The case is the second in two weeks, with little legal merit, filed by a neophyte prosecutor against a Trump opponent
federal prosecutors brought charges against another one of President Donald Trump’s political enemies. After interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan secured a grand jury indictment against former FBI Director James Comey two weeks ago, Halligan obtained another indictment, this time against New York Attorney General Letitia James, on Thursday.
The indictment of James is every bit as lackluster as the one against Comey, if not more so. According to the indictment, a grand jury charged James with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. It states that in August 2020, James secured a mortgage from OVM Financial to purchase a property in Norfolk, Virginia. As part of the loan approval process, she signed a second home rider—which, in the language of the indictment, required her «as the sole borrower to occupy and use the property as her secondary residence, and prohibited its use as a timesharing or other shared ownership arrangement or agreement that requires her to rent the property or give any other person any control over the occupancy or use of the property.»
«Despite these representations», the indictment claims the Norfolk property «was not occupied or used by JAMES as a secondary residence and was instead used as a rental investment property.» It alleges that by claiming the property as a second residence, James qualified for a 3-percent interest rate, and if she had instead applied for a loan as an investment property, her «comparable investment property rate» would have been 3.815 percent; that reduction saved money in both interest and seller credit, «for total ill-gotten gains of approximately $18,933 over the life of the loan.»
If the details of the case sound familiar, they should: As Andrew C.
