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CNN’s Anderson Cooper acknowledged that it was “not a great look” for New York Attorney General Letitia James to threaten to sue President Donald Trump after she was elected in 2018.
“According to PolitiFact, the day after she was elected in 2018, Letitia James was asked by a community activist if she was going to sue President Trump. And she replied, quote, ‘Oh, we’re going to definitely sue him. We’re going to be a real pain in the a–. He‘s going to know my name personally,’” Cooper recalled on Thursday.
“I mean, that’s not a great look for somebody who has just been elected, who has just been campaigning, who hasn’t even looked, I guess… deeply at any evidence,” he added.
NEW YORK AG LETITIA JAMES’ INDICTMENT SPARKS SHARP PARTISAN DIVIDE
CNN’s Anderson Cooper hosting “AC360” on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (Screenshot/CNN)
While CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin agreed that James’ 2018 comments were “inappropriate,” he argued that they were typical of “how our system works.”
“We live in a system where attorneys general and district attorneys in the United States — unlike almost any other country — are elected officials, are politicians, so they run for office making political statements. That’s how our system works,” he told Cooper. “It’s not pretty. I don’t think it’s a great system, but there’s nothing uncommon about it.”
Toobin added that just because James made “inappropriate comments” about the president doesn’t mean that she should “get indicted for fraud years later,” arguing that criminal cases are supposed to “stand or fall on their own merits.”
TURLEY HAILS TRUMP’S ‘TREMENDOUS VICTORY’ AFTER CIVIL FRAUD PENALTY TOSSED, BLASTS ‘GROTESQUE’ USE OF NY LAW
Cooper’s comments came during a broader discussion about James being indicted on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution by a federal grand jury on Wednesday.
New York Attorney General Letitia James hosts a town hall at SUNY Westchester Community College on May 8, 2025, in Valhalla, New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan said James faces up to 30 years in prison per count, up to a $1 million fine on each count and forfeiture if she’s convicted.
In a statement, James said the charges were part of President Donald Trump’s effort to impose “political retribution at any cost.”
“His decision to fire a United States Attorney who refused to bring charges against me — and replace them with someone who is blindly loyal not to the law, but to the president — is antithetical to the bedrock principles of our country,” James said. “This is the time for leaders on both sides of the aisle to speak out against this blatant perversion of our system of justice.”
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Earlier this year, the Justice Department opened an investigation into James for alleged mortgage fraud after James successfully won a civil case last year against Trump and his Trump Organization over allegations of faulty business practices.
President Donald Trump speaks to a gathering of top U.S. military commanders at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, in Quantico, Va. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)
Although James won the civil case against Trump, an appellate court in New York threw out the $500 million civil fraud penalty against the president in late August.
The New York Appellate Division overturned the penalty after ruling the disgorgement was an excessive fine that violated the Eighth Amendment.
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Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
