The Letitia James Indictment

We take no joy in N.Y.S. Attorney General Letitia James’s legal troubles. But we can’t help but express amusement at the way her indictment by a federal grand jury last week on allegations of bank fraud, mortgage fraud and making false statements to a financial institution were reported in major media outlets.

Typical of the headlines were The Wall Street Journal’s “New York Attorney General Indicted as President Presses to Punish Foes” and The New York Times’s “James Is Indicted as Trump Pursues Political Rivals.” And in its subheading, the Times added, “On Heels of Comey, Justice Dept. Targets Attorney General of New York.”

But there was nothing like this in the reporting on the slew of indictments of President Trump which were transparently based upon selective and creative interpretations and exploitations of ambiguous statutes and which reeked of “targeting.” Rather, typical headlines spoke of the “pursuit of justice” and the theme of news reports invariably included an observation that “nobody is above the law.”

This, even though in the course of her campaign for Attorney General, Ms. James – who was a leader in the legal assault on Trump – herself declared that she was running in order to bring Donald Trump down.

And the documents underlying James’s indictment on their face, seemed to corroborate the charges against her.

This unfolding story promises to be an instructive one.