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WASHINGTON: New York Attorney General Letitia James was charged Thursday as part of a mortgage fraud investigation aggressively pushed by the Trump administration, becoming the latest foe of the president to be prosecuted by his Justice Department.
James, who infuriated President Donald Trump by suing him and his company for fraud in a case that played out as he was running for office, was indicted on charges of bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution following a presentation to a grand jury in Virginia by a prosecutor who was hastily appointed last month amid Trump administration pressure to deliver criminal cases against his adversaries.
James’ office had no immediate comment Thursday. Her lawyers have vigorously denied any allegations and characterized the investigation as an act of political revenge.
The indictment, two weeks after a separate criminal case charging former FBI Director James Comey with lying to Congress, is the latest indication of the Trump administration’s norm-busting determination to use the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to pursue the president’s political foes and public figures who once investigated him.
The James case remained under seal Thursday, making it impossible to assess what evidence prosecutors have. But as was the case with the Comey charges, the prosecution followed a strikingly unconventional route. The Trump administration, two weeks ago, pushed out Erik Siebert, the veteran prosecutor who had overseen the investigation for months but had resisted pressure to file a case, and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who was once Trump’s personal lawyer but who has never worked as a federal prosecutor.
Halligan presented the case to the grand jury herself, as she did in the case against Comey, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
“No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust,” Halligan said in a statement. “The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.”
Trump has been advocating charging James for months, posting on social media without citing any evidence that she’s “guilty as hell” and telling reporters at the White House, “It looks to me like she’s really guilty of something, but I really don’t know.”
Her lawyer has accused the Justice Department of concocting a bogus criminal case to settle Trump’s personal vendetta against James, who last year won a staggering judgment against Trump and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he lied to banks and others about the value of his assets.
The Justice Department has also been investigating mortgage-related allegations against Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, using the probe to demand her ouster, and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., whose lawyer called the allegations against him “transparently false, stale, and long debunked.”
But James is a particularly personal target. As attorney general, she sued the Republican president and his administration dozens of times and oversaw a lawsuit accusing him of defrauding banks by dramatically overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements.
An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud.
The Justice Department probe began after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte sent a letter in April to Attorney General Pam Bondi, asking her to investigate James over her role in the 2023 purchase of a house in Norfolk, Virginia.
In seeking the investigation, Pulte cited a two-page power-of-attorney form that James signed on Aug. 17, 2023, which states, “I intend to occupy this property as my principal residence.” He speculated that claiming the house as her primary residence might have allowed James to avoid higher interest rates that often apply to second homes.
James’ lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the Democrat never misled anyone. James has said that she made an error while filling out a form related to the home purchase, but quickly rectified it and didn’t deceive the lender.

BRUSSELS: DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi appealed to his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame to stop supporting insurgents in the DRC at a Brussels event attended by both leaders on Thursday, drawing a rebuke from Kigali that he was “completely mistaken” about the roots of the conflict.
Tshisekedi, 62, issued the call as he took the podium after Kagame at the Global Gateway Forum, an investment conference organized by the EU in the Belgian capital.
“I call this forum as witness, and through it the entire world, to reach out my hand to you, Mr. President, so that we may make peace,” Tshisekedi said.
“This requires you to order the M23 troops supported by your country to stop this escalation, which has already caused enough deaths,” he said.
Kagame had not addressed the conflict directly in his speech, though he referred to an earlier statement by South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, who said he could “feel the energy for making peace” upon seeing the Rwandan and Congolese leaders.
“Some of us also felt the same. We felt the positive energy about business, investment, peace,” Kagame said.
Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe later responded directly to the Congolese president on X, saying: “You are completely mistaken. The only one who can stop this escalation is President Tshisekedi, and he alone.” Tshisekedi must end “this ridiculous political comedy that consists of abusing the platform of an important economic partnership summit, like the Global Gateway Forum, to launch accusations and shameless lies against a head of state, before posing as a victim of a conflict that he himself provoked,” said Nduhungirehe.
The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a region bordering Rwanda with abundant natural resources but plagued by non-state armed groups, has suffered extreme violence for more than three decades.
The M23 armed group, which resumed fighting at the end of 2021, has seized swaths of land in the region with Rwanda’s backing, triggering a spiralling humanitarian crisis.
According to the UN, clashes since January have caused thousands of deaths and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. The Congolese government and the M23 signed a declaration of principles on July 19 that included a “permanent ceasefire” to halt the conflict.
It followed a separate US-brokered peace deal between the Congolese and Rwandan governments signed in Washington in June, but it has proved slow to take effect on the ground.
“Africa needs to move on, President Paul Kagame, and we are capable of doing so,” Tshisekedi said, adding he would shelve a call for international sanctions on Rwanda to give talks a chance.
But Rwanda’s foreign minister accused his government of widespread abuses in eastern DRC, including “daily bombings by his fighter jets and attack drones.”
Rwanda has long accused Kinshasa of supporting a militia, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, drawn from the remnants of Hutu fighters who carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide.