The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of President Donald Trump’s biggest adversaries.
Two years after James successfully sued Trump for civil fraud, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department (DOJ) has issued subpoenas against the New York Democrat, with a grand jury investigation also underway.
The probe accuses James of “deprivation of rights,” a crime that involves a government official violating someone’s constitutional rights in an official capacity.
Sources have told The Daily Beast that the department is pursuing James on the basis that she campaigned for office on a platform of targeting Trump, with the intention of jailing him.
James has been one of the president’s biggest adversaries since she ran for New York attorney general in 2018, and one of the most hated law enforcement figures among Trump’s MAGA base.
“Now the hunter becomes the hunted,” right-wing commentator Rogan O’Handley, better known by the name DC Draino, posted on X in response to the news.
James sued Trump in 2022 while he was campaigning for the White House, accusing him of lying about his real estate empire and inflating the value of his properties for financial gain.
He was subsequently fined more than $300 million but is appealing the case.
But Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing and has accused James of engaging in a political witch hunt against him.
“She’s a horrible, horrible human being, and I think she’s a total crook, there’s no question about it—but that’s just my opinion," the president said earlier this year.
James’ office has described the DOJ probe as “weaponization of the justice system” - a term that Trump, who was criminally indicted four times before becoming president - regularly used against Democrats.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, her attorney Abbe David Lowell said that investigating the fraud case James won against Trump and his businesses “has to be the most blatant and desperate example of this administration carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
“If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with the facts and the law,” he said.
The investigation into James is being run out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York, which is led by Trump’s ally, U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III.
Federal judges initially declined to appoint Sarcone to the position, but the DOJ circumvented the usual confirmation process by appointing him as a “special attorney to the Attorney General,” granting him equivalent powers without needing Senate confirmation.
The Department of Justice declined to comment. But the probe is not the first criminal investigation the administration has opened against James.
In May, the DOJ opened a probe into allegations that James committed fraud by lying on loan and bank documents to obtain better mortgage rates. The investigation was initiated after a criminal referral from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte.
Pulte cited “media reports” to claim that James secured a better mortgage rate by fraudulently stating that a Virginia home she was purchasing with her niece in 2023 would be her primary residence.
At the time, James’ attorney, Abbe Lowell, slammed the investigation as an act of “improper political retaliation … publicly instigated and endorsed by President Trump.”
DOJ is also reportedly probing James for her pursuit of the National Rifle Association (NRA).
James had sought to dissolve the NRA but failed. She did, however, win a civil fraud case against the association’s longtime leader, Wayne LaPierre, who was found to have diverted millions of dollars from the gun group for his own personal lifestyle.
