Judge Bars Prosecutor From Inquiry Into Letitia James, New York Attorney General

Ms. James, New York’s attorney general, had been seeking to block a Justice Department investigation into her office by challenging the legitimacy of the U.S. attorney, John A. Sarcone III.

A judge on Thursday barred the top federal prosecutor in Albany, N.Y., from any further involvement with a civil rights investigation into the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, in another setback for the Trump administration as it pursues Ms. James.

The prosecutor, John A. Sarcone III, can no longer lead the investigation after lawyers for Ms. James challenged the legitimacy of his appointment as they sought to quash subpoenas related to the matter, one of several inquiries that the Justice Department has mounted against the attorney general.

Mr. Sarcone, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, remains in charge of the office, though the decision by the judge, Lorna G. Schofield, opens the possibility that Mr. Sarcone could be completely removed from the post.

The civil rights investigation into Ms. James began in August when Mr. Sarcone sent her office a pair of subpoenas. One was related to a civil fraud case that Ms. James had brought against President Trump in which she sued him, accusing him of exaggerating his net worth to defraud lenders. The other subpoena was related to her office’s long-running case against the National Rifle Association.

Judge Schofield said in an order on Thursday that Mr. Sarcone “was not lawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney when the subpoenas were issued.”

The judge blocked the subpoenas, but said that the federal government could seek to reissue them “at the direction of a lawfully authorized attorney.”

Mr. Sarcone referred a reporter to the Justice Department’s press office in Washington when asked for comment.

“This Department of Justice will continue to fight and defend the president and the attorney general’s authority to appoint their U.S. attorneys,” said a department spokesman, Chad Gilmartin. He did not directly answer a question about whether the department was planning to appeal Judge Schofield’s ruling.

“This decision is an important win for the rule of law and we will continue to defend our office’s successful litigation from this administration’s political attacks,” a spokesman for Ms. James said.

The disqualification of Mr. Sarcone from the case is the second time in three months that a judge has found a U.S. attorney to have been illegitimately installed by the Trump administration, bypassing a Senate confirmation.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said that Judge Schofield had confirmed “what was obvious from the start.”

“The Trump administration tried to cut corners, ignore the law and bypass the Senate — and the court shut it down,” Mr. Schumer said.

The attorney general was indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia in October over bank fraud. She called the charges baseless and vowed to fight them. But the charges were thrown out when a judge found that the U.S. attorney in that district, Lindsey Halligan, had also been appointed invalidly. Since then, two grand juries have rejected proposed charges against Ms. James.

Though Ms. James did not explicitly pursue Mr. Sarcone’s removal from office, Judge Schofield’s ruling appears to open the door to him being disqualified in the same manner as Ms. Halligan and a number of other U.S. attorneys installed by the Trump administration.

“Mr. Sarcone is not lawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney,” the judge wrote. “Any of his past or future acts taken in that capacity are void or voidable as they would rest on authority Mr. Sarcone does not lawfully have.”

That conclusion could encourage defense lawyers in Mr. Sarcone’s district to challenge his legitimacy in seeking the dismissal of cases against their clients. Successful challenges of that type have been brought in New Jersey, Nevada, California and Virginia.

Judges in the Northern District declined to appoint Mr. Sarcone as permanent U.S. attorney after his interim status expired in July. He was then appointed as a “special attorney,” which the Justice Department claimed gave him the powers of a U.S. attorney indefinitely.

But arguments defending such maneuvers have fallen flat, as Judge Schofield noted in her Thursday order. “Since August 2025,” she wrote, “federal courts have uniformly held that these appointments are invalid.”

Mr. Sarcone has an unorthox background for a U.S. attorney and has had a similarly unusual tenure. He has no previous prosecutorial experience, and spent the early part of his appointment getting into scraps with reporters and the police.

The subpoenas to Ms. James’s office, which asked for an unusually broad amount of material, also requested that the responses be delivered to Mr. Sarcone personally.

Partially quoting another judge’s opinion, Judge Schofield said that grand juries were “‘not meant to be the private tool of a prosecutor,’ much less one who is not lawfully appointed.”

Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.

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