Letitia James Wants Her Fraud Case Tossed Because Of ‘Outrageous Government Conduct’
State Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) called on Monday for the mortgage fraud charges against her to be dropped, arguing in a 22-page filing that President Donald Trump’s administration had engaged in “outrageous government conduct” in bringing the case in the first place.
Attorneys representing James argued in the filing that the charges themselves were “patently unconstitutional,” according to a CBS News report. They claimed that several officials within the Trump administration had embarked upon “months of unethical behavior” culminating in the allegation that she’d bought property in the state of Virginia, calling it a “second home” to secure a lower interest rate but instead turning it out as a rental property.
“If this brazen, continuous disregard for the law and the Constitution is not outrageous government conduct, nothing is,” the attorneys claimed, naming Fair Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte, top Justice Department official Ed Martin, and interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan in the filing.
Pulte was the one who sparked the investigation into the New York Attorney General — who had herself run on a platform of “getting Trump” and then willed a case into reality in her attempt to follow through. Pulte referred James for prosecution, but her attorneys claimed that he had “transformed the little-known agency into a weapon to be brandished against President Trump’s political enemies.”
They also attacked the Justice Department’s special attorney for mortgage fraud, Ed Martin – who called for James to resign shortly after the charges were filed — arguing that he “has engaged in a well-documented series of actions that cannot be described as anything but outrageous.”
“The letter was not an attempt to investigate the facts, nor did it hide his plain intention to pressure the sitting Attorney General of New York to resign from office or face criminal prosecution,” the lawyers said, also asserting that it represented a violation of “various codes of professional responsibility and ethics,” among other things.
They were equally displeased with Halligan, and claimed that the case against James amounted to “vindictive prosecution.”
The attorneys concluded by claiming that the Trump administration was out to “punish AG James for daring to take a stand against the President—both in this Court and by making the investigation of her so public and intrusive that the pre-trial process itself serves as punishment.”
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