New York Attorney General Letitia James is pushing back hard against what her legal team calls a baseless and politically motivated criminal referral, labeling the mortgage fraud accusations from President Donald Trump's administration as part of a broader "revenge tour," the New York Post reported.
James is hitting back at allegations that she committed mortgage fraud, calling the federal criminal referral against her a hollow attack fueled by Trump's ongoing campaign of political retribution.
In a sharply worded, five-page rebuttal sent Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, James' attorney, Abbe David Lowell, dismantled the claims lodged by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte. The referral accuses James of falsifying residence information to obtain a favorable mortgage rate on a Norfolk, Virginia, property purchased in August 2023.
Lowell called the referral "meritless" based on "shoddy media reports and a selective reading of public records." He noted that a document granting power of attorney to Shamice Thompson-Hairston mistakenly listed the Virginia property as James' principal residence — but that mistake had already been clarified in communication with a mortgage broker weeks earlier.
"Director Pulte cherry-picked an Aug. 17, 2023 power of attorney that mistakenly stated the property to be Ms. James' principal residence and at the same time 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.
He argued that this single paperwork error was immaterial and contradicted by a consistent record showing that James has always lived in Brooklyn, New York.
"Look at the entire file of each event, the haste in which one document has one line filled out in error, and the clear fact that, with the exception of attending school, Attorney General James has only lived in Brooklyn, and the 'criminal referral' becomes three pages of stale, threadbare allegations with no reason to proceed other than they are 'based on media reports' and are the next salvo in President Trump's revenge tour against Attorney General James," Lowell wrote.
James has been a frequent target of Trump's criticism, particularly after she led a civil fraud case against him and The Trump Organization that resulted in a $454 million judgment earlier this year. Lowell's letter directly ties the criminal referral to Trump's public promise to pursue his political enemies if reelected.
The question now becomes whether James received a benefit from the application that was not available but for the alleged fraud.
The U.S. Department of Justice has not commented on whether it will act on the referral.
Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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