During Nicolle Wallace’s MSNBC panel on October 6, 2025, former DOJ official Mary McCord claimed the evidence against New York Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James is so weak that prosecutors probably don’t think that she did anything wrong.
But the facts tell a very different story — one that shows a clear pattern of political bias and weaponization of power.
Letitia James built her entire campaign around her promise to “sue” Donald Trump.
In a 2018 interview with NBC New York, James declared:
“We’re going to definitely sue him. We’re going to be a real pain in the ass. He’s going to know my name personally.”
That wasn’t a neutral promise to uphold the law; it was a vow to target one individual — revealing political intent before any investigation ever began.
According to the American Bar Association’s Standard 3-1.2, prosecutors are required to act impartially and seek justice, not to preselect targets. By publicly pledging to “sue” Trump, James crossed that ethical line before she was even sworn in, undermining the credibility of her future investigations.
Her actions as Attorney General only reinforced that bias.
From 2019 to 2023, James oversaw a sweeping investigation into the Trump Organization, targeting Trump, his family, and their businesses. In September 2022, she filed a $250 million civil fraud lawsuit seeking to dismantle Trump’s company entirely — an extraordinarily severe remedy timed suspiciously with the 2022 midterms.
Legal analysts, including those cited by The Wall Street Journal (October 4, 2022), described her demands as “unprecedented” for a civil case, while Trump’s attorneys called the probe a politically motivated “fishing expedition.”
When MSNBC’s Mary McCord now dismisses the case against James as “so weak,” she conveniently ignores this pattern of behavior and the clear conflict of interest it exposes. She said during the segment:
“Some of the people who stayed obviously could stay through a certain amount of things that they might not have been that comfortable with. But they all have a red line, and I applaud the prosecutors saying, this is my red line, and I am not going to go in and seek an indictment when I know the evidence is insufficient. It’s not just that they know the evidence is insufficient, it could, well, be at least based on Carolyn and Ken’s amazing reporting about the investigation of Tish James that they actually — it’s not just insufficient. Like, they probably don’t think that she did anything wrong because the evidence is so weak there.”
That quote says it all.
Even when confronted with an investigation into Letitia James, MSNBC’s panel dismissed it outright — as if a Democrat abusing her power couldn’t possibly happen, and without even bothering to investigate or show the other side.
But the facts are clear: James ran for office promising to “get Trump,” then used the full weight of her office to make it happen.
That’s political targeting — not prosecution.
Imagine if a Republican attorney general campaigned on “taking down Joe Biden” and then spent years using the power of their office to go after him and his family. MSNBC would call it an abuse of power — the kind of authoritarian behavior they’d label fascism. But when Letitia James does it, they call it justice.
Mary McCord says they don’t think she did anything wrong. But the wrongdoing is right there in her own campaign tape — proof that speaks for itself.
Letitia James weaponized her office, violated public trust, and turned law enforcement into partisan warfare.