New York Attorney General Letitia James has found herself in the same pot she tried to boil President Donald Trump in just one year ago. And while she still has the bulk of the left-wing media apparatus on her side, it appears the law is not.
A federal criminal indictment was unsealed Oct. 9 in the Eastern District of Virginia, revealing that a federal grand jury had charged James with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. The case mirrors elements of James’s own civil suit against Trump, where she accused him of similar misrepresentations to secure better terms.
When James won the civil fraud lawsuit against Trump in which she alleged a decade-long pattern of fraudulent business practices under New York’s Executive Law Section 63(12), the media praised James, often highlighting her strategic handling and substantial evidence in the case.
CBS News legal expert Rikki Klieman described the February 2024 verdict as a “huge win” for James, adding that she is the person who “absolutely got this started.”
“This is a huge win for Letitia James. You have to remember, she is the one who, in fact, absolutely got this started, that she is the person who, as I said on the day that this was filed, she dared, absolutely dared, the district attorney in New York, Alvin Bragg, to go forward with a prosecution which he had declined to do,” Klieman said. “And so she wins. Anybody who says, well, she didn’t get it all, she got so much of it all. She is definitely going to be someone who can celebrate tonight.”
“This is a huge win for Letitia James.” CBS News legal expert @rikkijklieman says the verdict in the Trump civil trial is a “win” for New York AG Letitia James, who pushed DA Alvin Bragg to move forward with the prosecution of the former president. https://t.co/USKycZ7efM pic.twitter.com/B7aG3RYgA0
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 16, 2024
Political strategist Reecie Colbert told the publication TheGrio in March 2024 that James was the real winner in the case against Trump.
“There’s a certain poetic justice to a Black woman exposing a criminal, degenerate former president as being a complete fraud,” Colbert said.
“She really fearlessly went after Donald Trump, and she did it methodically, and she did it in a way that made her case unimpeachable. That’s why she got this massive victory,” Colbert added.
Even Democratic Senate Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries showed his support for James in a November 2024 X post, urging people to “[b]ack up off of her.”
“Attorney General Tish James is an intelligent, strong and principled public servant who I have known for decades,” he said, adding, “Back up off of her.”
Attorney General Tish James is an intelligent, strong and principled public servant who I have known for decades.
Back up off of her.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) November 9, 2024
The charges against James stem from her 2020 purchase of $109,600 three-bedroom home in Norfolk, Virginia, where she allegedly misrepresented the property as her primary or secondary residence on loan applications to secure a lower interest rate and better terms, but instead used it as a rental property. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
The indictment claims James signed a “Second Home Rider” agreement, stating that the Virginia home would serve as her secondary residence, which would qualify her for a lower 3% interest rate. In August 2020, 30-year investment property mortgage rates ranged from 3.5% to 3.75% for single-family homes. Prosecutors accuse James of violating the terms of her mortgage agreement by using it as a rental property, renting it to a family of three. The alleged misrepresentation allowed her to save approximately $18,933 over the life of the loan.
In April, the Daily Caller News Foundation visited the property highlighted in the indictment and found that James did not appear to be a resident.
Legal commentator Jonathan Turley, on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” discussed the allegations in court documents Thursday. He implied that if the false primary residence claims and other misstatements are proven, they clearly violate laws against misleading financial institutions, adding that the case is “perfectly crushing” considering the irony of the lawsuit she brought against Trump. (ROOKE: Democrats Can’t Stop Admitting Their Foot Soldiers Are Out Of Control)
“This is a person who prosecuted Trump for everything short of ripping a label off a mattress, and among the charges that were brought in New York, in not just the civil but the criminal case, was making false or misleading statements to financial institutions,” Turley said. “As for James, if we apply the Letitia James standard that she created, there’d be little question here. This seems pretty straightforward.”
Turley added that the “documents themselves are quite damning.”
This must be a hard fall for someone like James. Her own words from February 2024 about Trump’s case are especially damning, considering her indictment.
When powerful people cheat to get better loans, it comes at the expense of hardworking people.
Everyday Americans cannot lie to a bank to get a mortgage, and if they did, our government would throw the book at them.
There simply cannot be different rules for different people.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) February 16, 2024
“When powerful people cheat to get better loans, it comes at the expense of hardworking people,” she wrote. “Everyday Americans cannot lie to a bank to get a mortgage, and if they did, our government would throw the book at them. There simply cannot be different rules for different people.”
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