New York Attorney General Letitia James on Cases Against Trump

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I'm joined by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

New York Attorney General, James, you've successfully prosecuted Donald Trump in a civil fraud case,

$486 million judgment.

So you understand how at least he operates his businesses.

Can you apply that?

to what he's doing right now with the government?

Are you seeing similar patterns in how he's operating things?

Yeah, so in the civil, first of all, thank you so much for allowing me to be on your podcast.

I really appreciate it.

You know, listen, we brought the case against Donald Trump, who was then a civilian,

because he inflated his assets for the purposes of taking advantage of low interest rates and insurance rates.

You know, he engaged in this pattern and practice of illegality.

And it was following a two-year investigation after, you know, hearing individuals' witnesses before a hearing.

And so he would like to allege that it was politics, politics, but it really wasn't.

It was based on facts and the rule of law.

And so we were able to secure a summary judgment.

And then after a hearing, we secured a judgment.

And the interest rate continued to increase.

And we are awaiting at this point in time a decision from the appellate division of the state of New York.

And now what he is doing is causing more chaos, confusion, and contempt.

Contempt for the law.

contempt for individuals who work each and every day to serve our government,

contempt for Congress.

Republican members have just rolled over and allowed Elon Dusk and his musketeers, obviously, to gain access to our private and personal information.

He's throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.

And it's basically a brazen attack on a

democratic system of government.

And so I've got a duty and an obligation to defend the rule of law.

I took an oath to the Constitution and not to the king.

And that's what we are doing each and every day.

It was not my intention

to

resist,

but it is my intention, obviously, to ensure that the rights and privileges of New Yorkers are respected and to use the law both as a sword and as a shield, particularly to protect vulnerable and marginalized populations and individuals who tell me their stories each and every day about losing their job, individuals who are afraid about Social Security, individuals who are veterans, law enforcement individuals, and people who are afraid about their loved ones being deported and separated.

I want to talk about some of the specific cases that your Attorney General's office is involved in.

But in that case against Trump, as you mentioned, inflating assets, there would be certain assets that would be X, and he would just say they are Y, just put kind of a bunch of fraudulent and fake numbers to those assets.

Now, you kind of see the same playbook, though, with this administration.

I mean, you know, you had Trump and Elon Musk saying that somewhere between $400 billion and $600 billion of Social Security payments are like quote-unquote, they're saying

incorrect or fraudulent payments.

And then when Trump's press secretary, Caroline Lebitz asked about it and saying, well, those numbers are inactive.

Where are you getting these numbers from?

Well, that's what they think.

the numbers are and we're seeing that in their cuts in their gutting of the government they're using made-up numbers and fake numbers to justify it.

It almost seems like a lot of the Doge playbook is the playbook you saw also in your prosecution.

Do you see that?

Listen, when Donald Trump ran for office, he promised Americans that he would lower the cost of eggs and consumer products.

He indicated that he would

stop the war, bring peace in the war for Ukraine.

He would stand up and bring peace to that situation.

He would end the conflict

in

Israel and Gaza.

He said a whole bunch of things.

He said our markets obviously would be strong and that

he would make America first.

And nothing could be further from the truth.

Elon Musk has said it's all about corruption and waste and fraud.

They've indicated that individuals who are over 100 and some odd years are getting social security.

It's just lies.

Americans were duped.

They fell for it.

And the reality is, is that we're looking at Trump, we're looking at inflation, we're looking at the price of eggs go up, our markets have been falling today.

The reality is, is that he has befriended Putin,

he has weakened NATO,

and he has abandoned Ukraine because he supports and he likes strongmen.

It's all a bunch of lies.

And then, you know, he believes in a Unitarian type of government where all of the power is in his hands and not democracy.

And so our system of government,

the power of the purse belongs to Congress, and he is attempting to ignore that.

He's calling upon members of the judiciary, saying that he is going to

bring them up on charges and try to

go after these judges.

He has an enemies list.

I'm on it and other individuals who are standing up to him.

At the end of the day, it's important that individuals understand that they cannot be afraid, that this type of government, authoritarian government, requires cooperation and consent.

But democracy, my friends, requires courage.

