Nathalie Rose Jones, 49, from New York, was taken into custody in August for allegedly posting repeated online threats against former President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON – A grand jury has dismissed charges against a New York woman accused of threatening President Donald Trump, her lawyer said in a document filed Monday.
D.C. County District Court Chief Judge Jeb Boasberg released Natalie Rose Jones, 49, last week and placed her on GPS monitoring, despite objections from prosecutors, who argued she had made violent threats against Trump. Boasberg overturned a magistrate judge’s order detaining Jones after her arrest in Washington last month.
On Monday, Jones’s lawyer, Mary Petras, an assistant federal public defender, asked Boasberg to waive the remaining conditions of her release, saying a Washington grand jury had declined to indict her.
“The grand jury now finds no probable cause to indict Ms. Jones for the crimes charged,” Ms. Petras wrote. “Given this conclusion, the weight of the evidence is weak. The government may intend to seek a new indictment, but the evidence has not changed, and no indictment is likely.” Grand juries most often issue indictments in federal cases because they are tasked only with determining whether there is a reasonable basis for an indictment—a much lighter burden than in criminal trials—and because they generally make their decisions only after hearing the government’s evidence. Under federal law, an indictment must be filed within 30 days of arrest for the prosecutor to initiate criminal proceedings.
Jones, who previously worked as a pharmacist in Indiana, came to the attention of federal investigators in early August after she allegedly began posting threatening messages online against Trump. In an August 6 Facebook post referencing the FBI, Jones wrote that she was “willing to sacrifice the death of this president by disemboweling him and cutting his windpipe.” In an August 14 email, she allegedly wrote that she was “ready to kill this man,” an apparent reference to Trump. According to a warrant, the email was sent to “multiple military, pharmaceutical, and government agencies.”
Jones’s posts prompted a visit to her New York apartment by U.S. Secret Service agents, who questioned her but did not arrest her. Federal agents arrested Jones the day after she left for Washington, D.C., for a protest.
A magistrate judge said she did not believe Jones’s claims were exaggerated, but Boasberg disagreed. He said they sounded like the “babble” of a mentally ill person, but she lacked the means to put them into practice. He added that the U.S. Secret Service wasn’t concerned enough to dissuade Jones from traveling to Washington, D.C., even though she had told them she intended to do so.
“Doesn’t that suggest they didn’t take these threats seriously?” Boasberg asked.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office has repeatedly struggled to secure grand jury indictments since Trump’s federal campaign began in Washington. Last week, prosecutors were forced to admit they had tried three times to indict a woman for assaulting an FBI agent, but all attempts were rejected. The next day, WUSA9 reported that a grand jury declined to indict a Washington man accused of assaulting a Customs and Border Protection agent by throwing a sandwich at him. Prosecutors have since charged both defendants with misdemeanor offenses.
Under Justice Department policy, prosecutors can attempt to reindict Jones if Pirro consents. They can also file a misdemeanor criminal complaint.