Thread: Legal Charges Against Trump

Originally Posted by pickel

The samples they took back then would have the DNA in them Norton. They can still extract it. That is, if they used a rape kit on her and still have the sample.

Yep, if. Don't know but guessing they must have or attorney would not be asking for DNA release.

WTF, Did someone get to them? Who appointed the new DA who is reluctant to press charges.
This in ITSELF needs to be invetigated,

One of the most aggressive criminal investigations against Donald Trump appears to be running into the sand after the two leading prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office investigating the former president’s finances resigned.


The inquiry by Manhattan prosecutors into the operations of Trump and the Trump Organization has been among the most dangerous of the many legal perils facing him. The investigation, which began in August 2018 under the former district attorney Cyrus Vance and continued under incumbent Alvin Bragg, has dug ever deeper into alleged discrepancies in the value of the family’s assets in an effort to show a pattern of fraudulent behavior.


According to the New York Times, the two top prosecutors on the case, Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, quit the proceedings amid signs that the move on Trump is stalling as it reaches a make-or-break moment.

Anonymous sources told the Times that Bragg, who took over the investigation when he began as DA in January, had indicated that he was uncertain about taking the case to the next level.


Whatever Bragg decides to do in the coming days and weeks, it is clear that his office has been under mounting pressure recently as the inquiry reached a critical stage. Prosecutors were aware that the clock is running down as the present grand jury’s term comes to an end in April.

Or just running out the clock.

Key inquiry into Trump’s finances in jeopardy as two prosecutors resign | Donald Trump | The Guardian

Uh oh.

The title of this thread should read.....

Donald Trump and Jail Time

• Judge rules Trump's efforts to overturn election likely criminal

Former President Trump and his legal adviser, John Eastman, likely committed multiple federal crimes in their effort to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden's 2020 election victory, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a civil case involving subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

U.S. District Judge David Carter said in a 44-page decision on whether some of Eastman's private communications should be shielded from the panel that he found it "more likely than not" that the two engaged in criminal conduct.

"The illegality of the plan was obvious," Carter, who was appointed by former President Clinton, wrote. "Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the Vice President to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election."

The ruling has no direct bearing on whether Trump will face criminal charges over his efforts to undermine the 2020 results. Carter's decision came in a dispute over a subset of documents that the select committee had demanded in its subpoena.

The judge ruled that ten of the documents in the subset were privileged and should be withheld, but ordered Eastman to turn over the other 101 records to congressional investigators.

But while the ruling was narrowly-tailored and came in a civil dispute over Eastman's legal challenge to a subpoena, Carter's explosive findings mark the first time that a judge has found a reasonable likelihood that Trump broke the law in trying to remain in power.

Still, Carter acknowledged that the case before him is not positioned to address who should be assigned responsibility for last year's attack on the Capitol.

"More than a year after the attack on our Capitol, the public is still searching for accountability," the judge wrote. "This case cannot provide it. The Court is tasked only with deciding a dispute over a handful of emails. This is not a criminal prosecution; this is not even a civil liability suit. At most, this case is a warning about the dangers of 'legal theories' gone wrong, the powerful abusing public platforms, and desperation to win at all costs."

"If Dr. Eastman and President Trump’s plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution," Carter continued. "If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself."

Eastman Ruling

Trump likely committed felony obstruction, U.S. judge says

Wrong thread.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Wrong thread.

Which is a better one?

Originally Posted by David48atTD

Which is a better one?

The right wing domestic terrorist thread, but Landreth beat you to it already.

Without the comb-over and the orange tan

Give Donald a pitchfork and a pair of glasses ....and he would look all american

It just goes on and on ad infinitum . . .

New York judge denies Trump's bid to reverse $10,000-per-day contempt fine

A New York judge has denied a request from former President Trump's lawyers to reverse a $10,000-per-day contempt fine against Trump.

Why it matters: Judge Arthur Engoron issued the fine after he found Trump in contempt over his failure to comply with a subpoena that was issued as part of a state investigation into the Trump Organization's business practices. Trump is appealing the contempt finding.

