It was in September 2022 when New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a sweeping lawsuit against Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. The civil case was quite devastating: The attorney general’s office pointed to more than 200 cases of alleged fraud over the past decade and announced it was seeking massive civil penalties against the Republican and his businesses.
The case was a notable success: a New York judge reviewed the evidence and ruled earlier this year that Trump and the Trump Organization had indeed committed systemic corporate fraud. As part of his ruling, Judge Arthur Engoron imposed hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties against Trump and his co-defendants.
The outcome is still being appealed — an appeal that could well end up going well for the defendant — but in the meantime, the president-elect apparently wants New York Attorney General Letitia James to simply drop the case. Fox News Digital reported on Team Trump’s latest attempt to sway the New York Democrat, in the form of a letter from D. John Sauer, who pointed to his client’s “historic election victory.”
“President Trump has called for an end to partisan warfare in our nation and for us to join forces for the greater good of the country,” Sauer wrote. “This call for unity extends to the legal attack on him and his family that pervaded the most recent election cycle.”
Sauer — Trump’s pick to serve as U.S. attorney general — then told the attorney general that she has an opportunity to “help heal” national divisions by abandoning the case she has already won. The lawyer added that the president-elect “has called for an end to our nation’s partisan warfare.”
It is unclear whether Sauer could have typed this with a straight face.
In case readers are wondering why the fraud case won’t just disappear once Trump returns to the White House, as Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case already has, the answer is that this is a qualitatively different kind of case: Smith’s criminal charges were federal, and the U.S. Department of Justice has long had a policy that says a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.
However, the New York case is a state case involving alleged civil fraud, and is not affected by the return of the newly elected president.
As for Sauer’s pitch — James should volunteer to hold Trump accountable for the “good of the country” — I suspect prosecutors won’t find it particularly persuasive.
This message updates our related previous reporting.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
