The Justice Department has failed to secure a new indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) after its initial case against her was dismissed, a blunder for prosecutors who have trained their sights on the adversary of President Trump.
Justice Department officials sought to proceed with a fresh case against James, despite vowing at first to appeal the dismissal, after a judge found the appointment of Lindsey Halligan as acting U.S. attorney was unlawful.
But the panel of grand jurors returned a no bill on the charges pursued by prosecutors.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department and U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, said in a statement that the grand jury’s refusal to reindict her is a “decisive rejection of a case that should never have existed in the first place.”
“A federal court threw this case out after President Trump illegally installed a U.S. Attorney to file baseless charges against Attorney General James that career prosecutors refused to bring. This should be the end of this case,” Lowell said. “If they continue, undeterred by a court ruling and a grand jury’s rejection of the charges, it will be a shocking assault on the rule of law and a devastating blow to the integrity of our justice system.”
Halligan was the only prosecutor to present the initial case against James to a grand jury. Several outlets have reported that, this time around, other prosecutors were pulled in to lay out the allegations against James, including one from Missouri.
The previous two-count indictment against James centered on her plans for a Virginia home and whether she lied about them, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms that prosecutors claim would have saved her nearly $19,000 over the life of the loan. She faced bank fraud and false statements charges.
James has denied wrongdoing and cast herself as a target of selective and vindictive prosecution at the president’s behest. James responded to the rejection by reiterating her stance that the charges against her are “baseless.”
“It is time for this unchecked weaponization of our justice system to stop,” she said in a statement that expressed gratitude to the grand jury.
She came into Trump’s crosshairs after taking on his business empire in Manhattan, alleging in a 2022 lawsuit against him and the Trump Organization that he inflated his net worth for tax and insurance benefits.
A New York judge found Trump liable for fraud, and the president was hit with a penalty that ballooned to more than $500 million, including interest, before an appeals court wiped it out in August. Both James and Trump have appealed to the state’s highest court.
After career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia declined to pursue charges against James and former FBI Director James Comey, another Trump foe, the president pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to take legal action against his adversaries and suggested Halligan for the job.
A White House aide with no prosecutorial experience, Halligan was named to the office’s top post. U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie ruled last week that she was never eligible for the job because Bondi’s authority to install an interim U.S. attorney had expired, ending the cases against James and Comey.
Trump’s White House claimed after the dismissals that the decision sought to shield the defendants from accountability, insisting the facts of their indictments had not changed.
However, the judge left the door open for prosecutors to seek charges again by dismissing the cases in a manner that sometimes allows a do-over.
The Justice Department is also reportedly mulling whether to try to reindict Comey, whose case was dismissed at the same time as James’s. He said in a video after the charges were dropped that he is “innocent.”
However, complications in Comey’s case — including issues with the statute of limitations and a new lawsuit by his former lawyer, a key figure — could hinder efforts to prosecute him again.
