Donald Trump’s former personal attorney turned U.S. Attorney, Lindsey Halligan, did not give Attorney General Pam Bondi a heads-up before seeking an indictment of the president’s nemesis, Letitia James.
The New York attorney general was charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution on Friday.
She is the second top Trump foe to face charges after the indictment of former FBI director James Comey.
But Bondi, the top law enforcement official in the U.S., and other senior officials at the Justice Department, including Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, were caught off guard that the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia had presented to a grand jury, according to ABC News.
While top Justice Department officials had expected Halligan, a former Miss Colorado USA beauty pageant contestant, to move forward with seeking an indictment, they were not told until after she had already presented the case.
“This Justice Department is united as one team in our mission to make America safe again and the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, along with the entire team at Main Justice continue to empower our US Attorneys to pursue justice in every case,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement to Daily Beast.
The president has been accused of using the Justice Department to seek revenge against his perceived enemies, including James and Comey, after the president publicly pressured Bondi to take action in a since-deleted Truth Social post. There have been several reports that Trump, 79, had intended it as a direct message.
While Bondi was not informed in advance, Ed Martin, Trump’s previous pick for U.S. Attorney for Washington, DC, before his nomination was yanked over GOP opposition in the Senate, was told, according to the report.
Martin has been serving as a Justice Department special attorney on mortgage fraud and was captured bizarrely posing for photos outside James’ Brooklyn home in August as he investigated her.
On Thursday morning, he posted a picture of an eagle flying over the Brooklyn Bridge on X.
The indictment came against the recommendation of prosecutors who had investigated claims of mortgage fraud against James for months.
Halligan was appointed as acting U.S. attorney after the interim U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert resigned amid pressure to bring charges.
For years, James pursued cases against the president and the Trump Organization. In 2022, her office sued him and his business for fraud, which led to a more than $350 million judgment that ballooned to more than half a billion dollars before it was thrown out over the summer.
After the news that a grand jury returned an indictment, James released a video in which she called the charges “baseless.”
“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system,” James said. “He’s forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.”
