Former President Donald Trump is still fighting federal and civil lawsuits claiming he is the victim of political bias, this time over ongoing New York investigations launched in 2019 into his business practices and other matters. This week, Trump filed a lawsuit against New York State attorney general Letitia James.
The civil investigation launched by James concerns the valuation of Trump’s properties, and if they were falsified and inflated. Specifically, the investigation concerns tax, bank, and insurance fraud.
Since this is a civil lawsuit, James can’t also file criminal charges. However, her office can sue Trump for his actions if they are deemed illegal.
In his suit, Trump requests the courts stop her civil investigation into his business practices and prevent her from taking part in a separate criminal investigation.
Trump and his family-owned real estate firm filed the lawsuit in Federal Court in Albany. Legal documents claim New York Attorney General James was prejudiced against Trump due to political reasons, and to the historic, alleged “attacks” she made against Trump over many years.
Some of the alleged attacks noted in the lawsuit claim James violated Trump’s constitutional rights. Currently, James is investigating Trump in a parallel investigation for his business practices and might participate in another investigation into his alleged criminal actions.
Filed court documents by Trump’s attorneys state, “Her mission is guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent.”
This is not Trump’s first attempt to discredit authorities investigating him or his companies. In a dispute over getting access to Trump’s tax returns, Trump claimed Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr, a Democrat, who was investigating alleged criminal actives by Trump, was targeting him with “political harassment.”
The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s claims in February and ordered his taxes be handed over to Vance’s investigation.
Ms. James and the New York Attorney General’s Office are currently working with Vance on this ongoing investigation, where questions about Trump hover around an alleged, fraudulent inflated value of his assets. Vance and James allege Trump falsified the worth of his business so that his beefed-up organization would persuade banks to supply large loans.
Democrat James released a statement saying Trump’s lawsuit will neither prevent nor stall her ongoing investigation.
“The Trump Organization has continually sought to delay our investigation into its business dealings,” said James. “To be clear, neither Mr. Trump nor the Trump Organization get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions.”
Responding to this statement, Trump said her probe is “a continuation of the political witch hunt that has gone on against me.”
Vance is leaving his office in a few weeks, and Alvin Bragg will become the next Manhattan District Attorney, but the investigation is ongoing. If Trump is deemed to have committed a crime, he can be indicted.
James recently dropped her plans to run for election in the upcoming New York Governor’s race, saying she would remain as the New York Attorney General because there are still “a number of important investigations and cases” for her to complete.
This new Trump lawsuit against James claims the Attorney General illegally violated his right to due process and free speech in her ongoing public criticism of Trump plus the numerous subpoenas filed by her office against him.
Through court documents, Trump claims James violated a citizen’s Fourth Amendment’s protections against “unreasonable government searches” and abused her power with “over-broad, overreaching and irrelevant subpoenas.”
However, under US law, James, as an American citizen, can have a political bias, since there is no constitutional prohibition against her personal political beliefs. Only if James is proved to have broken ethics rules, such as by acting for purely retaliatory reasons, would she be sanctioned.
James said in a statement that no one is above the law, even a former president and billionaire. Noted James, “Our investigation will continue undeterred because no one is above the law, not even someone with the name Trump.”
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