Details: Trump's legal team had submitted affidavits asking Engoron to lift the sanctions, claiming he didn't have the subpoenaed documents, but Engoron refused to budge.

• The judge said Trump's two-sentence affidavit did not provide adequate evidence that Trump had thoroughly searched for the records and thus did not merit a purge of the contempt finding, CNBC reports.
• Trump's lawyers had also submitted affidavits stating they concluded that Trump did not possess the documents requested after a comprehensive search.

What they're saying: "I am surprised he doesn't seem to have any documents, they're all with the organization," Engoron said Friday in a state court, per Reuters.

• "I will consider your request to terminate the fine," he told Trump lawyer Alina Habba. "But if you don't hear from me, the clock is still ticking."
• Engoron ruled earlier this week that the $10,000-per-day fine must start on Tuesday, April 26.
• The Trump Organization did not immediately return a request for comment.

The big picture: New York Attorney General Letitia James previously said her office found "significant evidence" that the Trump Organization "used fraudulent and misleading asset valuations to obtain economic benefits."

DC Reaches $750K Settlement in Trump Inaugural Lawsuit

The District of Columbia attorney general says his office has reached a $750,000 settlement to resolve a lawsuit that alleged former President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee overpaid for events at the Trump International Hotel to enrich his family.

The District of Columbia attorney general said Tuesday that his office had reached a $750,000 settlement to resolve a lawsuit that alleged former President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee overpaid for events at the Trump International Hotel to enrich the former president’s family in the process.

Attorney General Karl Racine announced the settlement agreement in the case against the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the Trump Organization and the Trump International Hotel in Washington in a tweet on Tuesday. The document had not yet been signed by a judge.

The agreement says the case is being resolved “to avoid the cost, burden, and risks of further litigation” and that the organizations “dispute these allegations on numerous grounds and deny having engaged in any wrongdoing or unlawful conduct.”

As part of the agreement, the defendants will pay the District of Columbia a total of $750,000, which will be used to benefit three nonprofit organizations, the settlement paperwork says.

“We’re resolving our lawsuit and sending the message that if you violate DC nonprofit law—no matter how powerful you are—you’ll pay,” Racine said in a tweet.

Racine has said the committee misused nonprofit funds and coordinated with the hotel’s management and members of the Trump family to arrange the events. He said one of the event’s planners raised concerns about pricing with Trump, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Rick Gates, a top campaign official at the time.

The committee has maintained that its finances were independently audited, and that all money was spent in accordance with the law. The committee raised an unprecedented $107 million to host events celebrating Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. But the committee’s spending has drawn mounting scrutiny.

Gates, a former Trump campaign aide who cooperated in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, personally managed discussions with the hotel about using the space, including ballrooms and meeting rooms, the attorney general’s office has said. In one instance, Gates contacted Ivanka Trump and told her that he was “a bit worried about the optics” of the committee paying such a high fee, Racine said.

Prosecutors say the committee could have hosted inaugural events at other venues either for free or for reduced costs but didn’t consider those options.

“a bit worried about the optics”

A good start

Appeals court questions Trump’s effort to block NY AG subpoena

A New York appeals court appeared skeptical on Wednesday of former President Trump’s effort to challenge a state attorney general subpoena demanding his testimony.

During a hearing, a panel of judges on the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division seemed unpersuaded by Trump’s attorney, who argued that the civil subpoena was improper in part because it would complicate the former president’s right against self-incrimination amid a separate criminal investigation.

Justice Rolando Acosta repeatedly questioned whether the state judiciary has the authority to intervene in such an investigation on Trump’s behalf.

“You’re asking us to eliminate dozens of years of precedent, to somehow act like a legislature and say, ‘Let’s constrain the powers that the legislature has given you to prosecute civilly and criminally,'” Acosta said.

Trump is asking the appeals court to overturn a judge’s order that he and his two oldest children sit for a deposition with the attorney general’s office.

