Tonight in Your Rights: Tish's second triumph

NYAG James staves off second attempt at prosecution, and a third victory may be on the horizon. Also on the legal roundup: Roberts Court revives Texas maps, and more.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

A grand jury refused to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James as the Justice Department’s second attempt to prosecute one of Donald Trump’s enemies collapsed in a humiliating fashion.

“As I have said from the start, the charges against me are baseless,” James wrote in a statement. “It is time for this unchecked weaponization of our justice system to stop.”

“I am grateful to the members of the grand jury and humbled by the support I have received from across the country,” she continued. “Now, I will continue to do my job standing up for the rule of law and the people of New York.”

Is a trifecta of defeats for Trump’s Justice Department against James just around the corner?

Check out my roundup of her arguments against a second grand jury investigation and other legal news below.

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Inside a federal court in Albany, N.Y., Trump’s Justice Department had a chilly reception in its effort to enforce a pair of subpoenas against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The signature on both subpoenas and their cover letters belonged to John Sarcone, who identified himself as the “Acting U.S. Attorney.” The subpoenas sought James’s records related to her successful lawsuits against Donald Trump’s business empire and the National Rifle Association in search of alleged civil rights violations.

For nearly an hour, Senior U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield sharply questioned whether Acting U.S. Attorney was Sarcone’s lawful title and what she would do about it if it was not. James wants to make Sarcone the fifth consecutive Trump-loyalist prosecutor to be disqualified — and the second by her own disqualification motions.

“Power that he didn’t lawfully possess”

A former Trump campaign lawyer with no prosecutorial experience, Sarcone is trying to avoid becoming the fifth purported U.S. Attorney disqualified from his office. Other federal judges have disqualified other Trump-loyalist prosecutors like Alina Habba, Sigal Chattah, Bill Essayli, and Lindsey Halligan, all of whom were also not confirmed by the Senate.

“Sarcone exercised power that he didn’t lawfully possess,” attorney Hailyn J. Chen, the private counsel for the New York Attorney General’s office, told the judge.

After Sarcone’s 120-day temporary term expired, the judges of the Northern District of New York declined to extend his tenure, but he remained inside that office. His signature is the only one to appear on the documents at issue.

In that sense, Chen said: “This case presents an even stronger case for remedy than in Comey and in James,” referring to Halligan’s now-dismissed prosecutions. Halligan brought those cases before a grand jury, whose foreperson also signed the indictments. Sarcone, by contrast, signed alone. (In Virginia today, another out-of-district prosecutor brought the case the grand jury no-billed.)

If Sarcone can lead a probe under these circumstances, Chen said, “That would mean that anybody can walk off the street to issue a subpoena.”

“Overwhelming evidence of malice”

Sarcone’s brief and controversial tenure has been filled with scandal.

Months into his term, Sarcone accused an undocumented immigrant of trying to murder him outside of his hotel. Local prosecutors leveled that charge against immigrant Saul Morales Garcia based on those allegations, only to be forced to reduce the charge when surveillance footage debunked the claim. Sarcone listed a boarded-up house as his address in police records, raising questions about whether he complied with federal law requiring him to live in the district where he serves. Small wonder that the district’s judges refused to extend his term in the wake of the embarrassing sequence of events.

Under questioning by Judge Schofield, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Belliss acknowledged that Sarcone used his purported “Acting U.S. Attorney” title in the subpoenas and cover letters. Attorney General Pam Bondi later designated Sarcone a “special attorney,” but the Third Circuit rejected those word games as an end run of the law.

Cutting through the legal arcana, Judge Schofield asked the attorney general’s lawyer to describe the importance of the signature on the subpoena: “What’s the big deal?” she asked.

“The Appointments Clause [of the Constitution] is important,” Chen responded. “It is part of the separation of powers… This is not a mere technicality.”

Earlier in the hearing, Chen said that Sarcone’s appointment itself adds to the “overwhelming evidence of malice” against James and an “abuse of executive power” in retaliation for her successful lawsuits against Trump and the NRA.

Following roughly an hour of careful questioning, Judge Schofield did not indicate when she would issue her ruling in Sarcone’s case. For more information about the hearing, watch my conversations with Glenn Kirschner and Brian Tyler Cohen.

Below the Paywall:
The Roberts Court rescues Trump’s agenda on the emergency docket yet again. The New York Times sues the Pentagon. The Justice Department charges an alleged Jan. 6 pipe bomber, and a report roasts Hegseth on “Signalgate.”