{"id":17379,"date":"2025-10-26T16:05:39","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T16:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/17379\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T16:05:39","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T16:05:39","slug":"trump-target-will-use-maga-beauty-queen-to-get-case-dropped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/17379\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Target Will Use MAGA Beauty Queen to Get Case Dropped"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Attorney General Letitia James plans to argue in court that Donald Trump unlawfully appointed the prosecutor who obtained her indictment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

James\u2019 lawyers, in a court filing Thursday obtained by Reuters<\/a>, told the judge in the case the charges against her should be dropped due to the circumstances of Lindsey Halligan\u2019s appointment as U.S. Attorney in Eastern Virginia.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/p>\n

James said the charges against her are \u201cbaseless,\u201d and that the indictment is \u201cnothing more than a continuation of the president\u2019s desperate weaponization of our justice system.\u201d \/ Pacific Press \/ Pacific Press\/LightRocket via Ge<\/p>\n

James, who is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a bank over a mortgage on a second property of hers in Norfolk, Virginia, is scheduled to be arraigned there on Friday. She has denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump appointed Halligan, a 36-year-old former personal attorney of his and Miss Colorado beauty pageant contestant, to her role after federal prosecutors felt investigations into James and former FBI Director James Comey hadn\u2019t resulted in enough evidence to secure a conviction.<\/p>\n

The 79-year-old president, who has publicly stated<\/a> his desire to target each, pushed<\/a> those<\/a> prosecutors out and brought in Halligan.<\/p>\n

\"Halligan's<\/p>\n

Halligan’s appointment was unlawful, Comey and James are both arguing. \/ MARCO BELLO \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Halligan, who didn\u2019t have any prosecutorial experience upon her appointment, was not joined by any other prosecutors when she presented the investigations into James and Comey to a grand jury.<\/p>\n

Comey was indicted last month on the charge of making a false statement and obstructing Congress. He too is challenging the legality of Halligan\u2019s appointment.<\/p>\n

James\u2019 attorneys on Thursday made other comments about Halligan. In the court filing, they requested that Halligan\u2014or any other prosecutor who joins the case\u2014be appropriately punished for making statements about the case outside the court and legal filings.<\/p>\n

On Monday, a reporter for Lawfare described<\/a> a series of messages she had received from Halligan in which the Trump appointee criticized her social media posts about the James case. Halligan tried to claim\u2014after the fact\u2014that her messages were all off the record.<\/p>\n

The Daily Beast has reached out to the DOJ and James\u2019 office for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York Attorney General Letitia James plans to argue in court that Donald Trump unlawfully appointed the prosecutor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[12127,153,2842,398,2853,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-17379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-court-filing","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-james-comey","11":"tag-letitia-james","12":"tag-lindsey-halligan","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-queens","17":"tag-queens-headlines","18":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}