Letitia James indicted by federal grand jury in Virginia

State Attorney General Letitia James was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on Thursday afternoon on charges of mortgage fraud.

According to a copy of the federal indictment, James is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. She has been summoned to appear in a federal courthouse in Norfolk, Virginia on Oct. 24. 

“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system,” James said in a statement. “He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.”  

“These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost. The president’s actions are a grave violation of our Constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties,” she added.  

The case against James has been assigned to Judge Jamar K. Walker and referred to Magistrate Judge Douglas E. Miller, court records show. James is being represented by high-profile defense attorney Abbe Lowell.

The case stems from a $137,000 mortgage that James received on a Virginia home in 2020. The indictment alleges that James got a more favorable mortgage rate of 3% because she signed a “Second Home Rider,” which required her to use the property as a secondary residence, but she instead rented the property out to others, which meant that she should have paid a mortgage rate of 3.815%. According to the indictment, she saved a grand total of $18,933.

The U.S. Department of Justice may have other motivations for bringing this case than just recapturing the $19,000 difference between a secondary home mortgage and an investment property mortgage. 

President Donald Trump has repeatedly directed federal prosecutors to bring criminal charges against his political enemies – including James, who successfully sued Trump and his company for fraud in New York state court.

Erik Siebert, until recently the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned rather than bring charges against James and former FBI director James Comey. Trump named Lindsey Halligan, one of his former personal attorneys, to replace Siebert. Halligan personally presented the indictment against James to the grand jury.

Democratic elected officials were quick to defend James.

“New Yorkers know @NewYorkStateAG James for her integrity, her independence, and her relentless fight for justice,” Gov. Kathy Hochul posted on X after news of the indictment broke. “What we're seeing today is nothing less than the weaponization of the Justice Department to punish those who hold the powerful accountable.”

“No one should be surprised that Donald Trump is employing fascist tactics – prosecuting his opponents, weaponizing the federal government, and attacking the very fabric of our democracy. And Trump should not be surprised when millions of Americans stand up to his authoritarianism and his greed,” Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani said in a statement. “If Trump wants to leverage baseless charges to visit political retribution on New York’s Attorney General, he’ll have to go through New Yorkers first. The Attorney General has had our back, time and again. We have hers.”

At a hastily organized press conference outside City Hall, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander condemned the indictment.

“Everyone knows that this case is bullshit,” Lander said. “Donald Trump knows it, the federal prosecutor who refused to bring it as a charge knew it. The prosecutor who's bringing it tonight knows it. You know it. New Yorkers know it. Americans know it. There is nothing to this charge.”

“It's not that Donald Trump thinks that he can prove that there is, it's that Donald Trump thinks, because he's president, he could do whatever the hell he wants, put whoever in jail he wants, even though he knows it's false, and you know it's false, and that, my friends, is a democratic emergency,” he added.

For his part, Williams quoted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson on the danger of prosecutors abusing their discretion: “With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some law on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the condition of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it. It is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books or putting investigators to work to pin some offense on him.”

Williams said that the specific facts of the case involving James were almost irrelevant, since it is clear that Trump had ordered a criminal prosecution against her in retaliation for her winning a civil suit against him.

“Donald Trump has been very, very blatant about his goals to weaponize the federal government, weaponize the Department of Justice, weaponize everything at his hands against the people who have been brave enough to stand against him and stand up to him,” Williams said. “Now he's combed everything he can to try his best to invent reasons to come after the highest-ranking Black woman in the state where he was convicted of 34 felonies and civil fraud.”

Lander recalled that James was aware that Trump might try to retaliate against her, but she still made the brave decision to bring a lawsuit on behalf of the state of New York against him and his company. 

“Tish James knew the risk that she was taking when she brought that prosecution, and I, like many other people, said something to her at the time,” Lander said. “And when she says ‘without fear or favor,’ you know she means it. So to me, nobody has better modeled the courage to do their job in this dark time without fear for the consequences, but instead with loyalty to the people she was sworn to protect and our constitutional democracy than Tish James.