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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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So, my debut post. I've been lurking here for some time and I have decided to experiment with some public posting.

The culture war issue on my mind is the federal prosecution of NY State AG Letitia James. A summary, from my perspective:

  1. She more or less campaigned for office with "Get Trump!" as one of her campaign promises.

  2. Upon taking office, she and her team went through some of Trump's deals for the purpose of looking for grounds to pursue a claim against him.

  3. She and her team discovered that in one of his real estate deals, he had supplied arguably exaggerated figures for property he had used as collateral for a loan.

  4. The State of New York sued Trump in the general trial court making use of a consumer fraud statute which, until then, had been mainly used against businesses that take advantage of individual consumers (i.e. not deals between sophisticated businesses). This consumer fraud statute did not require proof of damages, which was helpful to the AG's efforts since Trump and his organization had paid the loan back in full and with interest.

  5. The trial court awarded a judgment against Trump for hundreds of millions of dollars, a judgment which was later reversed on appeal.

  6. This lawsuit had been one of numerous other "Get Trump!" legal activities, civil and criminal, in multiple jurisdictions.

  7. After Trump was re-elected, a Trump loyalist with access to federal home loan files went through Letitia James' files and discovered arguable fraudulent statements in her mortgage applications for certain properties. Letitia James was referred for possible prosecution and ultimately indicted for bank fraud.

  8. Normally in situations like this, the mortgage applicant is not prosecuted. Rather, they are required to pay the higher interest rates which would would have been required had the application been completed accurately.


Personally, my reaction to this series of events is one of satisfaction. I was outraged by the lawfare campaign against Trump and it seemed to me that AG James activities were an abuse of her office. The prosecution of James strikes me as a reasonable tit-for-tat, necessary to deter the Blue Tribe from future abuses. The most charitable interpretation I can think of with respect to these lawsuits is that they are a form of "Nazi punching," i.e. the idea that if you are dealing with genocidal psychopaths, it's reasonable to oppose them By Any Means Necessary. But of course, as others have pointed out here, when you combine (1) it's okay to punch Nazis; and (2) my out-group are, generally speaking, led by Nazis, the net result falls somewhere between "counterproductive" and "civil war."

What's also interesting to me is that for the most part, the media coverage has downplayed points 1-6 from above even to the extent of completely ignoring them in certain cases, giving the impression that Trump is just gratuitously using the justice system to target his political enemies. (Yes, this is the "boo outgroup" part of my post.)

So this brings me to my main question: What will happen next? Given that the Blue Tribe members (apparently) feel that they are the victims of a vicious unprovoked lawfare attack, will they decide to retaliate at the next opportunity? Are we about to enter an era where every outgoing president preemptively pardons himself and all of his associates; conservative businessmen with political aspirations avoid contact with New York and California; and liberal businessmen similarly avoid Florida and Texas? Probably this is an exaggeration, but I would guess that the Blue Tribe is thirsty for revenge and I could easily see this lawfare business escalating.

A secondary question: Perhaps, much like the mainstream media, I am omitting important context from my summary. Are there additional facts I should consider which would (or should) change the way I see this lawfare business? In one article I read (I think it was the New York Times) the point was made that the fraud alleged against Trump was much bigger than that alleged against Letitia James. But to me, this does not seem like an important distinction because the key similarity is that in both cases, it seems that the authorities chose a target for political reasons and then went looking for arguable wrongdoing by that person. (As opposed to starting with the wrongdoing and then looking to see who was responsible.)

A secondary question: Perhaps, much like the mainstream media, I am omitting important context from my summary. Are there additional facts I should consider which would (or should) change the way I see this lawfare business?

The critical point you are ignoring is that Trump was guilty, but James appears to be innocent. The behaviour she has been indicted for is applying for a mortgage on the basis that the house on Peronne Avenue would be a secondary residence when she was in fact intending to rent it out. James claims that she allowed a family member to live in the house in exchange for a small contribution to utilities and maintenance, and that she accurately described her plans to the bank. If James is telling the truth, then no crime. The evidence that would allow me to determine who is telling the truth here is not public, but we do know that the career AUSAs assigned to prosecute the case declined to do so, and that the Trump-appointed US Attorney resigned rather than overruling them.

