Katherine Carreo stands for a portrait Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Allison Dinner)2025-12-18T05:09:26Z WASHINGTON (AP) The Justice Department has launched a months-long effort to prosecute people accused of assaulting or hindering federal officers while protesting President Donald Trumps immigration crackdown and military deployments. Attorney General Pam Bondi has vowed such offenders will face severe consequences.In a review of scores of criminal prosecutions brought by federal prosecutors, The Associated Press found that the Justice Department has struggled to deliver on Bondis pledge. An analysis of 166 federal criminal cases brought since May against people in four Democratic-led cities at the epicenter of demonstrations found that aggressive charging decisions and rhetoric painting defendants as domestic terrorists have frequently failed to hold up in court.Its clear from this data that the government is being extremely aggressive and charging for things that ordinarily wouldnt be charged at all, said Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who is the director of Georgetown University Law Centers Institute for Constitutional Advocacy. They appear to want to chill people from protesting against the administrations mass deportation plans.Here are some key findings from the APs analysis: Dozens of felonies evaporatedOf 100 people initially charged with felony assaults on federal agents, 55 saw their charges reduced to misdemeanors, or dismissed.Sometimes prosecutors failed to win grand jury indictments required to prosecute someone on a felony, the AP found. Videos and testimony called into question some of the initial allegations, resulting in prosecutors downgrading offenses.In dozens of cases, officers suffered minor or no injuries, undercutting a key component of the felony assault charge that requires the potential for serious bodily harm.One of the cases was against Dana Briggs, a 70-year-old Air Force veteran charged in September with assault after a protest in Chicago. After video footage emerged of federal agents knocking Briggs to the ground, prosecutors dropped a case they had already reduced to a misdemeanor. Another case dropped by prosecutors was against 28-year-old Lucy Shepherd, who was charged with felony assault after she batted away the arm of a federal officer who was attempting to clear a crowd outside Portlands Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Her lawyers argued a video of her arrest showed she brushed aside an officer with too little force to have been intended to inflict any kind of injury.A Justice Department spokesperson said it will continue to seek the most serious available charges against those alleged to have put federal agents in harms way.We will not tolerate any violence directed toward our brave law enforcement officials who are working tirelessly to keep Americans safe, said Natalie Baldassarre, a DOJ spokesperson. Despite rhetoric, antifa rarely mentioned in courtThe administration has deployed or sought to deploy troops to the four cities where AP examined the criminal cases: Washington, D.C, Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago. Trump and his administration have sought to justify the military deployments, in part, by painting immigration protesters as antifa, which the president has sought to designate as a domestic terrorist organization. Short for anti-fascists, antifa is an umbrella term for far-left-leaning protesters who confront or resist white supremacists, sometimes clashing with law enforcement. The APs review found a handful of references to antifa in court records in the cases it reviewed. The review found no case in which federal authorities officially accused a protester of being a domestic terrorist or part of an organized effort to attack federal agents. Prosecutors have lost every trialExperts said they were surprised the Justice Department took five misdemeanor cases to trial, given that such trials eat up resources. They were further shocked that DOJ lost all those trials.When the DOJ tries to take a swing at someone, they should hit 99.9% of the time. And thats not happening, said Ronald Chapman II, a defense attorney who practices extensively in federal court.The highest-profile loss involved Sean Charles Dunn, a Washington, D.C., man who tossed a Subway-style sandwich at a Border Patrol agent he had berated as a fascist. Dunn was acquitted Nov. 6 after a two-day trial.In Los Angeles, 32-year-old Katherine Carreo was acquitted on a misdemeanor assault charge stemming from an August protest outside a federal building.Prosecutors had alleged she ignored an officers commands to move out of the way of a government vehicle and raised her hand and brought it down in a slapping/chopping motion onto the officers arm. Social media video shown to jurors raised doubts about that narrative, showing an officer striding toward Carreo and pushing her back. More than 50 cases are pendingProsecutors have secured felony indictments against 58 people, some of whom were initially charged with misdemeanors. They are accused of assaulting federal officers in several ways, including by hurling rocks and projectiles, punching or kicking them and shooting them with paintballs. None have yet to go to trial.From the start of Trumps second term through Nov. 24, the Department of Homeland Security says there have been 238 assaults on ICE personnel nationwide. The agency declined to provide its list or details about how it defines assaults.Rioters and other violent criminals have threatened our law enforcement officers, thrown rocks, bottles, and fireworks at them, slashed the tires of their vehicles, rammed them, ambushed them, and even shot at them, said Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.___Ding reported from Los Angeles, Fernando from Chicago, Rush from Portland, Oregon, and Foley from Iowa City, Iowa.___Contact the APs global investigative team at [emailprotected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/ RYAN J. FOLEY Foley covers national news for The Associated Press and is based in Iowa City, Iowa. A 21-year AP veteran, he was part of the AP team honored as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting for the 2024 series, Lethal Restraint. twitter mailto CLAIRE RUSH Rush is an Associated Press reporter covering Oregon state government and general news in the Pacific Northwest more broadly. twitter mailto JAIMIE DING Ding covers California breaking news for The Associated Press. She focuses on law enforcement and the courts, and is based in Los Angeles. twitter mailto CHRISTINE FERNANDO Fernando is a democracy reporter covering misinformation, reproductive rights and state supreme courts for The Associated Press. twitter mailto MICHAEL BIESECKER Biesecker is a global investigative reporter for The Associated Press, based in Washington. He reports on a wide range of topics, including human conflict, climate change and political corruption. twitter instagram mailto