Tipsheet

Left-Wing Activists Are Training Juries to Sabotage Trump DOJ Cases

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  March 10, 2026 4:00 PM

Last month, Townhall reported how a Left-wing activist group in Minnesota was advising citizens how to "resist" federal immigration laws by providing jury nullification training. That group, Defend612 seeks to "support resistance to the ICE occupation in Minneapolis" and ran two virtual sessions titled "The People's Pardon or Jury Nullification" at the end of February.

It seems this push to undermine our judicial system and the Trump administration is spreading, with reports that a Leftist activist group is doing the same thing in the Washington D.C. area and in other places across the country.

Here's more:

A left-wing activist group is teaching liberals in Washington, D.C., and "across the United States" how to increase their chances of serving as jurors on cases brought by the Trump Department of Justice so they can undermine its chances of securing convictions, training materials reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.

Freedom Trainers, whose fiscal sponsor is the George Soros-funded group Community Change, is working to make "jury nullification"—the practice of voting against a conviction even if the defendant broke the law—a go-to legal weapon for the Left. Its sessions and training materials, reviewed by the Free Beacon, show how the group teaches "committed people" to gum up federal prosecutions.

The group tells attendees to keep their addresses current to ensure they receive summons. Then, during the jury selection process, it advises them to "Never mention jury nullification," "Don't signal an agenda," and "say you'll listen to the evidence before forming conclusions." Once selected, the group tells its trainees to vote "not guilty" for any reason.

There is no institution the Left won't destroy in order to "resist" President Trump and Republicans. Of course, this can backfire on them in many ways, including leading to mistrials and legal consequences for jurors who misrepresent themselves during jury selection.

The consequences can include perjury, obstruction of justice, and contempt of court.

This includes 18 U.S.C. § 1621, which makes perjury a crime punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

This is a fundamental blow to the jury system and justice.

Hunter said jury nullification is “a legal remedy to correct when the court system, when the Department of Justice, has gone astray and awry.”

By which he means, "When Democrats lose an election."

And we may already be seeing the fruits of this.

The American jury system only works if jurors take their oath seriously and approach the evidence honestly and impartially. What these activist groups are encouraging isn’t civic engagement, it's the destruction of one of the bedrocks of American jurisprudence.

If activists lie their way onto juries to sabotage prosecutions, they aren’t defending democracy or resisting tyranny. They’re undermining one of the most fundamental institutions of the American legal system. Jury duty is supposed to be about justice, not politics, and turning it into a partisan weapon threatens the very rule of law these activists claim to defend.