AFAIK, no President of the United States has previously ordered the malicious prosecution of someone they should have known was innocent.

Normally in situations like this, the mortgage applicant is not prosecuted.

As an entirely separate point, this is a problem. Primary residence fraud is not victimless - among other things it defeats the homeownership-promotion mission of Fannie and Freddie. But because it is almost never prosecuted it appears to be common.

The critical point you are ignoring is that Trump was guilty, but James appears to be innocent. The behaviour she has been indicted for is applying for a mortgage on the basis that the house on Peronne Avenue would be a secondary residence when she was in fact intending to rent it out. James claims that she allowed a family member to live in the house in exchange for a small contribution to utilities and maintenance, and that she accurately described her plans to the bank

Here are some excerpts from the indictment document:

The loan was originated by OVM Financial under a signed Second Home Rider, which required JAMES, as the sole borrower to occupy and use the property as her secondary residence, and prohibited its use as a timesharing or other shared ownership arrangement or agreement that requires her to either rent the property or give any other person any control over the occupancy or use of the property.

JAMES' Universal Property application for homeowners' insurance indicated "owner-occupied non-seasonal use," further misrepresenting the intended use of the property.

So my first question to you is this: Do you accept that these are substantially accurate descriptions of the documents that James signed?

James claims that she allowed a family member to live in the house in exchange for a small contribution to utilities and maintenance and that she accurately described her plans to the bank

AFAIK, no President of the United States has previously ordered the malicious prosecution of someone they should have known was innocent.

This raises a couple questions:

  1. So in your view, it doesn't count as "renting" if you allow a family member to live in a property in exchange for a modest, below-market payment?

  2. Do you normally assign a person's self-serving uncorroborated claims regarding their alleged wrongdoing enough credibility to conclude that the person "appears" to be or is "known" to be innocent?

  1. Given the wording of the rider, the question isn't "does it count as renting?". it is "did James intend to give her relative the rights of a long-term tenant, including the legal right to exclude James from her own home?" If the amount of money is as James said it was (<$5000 over a multi-year period) that is more consistent with "no - James intended to grant her relative a license" than "yes - James intended to grant a legally binding tenancy at a soft rent". The Fannie/Freddie guidance on occupancy types explicitly says that the receipt of rent is not sufficient to disqualify a property from second home status.
  2. I don't consider James' statements to be uncorroborated. There are documents. I haven't seen them, but the career prosecutors and Trump-appointed US Attorney who have think the case is not prosecutable. That strongly suggests that the statements are corroborated, and we will get to see the corroborating evidence if there is a trial.

The other point is that this was economically a second home transaction, not an investment - James's motives for buying the house and allowing her relative to live in it were personal and not commercial, and she was paying the mortgage out of her own resources, not the rent. The business reason for charging a higher interest rate on investment mortgages than second homes is that

  • investment borrowers are relying on rental income to pay the mortgage (and the way they are underwritten reflects this) and can therefore be forced into a foreclosure situation by a long void period or non-paying tenant.
  • investment borrowers have no non-financial stake in the property and are therefore more likely to walk away from an underwater mortgage even if they could pay.

The first of these is the key one - in the UK you get "second home" pricing on a mortgage if you can qualify based on non-rental income, regardless of who is occupying the property. This doesn't change the fact that James is guilty if she misrepresented her plans for occupancy, but it is relevant to the plausibility of her story that she was honest about what she was doing with the lender and they agreed to underwrite the loan as a second home anyway.

Given the wording of the rider, the question isn't "does it count as renting?". it is "did James intend to give her relative the rights of a long-term tenant, including the legal right to exclude James from her own home?"

I tend to disagree with this. The documents apparently includes the following language:

Borrower will keep the Property available primarily as a residence for Borrower’s personal use and enjoyment for at least one year after the date of this Security Instrument, unless Lender otherwise agrees in writing

It seems to me that allowing others to be the primary occupants of the house is not consistent with this language.

