New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a federal judge in Virginia on Nov. 7 to dismiss a mortgage fraud case against her that she says is a case of selective prosecution.
James, who entered not-guilty pleas to charges of mortgage fraud in Norfolk, Virginia, on Oct. 24, alleges the Trump administration targeted her after she brought a civil action against President Donald Trump for bank fraud in New York. Her trial is scheduled for Jan. 26, 2026.
James is accused of one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution, after she said on mortgage documents that a house she purchased in Norfolk would be used as a secondary residence.
The U.S. Department of Justice claims that she instead used that home as a rental property for a family of three. Designating the property as a second home instead of a rental property allowed James to save nearly $19,000 in interest and tax credits, the government alleges. If convicted, she could be sentenced to as many as 30 years in prison and fined $1 million for each count.
James was elected in 2018 after running on a campaign promise to investigate Trump. In September 2022, she filed a lawsuit against Trump, alleging he had overvalued his real estate holdings by billions of dollars.
James stated in the motion that she had brought a lawsuit against Trump, two of his children, and the Trump Organization, which resulted in a court finding in 2024 that they were liable for fraud.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled against Trump in February 2024, issuing a judgment of more than $460 million, with interest accruing.
The New York Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department, a branch of the New York Supreme Court, tossed the penalty in August in a fractured ruling but left the finding of fraud against Trump undisturbed. James filed an appeal on Sept. 4 of the ruling throwing out the financial penalty.
In the motion filed on Nov. 7 with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, James said the court should throw out the indictment against her because the federal government “targeted [her] for prosecution because of the President’s genuine animus towards her protected campaign speech and fulfillment of her statutory obligations as New York Attorney General.”
The indictment is “the product of vindictive and selective prosecution, in violation of the Fifth Amendment,” the motion said. “Because this prosecution is flagrantly unconstitutional, this Court should dismiss the indictment with prejudice.”
If a case is dismissed with prejudice, the government is not allowed to refile the case in the same court.
The motion said that the lawsuit against Trump, coupled with James’s “outspoken criticism of the President, triggered six years of targeted attacks.” Trump, along with his allies, “have used every insulting term in their vocabulary to deride AG James and call for criminal penalties in retaliation for the exercise of her rights and fulfillment of her statutory duties to fulfill her obligations as New York state’s attorney general,” it said.
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