The judge dismisses Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Attorney General Letitia James and allows the investigation to continue in New York

In a 43-page ruling, US District Judge Brenda Sannes said she based her decision on case law that prevents federal judges from interfering in state-level investigations in most cases.

Sannes’ ruling came a day after a New York City appeals court ruled Trump must answer questions under oath in James’ investigation, upholding a lower court ruling that ordered him to answer for testimony.

“In a major victory, a federal court dismissed Donald Trump’s baseless lawsuit to stop my office’s investigation into his financial dealings and those of the Trump Organization,” James said in a tweet. “Careless lawsuits will not prevent us from completing our lawful, legitimate investigations.”

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Trump sued James in December shortly after she issued a subpoena for his testimony, resorting to a well-known but rarely successful strategy to end the three-year investigation.

Through his attorneys, the former Republican president claimed the investigation was political in nature and that James, a Democrat, violated his constitutional rights to make “a thinly veiled attempt to publicly slander Trump and his associates.”

James responded that Trump’s lawsuit was a sudden “collateral attack” on their investigation and that there was no legal basis for it and no evidence to support his claim that the investigation was purely political.

At a May 13 hearing that triggered Sannes’ decision on Friday, a lawyer for James’ office said the investigation was being dropped and that evidence from it could support legal action against the former president, his firm, or both.

Counsel, Andrew Amer, said “there is clearly a substantial body of evidence that may support the filing of enforcement proceedings has been accumulated,” although a final decision on filing such a lawsuit has not yet been made.

Amer, a special litigation attorney in James’ office, said the office is “nearing the end” of the civil investigation, which James said has uncovered evidence that Trump’s companies were depreciating the value of assets like skyscrapers and golf courses in financial statements for more than a misrepresented decade.