On ABC News’ This Week, host Martha Raddatz asked former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for his reaction to a grand jury’s decision to reject the Trump Justice Department’s indictment against six Democratic lawmakers. The lawmakers, who had each served either in the military or in the intelligence community, were featured in a November video that urged active-duty military members not to follow illegal orders.
[Note: President Trump called the six Democratic lawmakers traitors who should be charged with sedition punishable by death. Trump amplified a post which read, “HANG THEM.”]
Raddatz said to Christie: “Grand juries almost always indict. They didn’t this time.”
Christie, a DOJ veteran and the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey for seven years before becoming a two-term New Jersey Governor (and a candidate for President in 2016 and 2024), shared that during his time as a top federal prosecutor in the Garden State, “not once did we get no-billed, not once by a grand jury, not once.”
He added: “Why is that? This false idea that grand juries, that you can indict a ham sandwich, it’s not true, and the Trump administration has proven that. They’re putting up a bunch of ham sandwiches up there and the grand juries aren’t indicting them.”
DOJ getting rejected, once again, by a grand jury of citizens is practically unprecedented. In 7 years as U.S. Attorney, we never had one grand jury reject an indictment. Not once.
These vindictive prosecutions are ruining DOJ’s reputation & killing trust in our justice system. pic.twitter.com/tDXwqWgll0— Chris Christie (@GovChristie) February 16, 2026
Chris Christie warned, “What you’re seeing now is the absolute destruction of the credibility of the Justice Department.” He added, “The damage that gets done here by this just pure vendetta prosecution is long term and it’s going to be very very difficult to fix over the course of the next decade.”
[NOTE on the terminology: In 1985, Sol Wachtler, then the chief justice of New York’s Supreme Court, memorably said that “any good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.” Wachtler later became a tabloid sensation when he was himself indicted on charges that included extortion. He was convicted, served time, and became an advocate for mental health.]
Fellow Republican and U.S. Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) has also criticized the Trump administration for its handling of the video, aiming more at the Pentagon than the DOJ.
After Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tried to demote one of the six, the retired Navy captain and current Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and cut his retirement pay, Bacon wrote: “Pentagon keeps digging its own hole deeper… you have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. I don’t defend the video the six elected officials made, as it was foolish. But, they do have their First Amendment Rights.”
Pentagon keeps digging its own hole deeper… you have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. I don’t defend the video the six elected officials made, as it was foolish. But, they do have their First Amendment Rights. https://t.co/thsp3wGMX4
— Rep. Don Bacon
(@RepDonBacon) February 12, 2026
Kelly sued the Pentagon and Hegseth and in a preliminary injunction issued last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon wrote: “This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees.” Hegseth’s vow to appeal the decision triggered Bacon’s “know when to fold them” response.