The Trump administration is putting pressure on federal prosecutors in Virginia to proceed with a mortgage fraud case against New York Attorney General Letitia Grant, but the prosecutors are pushing by citing a lack of sufficient evidence to proceed with the case.
According to an ABC News report based on input by unnamed “sources familiar with the investigation,” the five-month investigation into the case has yet to generate any clear evidence that James intentionally made false statements to secure favorable terms on a mortgage for her Virginia home. However, Trump himself is pressuring the Department of Justice (DOJ) leadership to push ahead with the case against James while Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and Ed Martin, the head of the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group, are demanding an indictment of James by the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The ABC News report added that Pulte has lobbied Trump to fire Erik Siebert, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and replace him with a prosecutor who would indict James. Pulte sparked the case against James by making a criminal referral against her.
James denied wrongdoing and her attorney Abbe Lowell blasted Pulte’s criminal referral as “three pages of stale, threadbare allegations” that represented “the next salvo in President Trump’s revenge tour against Attorney General James.” James successfully prosecuted a civil court case that found Trump and his companies presented fraudulent valuations on their commercial properties to gain favorable lending deals.
“Given the cascade of unsubstantiated allegations coming from the Trump Administration on its ‘mortgage fraud’ crusade against Democrats, it’s no surprise they are having trouble finding an objective and law-abiding prosecutor who would ignore the facts and the evidence to manufacture sham charges,” Lowell said in a statement, referring to similar Pulte referrals against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook. “As we have repeatedly said, any impartial and non-political inquiry would conclude Attorney General James did not violate any laws managing her properties.”
