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Prosecutor resists Trump pressure to charge Letitia James
U.S. President Donald Trump and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Brian Snyder | David Dee Delgado | Reuters
A top federal prosecutor in Virginia is resisting pressure from President Donald Trump to seek a criminal indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James, a longtime antagonist of Trump, MSNBC reported Monday.
The prosecutor, Elizabeth Yusi, works in the U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of Virginia, which recently obtained an indictment of another target of Trump’s ire, former FBI Director James Comey.
“Yusi, who oversees major criminal prosecutions in the Norfolk office of the Eastern District of Virginia, has confided to co-workers that she sees no probable cause to believe James engaged in mortgage fraud, the two sources told MSNBC,” according to MSNBC’s report.
“Yusi plans to present her conclusion to the president’s new interim U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, in the coming weeks, they said,” MSNBC reported.
Halligan was installed in that job by Trump after her predecessor, Erik Siebert, resigned under pressure from Trump after opposing the filing of charges against Comey.
Halligan soon afterward got a grand jury to indict Comey on charges of lying during testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020.
Comey denies the allegations.
Trump over the weekend called James “SCUM” in a social media post that urged her removal as attorney general.
In an earlier social media post, on Sept. 20, Trump called on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute James, Comey, and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
Bill Pulte, whom Trump appointed to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has suggested that James committed mortgage fraud in connection with a Norfolk, Virginia, home, where her niece lives.
James’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has denied the suggestion that James said the home was her primary residence to obtain a more favorable loan rate.
“Lowell noted that a power-of-attorney form had mistakenly listed the house as a primary residence, but that James herself checked ‘no’ on the loan application when asked if the house was her primary home,” MSNBC reported. “In addition, according to Lowell, James also sent an email to her mortgage broker stating the house ‘WILL NOT be my primary residence.’ “
James, in early September, appealed an intermediate appellate court’s decision tossing out a $500 million penalty on Trump and his company in connection with business fraud. The appellate court said the fine violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of excessive fines.
The court upheld a trial court judge’s finding that Trump and others had committed business fraud.
He has denied wrongdoing in that case, which stemmed from a lawsuit that James filed against him.
