The Justice Department once again failed to convince a grand jury to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James, another embarrassing loss for the Trump administration which has tried to charge the president’s foe in a mortgage fraud case that career prosecutors have long viewed as weak.
The grand jury’s refusal of the case on Thursday was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive grand jury matters. It marked the second time in two weeks that panels have refused the government’s efforts to indict James — a highly unusual occurrence in a justice system in which the threshold to indict is low and grand jurors rarely decline a prosecutor’s case.
Prosecutors first indicted James in the Eastern District of Virginia in October on two charges related to her application for a mortgage on a home she bought in the state. A judge dismissed the indictment late last month after determining that President Donald Trump’s pick to run that U.S. attorney’s office, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed and had no authority to bring the case against James.
In that ruling, the judge also dismissed a case against another of Trump’s foes, former FBI director James B. Comey.
Last week, prosecutors returned to a grand jury in Norfolk in an effort to reindict James. Grand jurors declined to charge her based on the evidence that the attorneys presented to them. That refusal was an unusual event since grand jurors seldom reject a prosecutor’s case.
Prosecutors allege that when James purchased a Virginia property in 2020, she lied on a mortgage application to gain more favorable loan terms. They accuse the New York attorney general of saving nearly $19,000 in mortgage-related costs and fees through that move, which they called deceptive.
James has denied any wrongdoing in connection with that mortgage application.
Trump has long referred to James as a political foe. In her 2018 campaign for attorney general, she pledged to pursue litigation against Trump, whom she called an “embarrassment.” In 2022, she brought a civil fraud case against Trump and his real estate empire which, two years later, resulted in a judge ordering Trump and his company to pay more than $350 millionin fines and interest. In August, a New York appeals court voided the fine but left intact the judge’s finding that Trump and others in his company had committed fraud.
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