And so I urge everyone to stand up and to have some steel on their back, including Republican members of Congress, and to let him know that there's more of us than there are those in the White House, and that we together, unified are more powerful than he is and so that's why I'm urging everyone to raise their voice attorneys general you know we've organized and we prepared and we anticipated the possibility of a Trump administration you know we stood up to him during Trump one

and now we are much more coordinated and organized we've analyzed project 2025 again something that he said he knew nothing about but this is straight out of project 2025 we've analyzed circuits all throughout throughout this country.

We've analyzed jurisdiction, venue.

And that's why

after

the birthright citizenship, that executive order, we were able to file suit within 48 hours.

And we've continued to knock it out of the box.

And we are winning, winning.

winning because again we believe in the rule of law we believe in the constitution and we believe that the power of the purse belongs to congress and not the president of the united states and he cannot with the stroke of a pen or should i say sharpie

basically ignore or dismiss or dismantle the rule of government.

You've got to respect Congress and you've got to respect the Constitution and you've got to respect the constitutional order of our system and that's what we do each and every day.

Nothing more and nothing less.

Let's talk about some of the cases that your office has brought against the Trump administration.

You join with some of the other Attorney General's offices, as you mentioned.

One of the things you talked about earlier today was winning a big court order that's going to temporarily stop Trump's cuts to grant programs that Congress authorized to hire and retain teachers in underserved schools there.

Trump going after the most vulnerable.

You talk about how your office and a group of AGs challenged Trump's unlawful early termination of temporary protected status for Venezuelans.

We know a lot of these Venezuelans on TPS were also like family members of people who voted for Trump, Venezuelans for Trump.

Your office also leading the case on behalf of the probationary federal workers who were illegally fired.

Talk to us about those cases.

And one of the patterns seems to be Trump and the oligarchs look at some of the most vulnerable people and just punch down at the most vulnerable people.

So the first case was birthright citizenship, which is in our 14th Amendment, enshrined in the 14th Amendment.

And so he issued an executive order.

And again, within 48 hours, we were able to get a temporary restraining order and then ultimately a preliminary injunction.

Then he issued an executive order

on behalf of OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, basically freezing funds for a wide range of essential services all throughout the United States, including

meals on wheels, Head Start, Social Security, program initiatives and grants to veterans and law enforcement agents.

All of these essential and critical services, he sought to pause, again, because he wanted these agencies to be to comply with his wishes.

And we were able to get a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction.

Then we filed a case against the Treasury Department because Elon Doge Doge

Elon Musk and his band of engineers gained access to our very private and sensitive information, our social security numbers, our insurance information, and our addresses.

And we were able, we were successful there.

A number of agencies, including USAID,

including the Department of Defense, all of the federal agencies, we were able to get a preliminary injunction with respect to those cases.

NIH, the National Institute of Health, was his other executive order going after

these institutions here in the state of New York, some SUNY colleges, who engage in

groundbreaking

expertise and groundbreaking scientific research to find cures to cancer and to find cures to Parkinson's and heart disease.

And these

agencies,

National Institute of Health gives grants to the University of Albany, the University of Buffalo, Stony Brook.

And these are economic engines within these respective towns.

We were able to get an executive order.

We were able to get a temporary restraining order, and then we were able to get a preliminary injunction.

Then he filed an action against employees, probationary employees, and the law requires that the states be given 60 days' notice, and they violated that.

Again, executive order, and they dismissed and they fired all these individuals.

Again, we were successful in court in getting a temporary restraining order.

And a hearing on that case is on Thursday.

There was a case with regards to grants

for teachers to teach underserved communities and rural communities all throughout the state of New York and

all around this country.

And we, again, were able to seek a TRO.

And that hearing is also on Thursday as well.

We've also issued guidances to law enforcement and to hospitals that serve the LGBTQ community.

Again, focusing on gender-affirming care.

And so the list goes on and on and on.

Whenever he issues an executive order, it's the Blue Wall wall of defense, the attorneys general all across this country who respond in

record time, defending the rights of individuals, defending the rule of law and standing up for our democracy and for our freedom.

And we'll continue to do that, even with their threats

and even,

you know, with all of their,

you know, the fact that they throw everything against the wall and see what's going to stick.

You know, Attorneys General,

we're prepared to respond in record time.

What do you think of when, you know, given all of your legal experience and leading the top legal office in the state of New York, when Trump's DOJ lawyers are going into court and they're not able to answer these very basic questions by the judges of who's running a specific entity and then the judge says you don't know the answer and then some of these DOJ lawyers are there saying, well, look, you know, we're working as hard as we can.

