Maeve Bidonde, Staff Writer
On Thursday, New York State Attorney General Letitia James was indicted by US Attorney Lindsay Halligan, whom President Trump picked to secure such an indictment after US Attorney General Pam Bondi and several other attorneys refused to do it. James was indicted on two charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The indictment comes during the Justice Department’s mass charge pursuits against political opponents of Trump.
A statement obtained by CNN Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin said that, “As a matter of law, we will not discuss any grand jury matters with the media, but this Justice Department is united as one team in our mission to make America safe again and the attorney general, deputy attorney general, along with the entire team at Main Justice continue to empower our US attorneys to pursue justice in every case.”
Last month Trump demanded that the Justice Department find a way to charge his political rivals, including James. Trump pushed out a US Attorney who seemed resistant to the idea and replaced him with Halligan who used to be Trump’s personal lawyer, and she was the one to sign the indictment. The indictment states that James took out a $109,600 loan in August of 2020 for a house in Norfolk Virginia. According to The New York Times, the terms of the loan say that James was to use the house as a second residence, but it says that she never used the house herself, but she instead rented the residence.
The indictment also states that the misrepresentation gave James lower interest rates and a higher seller credit from the bank than they do for investment properties, and she would have saved $18,933 throughout the duration of the loan. James referred to the indictment as “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system” and said she would “fight these baseless charges aggressively.” Mortgage Fraud is rarely prosecuted at the federal level and, when it was, the 38 perpetrators in 2024 had fraudulent amounts over $550,000 and were sentenced accordingly.
Additionally, James had been previously investigated but cleared of all wrongdoing due to a misdone document. William J. Pute, another Trump loyalist who heads the Federal Housing Committee, was sifting through documents to find charges to levy against political rivals and referred James because of paperwork issues with two other properties. One such issue included a property she purchased in 2023 with her niece saying she would be the primary resident. James’s lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, fought back with a detailed defense accusing Pute of purposely cherry picking a single form that incorrectly stated that James would be the primary resident and leaving out the other two documents that said that James’ niece would be the primary resident of the property. The Justice Department has yet to touch the referral, but the property they’re using for the current charges was not mentioned by Pute’s referral or Lowell’s rebuttal.
After the indictment was announced, Lowell came forward saying they will “fight these charges in every process allowed in the law,” and that, “We are deeply concerned that this case is driven by President Trump’s desire for revenge.” The statute of limitations does not pose an issue as normally federal crimes cannot be charged more than five years after the incident happened, but Congress made 10-year exceptions, and the charges levied against James fall into the exceptions.
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