Wednesday marked the culmination of more than three years of inquiry into the Trump Organization as New York state attorney general Letitia James launched a civil fraud lawsuit against former president Donald Trump, three of his children, and two of his business associates.
The investigation came to a climax recently when Trump, who had been unsuccessful in his own lawsuit attempt to halt the investigation, refused to provide an oath during a deposition and repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights.
Donald Trump is not an exception, according to James, who stated in May that no one in this nation is allowed to choose how the law applies to them. “As we have said from the beginning, we will keep looking into this.”
Who Is Letitia James?
James, 63, is accustomed to having tense confrontations with important political leaders. When she first ran for attorney general in 2018, she ran on the Democratic ticket, and it was her investigation into claims of s***al harassment against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that eventually resulted in his resignation in August 2021. Cuomo has since accused her of partisan bias, just like Trump did. He launched an ethics grievance against James last week regarding the way outside counsel handled the investigation.
Cuomo has been a persistent annoyance for James, despite his public silence on the subject other than to support the integrity of her work. His administration undercounted the number of Covid-19 fatalities in nursing homes during the early stages of the pandemic, according to a damning report published by her office at the beginning of last year. This was a significant blow to Cuomo’s reputation as a pandemic-era truth-teller. James has previously criticised Trump more bluntly, most notably in her 2018 bid for attorney general.
Trump has attempted to use those remarks, along with others like a promise to “focus on Donald Trump” and “follow his money” during a 2018 debate, as proof that her investigation was politically motivated. Trump disregarded her claim that anyone in her position should be “following the facts and following the evidence” when he highlighted those comments, which she made during the same event.
Lengthy Legislative Career
James made a name for herself in New York City’s progressive political scene before rising to the position of state’s chief prosecutor. She was a deputy state attorney general in Brooklyn and a graduate of Howard University Law School. Running on the platform of the Working Families Party, a progressive group founded to serve as a check on the Democratic Party in New York but has since expanded into a national organisation supporting liberal candidates across the country, she won her first election, to the city council in New York, in 2003.
Brad Lander, the New York City Comptroller, served on the assembly with James and was a founding member of the Working Families Party. He continues to back James and characterised James as a progressive champion who was ahead of many national leaders from the Democratic Party’s left flank in an interview last year.
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