If a US Attorney won’t take her out, he’ll find one who will:
It’s all coming together in President Trump’s push to find a way to bring criminal charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James: the retribution, the denigration of the rule of law, the evisceration of the Justice Department, and the ultimate unbridled unitary executive.
In another important story, ABC News reported overnight that Trump is poised to fire U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert of the Eastern District of Virginia for not seeking an indictment of James on the bogus mortgage fraud claims the administration has drummed up.
The latest news comes after a deeply reported ABC News piece earlier in the week that prosecutors had turned up considerable exculpatory evidence in the case. So even though the investigation had begun on a pretextual predicate, it had done more to exonerate James than to implicate her in the supposed mortgage fraud. For that reason, Siebert wasn’t going to seek a grand jury indictment in the Virginia mortgage fraud case.
The refusal to bring a case against James apparently enraged Bill Pulte, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who pushed Trump to fire Siebert, ABC News previously reported. It appears now that Trump is expected to follow through on Pulte’s demand.
As someone on BlueSky pointed out, “knowing that a prosecutor might well get sacked if they don’t find incriminating evidence in matters deemed politically important by Trump really makes you wonder about the incriminating evidence in ongoing matters deemed politically important by Trump.”
That’s not to say that I have many doubts about that already. The dynamic duo of Bondi and Patel hardly inspire confidence in the integrity of the DOJ. But this will be the final nail in the coffin.