MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos warned Friday that New York Attorney General Letitia James should be concerned about the Department of Justice’s reported investigation into whether she violated President Donald Trump’s civil rights through her lawsuit against him.
According to The New York Times, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York has issued subpoenas related to James’ civil fraud case against Trump and his company, as well as her case against the National Rifle Association (NRA). Speaking on Chris Jansing Reports, Cevallos suggested the government might uncover unrelated incriminating evidence against James during its probe.
“There is nothing scarier for a citizen [than] to get a subpoena or find out that they’re being investigated by a federal criminal grand jury. It’s terrifying. And here’s why: Grand jury investigations sweep broadly,” Cevallos said. [see video below]
“They gather terabytes of information. And they’re very efficient at going through it. And the problem there for people is that they may be investigating issue number one and then stumble across never before known issue number two when going through all those documents,” Cevallos added.
“That is why if somebody is the subject, the target, of a grand jury investigation, that is not a good sign. So given that the federal government has such tremendous power to investigate, Letitia James should be very concerned,” he continued.
“Not that she necessarily did anything wrong, but because that kind of scrutiny of financial records, of business records, everything going back probably years, might yield something that the government finds interesting,” he said.
During her 2018 campaign for attorney general, James pledged to investigate Trump. In September 2022, she filed a lawsuit accusing him of inflating the value of real estate properties to secure loans. Ironically, she is now the subject of a mortgage fraud investigation overseen by special counsel Ed Martin.
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