A Virginia-based federal grand jury has charged New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) with mortgage fraud, weeks after President Donald Trump demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi push Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to target her for prosecution.
James’s office had sued Trump while he was a private citizen between his two presidential terms, alleging that his company had committed fraud while he was running for office in 2016. She has been a frequent subject of Trump’s ire since then, most recently in September, when Trump posted a message on Truth Social directing Bondi to go after James and a number of other figures he perceives as political opponents.
This week, it was revealed that the Truth Social post was actually meant to be a private message from Trump to Bondi.
James faces charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. In a statement immediately after the charges were announced, James denounced the investigation as being politically motivated.
“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system,” James said in a video message on X. “He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.”
“I am not fearful — I am fearless,” James added. “We will fight these baseless charges aggressively.”
Detailed evidence demonstrating that James supposedly defrauded financial institutions has not been made public. However, the case has garnered great scrutiny, as the charges only came about after Trump forced former United States Attorney Erik Siebert out of his position at the Eastern District of Virginia. Trump replaced Siebert with his former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, who has never worked a case as a federal prosecutor.
Siebert reportedly refused to prosecute the case due to weak evidence after overseeing the investigation since May, according to sources with knowledge of his thinking.
The charges come as Trump’s DOJ has also issued dubious charges against his former FBI director James Comey. Charges against more of Trump’s political opponents are rumored to be coming soon, including against his former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton and current Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), who prosecuted one of the impeachment trials against Trump.
The DOJ is alleging that, while purchasing a home, James marked on a form for a loan that she intended it to be a primary residence, rather than an investment property. This gave her a better mortgage rate than if she were renting the property to someone else, which she ended up doing for her niece.
But James has provided evidence that she had checked the box on the form as a mistake — indeed, in an email to her loan originator, she made it very clear she didn’t intend the property to be for herself.
“This property WILL NOT be my primary residence,” she wrote in the email.
James checked another box on a separate form stating the same thing — that the residence would not be a primary one.
A number of lawmakers and advocates have condemned the Trump administration for targeting James.
“This is what tyranny looks like,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) said in a Facebook post. “President Trump is using the Justice Department as his personal attack dog, targeting Attorney General Tish James for the ‘crime’ of prosecuting him for fraud — and winning.”
“This isn’t justice. It’s revenge. And it should horrify every American who believes no one is above the law,” Schumer added.
Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila, co-directors of the New York chapter of the Working Families Party, also panned the charges.
“This indictment is nothing more than a politically motivated attack by Trump’s Justice Department aimed at intimidating a Black woman who dares to hold Trump accountable,” the two wrote in a joint statement.
Earlier this week, when charges against James seemed imminent, Molly Roberts, senior editor at Lawfare, came to the same conclusion.
Let’s assume for a moment that prosecutors have James dead to rights on one or more of these charges. Even then, this is not the kind of mortgage fraud case federal prosecutors normally bring. U.S. attorneys offices typically prosecute mortgage fraud cases to nab big-time swindlers attempting to trick banks into six- to eight-figure losses. If Letitia James had committed mortgage fraud, her efforts would have yielded her only thousands of dollars — tens of thousands at most.
“The only world in which James’s activities would merit this level of attention is the political one,” Roberts added.
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