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MANHATTAN (CN) — The Department of Justice subpoenaed New York Attorney General Letitia James as part of a probe into her bombshell civil fraud lawsuit against President Donald Trump, according to reports.
One subpoena purportedly concerns whether James’ office violated the president’s civil rights when she sued him for lying about his net worth to swindle banks and insurers into getting more favorable business loans. James won the suit in 2024, and Trump owes roughly half a billion dollars for the judgement against him, which is currently on appeal.
The second subpoena reportedly relates to James’ longstanding corruption case against the National Rifle Association — another case James won last year after a jury found that the gun group’s former frontman Wayne LaPierre misappropriated donations to fund his gaudy lifestyle. She had previously sought to dissolve the organization altogether, but was unsuccessful in that bid.
“Any weaponization of the justice system should disturb every American,” a spokesperson for James said in a statement to Courthouse News, in response to the reports. “We stand strongly behind our successful litigation against the Trump Organization and the National Rifle Association, and we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers’ rights.”
James’ personal attorney Abbe David Lowell called the Justice Department’s supposed probe into James “the most blatant and desperate example of this administration carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
“Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration,” Lowell said in a statement. “If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with the facts and the law.”
A Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment.
The subpoenas reportedly came out of the Justice Department’s Albany office in the Northern District of New York, where Trump loyalist U.S. Attorney John Sarcone is the top prosecutor and is seeking to bring charges against James.
James, a Democrat, has been a fervent critic of Trump since his first presidential term. She’s accused him in his second term of going on a “revenge tour” by using the executive branch to punish his political opposition.
The attorney general is likely one of Trump’s top targets after her case against the president’s business empire successfully marked Trump a fraud and threatens to deplete a chunk of his net worth. Trump hasn’t minced words with his criticism of James, calling her a “horrible, horrible human being” and a “total crook” at a press conference earlier this year.
James kicked off her civil fraud investigation into Trump shortly after she took office in 2019, proclaiming throughout the case that “no one is above the law.”
Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who represents part of upstate New York and is one of Trump’s fiercest legislative allies, threw that slogan back in James’ face when commenting on the reported subpoenas.
“As James famously said, ‘No one is above the law.’ That standard also applies to her,” Stefanik said. “She is going to find out how true her own words are now that the DOJ opened a grand jury investigation into her abuse of power.”
It is at least the second time James is being investigated by Trump’s Justice Department. Earlier this year, the department, alongside FBI officials, opened a probe into claims that James used falsified records to get favorable loans on a Virginia home she purchased in 2023. James has denied that accusation.
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