New York AG’s New Lawsuit Against Trump Is Part of an Effort to Boost Her Own Prospects, Experts Say

News Analysis

New York Attorney General Letitia James carries significant political liability from her abortive run for governor last year and has targeted former President Donald Trump and his relatives with a slew of fresh civil charges in an effort to bolster her reelection prospects in a deep blue state, legal experts and political strategists say.

Frustration with crime in New York City runs high, as it does in many other parts of the country, and capitalizing on liberal Democrats’ dislike of the former president is, in part, a diversionary tactic and a ploy to recoup some popularity and prestige, the experts argue.

On Sept. 21, Attorney General James filed a lawsuit against Trump and three of his adult children, alleging that they had engaged in financial fraud by exaggerating the value of certain of their assets over the course of more than ten years. The alleged motive for the fraud was to get on better terms with banks and insurance providers. Besides barring Donald, Ivanka, and Eric Trump from serving as directors of companies registered in New York State or doing real estate deals, the suit aims to recover $250 million that James contends Trump and his relatives made illicitly.

The latest legal moves against the former president and his family, following closely on the heels of the FBI’s Aug. 8 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, quickly prompted a number of hyperbolic statements from pundits hostile to Trump and the brand of Republicanism that they believe he represents.

On Sept. 26, Michael Tomasky, an influential commentator and author who serves as editor of The New Republic and editor-in-chief of Democracy, published a lengthy opinion piece in The New Republic in which he repeatedly used expletives in reference to the former president and relished what Tomasky sees as the likely consequences

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