Arthur Engoron, the lower court judge, had ruled in February against Trump’s effort to block the subpoena, saying New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) was within her rights to seek both documents and testimony from the former president and his family as her office investigates potential fraud within his company.

“In the final analysis, a State Attorney General commences investigating a business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud, and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities’ principals, including its namesake. She has the clear right to do so,” Engoron wrote in his decision.

Last month, Engoron also found Trump in contempt and fined him $10,000 a day for failing to comply with aspects of the subpoena that were not part of the appeal, specifically the demands for business documents within his control.

Prior to the appeals court hearing on Wednesday, Engoron lifted the contempt ruling on the condition that Trump pay more than $100,000 in fines to James’s office.

Trump’s legal team is arguing in its appeal that the attorney general’s subpoenas should be blocked because of the joint criminal investigation into his company that James’s office is participating in with the Manhattan district attorney (DA). The attorney general’s civil subpoena, they argue, is circumventing the grand jury process for criminal investigations and jeopardizing Trump’s constitutional rights.

“They have never denied that whatever information they get under the guise of this civil subpoena is going to go right to the DA’s office,” Trump’s attorney, Alan Futerfas, said during Wednesday’s hearing.

Judith Vale, a lawyer with the attorney general’s office, countered that there is nothing unusual about parallel civil and criminal investigations and said the Trumps are free to invoke their rights against self-incrimination during a deposition.

“Under state and federal law the privilege against self-incrimination is a shield against being compelled to incriminate yourself,” Vale said. “It is not a sword that can be used to quash a civil investigative subpoena.”

It’s unclear when the appeals court will decide the case.

Both parties will face off in court again on Friday, when James’s office will ask a federal judge to throw out Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block the investigation.

The Jan. 6 committee may release videotapes of witness testimony during public hearings slated to start in June, according to reporting by Politico.

At least eight public hearings are set to take place. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is in the hot seat for refusing to testify before the panel.

The committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol took the unprecedented step Thursday of issuing subpoenas to five Republican congressmen, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.

The Washington Post's Jackie Alemany joins Morning Joe to discuss.

Trump pays $110,000 fine, contempt order not lifted: New York AG

Trump pays $110,000 fine but must do more to lift contempt order, New York AG’s office says

Former President Donald Trump paid a $110,000 fine imposed as part of a contempt-of-court order against him, but has failed so far to take all the steps required to lift the order, the New York attorney general’s office said Friday.

Trump has until Friday to fulfill all of the requirements for the contempt order to be purged. If he does not do so, a $10,000 per day fine against him could be reinstated.

Alina Habba, an attorney for Trump, did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron held Trump in contempt last month, after New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office argued that Trump had failed to comply with a subpoena for documents as part of its civil investigation.

The attorney general’s office is probing allegations that the Trump Organization illegally manipulated the stated values of different properties in order to get financial benefits when applying for loans, obtaining insurance policies and paying taxes.

Engoron’s contempt order required Trump to pay $10,000 per day for as long as he failed to comply with the subpoena. Last week, the judge said that he would lift the contempt order if the former president met certain conditions by Friday.

Trump complied with some of those conditions, a spokesperson for James’ office said. Trump paid $110,000 to the office on Thursday, and a digital forensics company completed a required review of his files that same day, according to the spokesperson.

But as of 12:15 p.m. ET on Friday, the former president’s lawyers had not completed a third condition: submitting new affidavits that give more detail about their search for documents sought by the investigators, the spokesperson said.

The $10,000 daily fine against Trump was imposed on April 25. It was halted after Trump’s lawyers on May 6 provided Engoron with 66 pages of documents detailing their efforts to locate the records requested by James’ office.

The prosecutor is draining the swamp so everyone can see who was in the bottom of the mud all along.

Ethics law offers possible path for Trump prosecution

As federal investigators weigh the potential criminality of former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, legal experts say a decades-old ethics law — one routinely violated by members of Trump’s inner circle — could provide them a glide path to prosecution.

The Hatch Act prohibits electioneering by executive branch officials, including the promotion of the president’s political interests, during the course of their formal duties.

