Trump legal bid to stymie investigation

In the lawsuit, filed two weeks after Ms James requested that Mr Trump sit for a January 7 deposition, Trump alleges that the investigation has violated his constitutional rights in a “thinly-veiled effort to publicly malign Trump and his associates”.

“Her mission is guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent,” the former president’s lawyers wrote in the suit.

Mr Trump, a Republican, seeks a permanent injunction barring Ms James, a Democrat, from investigating him and a declaratory judgment stating that she has violated his rights.

Messages seeking comment were left with Ms James’s office and Mr Trump’s lawyers. News of the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Albany, was first reported by The New York Times.

Ms James has spent more than two years looking at whether the former president’s company, the Trump Organisation, misled banks or tax officials about the value of assets – inflating them to gain favourable loan terms or minimising them to reap tax savings.

Ms James’s investigators last year interviewed one of Mr Trump’s sons, Eric Trump, who is an executive of the company, as part of the investigation.

Her office went to court to enforce a subpoena on the younger Mr Trump and a judge forced him to testify after his lawyers abruptly cancelled a previously scheduled deposition.

Ms James’s request for the former president’s testimony, first reported on December 9, was the first step in a process that will now probably lead to issuing a subpoena and going to a judge to order him to cooperate if he were to refuse.