When it comes to challenging the Trump Administration in court, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen is taking caution in choosing which legal challenges he will lead.
“We are not going to launch frivolous lawsuits,” said Jepsen in an interview with the New Haven Register”™s editorial board. “We will pick our battles with care.”
Jepsen criticized Trump domestic policies as a “full frontal assault … on virtually every aspect of life,” yet he expressed an unwillingness to be in the forefront of every legal effort to confront the president. He explained his reticence in taking command of the challenge to the ban against travelers from seven majority Muslim countries, claiming it would have taken time for the state to make a case for direct impact because Connecticut does not have an international border. Instead, Jepsen signed a friend of the court brief ”“ the U.S. District Court in Seattle blocked the travel ban and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.
Instead, Jepsen is now front and center in joining 39 fellow state attorneys general into an investigation of the generic drug industry, which he claimed is engaged in “systematic and pervasive price fixing.” And suing the financial services industry has also proved profitable for Jepsen: his office”™s lawsuits against Royal Bank of Scotland”™s pre-2008 underwriting of mortgage-backed securities and Moody”™s Investors Services problematic ratings of pre-2008 securities resulted in settlements that brought the state $120 million and $30 million, respectively.
“You have to pick your battles in this business,” Jepsen said.