The law was regularly flouted by the Trump administration while in office, a trend that continued throughout the two months between the presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

While the ethics law has been used almost entirely administratively since it was passed in the 1930s, experts say a rarely used criminal provision of the law could be a novel and relatively straightforward strategy to ensure consequences for Trump in what is sure to be a challenging atmosphere.

Norm Eisen, who served as special counsel to Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment, called the actions leading up to Jan. 6 part of a “disturbing and endemic pattern of conduct by Trump enablers in the White House that implicates the Hatch Act, including criminal aspects.”

“This is no exception. It may be the culmination and the worst example,” he said of events and statements around the Capitol riot.

“The problem is that criminal prosecution is really unusual. But everything that happened at the end of the Trump White House was also unusually wrong, and I think it is already the subject of criminal review. So given that context I think it is quite likely that prosecutors will take a fresh look at the Hatch Act among other potential remedies that have been more extensively discussed publicly.”

Much of the discussion over possible charges for Trump have focused on weighty crimes that carry heavier penalties, eyeing statutes that bar interfering with or delaying an official proceeding or conspiracy to defraud the United States.

But the sister statute for the Hatch Act, which bars coercing federal employees into political activity, carries a three-year prison sentence and could include a fine.

While the Hatch Act is typically thought of as applying ahead of elections, an opinion from the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) issued the day after the 2020 election notes that an individual doesn’t cease to be a candidate until the Jan. 6 certification of the election results.

Some actions from Trump and his associates after the election — from a call to Georgia’s secretary of state to a pressure campaign at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate alleged election fraud — offered early signs the Hatch Act may have been violated.

But depositions with Trump staff and text messages from his chief of staff Mark Meadows released in the last month show the extent to which the White House was the locus for coordinated efforts between the campaign, lawmakers and the DOJ.

Indeed, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has used Meadows’s campaign activities — noting his “unofficial role in the Trump campaign” and calling him a “functionary” — as justification for fighting his claims that his testimony should be protected by executive privilege.

“The administrative version of the Hatch Act and the criminal version of the Hatch Act exists to make sure that there there’s clear guidance and a clear prohibition on officials using their government jobs to help facilitate any candidate for elective office winning or holding on to their power,” said Donald Sherman, chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“And it seems quite clear from the facts available, that that was not just something that Mark Meadows did, but it was his primary focus as White House chief of staff in the days and weeks after the 2020 election,” he added.

“I mean, to call it a textbook case of a Hatch Act violation is a bit too on the nose. I think it’s far beyond what Congress or OSC or really anyone could have envisioned in terms of the worst-case scenario of an abuse of this principle.”

The Jan. 6 committee is still grappling with whether to make a criminal referral for prosecution of Trump and others in his circle as part of its final work product capping its investigation.

But it is preparing its own legislative proposals as part of a broader effort to ensure that Jan. 6 — the attack as well as the misuse of power — never happens again.

“You know what’s hiding in plain sight? In so much of the evidence that’s come out from a whole bunch of different sources is that there were government officials deeply involved in Donald Trump’s campaign, and so at the simplest level this is a Hatch Act issue spotter,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), one of the committee’s members, told The Hill.

“You can just identify so many cases where government officials were involved in reelection activity and political activity that went beyond reelection to arguable illegality.”

Good governance advocates have for years lamented the relative toothlessness of the Hatch Act. The president is exempt while in office, and other high-ranking officials are largely immune once they leave their posts. The only repercussions — at least administratively — are largely employment-related, like a reduction in salary grade or other demotions geared toward reprimanding rank-and-file employees. High-ranking officials can, however, be barred from future federal service.

“That’s kind of one of the general flaws in all of this,” Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, told The Hill.

“Unless the president asks, their superior asks, it’s very hard to get any accountability for these types of violations. And once they leave office, it’s pretty much nonexistent.”

The OSC, which oversees Hatch Act violations, wrote in its report documenting Trump administration violations of the law that its “enforcement tools are limited with respect to Senate-confirmed presidential appointees and White House commissioned officers.”

