Donald Trump holds up a copy of a story featuring New York Attorney General Letitia James during a news conference on Jan. 11, 2024, in New York.

Yahoo

10 hours ago

Prosecutors, law enforcement officials and legislators who have previously led or participated in investigations into Donald Trump's business and political activities are increasingly under scrutiny themselves.
While the moves haven't been announced by Trump himself, they dovetail with his vows on the 2024 presidential campaign to seek retribution if he was voted back into the White House.
As it pertains to the probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which included looking into contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian individuals, Trump has been vowing since at least 2019 to "investigate the investigators."
Here's a look at the latest developments, which follow previous actions taken to investigate former FBI director James Comey, as well as two members of Trump's first presidential administration. It remains to be seen if the probes will lead to actual legal peril for those targeted or if they are simply a means to make their lives miserable, with significant legal costs.
Letitia James
Prosecutors have convened a grand jury investigation and subpoenaed James's office for documents about the lawsuit against Trump and a separate case she brought against the National Rifle Association, several U.S. media outlets reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.
Abbe Lowell, a lawyer representing James, called the reported probe "the most blatant and desperate example of this administration carrying out the president's political retribution campaign."
When she ran for office in 2018, James branded Trump a "con man," and she has sued Trump and his Republican administration dozens of times over his policies as president and over how he conducted his private business empire.
The civil fraud case, brought forward in 2022, resulted in a $355-million US judgment against Trump last year, after a judge found he fraudulently overstated his net worth to dupe lenders as he built his real estate empire. The penalty is now larger, as it is accumulating interest, but Trump is appealing the verdict itself.
"Any weaponization of the justice system should disturb every American," James's office said in a statement last week.
In addition, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed in May that James was being investigated after a Trump administration official accused her of mortgage fraud. James's lawyer says the accusation was a lie based on a purposeful misreading of documents the attorney general signed in 2023 to help her niece purchase a Virginia house.
Brian Driscoll
Brian Driscoll was named acting director of the FBI in January to replace Christopher Wray and served in the position as Patel's nomination was pending. Driscoll made headlines after he and Robert Kissane, the then-deputy director, resisted Trump administration demands for a list of agents who participated in investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, which was led by Trump supporters.
Fired last week, Driscoll told colleagues in an email seen by AP that he hadn't been given a reason for his dismissal.
But Jamie Raskin, the lead Democrat on the House's judiciary committee, condemned what he characterized as the "purge at the FBI of anyone who refuses to pledge their blind and paramount loyalty to Donald Trump."
"The firing of Mr. Driscoll and other career agents is a shameful affront to the rule of law and typifies the Trump Administration's campaign to replace nonpartisan career law enforcement professionals with political loyalists and incompetent sycophants," said Raskin.
Also let go last week was Steven Jensen, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office. Jensen oversaw a domestic terrorism section of the FBI at the time of the Capitol riot.
In a statement last week, the FBI Agents Association condemned the firings of agents "carrying out the assignments given to them."
Under Patel's watch, the FBI has moved to aggressively demote, reassign or push out agents seen as being out of favour with bureau leadership or the Trump administration, while Trump pardoned the vast majority of those convicted for Capitol riot offences, including militia group leaders found guilty of seditious behaviour.
Adam Schiff
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has appointed a "special attorney" to probe mortgage fraud allegations of both James and Sen. Adam Schiff, two administration officials told NBC News last week.
The Schiff allegations concern a home purchased in Maryland more than 15 years ago. Preet Bharara, representing Schiff, said in a statement last week that the allegations were previously "debunked," while characterizing any resulting investigation as politically motivated.
Schiff has long been a Trump target, and the California Democrat was one of the House managers of Trump's first impeachment in late 2019.
In 2019, Schiff irked Trump and MAGA supporters by saying there was "significant" and "compelling" evidence of collusion between certain Trump campaign officials and Russians seeking to interfere in the 2016 election, though he admitted to CNN "there is a difference between seeing evidence of collusion and being able to prove a criminal conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt."
House Republicans in 2023 censured Schiff, saying in a resolution he "abused" his position by saying there was evidence of collusion.
WATCH l Trump's AG Bondi steps up efforts to probe Democratic officials:
Barack Obama
The Trump White House has renewed efforts to accuse former president Barack Obama and those who served in intelligence in 2015 and 2016 — including former CIA director John Brennan and former national intelligence director James Clapper — of treachery related to the origins of the Russian interference investigation.
Bondi announced a "strike force" to examine Obama administration officials, with reports emerging that federal prosecutors are being encouraged to seek grand jury indictments, though it's not clear which former officials might be under scrutiny.
In an interview with Fox News broadcast this weekend, Vice-President J.D. Vance said prosecutors must follow the law but he predicted "you're going to see a lot of people get indicted."
Bondi's move follows Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, releasing previously classified records on the origins of the Russian investigation. Gabbard and other officials, including Patel, have trumpeted them as demonstrating Democratic culpability in investigating the Trump campaign.
It earned a rare public statement from Obama, as well as accusations from critics like former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger that the administration was seeking a distraction from criticism over the Jeffrey Epstein controversy.
While a Republican-led Senate committee and a Justice Department inspector general have found fault with aspects of the Russia interference investigation, none have concluded it was unwarranted or the result of Democratic Party political tricks.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who led a two-year Justice Department investigation, determined Russia intervened on the campaign's behalf and that Trump's campaign welcomed the help.
Mueller's team, which could not secure an in-person interview with Trump, did not find that the campaign conspired to sway the election, but laid out examples of possible obstruction of justice.