What Are We Investigating Adam Schiff And Tish James For Today?
Prosecuting Trump for fraud is violating his civil right to do fraud.
You have perhaps heard the expression, credited to Solomon Wachtler, the one-time chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, that prosecutors can get a jury to indict a ham sandwich if they so want.
But Wachtler coined that phrase 40 years ago, which means he never had to ponder a particular “what if.” Namely, what if the prosecutor is Ed Martin, the Trumpist lapdog who, as the (acting) United States Attorney for Washington DC, spent the first few months of the new administration sending insanely stupid letters threatening to investigate sitting Democratic members of Congress for such horrific crimes as calling Elon Musk a dick. Even though, objectively, Musk is a dick.
Martin was such a scumbag that even the Republican bootlickers in the Senate wouldn’t confirm him to be the permanent US Attorney. And, to borrow a phrase, those lickspittles would confirm a ham sandwich if Donald Trump so ordered.
To soften the blow of this rejection, Trump instead gave Martin three jobs in the Justice Department, as an Associate Deputy Attorney General, Pardon Attorney, and Director of the Weaponization Working Group. That last one is a fancy title for a job that basically consists of trying to prove that every paranoid talking point about an alleged “Deep State” persecuting poor Trump and his conservative brethren really happened. (Another title for this job could have been fiction writer.)
Coincidentally, none of these jobs required Senate confirmation, which is lucky for old Eagle Ed, because as we mentioned, galactic dislike of Ed Martin is one of the few issues these days on which there is bipartisan agreement in Congress.
Now US Attorney General Pam Bondi has given Martin a fourth job as a special attorney investigating New York state Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff of California for alleged mortgage fraud. It’s basically the sort of bullshit investigation that Martin is supposed to be investigating the Biden DOJ for running against Trump. The difference was that Trump did all that shit he was accused of doing, as multiple congressional investigations and jury trials revealed.
We’re not going to go deep into the details of the accusations against Schiff, but you can read about them here and here. The nutshell version is that the Federal Housing Finance Authority made a “Document Demand” from the government-backed Fannie Mae Crimes Unit for any documents regarding loans related to Schiff.
This led to an accusation that Schiff, a California senator who owns both a condo in Burbank and a house in suburban Maryland, had committed mortgage fraud by claiming both of those places as a primary residence at one time or another.
A memo from Fannie Mae describing its findings did not use the word “fraud” nor accuse Schiff of committing it. But it was enough of a pretext for Eagle Ed to convene a grand jury in Maryland to try and gin up some flimsy charges.
In other words, the government went on a fishing expedition against a legislator who has been a thorn in Trump’s side for years.
The accusations against Letitia James are even flimsier, and you can read Marcie’s rundown of exactly why right here. The short version is that James helped her niece buy a house in Virginia and her signature is on some documents. In Trumpland, this means she might have committed mortgage fraud despite her having told the mortgage broker, in writing, that the house would NOT be her primary residence, and she was simply a “non-occupying co-borrower.”
Again, this would seem to be clearly aboveboard. But Eagle Ed has convened a grand jury in Virginia to see if he can get an indictment. Or at least make Letitia James cough up her life savings for some lawyers.
Separately, the (acting) US Attorney for New York’s Northern District, John Sarconne III, is investigating James’s investigation of Trump for business fraud. Which, you will recall, led to some harsh punishments for Trump, including termination of Trump Organization business licenses and fines totaling north of half a billion dollars.
Sarconne and the DOJ allege that James prosecuting Trump violated his civil rights, which apparently include the right to commit fraud by lying about property valuations on loan documents for decades.
On the plus side, the DOJ has reportedly been having trouble returning indictments on charges filed against protesters arrested in Los Angeles this spring. Maybe the federal prosecutor in LA is really bad. Or maybe the ordinary citizens getting drafted to grand juries are angry and pushing back on the administration in one of the few tangible ways open to them. If so, we hope the grand juries of the East Coast are just as pissed off.
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The Edsel of our times. Or Ford Pinto.
"Cybertruck Leads Tesla’s Used-Car Collapse
Once hyped as the indestructible truck of the future, the sci-fi pickup is now leading a massive plunge in used Tesla values as the company grapples with the fallout from its CEO's politics."
https://gizmodo.com/cybertruck-leads-teslas-used-car-collapse-2000641133
First off, it's not a pickup truck. It's an uglified El Camino, which were cool. This monstrosity embodies UNcool. But the other part of the equation lies with Elon Musk, who pissed off the customer base, and, well, nearly everyone on the planet. So could have a really nice vehicle, but if you tick off everyone, nobody wants that car. Nobody wants a vehicle that causes people to stare at you as if you're carrying the Bubonic Plague, children to run to their mothers, dogs to bark at you, cats to hiss at you.
The Orange Oaf has so many Prostituting Attorneys.