'No fear': Letitia James pleads not guilty in Trump-ordered prosecution
The New York Attorney General will stand trial on Jan. 26, 2026, if she doesn't succeed in dismissing her case before then.
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New York Attorney General Letitia James pleaded not guilty to two fraud-related charges in a Donald Trump-ordered prosecution.
A federal judge scheduled her trial for Jan. 26, 2026.
At a press conference following her arraignment, James told reporters: “There’s no fear today, no fear,” according to CNN.
After successfully obtaining a ruling that Trump fraudulently inflated his financial statements by billions of dollars, James faces allegations of a much smaller $18,933 fraud — or roughly $50 per month — involving a property she owns in Norfolk, Va. Career prosecutors initially refused to take the case. Then, Trump pressured former U.S. Attorney Eric Siebert out of his position over that refusal and replaced him with his former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience before pursuing the case alone.
The day before the hearing, James moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that Halligan was unlawfully appointed. Before becoming a Supreme Court justice, then-Justice Department attorney Samuel Alito wrote an Office of Legal Counsel opinion finding that two interim U.S. Attorneys cannot be appointed consecutively, as Siebert and Halligan have. (James cited Alito’s 1986 opinion in her written arguments.)
“Because there is no evidence that any other government attorney played a role in securing the indictment, the Court must dismiss this case for lack of jurisdiction if it determines that Ms. Halligan was not a proper representative of the United States,” attorney Abbe Lowell wrote for James.
Lowell also asked U.S. District Judge Jamar K. Walker, a Biden appointee, to order the government to preserve James’s right to a fair trial by forbidding extrajudicial disclosures to the media after Halligan sent encrypted text messages to Lawfare’s senior editor Anna Bower, in what the brief calls “an unusual and improper occurrence.”
“In initiating this contact, Ms. Halligan—the lead prosecutor on this case as of the date of this filing—commented on the credibility and general strength of the evidence presented to the grand jury,” Lowell wrote. “She also commented, more generally, on the purported strength of the case she was bringing, complained about the New York Times’ coverage of a certain witness’s grand jury testimony, and stated the article did not convey a “full representation” of what took place before the grand jury. These extrajudicial statements and prejudicial disclosures by any prosecutor, let alone one purporting to be the U.S. Attorney, run afoul of and violate the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Code of Federal Regulations, this Court’s Local Rules, various rules of ethical and professional responsibility, and DOJ’s Justice Manual.”
The New York attorney general’s motion to disqualify Halligan reportedly will be combined with former FBI director James Comey’s similar motion.
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