New York Attorney General Letitia James is slated to march into federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday morning to be arraigned on a two-count indictment over what prosecutors say were misleading statements about a second home she bought in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case drops amid a wave of prosecutions hitting President Trump\u2019s perceived political foes \u2014 a charge sheet that\u2019s stirred open revolt inside the Justice Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
James is facing two federal counts: bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. Prosecutors say the indictment stems from her Norfolk purchase, alleging that she misrepresented the property\u2019s nature to secure sweeter loan terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She insists she did nothing wrong and plans to plead not guilty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is nothing more than a continuation of the president\u2019s desperate weaponization of our justice system,\u201d James said in a statement after she was indicted. \u201cThese charges are baseless, and the president\u2019s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The James case \u2014 like the recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey \u2014 was put before a grand jury by Lindsey Halligan, a former White House aide whom President Donald Trump tapped last month as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Trump had announced in September he\u2019d install Halligan as the district\u2019s top prosecutor, replacing interim attorney Erik Siebert, who resigned after pressure to bring cases against both Comey and James.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fallout has been fierce. James\u2019 indictment, echoing Comey\u2019s, has triggered fresh accusations of \u201cweaponization\u201d and rattled DOJ ranks during Trump\u2019s second term. Multiple career officials in EDVA \u2014 including in the Norfolk office \u2014 have been pushed out or walked, with two assistant U.S. attorneys reportedly fired after objecting to pursuing James.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Halligan is expected to appear in court on Friday alongside Roger Keller, a Missouri-based federal prosecutor, according to filings. On the other side of the aisle, James\u2019 attorney Abbe Lowell told the court he\u2019s brought on Andrew Bosse \u2014 a former EDVA prosecutor who once ran the office\u2019s criminal division \u2014 to bolster the defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The criminal case\u00a0lands barely a year after James scored a civil fraud win against Trump \u2014 a backdrop guaranteed to inflame the political stakes on both sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Friday\u2019s arraignment, James is likely to move to toss the case on grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution, mirroring a play already made this week by Comey\u2019s legal team in Alexandria. Lowell has labeled the prosecution \u201cimproper political retribution,\u201d and vowed the defense would \u201cfight these charges in every process allowed in the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Justice Department didn\u2019t immediately comment on the case, or on whether additional EDVA prosecutors will join Halligan and Keller in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New York Attorney General Letitia James is slated to march into federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3111,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109\/revisions\/3111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}