Ryan Crosswell, a former federal prosecutor and Democratic candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania, spoke out following reports that two separate federal grand juries in Virginia declined to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James on alleged mortgage fraud charges.
In a tweet, Crosswell characterized the repeated refusals as intimidation rather than justice, drawing on his decade of experience as a prosecutor.
“Twice now, the grand jury refused to indict Letitia James,” Crosswell wrote. “As I told Laura Coates, in my 10 years as a federal prosecutor, I only saw a grand jury refuse a case once—and I’ve never seen prosecutors bring the same case after failing. This is not justice. It’s intimidation.”
According to sources cited by ABC News, federal prosecutors presented the case to a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, on December 11, 2025, after a Norfolk, Virginia, grand jury declined to indict James on December 4. In both instances, jurors reportedly rejected the Justice Department’s efforts to pursue charges alleging that James misrepresented information to obtain more favorable mortgage terms.
Sources told ABC News that prosecutors sought a second grand jury after an earlier version of the case was dismissed by a federal judge, who ruled that the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia had been unlawfully appointed. Despite revisiting the matter, prosecutors again failed to secure an indictment.
The Justice Department has not publicly commented on the grand jury decisions. ABC News reported that the agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The back-to-back refusals effectively end the prosecution’s efforts, according to sources familiar with the matter. Critics, including Crosswell, have described the case as a politically motivated attempt—stemming from the Trump era—to target James, a frequent and outspoken adversary of former President Donald Trump.
