Ambition drove Trump prosecutor's raid on political opponent: Report

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department recently targeted a powerful Virginia Democrat — but one expert worries that the Democratic Party will not be the primary casualty of this prosecution.

“[MS NOW’s Carol] Leonnig also reports that Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance lawyer who Trump illegally attempted to install as the top federal prosecutor in eastern Virginia, pressured prosecutors to bring charges against Lucas prior to the midterm elections, believing that ‘it would be good for the White House to be able, before the midterms, to accuse a prominent state Democrat in Virginia with bribery,’” wrote Vox's legal reporter Ian Millhiser on Thursday. Millhiser, who noted that the Justice Department claims to have been investigating Lucas for allegedly soliciting and accepting bribes since President Joe Biden’s administration, added that the charges against her may have at least some merit.

Yet even if the charges against her are valid, Millhiser pointed out that the charge appears to be politically motivated. It follows Trump pursuing ultimately-failed cases against other political opponents like New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.

“The raid targeted state Sen. Louise Lucas, the 82-year-old president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate, who is nationally prominent for two reasons,” Millhiser explained. “Lucas was the driving force behind the 10-1 Democratic congressional map that Virginia recently enacted to retaliate against similarly biased Republican maps drawn by red states. She’s also a pugnacious tweeter who gleefully mocks her political opponents online. After her congressional maps became law, Lucas posted an AI image of four incumbent Republican members of Congress working at McDonald’s.”

Given that Trump recently fired his previous attorney general, Pam Bondi, for failing to successfully prosecute his political enemies, Millhiser speculated that the questionable circumstances surrounding the Lucas case have larger ramifications.

“One other factor looming over the Lucas raid is that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was formerly one of Trump’s personal lawyers, has not yet locked down his job,” Millhiser wrote. “Blanche is the Senate-confirmed deputy attorney general, which means that he runs the DOJ unless and until the Senate confirms a permanent leader to replace Bondi, who Trump removed last month. Bondi was reportedly fired because Trump felt that she was ineffective in targeting his political foes.”

In light of the pressures on Blanche and Trump’s own history of political prosecutions, Millhiser speculated that it will be much harder for the administration to obtain a conviction against Lucas.

“When prosecutors run a media campaign against a criminal defendant, that shifts the conversation about whether that defendant is guilty or innocent from a courtroom, where there are procedural rules and clear jury instructions, to a public forum where potential jurors may draw unpredictable conclusions,” Millhiser said. “That’s doubly true when the defendant is someone like Lucas, who is more than capable of pushing her own opposing narrative to the press. And it is triply true when the defendant is a prominent political opponent of the prosecutor’s boss.”

He added, “By politicizing the Lucas investigation, in other words, the Justice Department tainted its jury pool. If Lucas is eventually arrested and brought to trial, prosecutors are going to have a tough time finding jurors who haven’t been exposed to media reports suggesting that the prosecution is a sham brought for an improper political purpose.”

One sign of the seemingly political nature of the Lucas prosecution is that Fox News broadcasted the fact of the FBI’s raid on Lucas’ office immediately.

"I will say. Some pretty remarkable instincts by Fox News to have its London correspondent placed in Portsmouth, Virginia right in time for the FBI raid of Louise Lucas," Bulwark reporter Sam Stein noted at the time.

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