New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) faces criminal charges over allegations she lied about her plans for a Virginia home, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms.
The accusations of real estate fraud against a prominent political figure may ring a bell.
James’s sweeping civil fraud case against President Trump and his business empire — the case that put her in his crosshairs — casts a shadow over the charges now lodged against the state’s top prosecutor herself, though far smaller in scope.
As Trump seeks retribution against his perceived enemies, the parallels could be used to both bolster the president’s efforts to discredit James and underscore critics’ claims of a weaponized justice system against his foes.
The indictment filed Thursday charges James with two counts, bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution, centering on her 2020 purchase and subsequent use of a property in Norfolk, Va.
She’s accused of buying the home under an agreement that required her to occupy and use it as a secondary residence but instead renting it to a family of three, resulting in better terms that would have saved her nearly $19,000 over the life of the loan.
When James took Trump to court in Manhattan, it was over claims of civil fraud.
She alleged in a 2022 lawsuit against him and the Trump Organization that he inflated his net worth for tax and insurance benefits — an attack on the president’s cherished real estate mogul image and billionaire status.
A New York judge found Trump liable for fraud and ordered him to pay a $354.8 million penalty comprised of ill-gotten gains from loan savings and property sales, which ballooned to more than $500 million with interest before an appeals court wiped the fine in August.
Civil fraud carries a lower burden of proof than the criminal fraud Trump’s Justice Department will have to prove against James.
In criminal cases, the government must show that fraud occurred “beyond a reasonable doubt,” while civil cases carry a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, or more likely true than not.
The specific charges against James are also a challenge to prove, according to Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin. To convict her, prosecutors will have to convince a jury she not only made false statements but did so knowingly.
“That means that she subjectively understood what she was doing,” Levitin said. “That’s not what a reasonable person would think — that’s what James herself thought. That makes these very difficult charges to prove.”
James sued Trump under a state law that gives New York sweeping power to bring claims against businesses that engage in “repeated fraudulent or illegal acts or otherwise demonstrate persistent fraud or illegality.” She did not have to prove he intended to defraud anyone.
The indictment against James and James’s complaint against the Trump Organization paint starkly different pictures of each case, said Will Thomas, a business law professor at University of Michigan.
James’s complaint against Trump’s business empire was more than 200 pages of “incredible detail,” laying out “instance after instance of wrongdoing to try to rebut the obvious concern that James was playing politics and going after Trump,” he said.
“DOJ felt no need to do that in this case,” Thomas said of the 5-page James indictment. “And there are a few explanations for why.
“One, is they don’t feel the need to rebut that because the president is openly calling for her prosecution,” he continued. “The other very likely possibility is they’re not issuing a talking indictment because, when it actually comes to the facts, they don’t really have anything to say.”
Both Levitin and Thomas said that federal cases concerning loss amounts as small as those alleged in James’s case — $18,933 — are unusual.
“You don’t tend to start with a charge like this,” Thomas said, suggesting small dollar sums are typically seen when the government has lost on bigger claims or is stepping in early to nip “overly terrible” activity in the bud.
It’s difficult to get a clear sense of how frequently federal charges are pursued in like cases, though restitution ordered by judges hints it’s not many.
In 2024 cases involving fraud, theft or embezzlement, the average amount of restitution judges ordered was more than $2.2 million, according to data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The median amount was $155,415.
“My sense is the only time you would ever see a prosecution on something like that is if there’s also something else going on,” Levitin said. “Now here, there is, right? The ‘something else,’ though, is something that the Department of Justice should never be considering, which is that James is a political opponent to the president.”
Trump’s fraud case falls on the other end of the spectrum. The appeals court found the half-billion-dollar judgment against him and his business to be an unconstitutional “excessive” fine. However, it kept the lower court’s finding of fraud against Trump and other penalties intact. Both Trump and James’s office have appealed to the state’s highest court.
The president has called James’s case against him a “witch hunt,” but after her indictment, she defended it as based on “the facts and evidence — not politics.”
“I stand strongly behind my office’s litigation against the Trump Organization,” James said, calling the charges against her “baseless.”
James is the first of a handful of Trump foes targeted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency with criminal referrals to face charges. She’s the second Trump rival to face charges.
Just two weeks ago, FBI Director James Comey was hit with two counts stemming from congressional testimony he gave in 2020. The Trump opponent of nearly a decade made his first court appearance Wednesday, where he entered a not guilty plea and a trial was set for Jan. 5.
The president criticized James as “corrupt” and “scum” on social media days before the charges were handed up, calling for her to be “removed” from the New York attorney general’s office.
Trump has pressured his Justice Department to prosecute his apparent enemies.
Both cases were brought in the Eastern District of Virginia by interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. A former White House aide with no prosecuting experience, Halligan was tapped by Trump to take over the post after Erik Siebert, the former U.S. attorney, resigned amid pressure to indict Comey despite finding there was not enough evidence to do so.
As of Friday, Halligan was the only prosecutor on James’s case. She was the only prosecutor on Comey’s case until the day before his arraignment, when two DOJ attorneys from North Carolina entered appearances.
The interim U.S. attorney called the allegations against James “intentional, criminal acts” in a statement announcing the charges, saying that “no one is above the law.”
“The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served,” she said.
Comey’s attorney indicated Wednesday that they’d seek to have the charges dismissed over vindictive prosecution by Trump’s Justice Department and challenge Halligan’s unusual appointment.
James will likely do the same, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law school professor.
“Even though that’s a difficult thing to show in a lot of cases, it seems like there’s a pretty strong argument here for both of them,” he said.
