During Donald Trump's second presidency, his administration officials and allies at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have heavily promoted the case against Moises Rivera-Luna, an alleged MS-13 gang member. But that case and others have not gone well for the Trump DOJ, and according to CNN's Katelyn Polantz, a pattern of mistrials and retrials at the DOJ's District of Columbia office reveals a major divide between jurors and pro-Trump prosecutors.

Drawing on "over two dozen Washington, DC, investigators, former prosecutors, defense attorneys and other legal experts," Polantz reports that "that track record for the U.S. Attorney's Office" — which is headed by federal prosecutor and Trump ally Jeanine Pirro — "is essentially unheard of in recent memory." Pirro, a former Westchester County, New York, district attorney and longtime Fox News host, was installed as interim U.S. attorney in May 2025, after Trump's first pick for the post, Ed Martin, saw his nomination stall in the Senate.

The numbers behind that record are stark. "Before the MS-13 case was re-tried in April, the DC U.S. Attorney's Office had secured convictions in only four of the eight federal cases tried before Washington juries since January," Polantz explains. "Since the MS-13 case's jury hung in April, the U.S. Attorney's Office has tried nearly a dozen more criminal cases in DC's federal court. In two, the defendants were acquitted. Four of the trials ended in deadlock, with jurors reporting in courtroom notes that they deliberated 'hopelessly' and were in complete 'impasse.' Mistrials were declared."

Many of the legal community figures cited "asked not to be named because they practice in the DC federal courthouse or have ties to the U.S. attorney's office," Polantz notes. "Several people in Washington's legal community who've interacted with federal jurors say perhaps the juries are politically unhappy with the Trump administration and, thus, take issue with the Justice Department."

The jury pool that office faces is unlike any other in the federal system. Because the District of Columbia is not a state, its U.S. attorney's office prosecutes not only federal crimes but also the local felony docket that a county district attorney would handle in any other American city, and its jurors are drawn from an electorate in which roughly nine in ten voters backed the Democratic presidential ticket in 2024.

CNN's interviewees used words like "embarrassing" to describe the sharp divide between jurors and the federal prosecutors of the DOJ's DC office. "While each case at trial where Pirro's office has struggled to convict is different," Polantz explains, "several of the people in the legal community have called the trend with the DC juries in federal court 'embarrassing' or described it as dire. The cases — some being retried weeks or months later — are bogging down a U.S. attorney's office that has already been stretched thin with Trump-prompted firings and departures and sullied by Pirro's political missteps in cases the president has wanted. Many fear how even the office's most experienced prosecutors might fare in trials set for the coming months. That includes the trial to begin this week for an alleged conspirator in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland." That bombing killed 270 people — 243 passengers and 16 crew aboard the plane, plus 11 residents of Lockerbie — and remains the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil.

Defense attorney Christopher Davis believes the meticulous nature of DC juries is a major problem for Pirro's office. "It's just the wheels of justice rolling along," Davis told CNN. "DC juries tend to lean left, and they're highly educated. They take their job seriously. They overturn every stone."

Source: Alternet