Justice Department, Told No by Grand Jury, Goes to Ask the Other Grand Jury

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — One day after a Washington grand jury refused to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, federal prosecutors drove eight miles across the Potomac on Wednesday to ask the grand jury in Alexandria, which department staff refer to as “the fun one.”

The strategy is one every child masters by the third grade: when Mom says no, go find Dad. Tuesday’s “no bill” over Hutchinson’s 2022 testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee joins a growing list of refusals, including three tries to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James that ended the same way.

The chief federal judge in Washington now requires the department to notify the magistrate judge on duty whenever a grand jury turns it down, a policy legal scholars describe as two parents who have finally started texting each other.

“They came in with a box of doughnuts this time,” said Pauline Dunworthy-Nobel, 66, a retired school bus dispatcher serving on the Alexandria panel. “Then one of them said the D.C. grand jury had basically already said yes. So I called the D.C. grand jury. They said they said no.”

Attorney General Todd Blanche said in April that the failed cases showed “that we’re working hard,” adding, “It could be that the grand jury just made the wrong decision.” Dunworthy-Nobel said that is word for word what her grandson told her after she refused to buy him a dirt bike.

Department aides have drawn up a list of backup grand juries in Norfolk, Richmond, and Wilmington, North Carolina, the last of which staff call “Grandma” because it is just happy anyone came to visit.

By Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors had filed a motion asking the court to reconsider, arguing that all the other countries’ justice departments get to indict whoever they want.