Here we go again with New York’s very own political witch hunter, Attorney General Letitia James, whose legal escapades read less like a commitment to justice and more like a playbook for political vendettas.
Newsweek: Letitia James Response to Donald Trump’s Election.
On Wednesday afternoon, James held a press conference responding to Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election.
“I congratulate the president-elect, Donald Trump,” James said. She continued, “And if possible, we will work with his administration. But we will not compromise our values or our integrity or our principles.”
James reiterated throughout her speech that her office is “prepared to fight back once again,” adding that her office, as well as other Democratic attorney generals across the country, are “guardians of the law.”
Prior to Trump’s election, she warned that she would be prepared to challenge Project 2025 proposals.
She told New Yorkers on Wednesday, “We’ve created contingency plans, so no matter what the next administration throws at us, we’re ready. We’re ready to respond to their attacks. We’re ready to respond to any attempts to cut or eliminate any funding to the great state of New York.”
James said during the conference, “We will continue to stand tall in the face of injustice, revenge, or retribution.”
Letitia James, the self-appointed avenger of the left, has turned the role of Attorney General into a personal vendetta crusade. Her office, ostensibly dedicated to upholding the law, has instead become a launchpad for her political ambitions, using the legal system as her personal battering ram against those who dare to oppose her political ideology.
Her campaign promise was not about safeguarding the rule of law or protecting New Yorkers from actual threats; no, it was about “getting Trump.” Well, mission accomplished, Letitia! You’ve managed to drag the integrity of your office through the mud with the finesse of a bull in a china shop.
City Journal, Oct 18 2022: Attorney General as Threat to the Rule of Law
By her words and deeds, New York attorney general Letitia James threatens the rule of law. Her political obsession with former president Donald J. Trump recently culminated in a civil lawsuit against the Queens-born real-estate mogul, his three adult children, and his company. In the complaint, James demands $250 million in damages and an end to the family’s New York business operations.
James is a career left-wing activist, prone to rhetorical bomb-throwing. In 2018, she was elected New York’s chief law-enforcement officer. Immediately prior, she was New York City Public Advocate, a useless position, with responsibilities described as “one of the great mysteries of local politics.” Created in 1993, it’s an office with a vague mandate offering unhelpful tautological commitments to its occupants: “the public advocate shall serve as the public advocate.” Any honest public advocate would recognize the office’s irrelevance and work to shut it down.
Nevertheless, New Yorkers promoted James, in part, because of her peculiar campaign platform—to take down the 45th president of the United States. American politics has always been a rough business, but campaigning to imprison or bankrupt a fellow officeholder, much less the leader of the free world, was partisanship taken to extremes.
Yet it was the central conceit of James’s 2018 campaign. If elected, she promised to use her perch as attorney general to “take on Donald Trump” and “investigate Trump’s New York Business.” Likewise, she referred publicly to then-President Trump as “illegitimate,” and described how she “look[ed] forward to going into the office of Attorney General every day, suing [President Trump] . . . and then going home!” As if these outbursts were not enough, she declared, “The president of the United States has to worry about three things: Mueller, Cohen, and Tish James. We’re all closing in on him.”
These instances of her personalized and prejudicial public sentiments can no longer be ignored as the rantings of a left-wing agitator cum prosecutor. James seemingly crossed the line from issuing threats to abusing legal process. Without a hint of self-awareness, she stated in her Trump-lawsuit press conference that “[t]here are not two sets of laws for people in this country; we must hold former presidents to the same standards as everyday Americans.” How many ordinary Americans did she publicly threaten to close in on and sue as she ran for attorney general?
James didn’t criminally prosecute Trump because she doesn’t have the statutory authority to do so under her case’s legal theory. Thus, she referred her putative findings to the Biden Justice Department for criminal prosecution—the same department that, in an unprecedented act, raided Trump’s home pursuant to a search warrant.
There is a term for all this: the weaponization of government—to harass, punish, ruin, and, if possible, imprison one’s political enemies. It’s a threat that transcends any one person.
With this kind of sustained campaign by government elites to destroy one man, it matters not the merits, or lack thereof, of a particular lawsuit or criminal investigation, because the personalized nature of the process undermines the rule of law. This principle holds that neutral legal rules, and their application, govern the conduct of all men, and that no one is above—or below—the law. This applies with greater force to prosecutorial and state authorities. When an investigation or legal process is inconsistent with the rule of law, it renders itself illegitimate.
James has made it abundantly clear that if you’re on the wrong side of her political agenda, you’re also on the wrong side of the law – in her eyes. This isn’t justice; it’s political theater where the script is written by James’ personal biases. She’s not just playing judge, jury, and executioner; she’s the director, casting villains based on political affiliations rather than criminal acts.
And what about the rule of law? That noble concept has been left gasping for breath under the weight of James’ political prosecutions. Her actions suggest that the law is not a tool for justice but a weapon for political retribution. She’s turned the legal system into a circus where the only act is the undermining of legal impartiality.
Fox News, Gregg Jarrett, May 20, 2021: NY’s AG Letitia James’ behavior is an affront to justice. She is neither fair nor impartial
Before Democrat Letitia James was ever elected Attorney General of New York in 2018, she vowed to exploit the immense powers of that high office to investigate and prosecute then-President Donald Trump for his business transactions.
Never mind that James was not privy to any evidence or documents that the then-president had ever violated state laws as a real estate developer. Being bereft of facts did not deter her from accusing Trump of everything from “money laundering” to “defrauding Americans.” She publicly denounced him as an “illegitimate president” and constantly repeated her campaign pledge to take him down.
What is known is that the New York attorney general is under the mistaken impression that her prosecutorial power is an omnipotent weapon that can be used to selectively punish a political nemesis and to advance her own career in public office. Her malign behavior is an affront to justice because it is so profoundly unethical.
James seems to have forgotten one of the most sacred cannons of professional ethics: the primary duty of a lawyer engaged in public prosecution is not to convict, but to see that justice is done. Yet, throughout her campaign speeches and post-election remarks, James committed herself to a legal course of action against Trump regardless of whether it was warranted and well before she gained access to any relevant evidence or facts.
Letitia James is the one who should be investigated for her malicious actions.
It’s time for a reckoning, not just for Letitia James, but for all who’ve watched this spectacle unfold and done nothing. Her legacy, if we can call it that, will be a case study in how not to run an Attorney General’s office. If there’s any justice left in this world, she’ll be remembered not as a guardian of law, but as a cautionary tale of how political ambition can corrupt even the highest offices. Here’s hoping the next chapter in New York’s legal history doesn’t involve more of these partisan charades.
She is a criminal herself. Not fit to be a leader. No ethics. No manners. Uneducated. Shame in the government employee. Wasting tax money & time