Matthew Lawrence Perna Act of 2025

This bill creates new rules for how the federal government handles criminal cases involving "political protest offenses," which are federal crimes that come from protest activities but are not violent crimes. For these cases, the bill says people cannot be held in jail before trial, their trial must start within 70 days of being charged, and Congress believes sentences should follow the minimum guidelines. The bill also makes broader changes to federal criminal cases, including making the government potentially responsible for malicious overprosecution by federal officers, limiting when national security agencies can investigate U.S. citizens, requiring agencies to tell people if they are being investigated when asked under freedom of information laws, and letting defendants in Washington D.C. move their trial to a court near where they live.

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