Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) on Wednesday demanded U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro preserve all evidence related to her unsuccessful effort to bring charges against him and five other Democratic lawmakers.
The request comes a day after Pirro’s office failed to obtain a criminal indictment against the lawmakers for putting out a video last year urging military personnel not to carry out illegal orders.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Pirro’s office, Abbe Lowell, Crow’s attorney, called the effort to indict Crow and the other Democrats involved in the video “a breathtaking and unprecedented level of prosecutorial overreach and misuse of power.” Lowell, who has represented a wide swath of President Donald Trump’s enemies in the last year, also put Pirro and other federal prosecutors “on notice” of the possible legal ramifications for failing to preserve evidence in the case or taking further action to pursue the case.
“Donald Trump’s abuse of America’s justice system is chilling and indefensible,” Lowell wrote in the letter. “What’s perhaps most surprising is not that your effort to secure a grand jury indictment failed, but that you even tried. Americans are paying attention to your gross abuses of power and demanding accountability.”
Pirro’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pirro and other prosecutors in the Trump administration have on several occasions struggled to secure indictments against several of the president’s political foes, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. A grand jury rejecting indictments is an exceedingly rare outcome in federal cases, as they are tasked only with determining whether the Justice Department has brought a plausible case, although the Trump administration has faced an unusual number of failures in liberal areas like New York and the D.C. area.
Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, whom federal prosecutors also attempted to indict in relation to the video, decried the move from Pirro’s office at a Wednesday press conference, with Kelly, calling it an effort “to abuse power in order to silence and intimidate anyone who disagrees with them.”
“The baseless and absurd allegations by Donald Trump, followed by your carrying out of the President’s political retribution campaign has already gone too far, and are evidence of yet another abuse of power directed at those who dare speak out and criticize this Administration,” Lowell wrote in the letter, which was first reported by CBS News.
Trump, in the wake of the video’s release in November 2025, repeatedly called for the lawmakers to face arrest and trial for what he called “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” The president later clarified that he was “not threatening death” against the Democrats.
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