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Deadline Legal Blog-Letitia James asserts 'outrageous government conduct' in latest motion to dismiss her case
The New York attorney general’s lawyers write that Trump officials “set out to do what they had been ordered to do: indict AG James.”
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https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/letitia-james-outrageous-government-conduct-motion-dismiss-rcna244607
There’s no shortage of ways that the Donald Trump-demanded indictments of James Comey and Letitia James might be dismissed pretrial. One of the latest examples came this week from James, who argues that “outrageous government conduct” should lead to the dismissal of her charges.
“Perhaps in no case before this Court has there been a more shocking course of government conduct,” James’ lawyers wrote in a motion filed on Monday. “The unprecedented, extensive, and outrageous misconduct in this case reached its apex when President Donald Trump, as part of his revenge campaign, decided that AG James needed to be indicted, no matter the cost,” they wrote, laying out the argument in a 22-page filing.
Arguing that the bank fraud indictment brought by the Trump-installed prosecutor Lindsey Halligan violates the New York attorney general’s due process rights, the motion calls out the “Trump-directed quartet” of Halligan, Attorney General Pam Bondi, “weaponization czar” Ed Martin and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte. “Despite the overwhelming lack of evidence or support from career prosecutors,” the motion reads, those officials “set out to do what they had been ordered to do: indict AG James.”
The motion was filed on the same day that a federal magistrate judge issued a scathing assessment of Halligan’s conduct in Comey’s case and took the rare step of ordering the disclosure of all the grand jury materials to the defense. That order is temporarily on hold while Halligan challenges it.
Likewise seeking grand jury disclosures, James on Monday filed her own such motion, in which she raised questions about, among other things, whether the grand jury was properly instructed. The answer could be especially illuminating in light of Comey’s judge observing Monday that Halligan, who hadn’t prosecuted a case before, appeared to make “fundamental misstatements of the law” to the grand jury that indicted the former FBI director. Both he and James have pleaded not guilty to their respective indictments in the Eastern District of Virginia.
“Perhaps in no case before this Court has there been a more shocking course of government conduct,” James’ lawyers wrote in a motion filed on Monday. “The unprecedented, extensive, and outrageous misconduct in this case reached its apex when President Donald Trump, as part of his revenge campaign, decided that AG James needed to be indicted, no matter the cost,” they wrote, laying out the argument in a 22-page filing.
Arguing that the bank fraud indictment brought by the Trump-installed prosecutor Lindsey Halligan violates the New York attorney general’s due process rights, the motion calls out the “Trump-directed quartet” of Halligan, Attorney General Pam Bondi, “weaponization czar” Ed Martin and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte. “Despite the overwhelming lack of evidence or support from career prosecutors,” the motion reads, those officials “set out to do what they had been ordered to do: indict AG James.”
The motion was filed on the same day that a federal magistrate judge issued a scathing assessment of Halligan’s conduct in Comey’s case and took the rare step of ordering the disclosure of all the grand jury materials to the defense. That order is temporarily on hold while Halligan challenges it.
Likewise seeking grand jury disclosures, James on Monday filed her own such motion, in which she raised questions about, among other things, whether the grand jury was properly instructed. The answer could be especially illuminating in light of Comey’s judge observing Monday that Halligan, who hadn’t prosecuted a case before, appeared to make “fundamental misstatements of the law” to the grand jury that indicted the former FBI director. Both he and James have pleaded not guilty to their respective indictments in the Eastern District of Virginia.