I don't consider James' statements to be uncorroborated. There are documents. I haven't seen them, but the career prosecutors and Trump-appointed US Attorney who have think the case is not prosecutable. That strongly suggests that the statements are corroborated, and we will get to see the corroborating evidence if there is a trial.

So if I understand you correctly, your argument is as follows:

  1. A career prosecutor and a Trump appointee declined to pursue the case.

  2. It follows that those officials determined that the case was meritless.

  3. If the case is meritless, it's because there is corroborating evidence for James' claims about the intended use of the property.

Does that pretty much sum up your argument?

Also, I had a couple other questions:

Regarding Trump's alleged wrongdoing in the civil case against him, you said:

which you or I would be prosecuted for in the unlikely event that we (a) did it and (b) got caught.

Are you able to identify 2 or 3 precedents for similar legal proceedings against ordinary citizens from the last 20 or 30 years?

Also, you said this:

The federal and Georgia election-related cases and the documents case were prosecutions for egregious wrongdoing of which Trump was unquestionably guilty

Of these cases, which would you say was the most egregious case with the most unquestionable guilt? I am asking because I would like to look at it more carefully.

Not the OP, though I'll tag @MadMonzer, but I am an attorney and there are a few things here that we need to clear up. There are three categories of mortgages: Primary residence, second home, and investment. We can forget about primary residence since nobody is claiming that this was a primary residence. The question we are therefore dealing with is whether this is a second home or an investment property; there are no other categories available.

Primary residences get the most favorable treatment. Correspondingly, the most common type of mortgage occupancy fraud is mischaracterizing an investment property as a primary residence. Second homes carry higher interest rates than primary residences; if you fall on hard times you're going to prioritize keeping a roof over your head over making payments on the ski condo. Investment properties traditionally carried even higher interest rates (note the past tense) because, as investments, the borrower's ability to repay is often contingent on the success of the business. The disadvantage of the higher interest rates and down payments was offset by the ability to use projected income off the property to qualify for the loan. The risk to banks of mischaracterizing an investment property as a primary residence or second home was that the bank wouldn't be properly pricing in the additional risk profile of the borrower, who may be able to afford the property on paper but may in fact be relying on rental income to make the payments.

Keeping that in mind, there are two critical weaknesses to the prosecution's case. The first is that they have to prove that James knowingly and intentionally made a misrepresentation to bank officials. The only evidence they have of this is her signature on a boilerplate rider that was signed at the closing along with a sheaf of other documents. Anyone who has ever purchased a home, including the people who will be on the jury, knows that the documents you sign are selected by the bank based on their understanding of the situation. The borrower isn't drafting these things themself and presenting them to the bank as representations. They are simply memorializations of what is already understood. In other words, everyone on the jury is going to understand that the bank included that rider based on conversations they had with James regarding the use of the property.

If have read that the investigators uncovered witnesses who corroborate James's story that she was forthright about what she wanted to do with the property. Unless the prosecution can produce someone from the bank who is willing to testify otherwise, this case is dead in the water, and even if they do produce such a witness, it muddies the waters but doesn't necessarily mean there's enough to convict. One guy who doesn't remember something that five other people remember isn't going to move the needle much, unless that one guy was in a better position to know. I haven't been able to find details about this evidence, so tke this with a grain of salt, but assuming it does exist, it more or less ends the prosecution right there unless they have something big.

Even without this evidence, though, the case still isn't a slam dunk. Fraud is unusual in the criminal world in that the intent requirements are very specific, and honest mistake is a defense. If nothing was said about the use of the property other than the signed rider, and the decision to use that particular rider was entirely on James, she could credibly argue that she didn't represent the property as an investment property because it wasn't an investment property and was never intended to be. This is supported by the evidence, considering that her proceeds from the deal have thus far amounted to $1,300 in 2020 and nothing since.

