Haha the irony of James talking about the weaponization of govt
Halligan’s
indictment Thursday of New York Attorney General Letitia James on allegations of mortgage fraud came faster than even some of her allies were expecting. She presented the case without informing Attorney General Pam Bondi or Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, people familiar with the matter said.
Halligan “wanted to just get it done,” one of the people said. She is also likely to bring additional charges against James, the person said.
James, a Democrat who previously brought a civil fraud suit against Trump and his business, called the allegations baseless and said the prosecution was an obvious case of political retribution. Her lawyer didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.
Halligan had been planning to present the allegations against James in Norfolk, Va., where the New York official’s property is located and where some thought the Justice Department would face a more favorable grand jury that would vote in support of an indictment. But logistically that wasn’t possible until next week, and Halligan didn’t want to wait. Instead, she moved forward in Alexandria, near where her office is located, unconcerned that a potentially less conservative pool of jurors might reject her, people familiar with her thinking said.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, in 2024.© Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press
Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin declined to comment on grand jury matters but said the agency is “united as one team in our mission to make America safe again.”
Bondi and Blanche knew generally that Halligan intended to seek an indictment of James at some point but were caught off guard by the timing, people familiar with those discussions said.
Halligan, 36, is at the forefront of the administration’s push to bring prosecutions that Trump has encouraged against his perceived foes. She has been leading the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia since Sept. 22, after Trump pushed out her predecessor, Erik Siebert, who also was a Trump administration appointee. Siebert and others in the office raised doubts that the evidence was strong enough to bring charges against either James or Comey. Halligan charged Comey a few days after she arrived, on allegations that he lied to Congress in testimony five years ago. Comey
pleaded not guilty this week.
Halligan, one of Trump’s former personal lawyers
who had never been a prosecutor, presented both cases by herself, with limited help from her Justice Department superiors and virtually none from other lawyers in her office wary of their new boss, people familiar with the matter said.
James Andrew
“Obtaining indictments by herself on short notice in two incredibly high-profile cases is impressive,” said John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney in the Western District of Virginia. More surprising still, he said, was that she was able to obtain them in a highly politicized environment, in which grand juries in Washington, Los Angeles and elsewhere have recently rejected indictments related to Trump-imposed crackdowns on crime and protests.
In the Comey case, she has brought on out-of-district prosecutors from North Carolina.
Write to Sadie Gurman at
sadie.gurman@wsj.com and Meridith McGraw at
Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com