(AFP) – Letitia James, the New York attorney general who successfully prosecuted President Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty on Friday to bank fraud charges. James, one of three prominent Trump critics to be hit with criminal charges in recent weeks, entered the plea at an arraignment in a federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, as reported by Fox News and CNN. The presiding judge set a trial date of January 26.
James faces one count of bank fraud and a second one of making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a property she purchased in Virginia in 2020. The case against James was brought one day after another Trump foe, former FBI director James Comey, pleaded not guilty to charges of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security advisor before becoming an outspoken critic of the Republican president, was charged last week with mishandling classified information. He has also pleaded not guilty.
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. James has rejected the charges as “baseless” and stated they are “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.” She emphasized that “the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution.”
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. James has appealed the ruling.
In addition to James and Comey, Trump has also publicly called for the prosecution of Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, who led the first impeachment of the president in the House of Representatives. Comey’s lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, has filed a motion seeking to have the case against the former FBI chief dismissed on the grounds that 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 a probe into whether any members of the Trump presidential campaign had colluded with Moscow to sway the 2016 vote. Since returning to the White House 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.
© 2024 AFP
