May 9 (UPI) — The Justice Department has reportedly opened an investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation, led by the FBI, into real estate transactions that involved James, The Washington Post, CBS News and Albany Times-Union reported.
It is the first such probe of a law enforcement official who litigated against President Donald Trump, as James won a half-billion-dollar civil fraud case against him.
The probe of James’ real estate dealings follows a criminal referral that William J. Pulte, Trump’s appointee as director of the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi in April.
“Based on media reports,” the referral written by Pulte says, “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.”
In the letter published by the Washington Post, James is alleged to have falsified residence status for a Norfolk, Virginia-based home in order to secure a lower mortgage rate and to have misrepresented property descriptions in order to meet strict requirements for government backed loans and government assistance.
Pulte also alleges James lied about the number of units in a brownstone she’s owned in Brooklyn since 2001.
“It appears that Ms. James may have listed the Brooklyn, NY property as four units instead of five units in order to meet the conforming loan requirements and thus receive better interest rates,” Pulte wrote. ” Ms. James also appears to have used this same falsification in order to receive mortgage assistance through [the Home Assistance Modification Program].”
He also included paperwork that purportedly shows that in 1983 James and her father signed mortgage documents that stated that they were husband and wife in order to secure a home mortgage.
“On May 4, 2000, Ms. James was listed again as ‘husband and wife’ in documents,” Pulte wrote. “While this was a long time ago, it raises serious concerns about the validity of Ms. James representations on mortgage applications.”
James’ lawyer, Abbe Lowell, sent a letter to the Department of Justice last month repudiating the allegations laid out in Pulte’s letter. Lowell, an attorney whose firm often represents clients that it believes have been unfairly targeted by the Trump administration, has also scoffed at the investigation.
In a letter to Bondi, which has been published by the New York Times, Lowell called the allegations “long disproven” and the investigation, “the latest act of improper political retribution, this time directed at Ms. James, publicly instigated and endorsed by President Trump.”
Lowell’s letter said Pulte had “cherry-picked” a single error in an application package that included other documents in which James stated multiple times that she would not be residing in the Norfolk home.
“Director Pulte absolutely ignored her very clear and all caps statement two weeks earlier to the mortgage loan broker that ‘[this property will not be my primary residence],” Lowell wrote.
Lowell added that James was merely trying to help her niece make a down payment.
“In the hundreds of pages that comprise the Norfolk loan application and other mortgage documents, Director Pulte points to a two-page power of attorney that was clearly mistaken and failed to reference Ms. James’ clear and repeated accurate statements,” Lowell added.
Her letter also addressed the allegation about the Brooklyn townhouse. Lowell told Bondi that a 24-year-old certificate of occupancy listing five units in the property is extraneous because many other and more current records provide an accurate count of four units. Lowell wrote that it’s also accurate in official New York City property records, and that records from a Queens property that belonged to James’s father did incorrectly list her as his spouse decades ago but that had been fixed.
“The stunning hypocrisy of President Trump’s complaint that the Justice Department had been ‘politicized’ and ‘weaponized’ against him is laid bare as he and others in his Administration are now asking you to undertake the very same practice,” Lowell’s letter said.
James has denied the allegations, calling them “baseless.” James’ office declined to comment.
It was James who led a lengthy civil trial against Trump in February of 2024, in which James’ office accused Trump of leading an effort to use fraudulent property valuations and estimates of Trump’s net worth in order to obtain beneficial loan rates and insurance deals he wouldn’t otherwise have received. The New York judge ordered Trump, his company and two of his adult sons to pay the State of New York around $364 million, which with interest now totals over $500 million. Trump has appealed the ruling.
Trump has publicly fumed over the case and even tried suing James unsuccessfully in an effort to stop her fraud investigation before a lawsuit could be filed in the case.
Trump was required to take the stand in November 2023 during the trial, from where he lashed out at James, during his hour-long testimony, and called the fraud case “a terrible, terrible thing.”
In March, Trump ordered James’ security clearance and access to classified information be revoked. He also called James “a total crook” during an appearance in the Oval Office Tuesday.
