For months, high-ranking officials in the Trump administration have accused several of the president’s enemies of mortgage fraud. The two-count indictment of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, is the first of those allegations to appear in the form of criminal charges.
The indictment refers to a home Ms. James purchased in Norfolk, Va., in 2020. It accuses her of having said in loan documents that she would use the home as a secondary residence but instead used the home as a rental property. That, they say, violated her mortgage agreement — which barred her from renting the property — and allowed her to receive favorable loan terms.
The first count of the indictment accuses Ms. James of committing bank fraud by seeking to defraud two financial institutions — OVM Financial and First Savings Bank. The second accuses her of making false statements to OVM Financial.
By misrepresenting how she would use the home, the indictment says, Ms. James stands to save about $19,000 over the life of the loan.
In a statement, the U.S. attorney who secured the indictment — a former personal lawyer to President Trump — said that the charges represented “intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust.”
In a statement, Ms. James, who has long been one of Mr. Trump’s foremost adversaries, called the indictment “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.” She called the charges “baseless.”
The case was initiated in April after Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department related to homes that Ms. James bought in Norfolk, Va., in 2023, and in New York City decades ago.
But the house the indictment focuses on was not included in that referral. That house, also in Norfolk, was purchased in 2020.
Ms. James and her lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, who have defended paperwork related to the 2023 Norfolk house in detail, have yet to discuss the 2020 purchase, in part because it was not previously known that prosecutors were scrutinizing that loan.
Still, career federal prosecutors in Virginia found little evidence to indicate Ms. James knowingly misled banks or was dishonest in her loan paperwork, according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Lowell said Thursday evening that he was “deeply concerned that this case is driven by President Trump’s desire for revenge.”
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in the New York region for The Times. He is focused on political influence and its effect on the rule of law in the area’s federal and state courts.
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