We're understaffed.

You know, we don't have the same amount of people that we do.

I mean,

as a lawyer, a former practicing lawyer, I'm thinking to myself, can I ever imagine going in front of a federal judge and saying that I don't have the staff to get the answers or being asked who runs the organization?

And I go, you know what?

It's above my pay grade.

I can't answer.

What's your perspective when you hear transcripts and you see that?

It's like sloppy.

I got to get your perspective on that.

Listen, we've got the Administrative Procedure Act, and most of the times they come into court, and the decisions and the executive orders are arbitrary, they're capricious, they're not grounded in fact and or the law, and there's just no evidence to substantiate what they are attempting to do.

This is an attempt to remake government.

That's what it is.

It's an attempt to remake our

form of democracy and to turn this into

an autocratic government,

a

Unitarian type of government.

And we've got to stand up and we've got to fight back.

You know, a lot of the members of DOJ, like Danielle Sassoon, who submitted her resume at DOJ, you know, they're heroes and cheros, individuals who stood up and said, we took an oath.

And a lot of the actions that this

administration has taken is basically, you know, in violation of the law.

And so I salute her for their courage.

I salute them because they're, you know, they represent, in my mind, they are, you know, you know, individuals who are brave and she you know led um so many uh other like-minded members of doj like-minded u.s attorneys who said um we just are not going to violate our code of ethics we're going to follow the law

and we are

you know going to depart from the department of justice and it's unfortunate that that more individuals in the department of justice don't do the same and just exit the Department of Justice.

Because again, we all took an oath, not to a king,

but to the Constitution.

And it's up to us to defend that right.

And that's what we do here in the New York State Attorney General's office.

And that's what so many other Democratic Attorney Generals do each and every day in their respective offices.

And it's an honor and a privilege to serve with them.

Let me ask you a final question.

What's the latest on Mahmoud Khalil?

I know your office may have been in touch with their lawyers.

I saw something about that.

What's the latest update on that?

What should the people know?

So let me just say that you can't deport individuals simply because you disagree with their political philosophies or their ideology.

And,

you know, basically detaining and arresting someone in the middle of the night without due process just violates the Constitution.

And due process requires that he have a hearing.

And that hearing will determine whether or not he has, in fact, violated

a rule of law, a section of law, whether or not he's violated the terms of his permanent citizenship.

And I just will allow the system of government and the system to work its course.

The hearing is scheduled

for Wednesday,

and we await the decision.

But I suspect at the end of the day

that by detaining someone,

by arresting someone,

by not providing them with due process runs afoul of

our system of government.

You know, I said finally, but I've got New York Attorney General Letitia James on, so I'm not going to, I got to ask you, I got to ask you one more question.

This is the real finally, though.

What do you say to the American people out there, though, who are worried and seeing all these democratic institutions under attack?

There are a lot of people who are scared.

They want to see fighters right now.

What's your message in general to Americans who are worried?

Are there going to be future elections?

Is our democracy going to survive?

What do you say to them?

So let me just say that, you know, I live in my beloved Brooklyn, and individuals come up to me each and every day,

who I hold in my arms, who are crying, just afraid of our government.

Individuals who are concerned about their loved ones not coming home.

Individuals who are afraid to take their child to school, to go to the doctor, to even go into a court house, individuals who have been witnesses to horrific crimes.

And obviously, I'm concerned about our government, but it's going to take all of us moving in the same direction to stand up and to defend this democracy, not just Democratic Attorneys General, but regular citizens and other elected officials.

That's what we have got to do.

And as

an attorney general who believes in the law,

I'm joining with other attorneys general.

I'm joining with the minority leader.

I'm joining with members in the United States Senate.

And we were hosting town hall meetings.

We had one just recently in Arizona.

We are hosting another one very soon in Minnesota, which will be led by Attorney General Keith Ellison.

There'll be one in Connecticut, one in Vermont, and I will be hosting one in New York.

We need to tell the stories of individuals who have lost their job.

We need to let people know that this administration is a threat to our security, a threat to everything that we believe in, a threat to our values and our principles.

And we need to stand up and we need to, again, speak out loudly and clearly and tell the stories.

Tell the stories and let people know that this, too, is our country.

And by

gone it, I was going to curse, but I won't curse.

We've got to fight for it.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, thank you so much for joining us on the Midas Touch Network.

Thank you.

I appreciate you.

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