We were dismayed by the omnibus lawsuit filed on Monday against the Trump administration by a coalition of 19 Democratic Attorneys General led by N.Y.’s AG Letitia James which seeks to block what they claim is the “unconstitutional and illegal dismantling” of the US Department of Health and Human Services through cuts in staff and public health grants.
According to the 101-page complaint filed in Rhode Island federal court, the cuts and reductions jeopardize congressionally mandated programs covering a broad range of services and therefore are, wholesale, sabotaging congressional decision-making. But once again Democratic elected officials – and most notably Ms. James of Trump Derangement Syndrome/lawfare fame–have merely demonstrated their disdain for election results.
While Ms. James and her cohort have taken some care to package their arguments in legalese, they are at base actually the stuff of traditional political campaigning. Contentions that laws enacted by Congress are being improperly implemented at the expense of the public are usually heard on the campaign trail in anticipation of the next election and not in a courtroom. So whether the Trump administration is in violation of federal laws should ordinarily be a matter for voters and not federal judges and juries.
Of course, given Donald Trump’s singular political odyssey, it should not be surprising that his political adversaries would turn to the courts as the forum of choice to determine the appropriateness of his conduct in presidential office whenever they can. In the past his political opponents have exploited ambiguities in law, and wildly prejudicial local judges and juries to conjure up legal actions designed to publicly disgrace him in the eyes of voters, break him financially and even take away his freedom. Indeed, those cases have drawn bizarre anti- Trump judicial rulings that have left almost all legal experts scratching their heads.
Nor has the avalanche of rogue legal actions ceased. According to Business Insider magazine Ms. James is on the frontlines of at least 15 legal actions brought by coalitions of Democratic AGs, all seeking to block executive orders and DOGE cuts. Plainly, she also seeks to use the courts to thwart President Trump’s anti-woke, leftist agenda–regardless of what the voters said.
Perhaps most revealing, she has also begun an inquiry into whether President Trump knowingly enabled insider trading when he flip-flopped on his tariff policies, causing enormous losses and then gains in the stock market. Apparently, AG James thinks that she has total discretion to look into presidential actions no matter how much they are grounded in his constitutional powers over economic policy.
Interestingly, the statute on which the inquiry is purportedly based is New York’s Martin Act, a 104-year-old law that gives state attorneys general extraordinary powers to police Wall Street. It allows the AG to issue subpoenas, grill suspects under oath, and file civil lawsuits or criminal charges. And while it covers securities and real estate frauds, is used only rarely for suspected insider trading, which is the illegal profiting from information about stocks not available the public.
However, legal experts and three veterans of the AGs office who have brought prosecutions under the Martin Act told Business Insider that they’ve never heard of it being used to investigate insider tips involving government policy, in this case, Trump’s on-and-off tariffs.
Ms. James has revealed that the primary reason ran for Attorney General was her desire to be in apposition to bring Donald Trump down and she did her best to do so, but failed to deny him reelection. And when he was, in fact, reelected, she invited her fellow Democratic elected officials to join her in an anti-Trump coalition. As of this writing, she hasn’t given up trying.
Indeed, she first announced her plans to sue the Trump Administration over its cutbacks at Health and Human Services last week at Rev Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and said at the time, “All of these funds and more, we’ve got to standup. And that’s why Democratic attorneys general will be joining me in filing this lawsuit in the coming days.”
Need there be anything more said about what drives New York’s chief legal officer?
