The Dictatorship
The DOJ’s investigation into N.Y. AG Letitia James is almost too on the nose
Donald Trump knows how to keep his word when he wants to. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised retribution and retaliation against his political opponents. He specifically called out New York Attorney General Letitia James, the trailblazing prosecutor who beat Trump and the Trump organization in court; a judge found that Trump and the organization improperly inflated assets in financial documents to get favorable loan terms. (Trump is appealing the civil penalty).
In November 2023, Trump made a post characterizing James’ prosecution against him as a “ridiculous Political Witch Hunt against me” and wrote, “She should be prosecuted!
In November 2023, as the trial was going on, Trump made a social media post characterizing James’ prosecution against him as a “ridiculous Political Witch Hunt against me” and wrote, “She should be prosecuted!” At a campaign rally in January 2024, he said the judge and James “should be arrested and punished accordingly.”
He appears to be actively making good on those vows to pay back the people he says wrong him even though the facts and evidence don’t appear to justify it.
NBC News reported Friday that Attorney General Pam Bondi has made MAGA activist Ed Martin a “special attorney” to probe mortgage fraud allegations against James made by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William J. Pulte, a Trump nominee who took office in March. At the same time, The New York Times reported Friday that the office of John Sarcone III, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, sent James’ office two subpoenas last week that seek to discover if she violated the rights of Trump and his businesses, as well as the rights of the National Rifle Association. James’ office successfully won a corruption case against the NRA the week after she won the fraud case against Trump and the Trump organization. Sarcone’s office didn’t respond to the newspaper’s request for comment.
Martin and Sarcone are wholly unqualified for their roles. Before their interim appointments this year, neither had ever been a prosecutor. Sarcone, who hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate, wrongly said a panel of federal judges had voted to extend his interim appointment as a U.S. attorney. In fact, that panel refused to extend his appointment, and the DOJ got around that rejection with a maneuver that appears to have never been used for the appointment of a U.S. attorney. According to a letter the Times obtained from the Justice Department’s human resources division, Sarcone has been named “special attorney to the attorney general” indefinitely and is, bizarrely, serving as the acting U.S. attorney and as the office’s first assistant.
MAGA activist and election denier Ed Martin is so radical he couldn’t secure enough Republican senators to support his nomination to be the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Not even Trump phoning holdout Republican senators could get Martin over the finish line. His consolation prize was being made DOJ’s pardon attorney and director of DOJ’s “weaponization” working group, which Bondi established with the apparent mission to investigate public officials who — following the facts, law and court rules — secured indictments against Trump. Martin previously represented some Jan. 6, pro-MAGA rioters.
Martin and Sarcone fit the new mold of Trump’s DOJ appointees. Unbridled loyalty and fealty to Trump is more important than qualifications. Of the two, Martin is the bigger threat to the rule of law — that is, treating like cases alike — and the bigger threat to the DOJ’s post-Watergate norm of keeping partisan politics out of DOJ decision making.
“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them,” he told reporters this spring. He said that “in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed.”
That appears to be what is happening in James’ case. They’ll charge her if they can and shame her if they can’t. Let’s be clear that charges do not appear to be justified.
They’ll charge her if they can and shame her if they can’t.
Regarding the mortgage fraud allegations, Trump administration officials say in notarized papers, James listed a Virginia home as her “principal residence” to get better loan terms. James’s lawyer told ABC News that the accusation was a “lie based on a purposeful misreading of documents in a lawful real estate transaction.”
In a letter to Bondi in April, that attorney, Abbe D. Lowell, wrote, “Director Pulte cherry-picked an August 17, 2023 power of attorney that mistakenly stated the property to be Ms. James’ principal residence and at the same time absolutely ignored her very clear and all caps statement two weeks earlier to the mortgage loan broker that “[t]his property WILL NOT be my primary residence.”
Lowell attached email messages that he said show that James was clear that the property would be her niece’s primary residence and that the “broker understood this” because he responded that James would be considered “a non-occupying co-borrower.”
Another allegation from Trump’s FHFA says James wrongly claimed that a five-unit dwelling she bought in Brooklyn in 2001 only had four units — as the Times explains “possibly in order to receive better interest rates.” But in the letter Lowell sent Bondi in April, the attorney writes, “The co-occupancy dwelling has four floors and, for as long as Ms. James has lived there, the property has always functioned as a four-person residence.” Lowell said that a 24-year-old certificate of occupancy mistakenly says it’s a 5-unit property, but he attached copies of multiple public documents that he say prove it’s a 4-unit property.
