N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James Indicted After Trump’s Pressure Campaign

 

N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James Indicted After Trump’s Pressure Campaign

 

Her indictment on mortgage-related charges follows a case brought against the former F.B.I. director James Comey.

 

Published Oct. 9, 2025

Updated Oct. 10, 2025, 3:32 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10/09/us/trump-news

 

Devlin Barrett Glenn Thrush and Jonah E. Bromwich Devlin Barrett and Glenn Thrush reported from Washington, and Jonah E. Bromwich from New York.

 

Here’s the latest.

A prosecutor handpicked by President Trump secured an indictment of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, on bank fraud and false statement charges in the Eastern District of Virginia on Thursday after the president publicly demanded she be charged.

 

The five-page indictment accused Ms. James of falsely claiming in loan documents that she would use a home she purchased in Norfolk, Va., as a secondary residence, and using it instead as a rental investment property, allowing her to receive favorable terms that would save her close to $19,000.

 

The charges, coming two weeks after the Trump-directed indictment of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, deepened the president’s intervention in the justice system, casting away longstanding democratic norms as he seeks retribution on his political enemies.

 

In a statement, Ms. James, a Democrat who had won a civil case against Mr. Trump accusing him of fraudulently inflating the value of his assets, called the indictment “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.” She called the charges “baseless.”

 

The prosecutions have ushered in a turbulent era at a Justice Department increasingly under the direct command of a president intent on using federal law enforcement to prosecute his adversaries, shield his supporters and redefine criminality as it suits his interests.

 

That his appointees have now succeeded in convincing two grand juries will likely embolden him, even if the prospects of conviction are anything but certain.

 

In both the James and Comey cases, the career prosecutors who conducted the investigations reported that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges, and a previous U.S. attorney ousted by Mr. Trump declined to bring either case before a grand jury.

 

The attorney general of New York, Letitia James, was charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution related to her purchase of a property in Norfolk, Va.

 

Mr. Trump’s newly appointed replacement, Lindsey Halligan, was the only prosecutor listed on either indictment. In nearly all similar cases, the career prosecutors responsible for collecting and analyzing evidence sign the court filings.

 

Mr. Comey pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of lying to and obstructing Congress, and his lawyer said he would seek dismissal of the case as a vindictive and selective prosecution. Court records show that Ms. James is due in court in Norfolk on Oct. 24.

 

Charges against other targets are likely on the way. The department has opened investigations into John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, and Senator Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat, among others.

 

“This is what tyranny looks like,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader and a longtime James ally, said in a statement. “President Trump is using the Justice Department as his personal attack dog.”

 

Even some Republicans sounded a note of caution. “Whatever threshold gets set here is the new floor for future prosecutions when roles are reversed,” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina told a CNN reporter. “That’s just the way this town works.”

 

Mr. Trump has escalated his campaign against his perceived rivals in recent weeks, pressing publicly for the U.S. attorney’s office to pursue Ms. James and Mr. Comey. He posted on social media last month that they were “guilty as hell,” declaring, “We can’t delay any longer.”

 

In voting for an indictment, the grand jury showed that it had been persuaded that there were reasonable grounds to believe Ms. James might have committed a crime. But prosecutors have enormous sway over grand juries, which proceed in secret and where defense lawyers are not permitted to mount a case.

 

The indictment represented the culmination of a monthslong effort to find enough to not only prosecute, but publicly humiliate, one of Mr. Trump’s main targets.

 

At the center of the effort is Ed Martin, chosen by the president this year to lead a task force inside the Justice Department with wide latitude to investigate people the president opposes and has accused of criminality.

 

Mr. Martin, who has little prosecutorial experience, has said that part of his job is to shame the president’s enemies. He has expressed a particular animus toward Ms. James, and showed up at her Brooklyn residence over the summer in a stunt intended to illustrate his intention to bring her to legal account.

 

Early Thursday morning, Mr. Martin, who has nicknamed himself “Eagle Ed,” posted a vintage illustration of an eagle flying over the Brooklyn Bridge, which a person close to him suggested was a reference to his pursuit of Ms. James, a former New York City councilwoman who represented neighborhoods including Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene.

 

A day earlier, Mr. Martin posted an undated photo of himself and Ms. Halligan in his office at the Justice Department’s headquarters.

 

Ms. Halligan, who had been a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience before being named interim U.S. attorney, made the presentation before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., in the James case on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing case.

 

The Trump administration’s effort to charge Ms. James began in April, when the president publicly called her a crook. A day later, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency sent a criminal referral letter to the Justice Department saying Ms. James “appeared to have falsified records” related to properties she owned in Norfolk and New York.

 

But the house at issue in the indictment was not included in that referral. The house in question, also in Norfolk, was purchased in 2020. Ms. James and her lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, who have defended the paperwork related to the other house in detail, have yet to discuss the paperwork for the 2020 purchase, in part because it was not previously known that prosecutors were scrutinizing that loan.

 

Career prosecutors in Virginia, however, found little evidence to indicate Ms. James knowingly misled banks or was dishonest in her loan paperwork, according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Since then, Ms. Halligan has taken control of the case and has sought to file charges.

 

Mr. Lowell said that he was “deeply concerned that this case is driven by President Trump’s desire for revenge.”

 

Ms. James has been one of the president’s most high-profile opponents since 2018, when she ran to be the attorney general, making her opposition to Mr. Trump a key plank in her platform. She opened an investigation into him shortly after taking office, and in 2022, her office accused him of fraudulently inflating the value of his assets.

 

After a monthslong trial, Ms. James won a civil judgment against Mr. Trump that, with interest, rose to more than $500 million. In August, however, a New York State appeals court tossed out the fine, saying it violated the Constitution’s prohibition against “excessive” financial penalties.

 

Those judges, though divided, nevertheless upheld the trial court’s finding that Mr. Trump and others overstated the value of real estate assets owned by his company in order to bolster his purported net worth and help the company get better terms on loans. The case is expected to be reviewed by New York’s highest court.

 

Tyler Pager contributed reporting from Washingt