Letitia James brought down the NRA. She was just getting started. In a civil suit—probably the most politicized civil suit in U.S. history—exhausting every resource to destroy her arch-enemy, Donald Trump, she’s doing her best to destroy everything the former President has accomplished in his long history of commercial development in the Empire State.
One would expect any state attorney general to follow their oath of office, which typically includes promises to protect the people of their state from lawlessness and lawbreakers. Her oath of office did just that. However, Ms. James had obligations to an unknown number of her political supporters when she was District Attorney in New York City and as Attorney General in New York. In both jobs and their subsequent campaigns, she raised lots of money on the back of her very public hatred of Donald Trump.
George Soros, two of his family members, and other megadonors helped propel the political career of New York Attorney General Letitia James.
In recent years, according to state campaign finance records, James has received backing from numerous left-wing donors who have also spent considerable amounts on anti-Trump efforts.
Financier George Soros has pushed at least $20,000 to James’ candidacy, including two $10,000 donations in 2021 and 2022. The 93-year-old billionaire has poured millions of dollars into efforts backing Biden and opposing Trump, and his Open Society Foundations has bankrolled a plethora of left-wing organizations that have worked on endeavors against the former president.
Soros, however, was not the only member of the family who threw money at James. His son, Jonathan Soros, gave her campaign at least $10,000 between 2018 and 2022, while Jonathan’s wife, Jennifer Allan Soros, added $4,000 in 2022.
Billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who helped rehabilitate convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s image and visited his infamous island, is one of the biggest backers of the New York attorney general.
The records show that Hoffman donated $47,100 to her campaign in 2022. Hoffman has put large sums into efforts to torpedo Trump. He’s also come under fire for a past effort in an Alabama Senate race that the New York Times described as a “Russian-style social media deception” campaign.
According to the filings, California-based physician Karla Jurvetson provided James with at least $67,300 in campaign contributions since 2019. Like Soros and Hoffman, Jurvetson has spent significant amounts against Trump and propping up Biden as she’s positioned herself as a prominent donor in recent election cycles.
Other notable contributors to James include director Spike Lee, former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer.
Campaign finance records show that James has pulled over $310,000 from her campaign since her 2018 election to purchase stays at luxury hotels across the country and host “political meetings” at swanky New York City restaurants. However, the most significant chunk of James’s extracurricular campaign spending has gone to finance her annual excursion to a Puerto Rican junket the New York Times calls a “most unusual gathering” of New York politicos.
Each year, the nonprofit Somos—whose stated mission is to “address problems of the Hispanic community”—hosts a conference in San Juan. At the Somos conference, which is sponsored by companies with business before the New York state government, James rubs shoulders with New York’s political elite and dances at exclusive roped-off parties hosted by public sector unions. Since November 2018, James’s campaign has forked over $32,000 to finance her stays at ritzy Puerto Rican hotels as part of her participation in the Somos conference.
New York state Sen. Julia Salazar (D.) told the New York Times in 2019 that her first visit to the Somos conference made her uneasy. “It’s basically Albany transplanted to San Juan except with, remarkably, more lobbyists,” Salazar said. “The experience for me was just being bombarded by lobbyists and feeling pressure to party with them, which I wasn’t thrilled to do.”
James, however, had no problem letting loose at the 2019 Somos conference. She was spotted dancing atop a platform at an exclusive party hosted by a New York City public employee union as a gathering of lobbyists swayed to the beat nearby, the New York Times reported.
It’s common practice among New York politicians to use campaign funds to pay their way to the annual junket, the outlet reported. Thanks to New York law, which lets politicians use campaign funds to “assist in the execution or performance of the duties” of their office, James’s campaign spending appears to be above board.
But James has repeatedly been criticized for her campaign spending. In 2001, during her failed campaign for a seat on the New York City Council, she was assessed a $29,000 penalty for misusing public funds for her primary election. James appealed the fine in October 2003, which the New York City Campaign Finance Board rejected.
James faced scrutiny again in 2018 for spending $36,000 in campaign funds with Brooklyn hairstylist Iyesata Marsh. The James campaign told the Wall Street Journal in 2018 that Marsh never styled James’s hair and instead worked as an event manager for the then-candidate.