Of course, if this were a legitimate investigation, the public would likely not even know about it. The DOJ manual prohibits disclosure of its ongoing investigations with exceptions only in limited circumstances. DOJ officials know this but don’t seem to care.
News of a federal criminal referral first appeared in the conservative tabloid New York Post in April. That news dominated the conservative media ecosystem that weekend. Ditto this past weekend, when the appointments and grand jury probes became public.
If this were a legitimate investigation, the public would likely not even know about it.
What Trump’s DOJ is doing now appears to have been pulled from the same playbook his DOJ used against Democratic governors in New York and New Jersey during his first term. In December 2024, the DOJ’s inspector general found clear signs that politics drove the department’s investigation of pandemic-era nursing home deaths. According to that report, in 2020, most of the nursing homes with the lowest quality of care during the Covid pandemic were in the Republican-governed states of Texas and Indiana. None of the 30 worst-ranked facilities were in New York or New Jersey, states controlled by Democrats.
However, the report mentions an alarming text message a senior official with the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs sent to at least one colleague Oct. 17, 2020, weeks before the presidential election. Using DOJ shorthand for the civil rights division and the civil division respectively the text, according to the IG report, said, “I’m trying to get [CRT] and CIV to do letters to [New York/New Jersey] respectively on nursing homes. Would like to package them together and let[the[theNew York Post]break it. Will be our last play on them before election but it’s a big one.”
“Our last play on them before the election.”
Put plainly, DOJ officials were weaponizing the department’s vast powers to attack the president’s political opponents for partisan purposes. That’s exactly what Justice Department appointees appear to be doing now.
Anthony Coley is a legal analyst for NBC News, BLN and CNBC. He was director of the Justice Department’s office of public affairs from February 2021 until January 2023.
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday halted President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to create a federal voter list and limit who can receive a mail ballot.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, sided with a coalition of nearly two dozen states that challenged the Republican president’s order in granting a summary judgment. Her ruling applies to this year’s midterm election cycle.
Plaintiffs argued in two lawsuitsboth filed in federal court in Boston, that Trump’s order should be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. The judge agreed, saying in her ruling that the provisions of Trump’s order seeking to create a federal list of eligible voters and using the U.S. Postal Service to determine who can receive a mail ballot are “legally void” because they “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.”
It was the second ruling in as many days against executive orders Trump has signed seeking oversight of the nation’s elections. A separate ruling Wednesday prohibited an executive order he had signed last year that would have required people to show documents proving their citizenship when registering to vote.
Order targeted mail voting, administration likely to appeal
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, whose state was among the plaintiffs, celebrated the court’s decision.
“Millions of independents, Republicans and Democrats across Arizona have voted by mail for decades,” she said in a statement, noting that nearly 80% of ballots in the state are cast by that method.
Mayes, a Democrat, singled out military families, voters in the state’s rural expanses and Native Americans who cast ballots from tribal lands.
“Donald Trump’s executive order targeted all of these voters,” she said. “But today, the courts affirmed what the Constitution makes clear: States run their elections, not the President.”
AP AUDIO: Federal judge halts Trump’s election executive order seeking to create a federal voter list
AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports President Trump has suffered a legal setback for a second straight day in his bid to get oversight of the nation’s elections.
The White House stood by Trump’s executive order and indicated the administration would appeal the ruling. The order, said spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, “lawfully protects our elections, and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail in its implementation.”
The administration, in its motions to dismiss the lawsuits challenging the order, argued that the motions were premature and that plaintiffs lacked the legal basis to bring their claim based on the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
But in an interim order before Thursday’s ruling, Talwani said the motions pertaining to this year’s election cycle were relevant: “In light of the EO’s specific deadlines over the next three months, and the reality that elections will be occurring throughout this period with the November 3, 2026 midterm occurring in just five months, postponing judicial review is impracticable and may inflict significant hardship on Plaintiffs,” she wrote. That order denied the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the challenges.
Executive order sought to give Postal Service a central role in elections
Trump’s executive order, the second one aimed at elections during his second term, comes as he continues to raise the specter of widespread voting by noncitizens as a reason to change election rules. But states already have detailed processes aimed at keeping their voter rolls accurate, and voting by noncitizens has been shown to be rare. It also is a felony that can be punishable by deportation.
