A federal grand jury in Virginia has indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James on one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statement to a financial institution — charges that come after steady pressure from President Trump to prosecute one of his longtime political foes.
James, a Democrat who pledged to investigate Trump during her campaign, eventually sued Trump and his company for inflating the value of some of its properties, winning more than $450 million in the civil business fraud case.
At one of his own campaign rallies last year, Trump called for both James and the judge in that case to “be arrested and punished accordingly.”
In a video posted to social media after the indictment became public on Thursday, James denied the charges as “baseless” and criticized the president’s actions as a “grave violation of our Constitutional order.”
“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system,” James said. “He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.”
Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia spent months on the case this year. A Republican career prosecutor there determined there was not enough evidence to bring a case against James. Then he was forced out of his job by the White House, only to be replaced by Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance lawyer in Florida with no experience as a prosecutor.
Last month, Halligan secured an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, who has pleaded not guilty to two felony charges.
The charges for James have been pushed in part by Ed Martin, the weaponization czar inside the Justice Department who traveled to Brooklyn to stand outside one of James’s properties, where he was photographed by The New York Post.
Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for James, has criticized Martin for targeting Democratic lawmakers and other figures to settle scores for Trump.
“We are deeply concerned that this case is driven by President Trump’s desire for revenge,” Lowell said in a statement on Thursday. “When a President can publicly direct charges to be filed against someone — when it was reported that career attorneys concluded none were warranted — it marks a serious attack on the rule of law. We will fight these charges in every process allowed in the law.”
James is scheduled for an initial court appearance on October 24.
Source: www.npr.org