Source: NBC News
Shortly after her election in November, New York Attorney General Letitia James vowed to “use every area of the law” to probe President Donald Trump, his family and associates, and his business.
As the chief legal officer in a state with that provides her with sweeping investigatory and prosecutorial powers, she can keep that promise.
With special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe now complete, others’ investigations, including the New York attorney general’s, are continuing.
James recently subpoenaed Trump’s banks, seeking information about the Trump Organization and the president’s finances. Though Trump has dismissed these efforts as “presidential harassment” and
“There’s broad power — there’s no question,” Oliver Koppell, a Democrat who served as New York attorney general in 1994, told NBC News of the substantial authority and tools the office has to investigate and prosecute businesses for fraud.
The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.
March 13, 201907:22
New York law allows the attorney general to seek restitution and damages — and, in extreme cases, dissolution — if a business is found to have engaged in persistent fraud. There’s also the Martin Act, a 1921 statute designed to protect investors.
Past attorneys general have used the Martin Act, considered to be the U.S.’s toughest such state statute in this realm, to expand their powers in the financial crimes sector. The law empowers the attorney general to subpoena witnesses and documents for information pertaining to possible fraud.
“The Martin Act gives really broad powers,” said Dennis Vacco, a Republican who served as New York attorney general from 1995 to 1998. (Vacco declined to comment on whether Trump or associates have sought his legal counsel regarding this investigation.)
Vacco said the Martin Act is one of few in the nation that provides the attorney general with criminal investigative authority without having to first receive a referral from the governor or a state agency and he noted that a criminal prosecution often will start off as a civil investigation, which is what the Trump Organization is currently facing.
The statute “really does apply to almost any financial transaction in New York state,” he said.
Koppell said that it was former Democratic New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who served from 1999 to 2006, who wrote the modern playbook that James could follow. Spitzer “really kind of expanded the scope of attorney general work in the area of financial fraud,” Koppell said.
Spitzer, who later was elected governor only to resign amid a prostitution scandal in 2008, aggressively pursued white-collar crimes like securities fraud and used statutes such as…
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