'Doing the right and ethical thing': Top prosecutor bucks Trump's order to prosecute rival

A senior prosecutor in Virginia is reportedly preparing to decline a high-stakes directive to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), raising serious questions about political interference at the Justice Department.

MSNBC reported Monday that Elizabeth Yusi, who leads major criminal prosecutions in the Norfolk office of the Eastern District of Virginia, has privately informed colleagues she finds no probable cause to charge James with mortgage fraud.

According to the report, she intends to formalize this view and present her reasoning to the newly installed acting U.S. Attorney for that district, Lindsey Halligan.

Halligan, a former White House aide and private attorney, replaced Erik Siebert after President Donald Trump publicly called for his removal, an effort sparked by Siebert’s reluctance to bring charges against James and former FBI Director James Comey.

Within the Eastern District, prosecutors anticipate potential reprisals against Yusi for resisting political pressure to pursue the James case. According to the report, her colleagues fear she could be dismissed for insubordination.

Trump has publicly demanded that the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against James, even though long-serving prosecutors have concluded there is insufficient evidence to show that she lied or intended to lie in her mortgage application for her niece’s home, per the report.

In a post on his Truth Social platform Saturday, Trump called James “SCUM” and demanded she be removed as New York’s attorney general, citing what he characterized as her “WITCH HUNT against President Donald J. Trump, and others.”

Randall Eliason, former chief public corruption prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., told MSNBC: “This supervisor clearly is doing the right and ethical thing by refusing to bend her legal conclusions to fit the president’s desire for political retribution.“

Eliason added that career prosecutors are being "forced to choose between honoring their oaths and risking their livelihood" and "forced out by the president’s politicization of the Justice Department.’”