MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos warned on Friday that New York Attorney General Letitia James should be worried about the Department of Justice’s reported investigation into her for potentially violating President Donald Trump’s civil rights through her lawsuit against him.
The acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York issued subpoenas pertaining to James’ civil fraud case against Trump and his company, along with her case against the National Rifle Association (NRA), The New York Times reported on Friday. Cevallos suggested on “Chris Jansing Reports” that the government could find unrelated incriminating information on James during its investigation. (RELATED: ‘These Documents Are Quite Damning’: Jonathan Turley Says Of Allegations Letitia James Committed Mortgage Fraud)
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“There is nothing scarier for a citizen [than] to get a subpoena or find out that they’re being investigated by a federal criminal grand jury. It’s terrifying. And here’s why: Grand jury investigations sweep broadly,” Cevallos said. “They gather terabytes of information. And they’re very efficient at going through it. And the problem there for people is that they may be investigating issue number one and then stumble across never before known issue number two when going through all those documents.”
“That is why if somebody is the subject, the target, of a grand jury investigation, that is not a good sign. So given that the federal government has such tremendous power to investigate, Letitia James should be very concerned,” he continued. “Not that she necessarily did anything wrong, but because that kind of scrutiny of financial records, of business records, everything going back probably years, might yield something that the government finds interesting.”
James vowed to investigate Trump during her 2018 attorney general campaign. She filed suit against him in September 2022, accusing him of inflating the value of real estate properties to receive loans.
James ultimately obtained a ruling in February 2024 that Trump must pay $354 million, with additional penalties boosting the total to over $450 million.
James’ attorney Abbe Lowell told the NYT a probe into the civil fraud case is “the most blatant and desperate example of this administration carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
“Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration,” he told the outlet. “If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with facts and the law.”
The FBI and U.S. attorney for the northern district of New York also reportedly opened a formal investigation into James over mortgage fraud allegations on May 8. James has repeatedly described the allegations as retribution for targeting Trump.
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