U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro faces a bar complaint alleging she abused her power to pursue indictments against six Democratic lawmakers on behalf of President Donald Trump.
The Legal Accountability Center filed the complaint Tuesday with a state grievance committee in White Plains, New York, which handles ethics cases against attorneys. The group asked the committee to investigate Pirro, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, and to pursue disciplinary action against her.
There was no legal basis for the "patently improper effort" to indict the lawmakers, according to the complaint, which says her only motive was political.
"The only purpose could have been political animus and a desire to intimidate perceived enemies of the federal government and the President, who personally criticized the lawmakers' video as seditious and punishable by death," the complaint notes.
Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition "punishable by DEATH" in a social media post, according to the Associated Press.
Her office was assigned the investigation afterward, the complaint says.
The six had appeared in a November video urging service members to reject orders they believed were unlawful, the complaint says. All six previously served in the military or at intelligence agencies, the wire service reported. A Washington grand jury refused to indict any of them in February.
"Prosecutors have enormous power, and with that power comes an obligation to exercise independent legal judgment rather than use the criminal justice system to carry out a president's political demands," the center's co-founder, Michael Teter, said in a statement to the AP.
Such refusals were once extraordinarily rare but have grown more common in Washington during Trump's second term, according to the report.
Pirro was asked at a news conference this year why grand jurors appeared skeptical of her office's cases, NBC News reported.
"Willing to take a no true bill, because I'll take all the crimes and put 'em in," she said, according to the network. A "no true bill" is a grand jury's refusal to approve charges.
Her office won only half of its first eight criminal trials this year, far below the national average, CNN reported in April.
The center also accused two of her subordinates, Carlton Davis and Steven Vandervelden, of ethical violations. A spokesperson for her office did not immediately comment.
The center filed a separate complaint against Davis with the Virginia State Bar, according to the AP.
