(AFP) – New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted Donald Trump, was indicted on Thursday, the second foe of the US president to be slapped with criminal charges in recent weeks. James, 66, a Democrat, was indicted by a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, on one count of bank fraud and a second one of making false statements to a financial institution.
The charges against James were brought one day after another prominent Trump critic, former FBI director James Comey, pleaded not guilty to charges of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. The cases against James and Comey were filed by Trump’s handpicked US attorney, Lindsey Halligan, after the previous prosecutor resigned, saying there was not enough evidence against them.
The case against James concerns allegedly false statements she made to obtain favorable loan terms for a property she purchased in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2020. In a statement, James rejected the charges as “baseless” and said they are “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.” “The president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution,” she said.
Trump recently publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against James, Comey, and others he sees as enemies in an escalation of his campaign against political opponents. After Trump left the White House in 2021, James brought a major civil fraud case against him, alleging he and his real estate company had unlawfully inflated his wealth and manipulated the value of properties to obtain favorable bank loans or insurance terms. A New York state judge ordered Trump to pay $464 million, but a higher court later removed the financial penalty while upholding the underlying judgment.
In addition to James and Comey, Trump has also publicly called for the prosecution of Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and his own former National Security Advisor, John Bolton. The indictments of James and Comey came after the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, stepped down after reportedly telling Justice Department leaders there was insufficient evidence to charge them.
Comey pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. The 64-year-old former FBI chief is accused of falsely stating that he had not authorized another FBI employee to be an anonymous source in news reports. The judge scheduled a trial date of January 5. Comey faces up to five years in prison if convicted. Comey’s lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, said he intends to file a motion seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds it is a vindictive and selective prosecution.
Appointed to head the FBI by then-president Barack Obama in 2013, Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 amid the probe into whether any members of the Trump presidential campaign had colluded with Moscow to sway the 2016 vote. Since taking office in January, Trump has taken a number of punitive measures against perceived enemies, purging government officials he deemed to be disloyal, targeting law firms involved in past cases against him, and pulling federal funding from universities.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul was among a number of prominent Democratic politicians who came out in defense of James. “What we’re seeing today is nothing less than the weaponization of the Justice Department to punish those who hold the powerful accountable,” Hochul said on X. Senate Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer said, “this is what tyranny looks like.”
“President Trump is using the Justice Department as his personal attack dog, targeting Attorney General Tish James for the ‘crime’ of prosecuting him for fraud — and winning,” the senator from New York said. In a statement, however, US Attorney Halligan defended the prosecution of James, saying she had committed “intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust.”
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