Politics
February 24, 2026 / 11:30 AM EST
/ CBS News
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Washington — The top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. has decided to table efforts to try to indict six Democratic lawmakers for posting a video urging military members not to follow illegal orders, sources told CBS News on Tuesday.
The decision by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to end the case comes after a grand jury in Washington, D.C. earlier this month refused to return an indictment, CBS News previously reported.
It was not yet clear whether the Justice Department could still explore pursuing other venues for the case, one of the sources cautioned.
A spokesman for Pirro declined to comment. The decision to table the case in Washington, D.C., was reported earlier by NBC News.
The grand jury’s rejection of the charges is historically rare, but is becoming more commonplace in Washington and other federal districts as grand jurors are seemingly becoming more concerned about whether some of the cases are politicized and designed to exact retribution against President Trump’s enemies.
Several politically-hired attorneys who work with Pirro were assigned to the case against the lawmakers, sources told CBS, and they tried to indict the six under a criminal statute known as 18 U.S.C. § 2387.
That law threatens a 10-year maximum prison sentence for anybody who “advises, counsels, urges, or in any manner causes or attempts to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military.”
After presenting the case to the grand jury, several sources told CBS that the grand jurors unanimously rejected the indictment, which is even more unusual.
All six Democrats later publicly condemned the move and applauded the grand jury.
After the rejection of the case became public, Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, wrote a letter to Pirro telling her that he was putting her and her office “on notice of the legal ramification” if they continue to pursue charges.
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