Other notable expenditures from James’s campaign include a $12,000 payment to Venture Jets, a private jet service provider, a nearly $2,000 payment at a Brooklyn diner in November 2020 to host a “meeting with elected officials,” $4,600 for house rentals in Martha’s Vineyard in August 2021 and 2022, $278 for a fundraising event at the Patrick Steakhouse in Brooklyn in October 2021, and $3,300 at the Junior’s cheesecake restaurant across five visits from December 2019 through April 2023.
Scrutiny of James’s campaign spending comes after she secured a $355 million fine against former president Donald Trump in a civil case alleging he overstated his net worth to dupe bankers into lending him funds. Trump said his financial statements were “perfect” and that James “manufactured” the charges to “pursue a political agenda.”
Obviously, there are many more political ” of Letitia James’s political side. However, there is nothing more intriguing than her stated goal in every legal activity she has participated in than Donald J. Trump and her undying prediction that she WILL destroy him.
Trump: The Target
There’s no question that Mr. Trump has made numerous enemies in building his decades-long commercial real estate development empire. After all, doing any type of business in New York faces many obstacles that are absent in other states and cities. In fact, the odds of business failure in the Big Apple are much higher than in any other major U.S. city. Trump beat those odds repeatedly.
Trump’s real estate accomplishments are certainly not exclusive to New York. His properties span numerous states and several foreign countries. Subsequently, the thousands of New Yorkers who are employed directly by Trump entities reap significant financial benefits from doing so.
There’s no doubt that during such a long and very public commercial real estate development career, Donald Trump has stepped on quite a few toes. However, it stands to reason that the nature of his businesses and their public reputations would lead to numerous stories about “corporate wrongdoing.” Of course, “The Donald” has a lengthy history of public romances. In fact, his entire personal life has been the subject of numerous national stories. I actually expected to find numerous examples of salacious wrongdoings on his part in investigating this story.
Numerous stories exist about Trump’s personal and business life. While some paint a “not-rosey” picture, those seem limited. In contrast, numerous stories share details of his philanthropic giving to random causes and individuals. One would expect that from a billionaire. Shockingly, there are dozens of stories shared through the years by private individuals who have received financial assistance and favors that often amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars given to people they didn’t even know.
So why the incessant tornado of hatred that hovers over whichever political position Letitia James holds that she calls “Get Trump?”
I do not mean to trivialize any of the never-ending depositions, press conferences, indictments, damning interviews of Donald Trump, and even his arrests. There is an abundance of facts in each of these that would almost certainly destroy any other American. Add to this the obviously tainted opinions of many of New York’s political class who dance primarily on the Left should be able to destroy the former President. Time and time again, she has failed for the most part — unless one factor in the outrageous expenses her litigation costs Donald Trump personally and corporately. And if you throw into the mix the outlandish civil suit just completed by James against Trump in NYC civil court, James’ full frontal attacks against Trump et al., I cannot remember another such successful individual who built an empire over decades who has faced such incessant assault against every part of his life.
The Bible speaks of hate in numerous books and chapters. Great philosophers have spoken throughout history about the destructive cost of living one’s life driven by anger and hatred. It’s impossible for me to put Letitia James’ incessant attacks against Trump in any other setting than a “Biblical bludgeoning” driven by her hatred for Mr. Trump.
How bad can it get? Or are we watching the demise of Trump’s personal fortune simultaneously with the destruction of his corporations and his substantive political achievements in his one brief stint in the White House?
What is her purpose?
The New York Sun gave their answer in a March story about James vs. Trump: “The New York attorney general is using the state’s legal apparatus to punish individuals and companies unpopular with the left — sacrificing the rule of law in the process.”
New York State’s attorney general, Letitia James, has a beef with beef.
This week Ms. James sued the JBS USA Food Company, the U.S. subsidiary of the world’s largest beef producer, accusing it of “fraudulent and illegal business activities” and demanding “disgorgement of all profits and ill-gotten gains.”
Disregard the inflammatory language. Ms. James’ lawsuit is frivolous — a mere publicity stunt.
If she can make the Empire State into a living hell for beef producers, she can do it to any other industry. Her politically motivated legal attacks will scare companies out of New York. Your business or job could be next.
