Adam Schiff, Letitia James and Trump's Payback Plan

New York Times

6 hours ago

President Trump's Justice Department recently reached a nadir when two prominent Democrats, New York's attorney general, Letitia James, and Senator Adam Schiff of California, were placed under criminal investigation for their personal financial dealings. They are the wrong targets chosen for the wrong reasons in a case supervised by the wrong prosecutor. But there's not much either of them can do about it.
The process leading up to the investigation demonstrates how this president has eroded longstanding ethical norms governing the relationship between the White House and the Justice Department. As the head of the executive branch, the president has authority over all the agencies in his cabinet, including the Justice Department; but since the abuses of Watergate, all subsequent presidents have taken steps to remove themselves from individual prosecutorial decisions while still leading on policy matters.
The Justice Department manual instructs that 'the legal judgments of the Department of Justice must be impartial and insulated from political influence. It is imperative that the department's investigatory and prosecutorial powers be exercised free from partisan consideration.' To that end, the manual sharply restricts contacts between prosecutors and the White House in criminal cases. With Mr. Trump using his social media megaphone, those limits don't exist.
Ms. James earned the president's ire by accusing him and the Trump Organization with fraud in connection with the valuation of real estate and winning a $454 million judgment against them (Mr. Trump is appealing). Mr. Schiff was a leader, in his days as a member of the House of Representatives, of the investigation of Russia's efforts to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election, and he became the lead House manager in Mr. Trump's first impeachment.
Among many other insults, Mr. Trump has reposted a call for Ms. James to be 'placed under citizens arrest' for 'blatant election interference and harassment,' and over the years he's denounced 'Shifty Schiff,' demanding that he be 'questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.'
If there were any doubt that these investigations amount to political hit jobs against two of President Trump's most indefatigable political adversaries, the issue was settled with Attorney General Pam Bondi's pick to lead the inquiries — Ed Martin, the Justice Department official who was so unqualified and partisan that he couldn't win confirmation in the Republican Senate to be the United States attorney in Washington. As a consolation prize for that failure, Mr. Trump appointed him to lead the so-called Weaponization Working Group, the Orwellian name for the prosecutorial payback operation designed to build cases against those who investigated Mr. Trump during the Biden administration. Some of Mr. Martin's first targets are Ms. James and Mr. Schiff. Far from displaying the open mind that honorable prosecutors should demonstrate, Mr. Martin said his goal was to 'stick the landing' against the two Democrats.
But a president's critics, like the president himself, should not be above the law, so what, then, is the evidence against Ms. James and Mr. Schiff? For both, the issues relate to real estate and mortgages, and the facts about them seem already well established.
The case against Ms. James has three parts, First, in 2023, she financed the down payment to help her niece buy a single-family home in Norfolk, Va. According to her attorney Abbe Lowell, Ms. James signed several documents that made clear that her niece, not Ms. James herself, would live in the house. But on one form, a power of attorney, she indicated that she herself would live there, which was obviously a mistake. In light of the other documents, the bank itself could not have been misled, and in any event, the mistake on the power of attorney brought Ms. James no monetary gain.
In 2001, Ms. James bought a four-story brownstone in Brooklyn with separate apartments for herself, her mother, her brother and a family friend. On one form, filed 24 years ago, the property was listed as having five units, not four. At all other times, she correctly listed it as four units. Last, in 1983, Ms. James's father bought a house in Queens for the family. On the mortgage application, he mistakenly listed Ms. James, who was just out of college, as his spouse, not his daughter, although other documents listed their relationship correctly. Ms. James has denied any wrongdoing, and according to her lawyer, the accusation that she may have financially benefited is baseless.
In a demonstration of the ferocity of the legal assault on Ms. James, her office was subpoenaed last week in a different criminal investigation, led by Justice Department prosecutors in upstate New York. This inquiry is apparently aimed at proving that Ms. James committed some kind of misconduct during the fraud investigation of Mr. Trump and his company, as well as in a separate lawsuit that her office filed against the National Rifle Association. The only basis for this case, it seems, is that the president was unhappy with the outcome of both cases, which Ms. James's office won.
As for Mr. Schiff, the investigation of him is rooted in the fact that like many members of Congress, he owns two residences, one in his home state of California and another in the Washington suburbs. According to mortgage documents, Mr. Schiff listed both as his 'primary' residence, which, according to a social media post by the president, represented an effort to 'get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America.' At the time Mr. Schiff applied for the mortgages, he was already in Congress, so the banks knew he had two residences. There does not appear to be any deception by Mr. Schiff and he has publicly denied the claims. (In addition, Mr. Schiff apparently last applied for a mortgage in 2012, which means any possible crime would be outside the 10-year statute of limitations; that would probably apply to most of the charges against Ms. James as well.)
For the moment, Ms. James and Mr. Schiff are essentially powerless. There is no remedy in federal law to stop even clearly meritless investigations. At best, the two elected officials can look forward to months of detailing their personal financial arrangements; in other words, they will be compelled to violate the political maxim that holds if you're explaining, you're losing.
Worse yet, their legal fates are in the hands of a dedicated political enemy who will be able to present the case for indictment to a grand jury. There, in the famous utterance of Sol Wachtler, the onetime chief judge of New York's Court of Appeals, prosecutors can get a grand jury to 'indict a ham sandwich.' The two elected officials will be able to offer formal legal and factual defenses only after they are indicted — that is, when they are criminal defendants in federal court, which is, to put it mildly, hardly a welcome forum.
President Trump has always been a master of projection. His accusations of misconduct nearly always replicate what he himself has done. So it is with 'weaponization,' which is how he describes the entirely legitimate efforts during the Biden years to hold him accountable for his financial chicanery and his efforts to overturn his loss of the 2020 election, among other misdeeds. Now, at his behest, his administration is turning that word against two of his most prominent critics.
For Mr. Trump, there may be few spoils of victory sweeter than the ordeal that Ms. James and Mr. Schiff will soon endure.
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