the truth about the corruption of the Trump administration.
Trump has appointed loyal and mindless brutes to be his legal attack dogs. The good news is that they suck at their job. Not that Trump cares.
That mentally defective sadist would have spanked the mushroom, thinking of Reid and her fellow patriots lolling in lockup. But he can still console himself with his ability to inflict wanton pain on people whose sole 'sin' is speaking up against his fascist dreams.
The reckoning
The Supreme Court has awarded Trump carte blanche to do whatever he wants. They have elevated him beyond accountability. Besides, he's old and demented, so regardless, he will go to his grave untroubled by the consequences of his actions.
But, as it stands, that blanket absolution does not apply to all the eager tools who work in his administration. They had better pray that either Trump's dreams of totalitarianism come true. Or that SCOTUS pulls another unconstitutional free pass out of its ass.
I sense that after three more years of this — especially if the economy crashes — America will be slavering for a return to justice and accountability. And the majority of citizens will be eager to elect a Democrat brimming with righteous anger, and ready to appoint a pit bull Attorney General, as the next POTUS.
