Fox News host Shannon Bream put Jeanine Pirro on the spot during a Sunday interview after a high-profile case tied to Donald Trump’s policing surge in Washington, D.C., failed to secure a grand jury indictment. Pirro, who serves as Trump’s U.S. Attorney for D.C., faced questions about why her office couldn’t get charges to stick against a man accused of throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal officer.
“So you talk about getting to court, getting your prosecutors together, and getting these cases together,” Bream pressed. “But here’s the headline from the Washington Post just days ago. It said D.C. judges and grand jurors push back on Trump policing surge.”
She didn’t stop there. “There’s at least one high-profile case where they’re making a lot of headline news about the fact that you couldn’t get a grand jury to indict.”
Pirro didn’t deny the issue but tried to explain the dynamics at play. “I know the case that they’re referencing, and there’s not a lot I can talk about in terms of grand juries, but what I can tell you is this. You know, there are a lot of people who sit on juries and they live in, you know, they live in Georgetown or in northwest or in some of these better areas and they don’t see the reality of crime that is occurring.”
She added that her office had been instructed to pursue the highest possible charges supported by law and evidence. “And in that one case, in that particular article, we were on point. But the grand jurors don’t take it so seriously. They’re like, you know, whatever,” reported Fox News.
The Department of Justice ended up stepping in and charging Sean Dunn, the man accused of tossing the sandwich, with a misdemeanor after the grand jury refused to indict him. Pirro defended the outcome, insisting her team’s role wasn’t over. “My job is to protect the victim,” she said. “We’re going to make the criminal accountable.”
The case has become symbolic of the tension between Trump’s tough-on-crime push and the resistance it has met in D.C. courts. Critics have seized on the Subway sandwich incident as an example of overreach and the limitations prosecutors face when juries are skeptical of the administration’s policing priorities.
For Pirro, the exchange with Bream underscored just how closely her office is being watched as Trump tries to show results from his law-and-order agenda. Even a relatively minor case like this one is now being scrutinized for what it says about the broader effort.