A judge on Thursday barred the top federal prosecutor in Albany from overseeing a criminal investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James, delivering the latest blow to the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute one of President Donald Trump’s perceived enemies.
U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield ruled that John A. Sarcone III — a Trump loyalist appointed in March as interim U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York — has been unlawfully serving in his role for months. Sarcone had no legal authority when he subpoenaed James’s office during the summer as part of a probe into whether her office had violated civil rights of Trump or others, Schofield said.
At the time those subpoenas were issued, she said, Sarcone had already served beyond the 120 days he could hold on to his position. Schofield described the Justice Department’s efforts to keep him in his job beyond that point as an “end-run” around federal statutes aimed at allowing him to target “a perceived rival of the president.”
“When the Executive branch of government skirts restraints put in place by Congress and then uses that power to subject political adversaries to criminal investigations, it acts without lawful authority,” the judge wrote. “Subpoenas issued under that authority are invalid.”
Schofield quashed the subpoenas Sarcone served on James’s office in August. The first sought information related to the successful civil fraud case James brought in 2022 against Trump and his real estate company, accusing them of defrauding lenders with outsize claims of his wealth. The second centered on litigation James pursued against the National Rifle Association, which led to a court-mandated restructuring of the organization.
Both bore only Sarcone’s signature, and did not include those of any of his office’s career line prosecutors. In a cover letter sent with the subpoenas, Sarcone directed James’s office to send any responsive documents to him personally.
Schofield called both subpoenas “unreasonable” and said they had no weight of law behind them. While the judge disqualified Sarcone from future involvement in those investigations, she did not bar other prosecutors in his office from reissuing similar subpoenas to James.
Schofield’s ruling marked the sixth time in five months that a federal court has found the Trump administration violated the law in its bid to install and retain loyalists in key prosecutorial posts across the country.
In November, a federal judge dismissed a separate criminal case in Virginia targeting Jamesfor alleged mortgage fraud after ruling that Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney overseeing that prosecution, was unlawfully serving in her role. The Justice Department is appealing that decision and has twice sought to obtain a new indictment in the case, only to be rebuffed by grand juries.
James has denied wrongdoing in both the Virginia investigation and the inquiry overseen by Sarcone. She’s dismissed both efforts as bids by Trump to improperly use the Justice Department to harass his rivals.
A spokesperson for James’s office described Schofield’s decision Thursday as “an important win for the rule of law.” James’s defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, hailed the decision as one that “strikes at the heart of a dangerous trend that not only subverts justice but erodes public trust in our legal system.”
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately return requests for comment. Department officials have previously defended the president’s authority to appoint whoever he wants in U.S. attorney roles and criticized a long-standing Senate custom that effectively allows senators to veto U.S. attorney picks in their state.
Trump never formally nominated Sarcone to a full term as U.S. attorney. New York’s two Democractic senators — Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand — had signaled they would not support the nomination were the president to do so.
Typically, U.S. attorneys are nominated by the president and must be approved by a Senate vote. As Trump has faced pushback to his nominees on Capitol Hill, his administration has deployed novel tactics to keep his picks in their jobs.
Sarcone was appointed under a federal statute that allows the attorney general to install an interim U.S. attorney for 120 days. If the Senate has not confirmed a president’s nominee by that expiration date, the law empowers the district’s federal judges to appoint a replacement.
Before his appointment, Sarcone had never worked as a prosecutor. His immediately previous job was as a regional administrator for the General Services Administration, which manages government-owned properties.
Aside from the James investigation, his tenure had been marked by other unusual events. In June, he said a knife-wielding undocumented immigrant from El Salvador had tried to kill him outside an Albany hotel. Surveillance footage later showed the man did not come close to Sarcone with his weapon, and charges brought by a local prosecutor were downgraded from attempted murder to a misdemeanor.
When his 120-day interim appointment was up in July, the judges in Sarcone’s district declined to reappoint him. Justice Department officials responded by appointing Sarcone as a “special attorney to the attorney general” as well as the office’s first assistant U.S. attorney, a move the department said “indefinitely” granted him the authority of acting U.S. attorney.
It used similar tactics to retain interim U.S. attorneys in New Jersey, Los Angeles and Nevada — all of whom judges have since deemed as serving unlawfully in their posts. Schofield cited those earlier rulings in her written opinion Thursday, calling them persuasive.
“Federal law does not permit such a workaround,” she wrote.
In a statement Thursday, Schumer hailed the decision and accused the administration of trying “to cut corners, ignore the law, and bypass the Senate.
“The court shut it down,” Schumer said. “The people of the Northern District of New York deserve a qualified, independent prosecutor, not a political loyalist. Today’s ruling is a clear rebuke of Donald Trump’s disregard for the rule of law.”
Schofield’s decision may not spell the end of James’s legal fights. Behind the scenes, Justice Department officials are pursuing other avenues to potentially bring charges against her, according to two people familiar with the matter.
While the efforts appear to be in the preliminary stages, investigators have begun scrutinizing financial ties between James’s 2018 campaign and her longtime hairdresser for possible impropriety, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2019 that James’s campaign paid the hairdresser, Iyesata Marsh, $36,000 in the waning months of the race. That sum included $22,000 in what officials described as rent paid to Marsh for a studio she owned in Brooklyn as a temporary campaign office. The remainder was for work Marsh did as an event planner at a political event, the campaign said at the time.
Neither James nor Marsh has been accused of wrongdoing in those transactions. Marsh was separately indicted last month by federal prosecutors in Louisiana who have accused her and her nephew of committing bank fraud and identity theft while purchasing a Land Rover several years ago. Marsh and her nephew have pleaded not guilty to those charges.
Marsh’s attorney declined to discuss the case or the Justice Department’s separate interest in his client’s relationship with James, which was first reported Thursday by the New York Times.
Lowell, James’s lawyer, scoffed at the idea that there was anything inappropriate about the 2018 campaign’s payments to Marsh. He accused the department of using its resources “to try to shake down people based on their association with Ms. James.”
“Like their earlier attempts, this attack on Ms. James is doomed to fail,” Lowell said.
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