But even going beyond that, if we assume that indeed she did intentionally make a misrepresentation to the bank, for it to be fraud that misrepresentation has to be material. Say you're buying a used car from a private seller. Certain things would be material to your decision to purchase: Age, mileage, accident history, repair history, etc. Suppose the seller claims he drove it cross-country last year and everything went well, and you found out later that this was a lie. He may have intentionally lied to you in order to mislead you into believing that the car was more reliable than he had any reason to believe it was, but if this statement didn't influence your decision to buy the car, there's no fraud. The upshot for James is that she doesn't even need witnesses to remember conversations from five years ago, only witnesses who will testify that if they had known about her true intentions at the time it wouldn't have changed anything.

There's another aspect to materiality that goes to a similar defense; while showing lack of financial benefit isn't a great defense in the sense that it doesn't negate an element of the offense, juries in general are unlikely to convict for fraud if the alleged perpetrator didn't benefit from the lie, or if the benefit was minimal. The two benefits one gets from classifying a property as a second home as opposed to an investment property are a reduced down payment requirement and reduced interest rates. The reduced down payment isn't a factor here because James put the same amount down as she would have on an investment property. The only possible motivating factor was the reduced interest rate. A representative for the bank told investigators that had the property been classified as an investment it would have increased the interest rate by a quarter point to a half point. One thing that hasn't been covered much, though, is how little money is involved. This house sold for $137,500. She put 20% down. Classifying it as an investment property would have cost James an extra $15–$30/month. These are not exactly the kinds of benefits one typically makes intentional misrepresentations over.

The Justice Department tried to dress this up as best they could and claimed that she defrauded the bank out of more than $17,000 over the 30-year life of the loan, but this is disingenuous. First, they didn't like the number the guy from the bank she actually used gave them, so they got another expert to testify to the grand jury that the rate increase would be closer to 0.8%. Then rather than use an average length that one would expect her to own the property, they assumed that she would live to age 92 and wouldn't sell, die, refinance, or pay off the mortgage in the meantime. They also assumed that a dollar in 2050 would be worth the same as a dollar in 2020; they should have applied a discount rate based on expected inflation.

All of that is before we even get to whether she violated the terms of the rider itself, which it is not clear that she did. The first thing the rider requires is "Borrower must occupy and use the Property as Borrower’s second home." Unfortunately, neither the rider nor the Federal mortgage regulations define any of the operative words including "occupy", "use", and "second home". A gander of the 1983 edition of Black's Law Dictionary in my office doesn't define "second home" but defines "occupy" and "use" in general terms suggesting some sort of control but without imposing any specific requirements that would be relevant here. Luckily, we can look at the rest of the language to get some clues as to what this means.

The next section states "Borrower will maintain exclusive control over the occupancy of the Property, including short-term rentals, and will not subject the Property to any timesharing or other shared ownership arrangement or to any rental pool or agreement that requires Borrower either to rent the Property or give a management firm or any other person or entity any control over the occupancy or use of the Property". Now we're getting somewhere! I flesh this out in another comment, but if you've ever rented a vacation property, you probably haven't dealt with the owner directly. The way this is typically done is the owner enters a management contract with a rental company that handles the business end of things including marketing, payments, repairs, cleaning, booking, etc. in exchange for a hefty percentage of the rental price. They aren't going to enter such a contract without access to the most profitable days in peak season, so the owner's ability to use the property himself under these contracts is often limited to a couple selected weeks during the offseason.

A guy I went to law school with bought such a property near a lake that he let the group I was with stay in for free a couple times for bachelor parties. By "free" I mean that he charged us $500/night; he wasn't getting anything himself, but there was a minimum "friends and family" rate that the rental company required him to charge to cover the costs of having the house occupied. Everything was still handled through the rental company, even though we knew the owner. In other words, the type of occupancy the clause requires is more of a constructive occupancy than a physical presence. James did not delegate the rental of the property to a third party; any agreement she made was directly with the occupant. She had control over whether her grandniece could stay there. People elsewhere have mentioned that the occupant was subject to eviction laws, but this isn't dispositive. While eviction proceedings can be drawn out, the arrangement James had was a tenancy at suffarance under Virginia law (no written agreement, no rent paid), and the tenant was only due three days notice.

