New York Attorney General Letitia James is expected to plead not guilty Friday to allegations of mortgage fraud brought by the Justice Department amid President Donald Trump’s push to prosecute those who have investigated him.
James, the highest-ranking Democrat to be indicted as part of Trump’s effort, is scheduled to appear at an arraignment Friday morning in Norfolk federal court. The case has been randomly assigned to U.S. District Judge Jamar K. Walker, who was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden.
In addition to the expected not guilty plea, James’s lawyers said in a court filing Thursday evening that they plan to ask that the case against her be dismissed on the grounds that Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s appointee as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was appointed illegally.
The case against James has been troubled for months. Prosecutors in Virginia investigated a criminal referral made this spring by a Trump ally, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, who alleged that James had committed mortgage fraud in purchasing a Norfolk home.
After a grand jury in Norfolk issued subpoenas, the Eastern District prosecutors deemed the evidence too weak to seek criminal charges, The Washington Post has reported.
The Justice Department then fired several career prosecutors, just as Trump publicly called on social media for Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring criminal charges against James and other perceived enemies. Legal experts and retired judges have said using the criminal justice system to punish Trump’s perceived political foes marks an unprecedented attack on the rule of law.
“I look at the facts like everybody else. You read the facts, and to me she looks terrible, she looks like she’s very guilty, but that’s going to be up to the DOJ,” Trump told reporters last month about James.
James and former FBI director James B. Comey, who was indicted last month, have denied the charges against them as politically driven vendettas being carried out at the president’s behest. Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, who has since become a frequent critic of the president, made a similar claim of vindictiveness and pleaded not guilty last week to federal charges in Maryland that he mishandled classified records.
The Justice Department is currently investigating other officials who have drawn Trump’s ire, including Sen. Adam Schiff of California and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.
A grand jury indicted James this month on one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. The case centers on a three-bedroom home James purchased in Norfolk for about $137,000 in 2020.
According to the indictment, James signed a “second home rider” that provided more favourable terms on the home’s mortgage but required that she not rent the property to others. The indictment alleges that James instead put the property up for rent and stood to make more than $18,000 in “ill-gotten gains” over the life of the loan.
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Career prosecutors, including Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney Trump had installed for the Eastern District of Virginia in January, determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge James. Trump then forced out Siebert and replaced him with Halligan, a White House aide who had no experience as a prosecutor before she personally got grand juries to indict Comey and James.
“He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding – all because I did my job as the New York state attorney general,” James said in a video message responding to her indictment this month. “These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.”
James’s defense team is led by Abbe Lowell, a top Washington criminal defense lawyer. Halligan is prosecuting the case along with an assistant U.S. attorney, Roger Keller, who normally works in Missouri, according to court records.
James has been one of the president’s chief antagonists since her office filed civil fraud charges against Trump and his real estate organization in 2022, resulting in monetary penalties of more than $350 million. A New York appeals court voided the fine in August but affirmed a lower court’s finding that Trump and others in his company had committed fraud.
The Justice Department also has issued at least one subpoena to James in a separate federal investigation that appears to focus on whether Trump’s rights were violated as part of the civil fraud case. A second subpoena to the New York attorney general’s office indicates that the Justice Department is probing James’s high-profile litigation against the National Rifle Association, which led to court-mandated reforms of the gun rights group, The Post has reported.
