Letitia James, the embattled New York state attorney general at the center of a Justice Department prosecution, has no one to blame but herself, a liberal legal expert wrote in a recent op-ed.
Elie Honig, a former prosecutor and contributor at CNN, blamed James, a Democrat, for instigating the “retributive mess” of political prosecutions that has culminated in charges alleging she lied on federal forms to obtain favorable mortgages for several properties.
James previously prosecuted President Donald Trump for mortgage fraud and secured a $500 million state judgment, which is currently sitting in appeals court.
“It’s a fact, beyond reasonable dispute, that Letitia James weaponized her official power as New York’s attorney general to pursue Donald Trump for political purposes,” Honig writes in New York Magazine.
“It’s equally clear that the Trump administration is now targeting James for payback. The downward spiral of prosecutorial retribution has begun, and there will be no winners.”
Trump’s prosecution of James alleges that she purposefully listed her father as her husband and claimed a Virginia property as her homestead, among other violations that the attorney general’s lawyers say amount to innocent clerical errors. Defiant statements from her press office have called the case a “weaponization” of the Justice Department, ironically the same cry of lawfare that Trump claimed against her in 2023.
To be sure, James in 2018 won her first election to the office on a series of promises to “get Trump,” tweeting at one point she would be “leading the resistance against Donald Trump in NYC.”
“Before she had access to any evidence, James declared conclusively that Trump ‘engaged in a pattern and practice of money laundering’ and ‘can be indicted for criminal offenses,’” Honig goes on.
“The day after she won office, still having seen no actual evidence, the new AG exulted, ‘We’re going to definitely sue him. We’re going to be a real pain in the ass. He’s going to know my name personally.’ For what? Who knows. Just something.”
In the Trump real estate case, charges of fraud were so “flimsy” that the appellate courts now appear likely to substantially reduce the financial penalty, the legal expert states. Similarly, Trump’s administration is going to have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that James’s actions carried criminal intent.
Furthermore, Honig observes that James, a twice-elected Democrat across New York state, is likely to find a favorable jury there.
“James was wrong to target Trump politically from her perch as AG. But that gives Trump no license to pay her back with an equally ill-motivated prosecution. Weaponization is no antidote to weaponization. James started this retributive mess, but this is no way to end it,” he adds.
Earlier this month, the Democratic-majority state legislature quietly inserted a provision into the state budget that would establish a $10 million fund for state employees targeted with frivolous prosecution by the federal government. Insiders close to the budget-making process told the NY Post the fund was explicitly established in response to James’s ordeal.
However, by tapping public funds, James may be exposing her official staff to subpoenas and depositions, threatening to tear open the inner workings of her office for the whole world to see.