And on the criminal front, it’s not clear that the Justice Department would consider such a charge, though its recent request to the Jan. 6 committee to review some of its depositions suggests they could be weighing some sort of criminal charges against those in Trump’s orbit.

The OSC report noted flagrant Hatch Act abuses by 11 Trump officials while in office, including Meadows and others who have been interviewed by the committee: former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and advisers Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller. The report, however, landed in November last year, well after the team had left office.

Since then, depositions released by the committee in court cases walk through the extent of Meadow’s actions for the campaign: He was on Trump’s call with Georgia’s secretary of state and visited the state during its election audit. He was the coordinator of calls between lawmakers and the Trump legal team — at one point Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) begged him for more time with Rudy Giuliani. And he was also involved in Trump’s pressure campaign at the DOJ.

“While [Meadows] is on the federal payroll, yes, he’s chief of staff to the president, but he’s not chief of staff to the president’s campaign, he’s chief of staff to the White House. And he seems to have completely lost that distinction,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis specializing in government ethics.

She said the lack of repercussions for holding the Republican National Convention at the White House — something she called a “Hatch Act crime spree” — was a green light to those in Trump’s orbit to push things further.

“When you don’t enforce a law, when you don’t prosecute or take accountability when people violate a law, you’re giving them permission to violate it in the future. Draw a straight line from the Hatch Act violations at the RNC at the White House, right up through the post election violations,” Clark said.

Still, not all are sure Meadows himself violated the law or that his violations can be proven in a court of law.

“If Meadows as chief of staff in the White House was putting any pressure on any federal employee to engage in partisan political activity, which I believe would include trying to reverse the election result, he is in violation of the criminal statute,” Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush White House, told The Hill.

Painter filed a complaint with the DOJ while Trump was in office alleging he violated the criminal statute, asking for an investigation into him and his aides.

“If I had enough evidence to feel that that complaint was justified in October 2020, whatever happened after the election was far worse,” he said.

But he said a conviction against someone like Meadows can be “a mess.” It would have to go beyond demonstrating the extent he organized meetings — even using White House phones is usually considered “de minimis” — and would need to show Meadows coerced others into helping the campaign.

“They’re allowed to engage in [their] personal capacity in political activity. And they’re allowed to do it in the White House,” he said. “Meadows can play politics one minute then do official work the next. You got to really take one hat off and put on the other.”

“If he sought to coerce a federal employee, including a staff member to a senator or representatives or a staff member of the Justice Department or the attorney general or anything like that, he would have committed a criminal offense,” Painter added.

An attorney for Meadows declined to comment.

But recent court filings in his battle with the committee lists a slew of examples in which former chiefs of staff “engaged in efforts related to their president’s election efforts.”

“While the Congressional defendants contend, without citing any factual support, that White House chiefs of staff do not get involved with an incumbent president’s reelection campaign, common sense and facts … are to the contrary. The breadth of the chief of staff’s duties necessarily includes activities relevant to the president’s reelection,” Meadows attorney George Terwilliger wrote in a Friday brief.

Meadows has in the past brushed aside concerns he had violated the law.

“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares,” he said in 2020 of the Hatch Act.

That’s precisely why some see action — either from the DOJ or from the committee — as a necessity.

“It’s not small potatoes because it goes to the heart of what our government is supposed to be — that it’s not just for the benefit of the office holders,” Clark said.

“Executive branch officials swear an oath, and it ain’t an oath to the president. It’s an oath to the Constitution.”

Appeals court rules Trump must testify in NY probe

Former President Trump and two of his adult children must provide testimony in the New York attorney general’s probe into his business practices, a state appeals court ruled Thursday, rejecting his challenge to a subpoena.

A four-judge panel for the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Trump’s appeal in the case, dismissing the former president’s arguments that the subpoena is part of a politically motivated investigation.

“OAG began its investigation after public testimony of a senior corporate insider and reviewed significant volumes of evidence before issuing the subpoenas,” the panel wrote in its four-page decision, using an acronym for the Office of Attorney General. “Appellants have not identified any similarly implicated corporation that was not investigated or any executives of such a corporation who were not deposed. Therefore, appellants have failed to demonstrate that they were treated differently from any similarly situated persons.”

