{"id":14790,"date":"2025-10-24T11:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/14790\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T11:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:17:07","slug":"new-york-attorney-general-to-make-first-court-appearance-in-mortgage-fraud-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/14790\/","title":{"rendered":"New York attorney general to make first court appearance in mortgage fraud case"},"content":{"rendered":"

NORFOLK, Va. (TNND) \u2014 New York Attorney General Letitia James will make her first court appearance on charges of mortgage fraud<\/a> on Friday.<\/p>\n

James was indicted this month on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution over a home she purchased in 2020 in Norfolk, Virginia.<\/p>\n

She has denied wrongdoing and said her indictment was \u201cnothing more than a continuation of the president\u2019s desperate weaponization of our justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department claims James rented the home out to a family of three rather than using it for the terms she signed for to acquire the loan. According to prosecutors, James agreed to keep the property primarily for \u201cpersonal use and enjoyment for at least one year.\u201d<\/p>\n

By signing the \u201csecond home rider,\u201d James was able to get a better interest rate that would not have been available for an investment property, according to her indictment. Prosecutors claim James stood to make $18,000 in \u201cill-gotten gains\u201d over the life of the loan.<\/p>\n

James is expected to plead not guilty in the case and her attorneys said in a court filing on Thursday that they plan to ask for the case to be dismissed because Lindsey Halligan, Trump\u2019s appointee for the Eastern District of Virginia who brought the case, was appointed illegally.<\/p>\n

James\u2019 attorneys also asked the judge for an order banning prosecutors from giving media information about the investigation or materials from the case outside of court, which comes after a report that Halligan had contacted a legal affairs reporter at Lawfare to discuss the case and coverage of it. The exchange was published and has drawn intense scrutiny on Halligan.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe exchange was a stunning disclosure of internal government information,\u201d attorneys wrote in the filing.<\/p>\n

James is among the most high-profile Democrats to be indicted by the Justice Department, along with former FBI director James Comey<\/a> and former White House national security adviser John Bolton. <\/a>Each of them has claimed the charges are politically motivated and are being carried out over vendettas by the president.<\/p>\n

James has sued Trump and his administration dozens of times and won a massive judgement against the president and his companies in a lawsuit claiming he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings in financial statements. A $350 million fine from the case was eventually overturned on appeal, but the ruling Trump had committed fraud was upheld.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORFOLK, Va. (TNND) \u2014 New York Attorney General Letitia James will make her first court appearance on charges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[393,10906,10907,1082,2849,398,10905,9,11,10,10908],"class_list":["post-14790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-attorney-general","tag-bank-fraud","tag-court-appearance","tag-justice-department","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-letitia-james","tag-mortgage-fraud","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-political-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}