The Justice Department has opened an investigation into one of President Trump’s longtime adversaries, Attorney General Letitia James of New York, examining whether her office violated his civil rights in its successful fraud suit against him, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
The acting U.S. attorney in Albany sent Ms. James’s office two subpoenas, one of which was related to the civil fraud case, which led to Mr. Trump being penalized more than half a billion dollars.
The second subpoena is related to the office’s long-running case against the National Rifle Association, the people said.Ms. James sued the organization in 2020, winning the ouster of its longtime leader, Wayne LaPierre, and sharply diminishing its power.
Two of the people familiar with the matter said that the new subpoenas were part of a broader investigation to determine whether the office violated Mr. Trump’s rights or those of others. It is a highly unusual use of a civil rights law more typically used to investigate potential racial, religious or sex discrimination, among other categories.
The inquiry also appears to be an extraordinary example of federal intervention in state proceedings and another battle in Mr. Trump’s escalating campaign against his nemeses. Ms. James has been one of Trump’s fiercest opponents since she first ran for attorney general in 2018, and his Justice Department has already opened a separate investigation into her personal real estate transactions.
The enmity between Mr. Trump and Ms. James is longstanding. In 2022, she sued him, accusing him of overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars. Mr. Trump lost and was penalized with the fine, which has since grown to more than half a billion dollars with interest. The case is on appeal.
Ms. James’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, on Friday called any investigation into Mr. Trump’s fraud case “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 said. “If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with facts and the law.”
Geoff Burgan, a spokesman for Ms. James, said: “We stand strongly behind our successful litigation against the Trump Organization and the National Rifle Association, and we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers’ rights.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The acting U.S. attorney in Albany, John A. Sarcone III, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The subpoenas appear unrelated to the case involving Ms. James’s personal real-estate transactions. The existence of that investigation was publicly confirmed earlier this year by the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, but it is unclear whether or how it has progressed.
In addition to Mr. Lowell, who is representing Ms. James as her personal lawyer, Ms. James’s office has retained Steven Banks, formerly of the firm Paul Weiss, to defend its staff members.
Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters have argued that his Justice Department should pursue cases against those who investigated or prosecuted him, and suggested one particular civil rights statute would give it grounds to do so.
That statute makes using law-enforcement authority to deprive a person of rights a crime. Historically, it has been used to investigate and prosecute police officers or prison guards who mistreat people based on their race, religion, sex, or national origin. The law, however, does not require that motive.
Mr. Trump has attacked Ms. James directly for years. In April, he called her a “crook” in a social media post in which he called for her resignation.
Mr. Sarcone, a Trump loyalist, is one of several U.S. attorneys the Justice Department has installed using an unusual legal procedure after judges and senators declined to appoint them permanently.
Mr. Sarcone has take a strong stance against immigration and has inserted himself into the national culture war over the issue, railing against former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s policies.
In July, after a panel of judges in the Northern District of New York declined to appoint Mr. Sarcone as the U.S. attorney at the end of his interim tenure, the Justice Department appointed him the “special attorney to the U.S. attorney,” a title that has typically been given to officials who lead complex prosecutions, not a U.S. attorney’s office.
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in the New York region for The Times. He is focused on political influence and its effect on the rule of law in the area’s federal and state courts.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
The post Justice Dept. Subpoenas Office of Letitia James, Who Sued Trump for Fraud appeared first on New York Times.
