New York Attorney General Letitia James is not leaving it to chance that a federal judge will see Pam Bondi’s Justice Department the way she does. She just handed the court a legal cheat sheet spelling out why, in her view, Bondi’s team keeps getting smacked around in other courtrooms and should, once again, come up short.
In a notice of supplemental authority filed Tuesday, James essentially walked Senior U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield through a history of courtroom defeats tied to Bondi’s appointment power. The filing came ahead of a key hearing on whether to shut down grand jury subpoenas issued in a federal probe targeting James’ own investigations.
James told the judge the submission was for her “convenience,” but the subtext was anything but gentle. She pointed out that Bondi’s moves to install both interim and acting U.S. attorneys have been repeatedly rejected by other courts, and she argued that those same flaws should doom the latest effort by acting U.S. Attorney John Sarcone.
Per Law & Crime, the fight centers on Sarcone’s grand jury subpoenas demanding documents from James’ office. Federal prosecutors are digging into the New York attorney general’s investigations, including her civil fraud lawsuit against President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization and her separate case against the NRA. James wants the subpoenas thrown out.
Schofield, an Obama appointee, has set a hearing for 11 a.m. Thursday on James’ motion to quash. She has already made it clear what she wants to talk about. Oral arguments, she said, will be “limited to the issue of whether Mr. Sarcone’s allegedly improper appointment as Acting U.S. Attorney invalidates the subpoenas.”
James is betting that line of attack is her strongest weapon. Her new filing leans heavily on decisions where courts found Bondi’s appointment gymnastics did not pass legal muster, drawing a straight line between those defeats and Sarcone’s role in the current clash.
A federal judge dismissed criminal charges against two perceived adversaries of President Donald Trump, FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling the US attorney he hand picked to prosecute them was unlawfully appointed https://t.co/DDoy56yBTS pic.twitter.com/w7Yfs2s50B
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 24, 2025
In her earlier August motion to quash, James did not bother to hide what she thinks is really going on here. She described the subpoenas as an act of political payback, not a neutral inquiry. Her office, she argued, is being dragged into a federal grand jury because of who she has chosen to investigate and sue.
She said Sarcone’s document demands were little more than “revenge” and directly linked that motive to Trump’s fury over her legal hits on him and his allies. The subpoenas were issued, James wrote, “because the President is unhappy that [her office] successfully enforced the laws of the State of New York against him and his allies.”
By reminding Schofield that Bondi has, in James’ telling, already been told “no” multiple times on similar appointment issues, the New York AG is effectively saying the judge does not need to blaze a new trail. She is inviting the court to follow the same path and clip Sarcone’s wings.
For now, everything comes down to Thursday’s hearing, and to one narrow but explosive question. If the judge decides that Sarcone’s appointment was improper, his grand jury subpoenas could be tossed aside in one stroke, handing James a major victory and giving Bondi one more loss to add to the pile.
