Letitia James has been charged with bank fraud after a lengthy legal battle between the New York Attorney General and the Department of Justice alongside President Donald Trump.
“No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust,” said Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan regarding the indictment
New York Attorney General James has called the charges “baseless” and Trump’s motivations a “grave violation of our constitutional order”.
She added: “This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General,” said James on Thursday. “The president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.”
The charges allege that James made false statements to a financial institution when applying for a mortgage in 2020 for a property in Virginia.
Prosecutors allege that James was granted the mortgage for the property under the condition that the three-bedroom house be used as a secondary residence. Instead, James rented the property to a family.
“This misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties,” the indictment reads.
The Virginia court says that if convicted, James could face up to 30 years in prison for each of the two charges, as well as up to $1 million in fines for each.
Halligan was appointed in late September as the district’s head attorney by the President in September after the Trump Administration put increasing pressure on predecessor Erik Siebert to be removed from the role.
Siebert, a long-standing lawyer and prosecutor, had told senior Department of Justice officials that there was not sufficient evidence to charge James over fraud allegations before his resignation, the New York Times reported.
James called Trump’s pressure on Siebert to resign and subsequently appointed Halligan in his place as “antithetical to the bedrock principles of our country,” on Thursday.
The New York Attorney General has long been targeted by the Trump Administration since she won a New York Supreme Court case against the President in 2024. Trump was found to have provided misleading accounts to lenders, falsely inflating his net worth.
“Donald Trump is finally facing accountability for his lying, cheating, and staggering fraud. Because no matter how big, rich, or powerful you think you are, no one is above the law,” said James in reaction to the ruling in February of last year.
Justice Arthur F. Engoron ordered Trump alongside his sons Eric and Donald Jr. among other defendants to pay $450 million, as well as barring the family from being officers or directors for any New York company for 2-3 years.
The New York Attorney General defended her legal battle against the President, saying on Thursday: “I stand strongly behind my office’s litigation against the Trump Organization. We conducted a two-year investigation based on the facts and evidence – not politics.”
James’ lawyer, Abbe Lowell, denied the charges according to The Associated Press.
“We are deeply concerned that this case is driven by President Trump’s desire for revenge,” Lowell said in a statement.
“When a President can publicly direct charges to be filed against someone — when it was reported that career attorneys concluded none were warranted — it marks a serious attack on the rule of law. We will fight these charges in every process allowed in the law.”
James is set to make an initial appearance in relation to the indictment in federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, on October 24.
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