The relevant part of the clause concludes "Borrower will keep the Property available primarily as a residence for Borrower’s personal use and enjoyment for at least one year after the date of this Security Instrument...." Again, we have language that implies a requirement of control, not of actual possession. There is no requirement of any particular personal use, only that the property is kept available for such use. Aside from the minimal three day notice requirement mentioned above, there is nothing that would have precluded James from using the property while her grandniece was living there. When a landlord and tenant enter into a normal lease, the lease typically precludes the landlord from entering the property except in specific situations; he can come in if he needs to fix something, but not just to hang out. People living in the homes of relatives for free without written lease agreements do not enjoy these same privileges. Ask any 23-year-old who moved back in with his parents after college if he can limit their use of the property. Even if they spend most of the time at their condo in Myrtle Beach.

Even still, several witnesses told investigators that James did use the property when visiting family in Virginia, though she did not stay at the house overnight. Prosecutors seized on this as evidence that she did not occupy the property, but this is a rather specious argument. It's already ambiguous at best whether the language in the rider actually requires the borrower to be present on the property at all. But they want to read into the statute a requirement that a certain number of overnight stays are required. They also want to extend the damage period to the entire 30 year term of the mortgage, even though the restrictions are only in operation for one year, consistent with the idea that someone relying on rental income wouldn't be able to afford to wait a year before leasing the property. the $17,000+ they want to claim she defrauded the bank of goes down to $10,800 if you use the bank's actual high-end numbers, which goes down to $5,400 if you use the bank's actual low-end numbers, which goes down to $800 when you realize that they can only claim the first year of payments as damages (the math is goofy since the amortization schedules are front-loaded).

As for how this compares to Trump, he was charged with hundreds of instances of misstating property values to obtain favorable mortgage terms. Yes, there's some uncertainty with regard to valuations, but he did stuff like inflate square footage and factor in potential development that was prohibited by deed restrictions. And this wasn't a one-time occurrence but a pattern of behavior that went on over years. He saved hundreds of millions of dollars in interest fees. And with his organizations going into bankruptcy six times over the years, he wasn't exactly a low-risk borrower. The fact that he made intentional misrepresentations of material facts in order to achieve a significant financial benefit was undisputed, even by his supporters. The argument was simply that because he paid the money back, no harm, no foul. Well, notice that in the preceding 2,000 words I made no mention at all of the fact that James (presumably) paid the money back according to the terms of the loan. I don't even know if she did, because it isn't relevant. And neither is the fact that this isn't usually prosecuted, another typical Trump defense line.

One final thing I would caution. Remember how back at the beginning I said that the past tense was important? Well, that's because second home mortgages don't get preferable treatment anymore as compared to investment properties. It used to be that using a rental company was the only way to consistently guarantee short-term rental income, and their use was barred by the rider, and a contract with one significantly curtailed the owner's rights to control the property. Then Airbnb came along, and it quickly became relatively easy for the aspiring investor to get significant short-term rental income while maintaining control of the property. Since Airbnb doesn't really have to do anything other than act as a marketing platform and handle payments, they aren't going to insist on a great deal of control. If you only want to rent the place out for a few weeks in the shoulder months, that's okay. If you decide after the first rental that allowing strangers on your property isn't for you, that's okay. Listing your second home on Airbnb didn't violate any explicit prohibitions. But banks weren't stupid, and realized that the opportunity afforded by the short-term rental platforms greatly increased the number of people who were interested in "second homes". The upshot was that when it becomes hard to tell who is relying on rental income and who isn't, everyone pays the higher rates, and the advantage of a second home classification disappears.

If the prosecution's interpretation wins the day, the Democrats can easily take this ball and run with it. The practice of buying Airbnbs for investment purposes and getting second home mortgages on them was widespread between 2019 and 2022, when banks raised second home rates to curtail the practice. Such fraud was much more apparent and easy to prove than whatever it is they're accusing James of, and it shouldn't be too hard for FHFA to cross-reference a list of second home mortgages with a list of Republican donors from swing states and swing districts. You can argue that James's suit against Trump was politically motivated, but at least she had the courtesy to pick something that only a guy like Trump would be guilty of. Trump just gave a future Democratic administration license to run roughshod over a not-insignificant percentage of the donor base. Claim it's politically motivated. Claim a huge scandal. Fine. James is doing the same thing and it's getting her nowhere; only vindication that she didn't violate any actual laws will get her off the hook. My reaction to such a series of events would be one of satisfaction. If Republicans want to pretend that this is actually a Serious Crime that needs to be prosecuted, then their own tribe can pay the price for their indiscretions. The Republicans can feel free to do the same once they get back in power, except the statute of limitations will be up by that point on the period where misclassification made sense. I guess you can't win them all.

