Prosecutor probing NYAG hit with bar complaint for "potentially illegal conduct"
The subject of the complaint is Trump's man in Albany: John Sarcone, who is now targeting the New York AG who won a half-billion dollar verdict against his boss.
Editor’s Note:
This article will be part of our ongoing coverage of Trump-appointed U.S. Attorneys staying in their positions without Senate or judicial confirmations. To support our investigation, become a free or paid subscriber to All Rise News.
Despite having no prosecutorial experience, and having spent most of his term mired in scandal, Donald Trump’s top prosecutor in Albany John Sarcone has the qualifications this White House prizes most: fealty to the president and a willingness to go after his enemies.
Sarcone’s investigation against one of Trump’s longtime targets, New York Attorney General Letitia James, went public on Friday, but Sarcone may not have his own house in order, according to a recent bar complaint accusing him of “potentially illegal conduct.”
“In just the four months since he was initially sworn in as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York, Mr. Sarcone has engaged in erratic and potentially illegal conduct,” the bar complaint, filed on Wednesday by the watchdog group Campaign for Accountability, states.
A staunch MAGA loyalist, Sarcone used to work for Trump’s 2016 campaign, and he is earning a reputation as a Trump hatchet man. In 2023, Sarcone wrote that then-President Joe Biden should be tried for “treason,” and his investigation into Attorney General James involves two of Trump’s grievances: the half-billion dollar civil fraud verdict against Trump and a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association.
“Any weaponization of the justice system should disturb every American,” a spokesperson for James wrote in a statement. “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.”
Whether Sarcone has the authority to open any investigation remains an open question: Last month, the judges of his district refused to extend Sarcone’s term, and Trump’s Justice Department unilaterally kept Sarcone in office, without Senate or judicial approval, by giving him a new title: “special attorney.”
Watch the All Rise News video breakdown below.
“Feared for my life”
In June, Sarcone had a troubling encounter with an undocumented immigrant named Saul Morales-Garcia outside a Hilton Hotel in Albany. In Sarcone’s telling, Morales-Garcia “charged” at him with a knife and tried to murder him.
“I feared for my life but I couldn’t let this individual harm and potentially kill others,” Sarcone wrote in an official press release announcing Morales-Garcia’s attempted murder charge.
Unlike traditional U.S. Attorney press releases, the announcement of Morales-Garcia’s charges had no mention of the presumption of innocence, and Sarcone went on a national press blitz about the encounter. Sarcone dramatically recreated the encounter on Fox and Friends, and he regaled his local TV stations about Morales-Garcia’s rap sheet.
“Now this individual, ok, had been deported in 2010,” Sarcone told a press gaggle. “I’m not gonna say what the crime was because it’s horrific, but it was of moral turpitude. You could look that up.”
According to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, Morales-Garcia was convicted of petit larceny before his 2010 deportation. Sarcone blamed Morales-Garcia’s return to the United States on Biden’s “open borders” policy, but Homeland Security says Morales-Garcia reentered the country at an “unknown date” between April 2010 and December 2021, a time frame that could include the four years of Trump’s first term.
Other elements of Sarcone’s story didn’t add up: Albany Times Union published the surveillance video of Sarcone’s encounter with Morales-Garcia, who could be seen brandishing a knife from a distance. The footage hardly showed a visual record of a brush with death.
“At no time does the video show Mr. Morales-Garcia anywhere near Mr. Sarcone; he is yelling at him from a distance,” the bar complaint notes.
Authorities dropped the attempted murder charge against Morales-Garcia, who received a 90-day sentence for a single count of misdemeanor menacing on July 3.
Less than two weeks later, the Board of Judges serving for the Albany-based Northern District of New York declined to extend Sarcone’s term.
“NO TRESPASSING”
Sarcone’s tenure got more tangled from there.
The Albany Times Union noticed a remarkable detail in Sarcone’s sworn deposition to the sheriff’s office about his encounter with Morales-Garcia: an address, which reporters visited only to find a boarded up house. Under federal law, U.S. Attorneys must reside in the districts in which they serve, and local NBC station WNYT broadcast images of the “NO TRESPASSING” sign on the plywood-blockaded entrance.
Sarcone claimed that the property had been fully renovated inside and connected the Times Union to Westchester-based developer Steve Sabba, the mortgage holder of the property.
Sabba, identified in the article as a former client of Sarcone’s private law practice, told the newspaper that the apartment was delayed because of “supply chain” issues resulting from Trump’s tariffs. When the Times Union sought to verify the account, Sabba accused the paper of preparing a “hit piece.” Sabba had been convicted of felony tax fraud on two separate occasions, the paper noted.
Sarcone removed the Times Union, the New York capital’s paper of record, from the Northern District of New York’s media distribution list after their investigation. The Campaign for Accountability described the paper’s “blacklisting” as an abuse of power.
The group’s bar complaint accuses Sarcone of violating several ethics rules, including one barring “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”
The Justice Department and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York did not respond to an email requesting comment.
A nationwide trend
A former 2016 Trump campaign lawyer, Sarcone is just one example of a nationwide trend of MAGA U.S. Attorneys remaining in office after judges refused to extend their terms.
Trump’s former personal lawyer Alina Habba became an interim appointee for the District of New Jersey before the Justice Department anointed her as a “special attorney” through a similar mechanism. The Campaign for Accountability also filed a bar complaint against Habba in June.
Legal experts warn that Trump’s insisting on keeping loyalists in charge of the U.S. Attorney positions across the country without Senate or judicial approval could risk compromising cases.
In New Jersey, two federal criminal defendants charged with drug and firearm offenses recently won the opportunity to argue that Habba should be disqualified from prosecuting them because she was appointed illegally. The men, Julien Giraud Jr. and Julien Giraud III, lost their bid to dismiss their indictment altogether because they were indicted months after her appointment. It is unclear whether defendants who were indicted after Habba became “special attorney” would have been more successful.
“Because this is unprecedented, it is hard to evaluate the risk to the DOJ,” said Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor in the District of New Jersey. “Defendants (civil and criminal) will make motions to dismiss cases on the grounds that the person purporting to be the U.S. Attorney is not properly in that seat.”
At least four Trump loyalists across the country have extended U.S. Attorney terms without Senate confirmation, including Habba in New Jersey, Sarcone in northern New York, Sigal Chattah in the District of Nevada, and Bill Essayli in the Central District of California.
The legitimacy of Habba’s extended term heads toward a reckoning soon. Oral arguments are slated for Aug. 15.
Read the bar complaint in full here.
The Republican Party acts as if they are in a soap opera. Too bad this is very real.
Adam your intellect & obedience to honest journalism in the legal sphere is exactly what we need these days!