It’s a fact, beyond reasonable dispute, that Letitia James weaponized her official power as New York’s attorney general to pursue Donald Trump for political purposes. It’s equally clear that the Trump administration is now targeting James for payback. The downward spiral of prosecutorial retribution has begun, and there will be no winners.
James started it when she ran for New York AG and won in 2018 primarily on an explicit platform of Vote for me, fellow Resistance warriors, and I’ll nail Trump. James tweeted that, if elected, she would be “leading the resistance against Donald Trump in NYC.” She solicited campaign donations by vowing to take down the President. Before she had access to any evidence, James declared conclusively that Trump “engaged in a pattern and practice of money laundering” and “can be indicted for criminal offenses.” The day after she won office, still having seen no actual evidence, the new AG exulted, “We’re going to definitely sue him. We’re going to be a real pain in the ass. He’s going to know my name personally.” For what? Who knows. Just something.
James did sue Trump, of course, and won (for the moment). After a circuslike bench trial focused on Trump’s habitual overvaluation of his assets in bank loan applications, New York state judge Arthur Engoron found Trump civilly liable for fraud and slammed him with damages amounting to over $500 million, including mounting interest. During the trial, James made a series of wildly inappropriate out-of-court statements that would ordinarily get a prosecutor fired; at one point, she publicly branded Trump and his family members as liars, while they were testifying.
Despite the judge’s verdict, James’s theory of liability was so flimsy that it barely concealed her previously-acknowledged motivation to stick one to Trump by any means available. The purported fraud victims were multi-billion dollar banks who were repaid in full on their loans to the Trump Organization, and made millions in profits through interest payments. Unsurprisingly, a New York appellate division panel voiced pointed skepticism of James’s victim-less case and seems poised either to substantially reduce the verdict or to throw it out.
Just months after the verdict, Trump won the 2024 election – a result that was in some immeasurable but significant part a popular rejection of the overkill tactics deployed by James and other prosecutors who filed criminal charges against him. Before and after he won, Trump (like James) made no secret of his passion for bloodsport. He constantly vowed retribution on the campaign trail against his prosecutorial and judicial tormentors – including, by name, James and Engoron – and now his administration is working hard towards that ignoble goal.
On April 13, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump posited on social media that James was “a totally corrupt politician” and a “wacky crook.” The very next day, Trump-nominated Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte sent a formal referral letter to the Justice Department. Pulte wrote that, “Based on media reports, Ms. Letitia James has, in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.” White House advisor Stephen Miller offered an inflammatory take that paralleled James’s uninformed, conclusory declarations years before: “She is guilty of multiple, significant, serial criminal violations.”
Pulte’s allegations focus on two properties. First, he claims that in 2023, James bought a property in Virginia and falsely claimed in the paperwork that it would be her “primary residence,” which would result in lower interest rates. And, according to Pulte’s referral, James repeatedly certified falsely that a five-unit building she owns in Brooklyn contains only four units; certain favorable loans are available only to owners of buildings with four or fewer units.
James has denied wrongdoing. An AG’s office spokesperson called the investigation “weaponization” and declared that James “will not be intimidated by bullies – no matter who they are.” James herself publicly dismissed the allegations as “baseless.”
James’s personal attorney, Abbe Lowell (who has made a career representing high-profile political players, including Hunter Biden), offered an impassioned but nuanced response in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department. Lowell concedes that James’s paperwork did contain certain “mistaken” statements, but argues that they were both inadvertent and insignificant. Lowell explains that James was helping her niece buy the property in Virginia, and that James had made clear elsewhere in the paperwork that the home would not be her own primary residence. And Lowell notes that the property in Brooklyn was in fact used as a four-unit dwelling (not five) and that official City paperwork at certain points stated that the building had four units.
The FBI confirmed this week that they’re on the case. Director Kash Patel said during a Fox News interview (which apparently is how the administration now makes its formal announcements),“[T]his case, I can tell you, is being handled by our professional pros who are subject matter experts, reporting directly to [FBI] headquarters…” Well, then: our “professional pros.” They’ve got the heavy hitters on this one.
James has again displayed dubious ethical instincts in her response to the pending inquiry. She has inexplicably chosen to use the resources of her public office to respond to the investigation. James issued a statement through the AG’s official spokesperson, and she reportedly plans to use state funds to cover some of her legal expenses. This is a dreadful idea. By dragging the AG’s office into her personal mess, James has made some of her colleagues into potential witnesses, and subjected them to subpoenas. (Prosecutors might ask the AG’s spokesperson, for example, what James initially said about the allegations. There’s no privilege there.) And it’s unclear how the AG can justify using New York taxpayer money to fund her personal criminal defense.
I have no idea if James ultimately will find herself on the other side of an indictment. The former prosecutor in me sees Pulte’s allegations as something more than frivolous but decidedly less than compelling, at this point. Then again, Trump has openly pined for a payback prosecution, and it’s hard to envision Bondi and the Justice Department denying him the thrill of retribution in the name of measured prosecutorial discretion.
If the feds do indict James, they’re going to have a hellacious time convicting her. The evidence as we currently know it is decidedly mixed, whereas prosecutors must prove criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt. And James remains a popular political figure in New York who has twice been elected comfortably to statewide office as AG, in 2018 and 2022. It’ll be tough finding a jury willing to convict unanimously.
James was wrong to target Trump politically from her perch as AG. But that gives Trump no license to pay her back with an equally ill-motivated prosecution. Weaponization is no antidote to weaponization. James started this retributive mess, but this is no way to end it.
Elie misperceives the history. Trump’s publicly known fraud (overvalued real estate as loan collateral, and simultaneously undervalued for tax purposes) was a prize-winning column in the NY Times before Tish ran for office, and the prior AGs investigated, but didn’t push for an indictment. That was what was the basis of her campaign. The fraud yielded him favorable interest (which cost the banks) and lower taxes (costing the state and municipalities). Cheating to get better deals was not sharp business, but fraud. If I sold you a car with a rolled back odometer, the fact that the car was otherwise mechanically sound does not obviate the fraud.
The federal courts in which the "weaponization" you claim to be indisputable was asserted shut down that (your) argument twice, once when Trump pursued your idea, then again when their loss was appealed. Saying it again and again does not make it true. It just makes it kind of extra cringy.