His Department Asked Two Grand Juries to Indict Her and Both Said No. His Line Is That Her Targets "Won't Get a Fair Shake."

The Cornell case got real reporting: a woman who told Cornell police for hours that she had been raped by five men in a fraternity house, a sworn summary that left her clearest sentence out, a Tompkins County DA who declined to charge anyone without ever interviewing her, and Executive Order No. 64 on the night of October 1 handing the case to the Attorney General. The President's reaction got real reporting too, as a feud item with a line about how the two have history. Put them together and the history is the point. In October 2025 Lindsey Halligan — a former White House aide, two weeks into an interim appointment, the only prosecutor in the room and the only signature on the paper — indicted James in Virginia over a Norfolk mortgage. A federal court threw it out because her appointment was unlawful. The Department went back twice; two grand juries of ordinary citizens returned no true bill. On December 12 the Department moved to seal the second refusal, on a filing carrying the Deputy Attorney General's name, and a magistrate judge refused because ABC had published it thirty-three minutes before the grand jury handed it up — "essentially futile." The one extended public test of whether Letitia James gets treated fairly, or gives it, ran in a courtroom and the government lost it twice. The appeal is still pending. He commented anyway, and nobody printed the docket next to the quote.