The first is that they have to prove that James knowingly and intentionally made a misrepresentation to bank officials.

if we assume that indeed she did intentionally make a misrepresentation to the bank, for it to be fraud that misrepresentation has to be material.

but if this statement didn't influence your decision to buy the car, there's no fraud

I was skeptical of these claims, so I looked up the statutes involved (18 USC Section 1344 and 18 USC Section 1014).

First, it seems that for both of these statutes, the applicable mens rea requirement is "knowingly" -- not "knowingly and intentionally"

Second, I searched for pattern jury instructions from the 4th Circuit. I found South Carolina (which is obviously not Virginia) but I doubt there's much of a difference. Here are some excerpts from the jury instructions:

Materiality is not an element of 1014.

Intent to deceive is irrelevant. The only specific intent that matters is the intent to influence the bank’s actions.

Reliance is not an essential element of 1014.

https://www.scd.uscourts.gov/pji/patternjuryinstructions.pdf

Would you agree that these pattern jury instructions seem to contradict your claims, as an attorney?

If have read that the investigators uncovered witnesses who corroborate James's story that she was forthright about what she wanted to do with the property

I am curious about this, would you mind providing a link?

she could credibly argue that she didn't represent the property as an investment property because it wasn't an investment property and was never intended to be

As a side note, I am really curious to see whether James claimed tax benefits as though the property were an investment property.

Aside from the minimal three day notice requirement mentioned above, there is nothing that would have precluded James from using the property while her grandniece was living there.

Perhaps, but if James visited sporadically while someone else lived there on a continual basis, that's not "available primarily as a residence for Borrower’s personal use and enjoyment" The house is primarily available for some other use, agreed?

I made no mention at all of the fact that James (presumably) paid the money back according to the terms of the loan.

Well do you agree that she received more favorable terms than she would have if the property had been categorized as an investment?

Trump just gave a future Democratic administration license to run roughshod over a not-insignificant percentage of the donor base.

If by "license" you mean that future Democrats will feel justified in escalating further, then yes, that's a valid concern. Although in practice, I would imagine that they would primarily target leaders on the other side. But yeah, that's part of what was so troubling about James' activities. They invite reprisal, which invites further reprisal, and so on.

I guess you can't win them all.

Agreed, although you can almost always find SOMETHING to use against someone.

I'd suggest a possible alternative reason for why prosecutors might want to avoid prosecuting James regardless of the merit of the case: the standard that it establishes exposes them. James is a prosecutor. You're a prosecutor. James did politically motivated prosecutions of your boss. Your boss asks you to prosecute her in retaliation. What's gonna happen to you in 4-8-12 years when the political pendulum swings? You've just walked directly in front of the crosshairs. In contrast, you know your boss' reputation, if you refuse he'll fire you, he might badmouth you a bit, but if you lay low and shut your mouth afterwards, he's not gonna come after you.

What do you think this is?

Democrats laughed and applauded when Barak Obama "joked" on late nite TV about sicing the FBI and IRS on his critics, and dismissed the scandal as a "nothingburger" when it was revealed that he wasn't joking.

While a lot of Trump's supporters wanted to see Clinton, Comey and a lot of other senior Democrats prosecuted, Trump notably did not do this in his first term.

Democrats subsequently elected Letitia James, in part, on the premise that politically motivated prosecutions are a good thing that America needs more of.

Letitia James and her defenders are like an adult dog that was never house broken. They are never going to learn that what they have done is wrong if you don't grab them by the scruff of the neck and shove their face in it.

The Democrats as a people need to be taught that politically motivated prosecutions are going to blow-back on them in 4-8-12 years when the political pendulum swings, and that is what the Republicans are currently doing.