The ruling also applies to Donald Trump Jr., who is currently an executive vice president at the family’s company, and Ivanka Trump, who stepped down as a corporate officer in 2017.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who is conducting a civil investigation into potential fraud at the Trump Organization, applauded the decision.

“Once again, the courts have ruled that Donald Trump must comply with our lawful investigation into his financial dealings,” James said in a statement. “We will continue to follow the facts of this case and ensure that no one can evade the law.”

James has said that her investigation has found evidence that the Trump Organization fraudulently misrepresented the value of its assets in the years before Trump was elected.

Trump attorney Alan Futerfas was not immediately able to comment on the decision.

The ruling is not certain to bring an end to Trump’s legal battles against James. He could still appeal the decision to the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest judicial body. And Trump is also asking a federal judge to block James from carrying out the investigation, though it’s not clear when that lawsuit might be decided.

Trump had appealed a lower court ruling ordering him to provide testimony and documents to James’s office. Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump in contempt earlier this month for failing to comply with the order to provide business records to the investigators.

The former president’s lawyers had echoed his public accusations that James’s investigation was motivated by political animus. They also argued that by forcing him to testify in the civil investigation, the attorney general is jeopardizing Trump’s right against self-incrimination in the midst of a parallel criminal probe being carried out by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Futerfas had pointed to James’s comments promising to go after Trump while campaigning for her office as evidence that the civil investigation is improper and intended to feed information to criminal investigators.

“They have never denied that whatever information they get under the guise of this civil subpoena is going to go right to the DA’s office,” Futerfas told the appellate panel at a hearing earlier this month.

But the judges also rejected that argument on Thursday, saying James had a valid basis for launching an investigation, citing the congressional testimony that Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen gave in 2019 detailing fraudulent practices at Trump’s business.

“The political campaign and other public statements made by OAG about appellants do not support the claim that OAG initiated, or is using, the subpoenas in this civil investigation to obtain testimony solely for use in a criminal proceeding or in a manner that would otherwise improperly undermine appellants’ privilege against self-incrimination,” the panel said in its decision.

Think,......Perjury

The fact is that baldy orange cunto should have been investigated years ago, so you can see some validity in the argument that there is an element of political motivation behind it.

^Couple years ago it was the president. Presidential Immunity

It no longer is.

Judge dismisses Trump lawsuit that sought to block New York’s investigation of his business practices

A federal judge on Friday dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James, allowing her civil investigation into his business practices to continue.

In a 43-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Brenda Sannes said she based her decision on case law that, in most cases, bars federal judges from interfering in state-level investigations.

Sannes’ ruling came a day after a New York appeals court ruled that Trump must answer questions under oath in James’ probe, upholding a lower-court ruling requiring him to sit for a deposition.

A message seeking comment was left with Trump’s lawyers.

Trump sued James in December, just after she issued a subpoena for his testimony, resorting to a familiar but seldom successful strategy in an attempt to end the three-year investigation.

Through his lawyers, the Republican former president alleged that the probe was political in nature and that James, a Democrat, had violated his constitutional rights in a “thinly-veiled effort to publicly malign Trump and his associates.”

James responded that Trump’s lawsuit was a sudden “collateral attack” on her investigation and that there was no legal basis for it and no evidence to support his claim that the probe is purely political.

At a May 13 hearing that precipitated Sannes’ ruling Friday, a lawyer for James’ office said the probe is winding down and that evidence from it could support legal action against the former president, his company, or both.

The lawyer, Andrew Amer, said “there’s clearly been a substantial amount of evidence amassed that could support the filing of an enforcement proceeding,” although a final determination on filing such an action has not been made.

Amer, a special litigation counsel in James’ office, said the office is “nearing the end” of the civil investigation, which James has said uncovered evidence Trump’s company misstated the value of assets like skyscrapers and golf courses on financial statements for more than a decade.