Pew Research: It's Rare for a Grand Jury to Refuse to Indict. Here's Why That Matters Right Now.

Six sitting Democratic members of Congress. The Democratic attorney general of New York. All targeted for federal prosecution by the Trump administration. All cleared — not by a partisan court, not by a political maneuver, but by federal grand juries composed of ordinary American citizens who heard the evidence and said no.

This is how the system is supposed to work. A federal grand jury is not a rubber stamp. It is a citizen body — anywhere from 16 to 23 people, drawn from the community, operating in secret — whose sole job is to evaluate whether the evidence is strong enough to justify putting someone on trial. They are not appointed by any president. They answer to no party. And in case after case where the Trump administration has sought to prosecute political opponents, they have declined to indict.

Here's what makes that so striking. Federal grand juries indict tens of thousands of people every year. And they almost never say no. According to the most recent available federal data, grand juries declined to indict just six people nationally in a single year — and averaged only about 15 refusals per year over the course of a decade. There's even a saying, coined by a New York judge in 1985, that a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. That's how rare these refusals are. And yet, when presented with the Trump administration's cases against Democratic elected officials, these citizen panels — operating with no political accountability, hearing only what prosecutors put in front of them — said the evidence wasn't there.

That is not a footnote. It is a verdict on the strength of these prosecutions.

What is at stake here is something Leading Ladies Vote has always fought to protect: the principle that no one — not a Congress member, not a state official, and not a private citizen — should face the weaponized power of the federal government for political reasons. The justice system must be a shield for everyone, not a sword for those in power.

That's not partisan. That's constitutional. And it is worth defending.

Read the full Pew Research report: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/27/what-to-know-about-federal-grand-juries/