During the October 6, 2025, episode of Deadline: White House on MSNBC, 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, a prosecutor’s duty is to seek justice, not merely convictions, and to act impartially rather than target specific individuals. By publicly promising to “sue Trump,” James blurred that ethical line and signaled bias before ever taking office.
From 2019 to 2023, James oversaw a sweeping investigation into the Trump Organization and its executives, including Donald Trump and members of his family. In September 2022, she filed a civil fraud lawsuit seeking at least $250 million in penalties and remedies that could effectively dismantle the company’s New York operations — an extraordinarily severe action announced just weeks before the 2022 midterms.
The lawsuit was civil, not criminal, yet it sought to bar Trump and his family from all New York business dealings and to dissolve their company entirely — penalties legal analysts called “extraordinary” for a civil case because such sweeping remedies are almost never pursued outside criminal court.
Legal commentators described her demands as unusually broad for a civil action, while Trump’s attorneys called the probe a politically motivated “fishing expedition.
When MSNBC’s Mary McCord dismissed the case against James as “so weak,” she ignored the clear conflict of interest and history of political targeting. McCord 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.
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 prosecutors “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.