Trump hunts after longtime critic in 'improper revenge campaign'

President Donald Trump is continuing his “improper revenge campaign” against New York Attorney General Letitia James — and she is fighting it actively.

“President Donald Trump’s top housing official Bill Pulte issued two new criminal referrals for New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday, attempting to revive the administration’s ongoing legal pursuit of one of his political opponents,” reported CNN on Wednesday, adding that the referrals were sent to Illinois and Florida for “suspected homeowners insurance fraud.” The Justice Department confirmed to CNN that “referrals were received by our US Attorney Offices,” while James' attorney Abbe Lowell accused Trump of continuing his “improper revenge campaign instead of helping bring down the rising cost of living in this country.”

The lawyer added in a statement to CNN, “Frustrated by repeated failures, where judges and grand juries have rejected their attempts to charge Attorney General James, Trump and his political enablers keep abusing their power to pursue a vendetta against her by trying to rename, refile, and repeat baseless allegations. They continue this improper revenge campaign instead of helping bring down the rising cost of living in this country.”

Lowell also predicted that “these desperate tactics will fail — just as every previous attempt has failed — and exposes an Administration that has abandoned its responsibility to the American people in favor of petty political payback.”

Among the “previous attempts” mentioned by Lowell was an October indictment on one count of making false statements to a financial institution and one count of bank fraud. A judge dismissed that case after Trump’s appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in Alexandria, Va. was deemed invalid. Other Trump prosecutions of his political enemies have also failed.

“This is how grand juries were meant to work,” UC Berkeley Criminal Justice Center Director Chesa Boudin and UC Davis Law Professor Eric S. Fish wrote in The New York Times about Trump’s failures to prosecute people he dislikes for political reasons such as James, adding that “a primary security to the innocent against hasty, malicious and oppressive persecution.” When U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed Trump’s attempted prosecution of another political enemy, former FBI Director James Comey, in November, she made it clear she had done so because of the sloppy methods Trump used to prosecute the case.

“Because Ms. Halligan had no lawful authority to present the indictment, I will grant Mr. Comey’s motion and dismiss the indictment without prejudice,” Currie explained.

Dickinson College President John E. Jones III, a former federal judge, told The Conversation’s politics editor Naomi Schalit that when grand juries reject Trump’s attempted prosecutions, they do so to defy an overreach of power.

“The grand jury would have to totally reject the whole premise of the case that’s being presented to them by the United States attorney because, remember, there are typically no witnesses appearing before the grand jury to dispute the facts,” Jones told Schalit. “The grand jury is clearly saying, ‘Even accepting the facts you’re putting before us as true, we don’t think under these circumstances this case is worthy of a federal indictment.’”

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