LETITIA JAMES AND AN EYE FOR AN EYE. There’s no doubt Letitia James still wants to destroy Donald Trump. New York’s Democratic attorney general, who won office on a campaign pledge to pursue Trump, who filed a meritless lawsuit to destroy Trump’s business empire and with a sympathetic judge won a $454 million verdict, who cheered as her Democratic colleague, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, prosecuted Trump on flimsy charges of fraud and convinced a deep-blue Manhattan jury to convict — after all that, Letitia James is still at it.
“I’m not afraid of no president,” James shouted during a speech at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in April of this year. “Donald Trump, we’re ready for you. We’re coming for you. … We’re fighting on. We’re not going down silent. Victory, my friends, is clear. It’s now. And I’m not waiting four years. I’m waiting two until a speaker by the name of Hakeem Jeffries comes to bring us some rest.”
James’s reference to Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who would presumably become speaker of the House if Democrats win next year’s midterm elections, indicates that, after all her pursuits of Trump, she now hopes for another impeachment as soon as Democrats control of the House.
None of that is a surprise. After all, this is a collection of the things James said about Trump during her 2018 campaign to become New York’s attorney general:
“This illegitimate president who sits in the White House. … He’s not my president, he’s an illegitimate president. His days are numbered. His days are numbered. … We’ve got to be ready to mobilize and we’ve got to get ready to agitate and irritate until victory is won, or more importantly, until Trump is defeated. … We will all rise up and resist this man … and ultimately we’ll bring him down. … Illegitimate president. … I’m going to give you [Trump] the same level of respect that you gave President Obama, and that is absolutely no respect at all. … Donald Trump has got to go. Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Donald Trump has got to go. … The days of Trump are numbered.”
James was also fond of doing call-and-response with campaign crowds. “Lock him up!” the crowd would yell. “What?” James said. “Lock him up!” “What?” James said again. “Lock him up!” And so on.
James won the attorney general’s race and kept her promise to pursue Trump in any way she could. “Before she had access to any evidence, James declared conclusively that Trump ‘engaged in a pattern and practice of money laundering’ and ‘can be indicted for criminal offenses,’ wrote legal analyst Elie Honig. “The day after she won office, still having seen no actual evidence, the new AG exulted, ‘We’re going to definitely sue him. We’re going to be a real pain in the ass. He’s going to know my name personally.’”
This was not just talk from James. Yes, she filed a lot of lawsuits against this or that Trump policy. But she also pursued Trump personally in an effort to crush the companies he spent a lifetime building. She appeared to desperately want to hurt Trump, politically and personally, and she was willing to use the law, and to stretch the law, to do it.
So now the Trump administration has indicted James for mortgage fraud — one count of bank fraud and one count of making a false statement to a financial institution. The indictment says James bought a house in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2020 for $137,000, and took out a mortgage for $109,600. The indictment says the terms of the loan required James to use the house herself, and that she agreed to the terms, but she then rented out the house.
“This misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties,” the indictment says, “including a note rate of 3.000% (avoiding a 0.815% higher comparable investment property rate of 3.815%, resulting in approximately $17,837 in rate savings over the life of the loan.” Taking other factors into account, the indictment says James enjoyed “total ill-gotten gains of approximately $18,933 over the life of the loan.”
A number of observers have pointed out that the charges against James mirror the charges she leveled against Trump, only on a far smaller scale. She accused Trump of lying about his assets in order to get more favorable real estate loan terms, and the Trump Justice Department is accusing her of lying about her intentions to get more favorable real estate loan terms.
Of course, one could argue that the difference in scale is so huge, and the alleged $18,933 in “ill-gotten gains” so small that James should not have been charged. But that is not how James used to see things. When she won the suit against Trump, she tweeted, “When powerful people cheat to get better loans, it comes at the expense of hardworking people. Everyday Americans cannot lie to a bank to get a mortgage, and if they did, our government would throw the book at them. There simply cannot be different rules for different people.”
Now, after the indictment, it’s almost astonishing that James is on record saying something that so eloquently justifies the new charges against her. But there it is — the book is being thrown at Letitia James herself, with the rationale provided by … Letitia James. Even those who don’t like the indictment concede that it’s pure James. “It’s a penny-ante case that shouldn’t have been brought,” said National Review’s Dan McLaughlin, who is no fan of Trump. “But it IS fraud under federal law. And if you take at face value the standard James applied to Trump, there’s no discretion to not prosecute it.”
What to make of it all? First, put aside the voices who cheered on and still defend James, and Bragg, and the other lawfare warriors who attacked Trump, but who now condemn the Trump Justice Department’s actions. They don’t need to be taken seriously.
But what about those who at the time recognized the anti-Trump lawfare campaign for the dangerously corrupt development that it was, and now also condemn the Trump indictments of Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey? What about them? They seem to be objecting on two grounds. The first is that two wrongs don’t make a right. The second is that the James and Comey indictments are the continuation of a downward spiral that Democratic lawfare started. Who knows where it will end, they say, but it won’t be a good place.
That’s a legitimate way of reading the situation. But there’s another way, as well. When one party, in this case, the Democrats, gets away with something, they’ll do it again. Remember that Democrats were ecstatically happy any time one of the lawfare warriors struck a blow against Trump. They loved it. And even now, when it seems obvious that the lawfare overreach actually helped Trump win the White House again, they still approve of what James and Bragg and special counsel Jack Smith did.
But now, with Trump’s version of lawfare targeting them, maybe they’ll finally get a taste of what they inflicted not only on Trump but on his top aides and even those on the periphery of his administration. Maybe they’ll reconsider whether what they did in 2023 and 2024 — 91 felony counts and a crippling lawsuit, among other attacks — was really a good idea. That would be a positive development. Of course, it might not happen, and things might just head further downhill. But especially in the case of Letitia James, it’s hard to get very upset about Trump striking back.
