Jeanine Pirro's office shelves pursuit of Democrats over social video, sources say

Source: NBC News

Feb. 23, 2026, 6:25 PM EST


Jeanine Pirro's office has decided to stop pursuing the case against six Democratic lawmakers who urged members of the military and intelligence communities in a social media video not to comply with unlawful orders, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

Roughly two weeks ago, as first reported by NBC News, a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., unanimously rejected an attempt by Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to indict lawmakers over the video, illustrating that grand jurors didn’t think the government had passed even the low legal threshold of probable cause required to bring an indictment.

While a potential case against the six lawmakers is now considered dead in Washington, that decision wouldn’t necessarily bar a federal prosecutor from trying to bring a case in a different federal court district, though there have been no public indications that will happen.

Legal experts and Democrats have criticized the unprecedented attempt to use the immense powers of the Justice Department to punish six members of Congress as a purely political attack on protected free speech and a sign that the guardrails that existed during the first Trump administration have been eroding.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jeanine-pirros-office-shelves-pursuit-democrats-social-video-sources-s-rcna259783