For the third time this week, the president is railing against New York State Attorney General Letitia James. It seems like no matter what Trump does, though, his zingers just aren’t landing. This time, Trump complained to the press pool that James’ campaign while running for New York Attorney General was “illegal.” Trump wrote, “She campaigned on, ‘I’m gonna get Trump, I’m gonna get Trump.’ She never knew me, I never met her, I don’t know who she is. But her whole campaign was that — and that’s illegal, you’re not allowed to do that, she knew nothing about me.”
Reactions to Trump’s claims have been swift and merciless.
New York State, generally — and Letitia James specifically — have been on Trump’s mind quite a lot this week. Trump’s comments to reporters Friday came in the wake of recent Twitter-feuding between POTUS and James. Much of what Trump’s railed against in a series of anti-New York tweets, however, is demonstrably false. Noteworthy among those falsehoods is Trump’s claim that New York’s efforts to take down his foundation have been, “going on for years, originally brought by Crooked Hillary’s Campaign Chair, A.G. Eric Schneiderman, until forced to resign for abuse against women.”
Schneiderman was in fact not Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair (that was John Podesta). Schneiderman was on Clinton’s “New York Leadership Council” — but so were over 100 other people. While we’re on the topic of who did what, plans to investigate and potentially prosecute Donald Trump hardly originated with Letitia James. James’ predecessor, Barbara Underwood, was quite public about her plans to take down the Trumps for state-level wrongdoing when the time was right. The New York State Legislature even amended its laws to ensure Trump could be prosecuted for state-level offenses even after escaping (or being pardoned for) federal ones.
Some have speculated that Trump’s recent fixation on James stems from advance knowledge of impending charges about to come his way from New York State.
While Trump may only have just recently become familiar with Tish James, the rest of New York has known her for quite a while.
[Image via MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images]