Analysis: As DOJ went after protesters for felony assault, juries and judges were unconvinced

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department failed to secure felony convictions against most of the 102 protesters arrested in four major cities last year on charges of assaulting federal authorities — a record far below the norm in federal assault prosecutions.

All of the dozen cases that made it to trial, mostly in Los Angeles, ended in acquittal, mistrial or dismissal. Experts say that's surprising for a department known for its ability to win at trial. The last three felony assault cases, in LA and Portland, will go to trial this fall.

The dismal record has raised questions about rushed investigations and aggressive charging tactics by prosecutors under pressure to show the Trump administration is cracking down on people who assault law enforcement. It comes as the Justice Department is facing broader setbacks in politically charged investigations, with grand juries repeatedly refusing to return indictments and trial juries granting acquittals.

“Prosecutors tend to win because they control what cases they pursue and they have a lot of resources and discretion,” said Mary Fan, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at the University of Washington.

The fact that the government failed to win any felony assault convictions at trial calls into question “whether or not these charges should have ever been brought in the first place,” she said.

The Associated Press' analysis focused on arrests made during protests last summer and fall in LA, Chicago, Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C. — cities with significant protests where President Donald Trump sought to or successfully deployed the National Guard.

Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said those who interfered with federal law enforcement would face “severe consequences.”

Most of the arrests — 102 — were for felony assault on a federal officer, which can carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Of those cases, 41% were dismissed and 34% were pleaded down to misdemeanors. Ten people pleaded guilty to felony assault. Nine people got prison time.

Of those arrested on other charges, seven were sentenced to prison for offenses including arson and obstructing law enforcement. A handful of defendants have diversion agreements, meaning their case will be dismissed if they demonstrate good behavior.

The AP's analysis shows that the Justice Department’s record failed to meaningfully improve since December, when an initial assessment showed early struggles to prosecute people on the charges for which they were arrested.

The Justice Department said in a statement that federal prosecutors are right to prioritize cases against people accused of assaulting federal officers and that “each case is based on the facts.”

“If there are mitigating factors identified in a case, then prosecutors must also act appropriately to inform the court, and in some cases downgrade or drop charges," the department said.

It’s rare for federal prosecutors to lose at trial. In 2024, 82% of defendants charged with felony or misdemeanor assault were convicted at trial or with a plea deal, according to data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. AP’s analysis found that less than half of the protesters charged for either felony or misdemeanor assault were convicted.

In Portland, a jury couldn’t reach agreement on felony assault charges for Oriana Korol, who was playing clarinet in a marching band demonstrating outside the city’s ICE building last October when a scuffle involving officers broke out. Officers pepper sprayed her and pushed her to the ground, where she struck one with her foot, according to court documents.

After a mistrial, prosecutors filed a reduced misdemeanor assault charge. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced Sept. 1 to time served and one year of supervised release.

Her attorneys wrote in a court filing that she “has accepted responsibility for the bad choices she made over a few seconds that caused no injury.”

Jonathan Caravello, a lecturer at California State University Channel Islands, was acquitted of assault on a federal officer after a three-day trial. He was accused of throwing a tear gas canister deployed by immigration agents back at them while protesting a raid at a Southern California cannabis farm.

Caravello said he was trying to get the canister away from the crowd. Videos showed he had tossed it high above officers’ heads and it landed far behind them. The jury acquitted Caravello after a quick deliberation.

“They’re trying to get a chilling effect out of these charges,” said Caravello, who turned down a misdemeanor plea deal.

Michael Rabbitt was among six co-defendants accused of felony conspiracy to impede a government vehicle from accessing an ICE facility near Chicago last September.

The vehicle slowly advanced despite being surrounded by protesters, leading some to put their hands on it, Rabbitt said.

After the government dismissed charges against two of the defendants, defense attorneys requested transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to the conspiracy indictment. The government eventually dropped the conspiracy charge and proceeded on misdemeanor counts of impeding a federal officer.

The judge later reviewed the unredacted transcripts and admonished prosecutors for improper behavior before the grand jury. The charges were dismissed days before trial.

Rabbitt said he was proud they fought the charges.

“This case was bigger than us,” he said. “I’m proud that we won this case, not just for us, but for protesters across the country.”

Though many federal criminal cases end in plea deals, some legal experts say it's rare for felony assault to be pleaded down and may signal overcharging — filing a more severe initial charge so defendants will be more willing to plead guilty to one with a lighter sentence.

“I think when prosecutors bring charges ethically, they should be prepared to prove them beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

The U.S. Attorney’s office overseeing Los Angeles said it brought the prosecutions in response to a “wave of violence against law enforcement officers who were doing their jobs." It voluntarily dismissed charges against some defendants after further investigation, it said.

LA prosecutors have arrested three additional people for felony assault at immigration-related protests this year. One pleaded guilty to a felony and two to misdemeanors.

In Chicago, all but one of 19 felony assault cases were dismissed. The U.S. Attorney’s offices in the Northern District of Illinois, District of Columbia and Oregon did not respond to requests for comment.

A man accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a hotel outside Los Angeles where federal authorities were staying was sentenced to five years in prison. Two others were sentenced to more than three years after pouring lighter fluid on a burning California Highway Patrol vehicle.

