{"id":48337,"date":"2025-10-09T18:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T23:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=48337"},"modified":"2025-10-09T23:10:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T04:10:59","slug":"federal-grand-jury-indicts-n-y-ag-letitia-james-on-bank-fraud-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=48337","title":{"rendered":"Federal grand jury indicts N.Y. AG Letitia James on bank fraud charges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Oct. 9 (UPI) — A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James<\/a> on charges that accuse her of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A grand jury in the U.S.District Court of Eastern Virginia indicted James<\/a> on the criminal charges after the Justice Department accused her of falsely claiming a Norfolk, Va., property that she bought in 2023 would be her primary residence to obtain more favorable mortgage terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The charges arose after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte earlier wrote Attorney General Pam Bondi<\/a> regarding the matter and suggested James committed fraud, CBS News<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan presented evidence to the grand jury on Thursday, which resulted in the indictment against James, according to ABC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James afterward accused the Trump administration of using the DOJ to punish her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system,” James said in a prepared statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York state attorney general.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James said the charges against her are “baseless” and said the president’s public comments affirm “that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She called the matter a “grave violation of our constitutional order” and said Republican and Democratic Party leaders should “speak out against this blatant perversion of our system of justice.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While James called the indictments against her a “perversion” of justice, she previously campaigned for her current office partly on charging Trump with alleged crimes during his first term in the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James in 2018 successfully ran to become New York’s attorney general and while campaigning said she would investigate and bring charges against Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2022 civil lawsuit<\/a>, James accused the president and the Trump Organization of lying about property values to secure a loan that was repaid in full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A New York judge imposed a $350 million fine<\/a>, plus interest, and barred Trump from doing business in New York for three years after the court found him guilty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president appealed the financial penalty, which totaled nearly $500 million when interest was added, and a New York appellate court in August threw out the fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James is appealing the appellate court’s ruling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

upi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oct. 9 (UPI) — A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James on charges that accuse her of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. A grand jury in the U.S.District Court of Eastern Virginia indicted James on the criminal charges after the Justice Department accused her of falsely claiming a Norfolk, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":48338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[34888,33266,34889,34890],"class_list":["post-48337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-bank-fraud","tag-federal-grand-jury","tag-letitia-james","tag-new-york-ag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48339,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48337\/revisions\/48339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}