{"id":95191,"date":"2025-08-19T20:52:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T20:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/95191\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T20:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T20:52:11","slug":"trump-official-urged-new-york-attorney-general-james-to-resign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/95191\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump official urged New York Attorney General James to resign"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump\u2019s political weaponization czar sent a letter<\/a> urging New York Attorney General Letitia James to resign from office \u201cas an act of good faith\u201d four days after starting his mortgage fraud investigation of her. Then he showed up<\/a> outside her house.<\/p>\n

Ed Martin, the director of the Justice Department\u2019s Weaponization Working Group, told James\u2019 lawyer on Aug. 12 the Democrat would best serve the \u201cgood of the state and nation\u201d by resigning and ending his probe into alleged paperwork discrepancies on her Brooklyn townhouse and a Virginia home.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer resignation from office would give the people of New York and America more peace than proceeding,\u201d Martin wrote. \u201cI would take this as an act of good faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then last Friday, Martin turned up outside James\u2019 Brooklyn townhouse in a \u201cColumbo\u201d-esque trench coat, accompanied by an aide and New York Post journalists. He didn\u2019t meet with James or go inside the building. A Post writer saw him tell a neighbor: \u201cI\u2019m just looking at houses, interesting houses. It\u2019s an important house.\u201d<\/p>\n

James\u2019 lawyer Abbe Lowell shot back on Monday, telling Martin in a letter<\/a> his blunt request for James\u2019 resignation defied Justice Department standards and codes of professional responsibility and legal ethics.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department \u201chas firm policies against using investigations and against using prosecutorial power for achieving political ends,\u201d Lowell wrote. \u201cThis is ever more the case when that demand is made to seek political revenge against a public official in the opposite party.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me be clear: that will not happen here,\u201d Lowell added.<\/p>\n

Lowell also blasted Martin\u2019s visit to James\u2019 home as a \u201ctruly bizarre, made-for-media stunt\u201d and said it was \u201coutside the bounds\u201d of Justice Department rules. He included an image from security camera footage showing Martin, in his trench coat, posing for a photo in front of James\u2019 townhouse. He said Martin looked as if he were on a \u201cvisit to a tourist attraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Associated Press obtained copies of both letters on Tuesday. A message seeking comment was left for Martin\u2019s spokesperson. James\u2019 office declined to comment.<\/p>\n

The letters were the latest salvos in a monthslong drama involving Trump\u2019s retribution campaign against James and others who\u2019ve battled him in court and fought his policies.<\/p>\n

James has sued the Republican president and his administration<\/a> dozens of times and last year won a $454 million judgment<\/a> against Trump and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he lied about the value of his assets on financial statements given to banks. An appeals court has yet to rule on Trump\u2019s bid to overturn that verdict<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the AP reported, the Justice Department subpoenaed James<\/a> for records related to the civil fraud lawsuit and a lawsuit she filed against the National Rifle Association.<\/p>\n

Martin\u2019s investigation stems from a letter Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi in April asking her to investigate and consider prosecuting James, alleging she had \u201cfalsified bank documents and property records.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pulte, whose agency regulates mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, cited \u201cmedia reports\u201d claiming James had falsely listed a Virginia home as her principal residence, and he suggested she may have been trying to avoid higher interest rates that often apply to second homes.<\/p>\n

Records show James was listed as a co-borrower on a house her niece was buying in 2023. Lowell said records and correspondence easily disproved Pulte\u2019s allegation.<\/p>\n

While James signed a power-of-attorney form that, Lowell said, \u201cmistakenly stated the property to be Ms. James\u2019 principal residence,\u201d she sent an email to her mortgage loan broker around the same time that made clear the property \u201cWILL NOT be my primary residence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pulte also accused James of lying in property records about the number of apartments in the Brooklyn townhouse she has owned since 2001.<\/p>\n

A certificate of occupancy issued to a previous owner authorized up to five units in the building, where James lives and has rented out apartments. Other city records show the townhouse has four units, a number James has listed in building permit applications and mortgage documents.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 8, Bondi appointed Martin, a former Republican political operative, to investigate. Martin, the current U.S. pardon attorney and former acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., is also investigating mortgage fraud allegations against Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Schiff\u2019s lawyer called the allegations \u201ctransparently false, stale, and long debunked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowell said it appears the working group Martin leads \u201cis aptly named as it is \u2018weaponizing\u2019\u201d the Justice Department \u201cto carry out the President\u2019s and Attorney General\u2019s threats.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump\u2019s political weaponization czar sent a letter urging New York Attorney General…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[64444,64443,23,7567,28,12,49711,6884,793,3138,3130,2221,49710,2005,1999,3,3131,111,8638,10585,795,21,19,22,20,25,24,5148,800,64445],"class_list":["post-95191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-abbe-lowell","tag-adam-schiff","tag-america","tag-brooklyn","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-ed-martin","tag-fraud","tag-general-news","tag-government-and-politics","tag-lawsuits","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-letitia-james","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-pam-bondi","tag-politics","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-virginia","tag-washington-news","tag-william-pulte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}