Already, Ms. James has used the powers of her office to go after President Trump and the National Rifle Association. Now she’s targeting a beef producer. What’s next? Furriers, car dealerships, Big Pharma, pro-life groups, friends of Israel, companies that donate to Republicans?
Most of Ms. James’ 38-page legal complaint is a rant against beef, not JBS specifically. “Beef has the highest total greenhouse gas emissions of any major food commodity, and beef production is linked to large-scale deforestation, especially in the Amazon rainforest.”
New York is a long way from the Brazilian rainforests or even JBS’s American operations in Colorado. So how does she justify a New York lawsuit? She accuses JBS of fraud for telling New York consumers that the company aspires to be “Net Zero by 2040.”
The fraud charge is ridiculous. Labelling chuck steak as filet mignon would be fraud because it would misrepresent the product being sold. But saying you aspire to be net zero 20 years from now is not fraud.
Half the world’s 2,000 largest publicly listed corporations state that they aspire to be net zero by 2040, but very few have concrete plans on how to get there, according to Net Zero Tracker. The technology hasn’t been developed to do it affordably. An aspiration is not a legal commitment.
The complaint makes clear that Ms. James’ goal isn’t to get JBS to refine its advertising. She wants to put beef producers out of business.
Citing a United Nations report, Ms. James argues that reducing emissions “cannot be eliminated through existing or anticipated technology. Instead, scientists point to the need to reduce production of and demand for ruminant meat, including beef.”
Ms. James complains that “the JBS group plans to do the opposite. The JBS Group forecasts increased demand for its products over the coming decades, and it intends to meet that demand.”
So what is JBS’s crime? Growing, instead of caving to the Left and closing down.
Ms. James’ lawsuit is a warning to businesses not to expect impartial justice. She’s targeting the politically disfavored for extinction. It will mean publicity for her but millions of dollars in defense costs for her victims.
Where is the New York State Bar Association, which pledges to uphold the integrity of our legal system and discipline lawyers who bring frivolous lawsuits?
Rule 3.1 of the bar association’s Code of Conduct defines a frivolous lawsuit as one having “no reasonable purpose except to harass or maliciously injure.” That’s the JBS lawsuit to a tee. Shame on the NYSBA for lacking the spine to denounce it.
Since 2019, hundreds of businesses, including major financial institutions, have fled New York because of high taxes, regulations and crime. Ms. James’ legal vendettas will turn the business community’s exodus into a stampede.
Meanwhile, the city is suffering a surge in pedestrian assaults, subways attacks and retail theft. Instead of suing JBS, MS. James should be calling for the repeal of the state’s insane bail “reform” and the removal of pro-criminal district attorneys like Alvin Bragg.
Can Ms. James be removed from office? Technically, yes — by a two-thirds vote of the state senate, on the recommendation of the governor. But in New York’s one-party rule, that won’t happen.
It’s up to the legal community to stand up to Ms. James and demand the impartial, apolitical administration of justice. Without it, New York’s economy cannot survive.
Summary
After watching her incessant witchhunts through the last decade or so, it is plain to me that Letitia James is on a personal quest that she has committed her life to complete. Her ethnicity and gender — “Black” and “Female” — have opened numerous doors for her inside one of the nation’s most powerful Democrat bureaucracies that receives permanent cover from the far left New York State and New York City governments — including law enforcement. New York’s legislative operation is certainly leftist-controlled. Put those facts on one side of the equation we’re discussing and one more important item and you have “probably” solved the problem of “Why is she doing this?”
She has created the perfect storm: for Trump and every other target she “identifies.” And Alexander the Great could not have done a better job creating a perpetual atmosphere of anger, hatred, lust for power and control over every aspect of each of her target’s lives.
Can I state “absolutely” that these are THE driving causes of her consuming purpose of destruction?
Here’s all I know for certain regarding matters like these: “If it quacks and waddles it, almost always, is a duck.”
Knowing that, logic demands putting those “probabilities” pieces mentioned above together with my South Louisiana statement above to compute an answer.
But there could be even more to the fuel lighting her fire. What about money?
I Timothy 6:10 — The love of money is the root of all evil.
Throw that scripture into the equation and it all makes perfect sense!
