Former President Donald Trump accused New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday of “prosecutorial misconduct” after she subpoenaed him to testify as part of her civil fraud probe into his business dealings.
“Letitia James wants to politically weaponize her position as Attorney General instead of exemplifying impartiality and protecting the interests of all New Yorkers,” the 45th president said in an emailed statement.
James wants to grill Trump on Jan. 7 as part of her investigation into whether the former president overvalued the Trump Organization’s assets to obtain loans and undervalued them for tax purposes.
A similar investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is also underway.
On the same day the subpoena surfaced, James announced that she was ending her campaign for governor.
“There are a number of important investigations and cases that are underway, and I intend to finish the job,” she said at the time. “I am running for re-election to complete the work New Yorkers elected me to do.”
Trump argued that James dropped out “because her campaign was a complete failure, possibly because the citizens of New York saw how unfairly and viciously she and other highly partisan New York Democrat prosecutors were treating President Donald J. Trump.”
“It’s called Prosecutorial Misconduct,” he added.
“While she pretends that she suspended her short-lived campaign for New York Governor to go after me, she conveniently fails to mention that she couldn’t garner any support and her poll numbers were abysmal — she had no chance of even coming close to winning,” the former president went on.
“Despite weeks of campaigning, she was losing to Governor [Kathy] Hochul by what would have been a massive landslide,” Trump said.
According to a Siena College poll from earlier this month, Hochul had a commanding lead in a hypothetical Democratic primary, with 36 percent saying they would vote for her and 18 percent saying they would vote for James.
“She should focus her attention on helping to resurrect the once Great State of New York where crime and poverty continue to wreak havoc, with murder, rape, drug sales, and just about every other form of crime at record levels, and now with a just-announced highest unemployment rate in the Nation,” Trump said.
“New York is dying before our very eyes, and all the Democrat Prosecutors are focused on is how we can get and punish Donald Trump, who many would say has done, over the years, a spectacular job for New York!”