A top prosecutor in Virginia has informed colleagues she plans to decline to seek charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, resisting intense pressure from President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with her discussions.
Elizabeth Yusi, who oversees major criminal prosecutions in the Norfolk office of the Eastern District of Virginia, has confided to co-workers that she sees no probable cause to believe James engaged in mortgage fraud, the two sources told MSNBC. Yusi plans to present her conclusion to the president’s new interim U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, in the coming weeks, they said.
Trump installed Halligan after he announced two weeks ago that he would fire the first acting U.S. attorney he appointed to the post, Erik Siebert, who resisted seeking fraud charges against James and other charges against former FBI Director James Comey. Siebert resigned Sept. 19 after learning he would lose his job.
Trump then named Halligan, a White House aide and insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience who had previously been his personal defense lawyer, to replace Siebert. A few days after taking the reins in the Eastern District, Halligan sought and won the indictment of Comey on charges of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding, a case that Siebert and office colleagues considered too weak to charge, the people said.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia are bracing for the top supervisor in Norfolk to be fired for resisting pressure from Trump to prosecute Letitia James, one of his perceived enemies.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District are now bracing for Yusi to be fired for her own resistance to try a case that many lawyers have said lacks sufficient evidence, according to the two people.
Trump has publicly called on the Justice Department to criminally prosecute James, despite the conclusion of career prosecutors that they cannot prove she lied or intended to lie on a mortgage application for her niece’s home, according to the people. In a Truth Social post Saturday, Trump called James “SCUM,” saying she should be removed as New York attorney general and pointing to what he called “her WITCH HUNT against President Donald J. Trump, and others.”
The Justice Department declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia also fear their colleagues will be pressured to seek an indictment against James, or risk being fired, the two people familiar with internal discussions said. Halligan has been closely monitoring progress on the case, these people said.
Such preliminary charging decisions are normally recommended by line prosecutors who would be sifting through the facts in the investigation and would report to Yusi. But in the politically charged case of James, the senior supervisor in the Norfolk office has taken measures to try to protect her staff who have been handling the case before a grand jury, the person said.
“This supervisor clearly is doing the right and ethical thing by refusing to bend her legal conclusions to fit the president’s desire for political retribution,” Randall Eliason, the former top public corruption prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and a retired law professor, told MSNBC.
But he said it is “tragic” that career prosecutors are being “forced to choose between honoring their oaths and risking their livelihood” and “forced out by the president’s politicization of the Justice Department.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia has become a flash point in the Trump administration’s persecution of officials whom the president has deemed to be his foes.
The new developments follow other departures from an office that has become a flash point in the Trump administration’s persecution of officials whom the president has deemed to be his foes.
On Friday, the top national security prosecutor in Virginia’s Eastern District railed against Justice Department political appointees for carrying out Trump’s directives rather than fulfilling their oath to “follow the facts and the law wherever they lead, free from fear or favor, and unhindered by political interference.”
The prosecutor, Michael Ben’Ary, had been fired after a Trump ally questioned his loyalty to Trump in a social media post. Ben’Ary wrote in a letter, “In recent months, the political leadership of the Department have violated these principles, jeopardizing our national security and making American citizens less safe.”
James successfully sued Trump and his real estate company, the Trump Organization, for what she said was a series of fraudulent business practices, winning a 2023 civil fraud verdict and a $454 million penalty from a New York judge. The verdict was upheld on appeal, but the monetary penalty was thrown out two months ago, in August, after a court deemed it excessive. Trump proclaimed “total victory” after the appellate court’s decision, while James vowed to appeal.
Trump has repeatedly insisted James face consequences for what he deemed to be a spurious attack on him.
The allegation that James engaged in mortgage fraud stems from a May “criminal referral” made by Trump ally Bill Pulte, whom the president appointed as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. He cited “media reports” suggesting that James had falsely claimed a Norfolk, Virginia, home where her niece resides as her primary residence to secure a lower mortgage rate.
James’ attorney, Abbe Lowell, has said James made no such claim in helping her niece seek a loan for a home, and submitted evidence to Attorney General Pam Bondi from James’ own writing at the time. Lowell noted that a power-of-attorney form had mistakenly listed the house as a primary residence, but that James herself checked “no” on the loan application when asked if the house was her primary home. In addition, according to Lowell, James also sent an email to her mortgage broker stating the house “WILL NOT be my primary residence.”
In a Sept. 20 social media post, Trump called on Bondi to prosecute the alleged crimes of James, former FBI Director James Comey and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. He claimed they were “all guilty as hell.” The president pointed to his two impeachments and multiple indictments as baseless.
He wrote: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility” and that “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
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