“I have never heard of a situation where every single grand juror rejected an indictment,” former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote. “Every single one.” The Trump administration has made a habit of failing to secure indictments — a process so infamously easy that everyone jokes about how the government could indict a ham sandwich — but it’s still unheard of to fail to persuade even one grand juror to indict.
Achievement unlocked!
NBC reports that the administration not only flubbed its attempt to indict the six Democratic lawmakers who starred in a video reminding military personnel that the law requires them to reject unlawful orders, but it could not find a single grand juror willing to bite. The case against the lawmakers was, of course, frivolous. The Uniform Code of Military Justice does, in fact, impose a duty on the military to disobey illegal orders, rendering any charge against the legislators an uphill battle.
It was also a battle that the career prosecutors in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office probably didn’t want to fight. U.S. Attorney Offices around the country have suffered drastic attrition, with principled public servants refusing to bring garbage charges to appease their political appointee bosses. To fill out the ranks in her office, former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro apparently tried to “get the band back together” from her days as the Westchester County DA, bringing on a former assistant DAs from the old days to help her out.
Steven Vandervelden, the long-time local prosecutor, drew the case against the lawmakers — along with another lawyer with limited federal prosecutorial experience, Carlton Davis — suggesting Pirro couldn’t convince one of the career prosecutors left in the office to touch this case. And it’s possible that even Vandervelden knew this was a lost cause because according to Bloomberg Law News, Vandervelden continued to run his dance photography studio while pitching in to help his old boss pursue political prosecutions.
This dance photography studio.
Apparently Vandervelden went into this business in 2023, telling the Rockland/Westchester Journal News he appreciated a career where he could “look for the light and find beauty as opposed to the grime” after 34 years prosecuting homicide and organized crime cases. Pirro’s office sent a statement to Bloomberg pushing back against the news that he runs a photography studio:
In a statement, Pirro said, “Steven Vandervelden is one of the best prosecutors and best investigators that I have worked with in well over three decades in the criminal justice system. Any attempt to undercut his expertise is nothing more than an effort to detract from his excellent prosecutorial record to which few can compare. And by the way, everybody has a hobby.”
Based the DOJ’s redaction choices and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s testimony yesterday, “everybody has a hobby” also appears to be the administration’s official stance on the Epstein files.
Seriously though, Pirro’s statement is frankly disrespectful of Vandervelden. This isn’t a hobby, it’s his business! And taking a look at the photos on his site, he’s pretty good at it!
It also misunderstands the criticism, which is probably to be expected of an administration dominated by the dullest tools in the metaphorical shed. The knock on Vandervelden isn’t that he’s a photographer, it’s that a small business owner who retired three years ago is running a case with grave constitutional implications as a side hustle. Trying to charge sitting legislators with treason — or whatever nonsense charge the DOJ dreamed up — probably shouldn’t be a gig economy job.
But that’s what happens when the DOJ has embarked on a campaign of lawlessness that saw its public integrity unit all run for the hills rather than be associated with behavior that should by all rights end in disbarment. So Pirro’s office called in Vandervelden like hiring a prosecutor off Fiverr and gave him a guaranteed loser of a case. Man, it’s not worth it. Just stick to the photography because working with this DOJ is nothing but grime all the way down.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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