Federal judges sentenced eight people to decades in prison for their participation in a demonstration outside a detention center in Texas last July where a police officer was shot in the neck.

Three people were convicted at trial of conspiracy to impede or injure an officer for protesting outside a detention facility in Spokane, Washington, last June. The Spokane and Texas cases were not included in AP’s analysis because they did not occur in one of the four cities where Trump tried to or deployed troops.

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Rush reported from Portland, Oregon. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington.

Jonathan Caravello, a lecturer at California State University Channel Islands, sits for a photo in Ventura, Calif., Friday, Aug. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

FILE - Protesters clash with authorities in downtown Los Angeles, June 8, 2025, following the night's immigration raid protest. (AP Photo/Jae Hong, File)

FILE - Protesters confront federal law enforcement agents outside the Metropolitan Detention Center on June 6, 2026, commemorating federal immigration raids and community protests one year ago in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jill Connelly, File)

Michael Rabbitt poses for a photo at his home in Chicago, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

The Atlantic is quiet — record quiet — this hurricane season thanks to an enormous El Nino that crushes storms before they get going.

No Atlantic hurricanes have formed yet this year and none are likely to form for at least another week, even though this would normally be the peak of the season, according to the National Hurricane Center. Only five relatively weak and brief tropical storms have spun up this season.

On Saturday, 2026 set a record for the longest a season has begun without a storm that has reached winds of 64 mph (103 kph) to qualify as a hurricane — at least in the satellite era, said Nick Novella, a meteorologist at the government's Weather Prediction Center. Before the 1950s there were a few years where no hurricanes were recorded this late in the season, but meteorologists don't trust those records because ocean monitoring wasn't complete.

Overall hurricane activity using a measurement that factors in the number of storms, their strength and how long they last is also at a post-1950 record low, according to Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach. Storm activity in the Atlantic is only 7% of normal for this time of year.

People shouldn't let down their guard because it just takes one storm, even during an El Nino, to be catastrophic. Several experts pointed to 1992, which kicked off late but nastily with devastating Hurricane Andrew.

“It’s really staggering, just how inhospitable the Atlantic is to anything that could form a tropical cyclone right now,” said Kristen Corbosiero, a University at Albany atmospheric science professor. “Anything that tries to form is just getting this triple whammy” of winds that decapitate a storm, dry air that starves it and downward pushing winds that basically stomp it.

Those three forces are classic impacts of El Nino, the natural and temporary warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific that warps and warms weather worldwide, five experts told The Associated Press.

"It's just hammering the Atlantic. It’s just impressive,” Klotzbach said. “We haven’t even had anything really even close to a hurricane.”

The biggest El Nino effect in the Atlantic is record-strong wind shear, which is when strong easterly winds hit a storm system at low levels while strong westerly winds push it the other way at upper altitudes. The result is that they “tear apart” the storm, Corbosiero said.

In the area between Africa and the Caribbean where the strongest storms normally form and head west, that wind shear is about 45 mph (74 kph) more than what a tropical cyclone can withstand, Corbosiero said. That's an unheard of level, she said.

“Their heads are cut off before they even have a chance,” said University of Miami hurricane expert Brian McNoldy.

The one area where wind shear hasn't been high has been the Gulf of Mexico and those storms tend to really get going later in the season, so there could still be some strong ones coming to that region, Corbosiero and others warned.

Along with the dry air that starves the storm, African dust is choking it and there are fewer “seeds” of stormy weather that could develop, all classic El Nino signs, the experts said. And in the Atlantic, high pressure is pushing the air downward, which also hinders storms from forming, they said.

This is all despite warm waters — the world's oceans have been record hot for 100 days — that normally feed storms. It shows the power of El Nino to overcome that, Klotzbach said.

The trouble is the Atlantic waters, while warm, haven't warmed up nearly as quickly as the atmosphere above, which got hotter quickly as part of El Nino, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel. His research found what matters more than just the water temperature is the difference in temperature between the air and the water; because hurricanes are powered by the flow of heat from the ocean to the air, the higher that is, the less storm activity there will be.

The waters of the Atlantic are a few months behind the atmosphere in feeling the El Nino effect. But next year, as the El Nino winds down and cools closer to normal, the warm water will persist, which will increase the odds for next season to be extra busy, Emanuel said.

Just as El Nino traditionally dampens Atlantic hurricane season, it tends to rev up tropical cyclone activity in the Pacific, with moist air and little wind shear. And so far this year, storm activity in the eastern Pacific is nearly double normal, with hurricanes lasting much longer than usual. In the central Pacific, activity is about 40% more than normal.

“It's just a party out there, one right after the other in the eastern Pacific,” Klotzbach said.

While the Atlantic has had only five small tropical storms, there have been 16 named storms in the eastern Pacific and 20 in the central Pacific.

Hawaii has been hit twice. El Nino tends to push storms farther west than other years, Corbosiero said.

Because scientists have long known about El Nino's effects on storm activity in both oceans, forecasters months ago predicted a slow Atlantic hurricane season.

“I don't think anyone really foresaw it being this quiet,” McNoldy said. “This is quite remarkable.”

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