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U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said it believed it was in the “interests of justice” to dismiss all charges against Nathalie Rose Jones.
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors moved to dismiss their case Friday after a grand jury declined earlier this week to indict a woman accused of threatening the president.
In a one-page filing, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office asked a judge to dismiss a felony threats charge against 49-year-old Nathalie Rose Jones of New York.
“The United States has determined that dismissal in this matter is in the interests of justice,” prosecutors wrote.
Jones was charged last month with allegedly making threats online against President Donald Trump. A magistrate judge initially ordered her detained, but the chief judge of D.C.’s federal court later reversed that, saying the alleged threats appeared to be no more than “rantings.”
Jones, who formerly worked as a pharmacist in Indiana, is one of at least nine instances in which a D.C. grand jury has refused to support charges brought by Pirro’s office since the federal surge in the city began last month. Prosecutors dismissed similar charges Thursday against another man accused of threatening the president, Edward Dana, after a grand jury declined to indict him on a felony charge.
In Dana’s case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office chose to prosecute him instead on misdemeanor vandalism and attempted threats charges in D.C. Superior Court, which do not require indictment. As of Friday afternoon, Superior Court records showed no charges against Jones.
D.C. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg, who granted Jones release last month, said prosecutors appeared to have put more weight on her alleged threats than the U.S. Secret Service – which visited her New York apartment but did not arrest her.
“Doesn’t that kind of suggest they didn’t take those threats seriously?” Boasberg said.
Pirro’s office asked a magistrate judge to dismiss the case against Jones without prejudice, which would potentially allow prosecutors to refile the charges at a later date. Jones’ attorney, assistant federal public defender Mary Petras, argued in her own motion Friday that the case should be dismissed with finality.
“The charges against Ms. Jones were based on interpretations of statements the government presented to the grand jury,” Petras wrote. “The grand jury rejected that interpretation of the statements and apparently agreed that Ms. Jones’s statements were consistent with her First Amendment rights.”
The unprecedented wave of motions to dismiss from the U.S. Attorney’s Office has drawn criticism from judges. On Thursday, the magistrate judge who presided over Dana’s case warned the Pirro’s office had lost credibility with the court and ordered prosecutors to report to him what steps they would take to avoid filing cases that were unlikely to succeed in the future.
Pirro, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as D.C.’s top prosecutor last month, has stood by her office’s charging decisions and accused grand jurors of becoming “politicized.”
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