Halligan again, same attorney who indicted Comey. What a hack. Press Release: New York State Attorney General Indicted. Here’s the Indictment - like Comey’s indictment, only Halligan’s signature. The basic accusation is in Aug 2020 James lied to get a better mortgage rate of 3.00% instead of 3.85% on a $100k’ish loan. This deprived the lender $18k’ish over the life of the loan.
Per NY Times:
As in the case against Comey, career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia had looked askance at the case against Letitia James, and sought to convince top officials at the Justice Department that there was not enough evidence to charge her. But President Trump pushed out the head of that office, replacing him with Lindsey Halligan, who has now secured the indictment of James.
And it’s not just the prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virgina who have raised questions about the case: Many current and former federal prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers who handle white collar cases and who have reviewed the loan documents have said convicting James would at best be an uphill climb.
It’s for harassment because that’s just how petty that fucker is.. She’ll have to appear and hire a lawyer, so time and money for her and taxpayer dollars to prosecute. He’s likely also aiming to tarnish her reputation, and when the case falls through he’ll say that the whole thing was rigged by a liberal judge. Same shit, different day.
NY State, in anticipation of this, has a $10 million dollar fund to cover defense attorney fees for her. Comey is wealthy and very well-connected. It’s not good by any measure for them to be indicted like this, but these people can properly defend themselves against the Gov’t. Just like Trump could.
Once these indictments start getting a step lower than a Letitia James/set aside taxpayer money, then the truth matters less and the US Gov’t can just crush you with its weight.
I’m curious about the grand jury vote.In the Comey case there were 3 charges. You need 12/23 votes to indict and the vote was only 14 for indictment on two charges and less than 12 on the third. The standard of proof is also much lower than in an actual trial showing how weak that case really is. I suspect that the James case isn’t much better.
Probably not, due to prosecutorial immunity, I am guessing (IANAL). Generally speaking, she would be immune to a lawsuit for any prosecutorial acts she makes; it’s considered to be absolute immunity. On the other hand, that immunity isn’t as absolute for administrative or investigative acts, so there’s the remote possibility for a lawsuit for this case under those conditions.
Lindsey Halligan—the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia—was texting me. Over the next 33 hours, Halligan texted me again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Through the whole of our correspondence, however, there is something Halligan never said: She never said a word suggesting that she was not “on the record.”
Nothing shocking or anything, but extremely odd behavior (insulting and arguing with a reporter re an active high profile case) and pure incompetence (saying “off the record” days after the conversation was over). Here’s a link to the texts if you have 5mins to waste.
I’ll just take the whining further and add that Halligan also hints that she didn’t think off the record was necessary because “you’re not a journalist” even though in the text exchange Halligan referred to her as a “reporter”, is discussing her recent reporting, and acknowledged meeting her covering the Trump trials as a reporter.
This is our Gov’t prosecutor upholding justice. It’s shameful.
It’s nothing more than what we expected. Self-important, dismissive, insulting, and incompetent. The only qualification she has for the job is loyalty to Trump. This is nothing more or less than exactly what any sensible person expected from Trump 2.0
Even if she had said “this is off the record” outside of a courtroom (e.g., attorney-to-judge conferences), this is only a journalistic ethics issue. It’s enshrined in the Constitution, wherever Jefferson wrote of “pinky swear”.
Presumably, a “real” journalist would lose credibility. Also it’s agreed upon before the info is dispensed and someone can’t say, “BTW that was off the record” or even lamer, "This unwritten rule applies to you even more as you didn’t pass journalism college.
The dude’s name is Sam Antar and he’s combing through records at the behest of MAGA to uncover these fiendish crimes. Nobody’s made any complaint, though Trump’s banks didn’t make any complaint either when his organization was convicted of fraud, this is just a blatant fishing expedition. I don’t think this is even going to trial.
FTR, this is a different “crime” than the one where she declared her personal residence in Virginia to be a personal residence. In this fiendish crime, she apparently declared her multi-unit Brooklyn residence to have 4 units, whereas it allegedly has 5! If Trump had anything more than a toddler’s brain he’d be thoroughly embarrassed by this fiasco.
