It’s good to know that, staring down real-estate fraud charges of the same type she brought against Donald Trump — except this time on far more solid evidence — the Letitia James playbook remains unchanged: Sue Donald Trump.
In an announcement on Monday, the embattled New York state attorney general announced she was leading a coalition of 20 blue states suing the Trump administration over Health and Human Services cuts, according to Fox News.
During a news conference, she said that the administration had violated “hundreds” of laws in what she called the most “sweeping and unlawful assault on public health” in American history.
The suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island on the same day, asked the court “to halt the unlawful dismantling of HHS, to stop the mass firings, and to restore the life-saving programs that millions of Americans depend on.”
The cuts, the suit said, erases “decades of public health progress” and makes it so that HHS cannot “execute many of its most vital functions.” The cuts, which included terminating 10,000 full-time HHS staffers and reducing the number of agencies within HHS, was “in violation of Congress’s instructions, the U.S. Constitution, and the many statutes that govern the Department’s programs and appropriate funds for it to administer.”
“None of these layoffs were necessary to accommodate a funding shortfall – Congress’s appropriations have remained steady, or in many cases, grown in recent years,” the lawsuit read.
“All told, 20,000 full-time employees – almost twenty-five percent of HHS headcount – would be terminated in a few months to save, by Defendants’ own estimate, less than one percent of HHS expenditures.”
New York is joined by attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.
“This administration is not streamlining the federal government; they are sabotaging it,” James said.
Should Congress pass a law making civil fraud a criminal offenses for public servants?
“When you fire the scientists who research infectious diseases, silence the doctors who care for pregnant people and shut down the programs that help firefighters and miners breathe or children thrive, you are not making America healthy; you are putting countless lives at risk,” she continued.
“This is not how government is supposed to work. These actions are dangerous, cruel and illegal. They defy Congress’s authority and they violate federal law. And that is why today I am leading a lawsuit joined by Democratic attorneys general across the country to stop this administration from tearing down our public health infrastructure.”
There are two different strains of thought here, both of them not exactly helpful to James’ cause.
The first is the notion that everything is fine and Washington just needs to keep on funneling money down the throat of the governmental behemoth — and if it doesn’t, there’ll be hell to pay from states whose voters consistently choose fiscal incontinence in federal candidates.
Pretty much all of it is, at some level, unsustainable. Cuts will have to be made, and Trump is making them. Had he made them to anything else, rest assured these attorneys general — led, as always, by Letitia James marching front and center — would be suing.
Shut down a mime school operated by the National Endowment for the Arts and James would be charging Trump with the attempted murder of Marcel Marceau. It wouldn’t even matter that he’s been dead for almost two decades. Lift a finger to cut some funding to the federal government and watch Democrat AGs reach for the axe to cut that finger off.
However, beyond the generic nature of a lawsuit against the Trump administration over funding cuts spurred by the Department of Government Efficiency — and a general desire to return to fiscal sanity, somehow, through some mechanism — is the specific nature of a Letitia James-led lawsuit against Donald Trump at this very moment.
As an attorney general, James has earned a reputation for being the political version of those personal injury lawyers with shouty commercials that ask, “Are you injured?! Do you know someone who’s been injured?! Would you like to be injured?!” She’ll sue or charge any Republican — or conservative-linked cause or individual for anything more controversial than stating a day of the week is likely to end in a Y — and do so with a relish and glee that will make you really believe this was a woman born 200-odd years too late for her real calling, participation in the Reign of Terror.
This is fine with Democrats and her electorate, and it was even more fine when she brought specious charges of real estate shenanigans to get better deals on loans against the Trump Organization in civil court during the 2024 lawfare-fest against the then-Republican frontrunner.
It’s a bit less fine now that it turns out James allegedly pretty much did the same thing herself, albeit more verifiably. A letter of referral to the Department of Justice from U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte noted a number of “irregularities in a series of loans James obtained” on two of her properties.
These irregularities included James listing a secondary residence in Virginia as her primary residence “despite being a statewide public office holder in the state of New York at that same time and primarily residing in the state of New York,” serially listing a Brooklyn property she owned as having four units or less on loan documents filed between 2001 and 2019 in spite of a 2001 certificate of occupancy listing the property as having five units, and having her father co-sign loan documents as her husband.
All of these irregularities, wonder of wonders, would have led to better loan terms. You know, like what she sued Donald Trump for.
At the time, James’ office responded with a statement that said this was all lawfare in and of itself, even though she had spoken with considerable vitriol about how such white-collar abuses are serious crimes and had nothing to do with lawfare against a candidate she didn’t like.
“Attorney General James is focused every single day on protecting New Yorkers, especially as this Administration weaponizes the federal government against the rule of law and the Constitution. She will not be intimidated by bullies — no matter who they are,” a spokesman for the attorney general said when the letter dropped last month.
And lo and behold, who’s leading the charge of the prodigal brigade when it comes to trying to force the federal government to spend more money in court? Letitia James, who very much needs to change what’s the first thing that comes up in her Google results in a hurry.
Conservatives should have known these suits were coming. Democrats love the phrase “due process” because, to them, the emphasis on the second word — and it’s hopefully a long process, one that waits out any Republican attempts to change how Washington works. The woman leading them, though — well, that’s just the chef’s kiss. She’s distracting from her problems by doing the only thing she knows how to do: suing her enemies. Again. Cling wrap couldn’t possibly be more transparent.
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