Letitia James is “the last person who should be complaining about politicization of the prosecutorial function”

Letitia James is “the last person who should be complaining about politicization of the prosecutorial function”

On October 13, 2025, I appeared on Chicago’s Morning Answer with Dan Proft to talk about the indictment of Letitia James and the court rulings on Trump’s deployment of the national guard. I’ve been on Dan’s show many times, and it’s always good to be back.

We previously covered the indictment, Letitia James Indicted on Bank Fraud, False Statements to Financial Institution Charges.

Listen below:

(If player does not load, click here, my segment starts at the 6:30 mark)

Partial Transcript (autogenerated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)

Proft: On the topic, we’re pleased to be joined by Professor William Jacobson. He is a clinical professor of law and director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School, founder of legalinsurrection.com and president of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, professor Jacobson, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.

WAJ: Thanks for having me on.

Proft: So your reaction to the Letitia James indictment and of course, the larger lawfare context.

WAJ: There are multiple levels of irony there because James ran for office, it’s on video, ran for office to be Attorney General of the State of New York, to get hold of a massive, massive attorney general bureaucracy. And she said she was doing it to get Donald Trump. She even ran an ad, which we posted many times, which she says ‘the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end.’ Soon after she was elected, she also announced that she would use her office, his is on video, not only to get Donald Trump, but to get his family.

So Letitia James, of all people has weaponized the prosecutorial function for political purposes to get a political opponent. She will ultimately be judged on whether she committed mortgage fraud or not. Certainly, the facts in the indictment seem to indicate that, but an indictment doesn’t give the other side of the story, doesn’t give the defense.

But she is the last person in the world who should be complaining about politicization of the prosecutorial function because she’s exhibit A as to what Democrats did. She investigated Trump and she could not find a crime to prosecute against him. So she brought the civil case, the so-called mortgage fraud case, banking fraud case against Donald Trump, something, while it’s not identical to what she charged him with, has to do with obtaining more favorable loans based on false valuations, allegedly false valuations. And so she sought to cripple [Trump] and came very close to it, until an appeals court threw out the monetary verdict.

She sought to cripple the entire Trump organization, family members, everybody. on a flimsy theory, that because Trump valued properties above what the assessed value for tax purposes was, that that was somehow fraud, even though there were sophisticated banks on the other side who of course do their own valuation.

So Letitia James politicized her prosecutorial office. She did it to get a specific person. She came up with a novel theory to prosecute him for getting loans on a more favorable basis. She is the last person who should be complaining.

Proft: … but what are Republicans to do? I, I don’t know. I don’t wanna go down this path, but I don’t know how you prevent going down this path unless you inflict enough punishment on the other side, that there is agreement to return to the rule of law as opposed to using the law to punish your political opponents…..

WAJ: In a better world, nobody would be doing this. But we don’t live in a better world. We live in a world where the federal and state prosecutorial bureaucracies were completely weaponized against Donald Trump.

You mentioned the criminal case in New York, because Letitia James couldn’t find a crime that she could prosecute. So the local DA, Alvin Bragg, supported by George Soros’s foundations, brought a novel legal theory to convert misdemeanor bookkeeping offenses, alleged misdemeanor bookkeeping offenses, into a felony so that they could bring the case against Donald Trump using legal theories that had never been used in that way before. It resulted in a conviction in a New York City court. Surprise, surprise. But it never got ruled on an appeal because as soon as he became elected president, the judge stayed everything because he can’t be prosecuted as president now.

So we never got a final legal determination there, but it was a novel theory never used against anybody else to turn misdemeanor bookkeeping, alleged misdemeanor bookkeeping offenses into a felony.

So of all the people, the Democrats have been doing this, and of course, they did it at the federal level with Trump. The criminal prosecution related to the records found at Mar-a-Lago was ultimately thrown out by a district judge. The DC case never got to trial…  And let’s not of course forget Fannie Willis, the disgraced Fannie Willis, the local prosecutor in Georgia who jumped on the bandwagon to use her office to get Trump.

So the Democrats created the situation, I wish they hadn’t done it, and I wish they could stand here and say, oh, you know, Republicans shouldn’t do that because that’s not right.

Well, I’m sorry. It’s too late for the Democrats to say that.

And the main perpetrator, the worst perpetrator of all Letitia James, who abused her office for political purposes, is now going to be held to account, and she’s not going to be held to account for political reasons. She’s being held to account because she put herself in the spotlight. And others, it wasn’t even the Trump administration. Others have been pounding the table for a couple of years about Leticia James and this mortgage fraud. And so it finally came to the attention of prosecutors and they prosecuted it.

And so I, I’m sorry, I just don’t feel bad. I wish we were in a different place, and maybe now Democrats will get it through their heads not to do this, although they’re promising to do it again anyway.

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