A federal grand jury in Virginia has declined to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James, days after a judge dismissed the earlier case against her.
It marks another blow to Trump’s efforts to prosecute those he considers political adversaries, which also includes ex-FBI Director James Comey.
Last month, a judge dismissed the federal cases against James and Comey after finding the prosecutor appointed by Trump was not in the post legally.
James, who had successfully brought charges against President Donald Trump before he won re-election, had said the federal case alleging she committed bank fraud and made false statements to a financial institution was politically-motivated.
CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, reported the grand jury declining to sign off on an indictment citing an unnamed official.
Both cases against James and Comey were dismissed with prejudice, meaning the government can attempt to prosecute them again on the same charges.
Made up of members of the public, grand juries only decide if there is enough evidence to take a case to court. In legal terms, a grand jury determines whether probable cause exists to believe a crime has been committed. It does not decide guilt or innocence.
It is extremely rare for a grand jury to decline a prosecutor’s request to indict a suspect. In 2016, federal prosecutors investigated more than 150,000 people, and grand juries declined to file charges in only six cases, according to CBS.
The federal government had alleged that James lied when she bought a three-bedroom home in Norfolk with a mortgage loan that required her to use the property as her secondary residence.
The “misrepresentation” allowed James to obtain favourable loan terms that would not have been available for an investment property, prosecutors claimed.
Unnamed sources have told US media that James bought the home for her great-niece in 2020 and that the relative never paid rent for the home.
James released a statement on Thursday, praising the grand jury’s decision.
“As I have said from the start, the charges against me are baseless,” she said. “It is time for this unchecked weaponization of our justice system to stop.”
A lawyer for James, Abbe David Lowell, called the grand jury’s refusal “a decisive rejection of a case that should never have existed in the first place”. He added that if the government continues to seek a prosecution “it will be a shocking assault on the rule of law and a devastating blow to the integrity of our justice system”.
As the top lawyer for the state of New York, James brought a civil fraud case against Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, in 2022. Trump was later found liable of falsifying records to secure better loan deals, leading to a $500m (£376m) fine.
The penalty was thrown out by an appeals court, which called it excessive, although it upheld that Trump was liable for fraud.
James and Comey are not the only adversaries of Trump to have faced federal charges.
Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, is currently charged with sending and wilfully retaining national defence information.
By BBC News
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