A prosecutor installed by Donald Trump may have been able to secure an indictment against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, but actually obtaining a conviction may be an uphill battle, legal experts say.
Even before a grand jury handed down the indictment on Thursday, there was already deep skepticism about possible charges. Career prosecutors in the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of Virginia had looked at accusations James committed mortgage fraud and concluded there was no probable cause to charge the case. Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s handpicked interim US attorney, nonetheless went ahead and presented the case to the grand jury. Her decision to do so reportedly caught top justice department officials off-guard.