Trump issued his second order in March after a bill he supported to overhaul voting stalled in Congress. The order would have had the federal government — through the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration — create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters. It then directed the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list.
Election officials argued that it was ripe for abuse and could cause chaos.
The Postal Service has published a proposed rule required by Trump’s executive order in the Federal Register. Among other things, the rule would not apply to primary elections or overseas ballots.
Postal Service workers have pushed back against the order, saying they are not equipped to determine who is eligible to vote in each state. After Trump issued his order last spring, the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association said forcing its members into such a role “risks politicizing one of the nation’s most trusted public institutions.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat whose state was among the plaintiffs, said the executive order illustrated how Trump was attempting to “abuse power in previously unthinkable ways” to interfere in elections.
She said it “strains credulity” to think the U.S. Postal Service could set up a workable system for pre-screening individual voters to determine whether they would be allowed to vote by mail, adding that it would be “a shocking violation of American constitutional rights.”
The Postal Service did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment.
Trump’s second election executive order faces multiple legal challenges
The lawsuit seeking summary judgment was filed by Democratic attorneys general representing 22 states and the District of Columbia. Also signing on were attorneys representing Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, which has a Republican attorney general.
The states also told the court that the move imposes a costly burden on election officials to comply and would spread fear about the possibility of prosecution. Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer for the Trump administration, had argued that no one would be prosecuted for violating the order.
The other lawsuit filed in Talwani’s court was by the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups, which have sought a preliminary injunction against the executive order.
In yet another lawsuit filed against the executive order, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., in May agreed with the Trump administration that it was too early to block the order because it had yet to be implemented. That lawsuit was brought by Democratic and civil rights groups, which have appealed.
Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe BidenTrump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigationsincluding ones run by Republicansfound it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.
___
Barrow reported from Atlanta and Hanna from Topeka, Kansas.
California voters will consider a controversial proposal in November to temporarily raise taxes on billionaires after the labor union backing the measure announced Thursday it would forge ahead despite pressure from critics to withdraw it.
The proposal, backed by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 billion and who were living in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. The goal is to generate $100 billion in revenue, mainly to fund the state’s Medicaid system after federal cuts.
“I am all in on this,” union President Dave Regan said on a Zoom call, adding that opponents of the proposal are “totally out of touch.”
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and many traditional allies of the union oppose the measure. They argue it is a temporary fix for an ongoing problem and that it would push the ultrawealthy to leave the state, taking the money they would contribute in income taxes with them. Newsom, who is considering a presidential run as he prepares to leave office in January, has generally opposed tax increases during his time as governor.
A coalition of healthcare, education and housing groups — including the California Medical Association and California School Boards Association — banded together last week to fight the tax.
“The dangerous wealth tax directly threatens vital funding for education and schools, healthcare and clinics, public safety, and infrastructure projects by making California’s revenue even more volatile,” the coalition said in a statement.
Brian Brokaw, a Newsom political adviser who is leading a political committee opposing the tax, said it would “make California’s biggest challenges worse.”
“Driving away the state’s sustainable tax base for a one-time grab is bad policy and an even worse deal for 40 million Californians who will be left holding the bag,” he said in a statement.
Under the proposal, the state would spend the money generated from the tax over multiple years. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the proposal would generate tens of billions of dollars in the first few years, but that income tax revenues would subsequently decline by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Many of the Silicon Valley tech moguls who oppose the measure have already moved their assets to other states or threatened to do so to avoid the possible tax. They have also spent millions to try to defeat it.
Since the proposal was announced in October, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated $82 million to a political committee called Building a Better California that backs a variety of initiatives designed to blunt the billionaire tax proposal. It has raised more than $118 million, counting Brin’s contributions, from fewer than a dozen donors.
California relies on its top 1% of earnersfor nearly half of its personal income tax revenue.
The union offered to scale back its proposal last week, asking Newsom to back a 2% tax on billionaires instead. But the governor’s office said the lower rate didn’t change his stance.
The proposed tax may have piqued the interest of many Democrats because it comes at a time when they are particularly concerned about affordability, income inequality and federal cutbacks to government programs, said Martin Gilens, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“There’s kind of a perfect storm that sort of bolsters preexisting inclinations to be sympathetic to the idea of raising taxes on the well-to-do,” he said.