Yeah, but by asking them to be the instrument to teach this lesson, you're asking a lot personally from Republican-aligned prosecutors, you're asking them to make themselves a named, direct target for the next cycle. You're asking them to stand up to draw enemy fire. James probably felt safe because she thought that Trump would not come back and that the next Republican administration will want to distance themselves from Trump and so they wouldn't retaliate on his behalf. But I don't think any Republican-aligned prosecutor can feel quite so confident that the Democrats are not going to get back into power before this fades from memory, and that they will not be in a revanchist mood.

... there's a fun story from the criminal justice sphere, and by fun I mean incredibly depressing.

It's an old Freakanomics bit that drug dealers don't actually make that much money, but despite being in Freakonomics, it's actually true. The distribution agents and runners make peanuts, even mid-level dealers that handle a lot of cash end up spending a lot of that to replace stock, and you have to get real close to the top of the chain to break into high five figures or low six. Now, admittedly, that's tax-free and you don't have to deal with McDonald's customers, but there's a whole new level of problem when 'can't leave work at work' goes from late-night on-call to slightly more energetic concerns, whether from police or from other criminals.

Why would people accept a risk of 45 calibre wakeup calls for less than they could make sllepping fries ends up one of the big driving questions for criminology, and unfortunately there's a ton of different partially-right answers : lack of access to conventional employment, cycles of poverty, casual users making a little bit of money on the side, yada yada.

If you ask the actual people, though, a very common answer (especially once you get away from the casual users) is that they don't plan to stay at the entry-level. After all, it's not like the people at the top now have been there very long, and turnover for the mid-levels is often ridiculous. They're always hiring!

It seems stupid, from the outside view. They're jumping to get into the shoes of imprisoned (or dead) men, with at most vague motions about how they won't step into whatever trap got the immediate previous owner and not the thirty other previous owners. Maybe it is stupid.

They're still always hiring.

This does indeed seem to be a plausible description of the thought process of these prosecutors.

If I, as a citizen, believe that this is in fact the calculus being performed by members of the executive branch, what conclusions should I draw?

More comments

While a lot of Trump's supporters wanted to see Clinton, Comey and a lot of other senior Democrats prosecuted, Trump notably did not do this in his first term.

Trump 1 was plagued with people who didn't want to do what Trump said. He fought with Sessions trying to get him to do it and gave up after managing to get Sessions out. He said on Nov 2, 2017

“Hopefully they are doing something,” Trump said of the Justice Department probing Clinton during a radio interview with host Larry O’Connor on Washington’s WMAL. “At some point maybe we’re going to all have it out.”

“The saddest thing is, because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved in the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved in the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing and I’m very frustrated by it,” he continued.

I'd suggest a possible alternative reason for why prosecutors might want to avoid prosecuting James regardless of the merit of the case: the standard that it establishes exposes them. James is a prosecutor. You're a prosecutor. James did politically motivated prosecutions of your boss. Your boss asks you to prosecute her in retaliation. What's gonna happen to you in 4-8-12 years when the political pendulum swings? You've just walked directly in front of the crosshairs. In contrast, you know your boss' reputation, if you refuse he'll fire you, he might badmouth you a bit, but if you lay low and shut your mouth afterwards, he's not gonna come after you.

I agree that's a possibility. Another possibility is that the prosecutor simply thinks it's abuse of office to engage in politically-motivated retaliation. Even if the prosecution is in retaliation for something that itself was abusive.

Also, even if the prosecutor is not worried about being brought up on trumped-up charges down the road, he still might worry about damage to his reputation. It's very common for former federal prosecutors to end up with high-paying jobs at fancy law firms. Having been the person who prosecuted Letitia James would probably mean having to write off the possibility of future employment at 70-80% of BigLaw type firms. Perhaps more.

There's also the part where lawfare works better when the target of it actually commits a crime. It's admittedly early to tell, but Comey's trial might not go so well for the administration.

A prosecutor's job is to score a conviction. Imagine you're a prosecutor, and your boss tells you you're required to stand in front of a judge being berated because the point was just to harass a guy.