Grand Jury Blocks DOJ Bid to Indict Hutchinson

On Tuesday, October 27, 2026, a federal grand jury in Washington rejected the Justice Department’s effort to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide, over testimony she gave about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In legal circles, a grand jury’s refusal to approve charges is known as a “no true bill.” Prosecutors sought an indictment. The grand jury said no.

CBS News reported that four sources briefed on the proceedings said federal prosecutors had been rebuffed. The Washington Post first reported the grand jury’s decision. At the time CBS News reported, the Justice Department hadn’t responded to a request for comment, leaving the public with accounts from people briefed on the proceedings rather than an explanation from the department itself.

A prosecution pushed from above

Some Justice Department prosecutors were deeply skeptical that the department had a case against Hutchinson. They concluded it would be difficult to win a conviction. That skepticism stands alongside an investigation directed to the department’s civil rights division, a unit that normally focuses on issues such as police violence and election integrity. The division’s usual remit contrasts sharply with the target of this investigation: a civil-rights apparatus turned toward a former White House aide over testimony about the Capitol attack.

Harmeet Dhillon leads the division. The report described her as a Trump loyalist who had reoriented the unit to align with President Trump’s agenda, including by obtaining agreements from elite universities that favored the administration. Those details place the investigation inside a department whose leadership and priorities the report describes as aligned with the president. The grand jury stopped this particular bid from advancing on prosecutors’ terms.

The indictment machine meets resistance

The account called the rejection an unusual setback for the Justice Department. Grand juries once rarely rejected prosecutors’ requests, because the department traditionally sought charges in cases it expected to win. Under Trump, though, such failures had become more common; he had pushed prosecutors to seek indictments even when evidence was lacking. The reported pressure comes from the top, but the grand jury’s refusal marks a limit on what prosecutors could secure in this case.

In recent days, the Justice Department announced charges against two former FBI agents and former FBI director James B. Comey. A grand jury hadn’t charged any of them, though prosecutors would need to clear that hurdle to proceed with criminal prosecutions. Hutchinson’s case therefore arrived amid other announced charges that hadn’t passed the same institutional gate. The department can announce charges. A grand jury can still refuse.

The report described the rejection as the latest setback in Trump’s effort to pursue political opponents. It didn’t describe a community campaign, mutual-aid effort, or other grassroots response to the investigation; the action at issue came from inside the grand jury system. Here, resistance to the proposed indictment took the form of jurors declining to approve prosecutors’ request. The Justice Department sought to turn its investigation into a prosecution, while prosecutors who doubted the case and a grand jury that rejected it exposed the limits of that push.