But there’s a catch. Support for ballot initiatives often declines as the election nears, and if the measure passes, it’s likely to face legal challenges, Gilens said.
Since taking office one week ago, Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, has busied himself on social media posting flattering photos of President Donald Trump, trivia about a former counterintelligence agent and praising his current staff.
What the Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience has not done is address the public about his plans, or calm the unease and confusion inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is being described by top officials as “chaotic” amid firings of senior personnel with threats of more to come.
One image posted to the official X account of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, apparently artificial intelligence-generated, features Trump raising a clenched fist in the air with two B-2 stealth bombers in the sky behind him. Another is an image of the president, his fist clenched, glowering as he stands behind the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk.
In another post, Pulte, who was expected to gut the workforce of the National Counterterrorism Center, instead declared the staff there “true professionals and American patriots” after he said he spent time with them, adding “it is a privilege to work beside them.”
And in an apparent attempt at levity, Pulte reposted a message reminding Americans that Tuesday was “National Typewriter Day” and informing them of the role that a former Army counterintelligence agent played.
“Fun CI fact,” the post reads. “Former Army CI Special Agent Leroy Anderson composed ‘The Typewriter’ on October 9, 1950.”
But Pulte’s arrival has sparked anxiety and fear among the office’s workforce, three former U.S. intelligence officials told MS NOW, granted anonymity to address a sensitive topic.
They said that a half dozen political appointees were removed from their posts and several dozen staffers were sent back to their home intelligence agencies. Beyond that, little else is known about Pulte’s plans.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MS NOW that his requests for more information from the office, known by the acronym ODNI, have been rebuffed.
“I’ve been calling over there all day and can’t get my calls returned,” said Himes.
He later said, “I spoke directly to their office of congressional affairs. They said they had nothing for me.”
“It seems like it’s totally chaotic at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on a podcast Wednesday. “There was word that there was going to be firings and then he said he changed his mind. We don’t know.”
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA official and now an MS NOW contributor, said that staff in the intelligence community do not know what to think.
“Everyone is in the same boat and unsure of what is going on,” he said. “That said, there is no love lost for the DNI, as many believe that there is redundancy that does need to be cut.”
The other former U.S. intelligence officials said they agree that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in need of reform. The agency was created after a lack of information sharing among U.S. intelligence agencies played a role in the failure to stop the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ODNI’s mission is to ensure that the country’s now 18 different intelligence agencies share information with one another.
But the former intelligence officials said Pulte is patently unqualified to design or carry out those reforms.
“As with many things Trump alights upon, there is a sliver of truth here but he goes about addressing it in the worst possible way,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW, granted anonymity over concerns of retaliation. “But mass firings without any kind of sense of what you are trying to accomplish is addressing it in the most ham-handed way.”
That former official, as well as Warner and Himes, have said they fear that Pulte’s mission is to use his position as the nation’s top intelligence official to help Trump interfere in the midterm elections in November.
Pulte, who simultaneously serves as the Trump administration’s top federal housing official as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, used government mortgage information to file several criminal referrals against Democrats whom Trump considered enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff of California and New York State Attorney General Letitia James. None of Pulte’s referrals have resulted in criminal convictions.
One fear expressed by Warner and some former intelligence officials is that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates.
One way he could do that, they say, is by falsely claiming foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats. And Pulte and FBI agents could seize voting machines, ballots and election records in November — as Gabbard did in Fulton County, Georgia, last year at Trump’s behest — as part of voter fraud investigations that please the president.
“I have to tell you, I was extraordinarily concerned about the former director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, interfering in our election,” Warner told NPR earlier this month. “The concerns I had with Tulsi Gabbard now, upon reflection, look small versus the concerns I have with Bill Pulte.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
- Congressional Black Caucus blasts Slotkin over her calls for new leadership in the House
- Why Belgium’s prime minister isn’t cheering on the Red Devils
- Key Democrats urge House to reject kids’ safety proposal
- World Cup match collides with Florida GOP bash
- A drag queen, a rainbow festival and a game FIFA can’t control
- Envoy’s pharaoh well party
- The world’s not big on the US. The World Cup might help.
- Judge halts executive order seeking to create federal voter list…
- Pete Buttigeig says he was targeted by false abuse allegation in Michigan
- The World Cup game the White House cares most about today
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship10 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words