New York Attorney General might have believed that going after President Donald Trump was going to make her career, but it could actually backfire on her.
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said, in an op-ed for the liberal New York Magazine, that the legal issues James is facing with the Trump administration are of her own making since she first chose to weaponize the law against the president.
“James started it when she ran for New York AG and won in 2018 primarily on an explicit platform of Vote for me, fellow resistance warriors, and I’ll nail Trump. James tweeted that, if elected, she would be ‘leading the resistance against Donald Trump in NYC.’ She solicited campaign donations by vowing to take down the president. 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.’ 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.’ For what? Who knows. Just something,” Honig said.
“James did sue Trump, of course, and won (for the moment). After a circuslike bench trial focused on Trump’s habitual overvaluation of his assets in bank loan applications, New York State judge Arthur Engoron found Trump civilly liable for fraud and slammed him with damages amounting to over $500 million, including mounting interest. During the trial, James made a series of wildly inappropriate out-of-court statements that would ordinarily get a prosecutor fired; at one point, she publicly branded Trump and his family members as liars, while they were testifying,” the legal analyst said.
“Despite the judge’s verdict, James’s theory of liability was so flimsy that it barely concealed her previously acknowledged motivation to stick one to Trump by any means available. The purported fraud victims were multibillion-dollar banks that were repaid in full on their loans to the Trump Organization and made millions in profits through interest payments. Unsurprisingly, a New York appellate-division panel voiced pointed skepticism of James’s victimless case and seems poised either to substantially reduce the verdict or throw it out,” he wrote.
Months after President Trump won the 2024 presidential election, it is now James who is on the hot seat.
Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche last month, alleging that James “falsified records” to secure home loans for a Virginia property she listed as her “principal residence” in 2023—while she was still serving as a New York state prosecutor.
This incident took place in late August 2023, just weeks before James initiated her civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization for inflating property values—a trial that ended with a $454 million judgment.
“Ms. James was the sitting Attorney General of New York and is required by law to have her primary residence in the state of New York — even though her mortgage applications list her intent to have the Norfolk, VA, property as her primary home,” the letter stated.
“It appears Ms. James’ property and mortgage-related misrepresentations may have continued to her recent 2023 Norfolk, VA property purchase in order to secure a lower interest rate and more favorable loan terms.”
In February 2001, James also bought a five-family dwelling in Brooklyn — but has “consistently misrepresented the same property as only having four units in both building permit applications and numerous mortgage documents and applications,” the letter noted.
Pulte also attached several documents revealing that James purchased another property with her father as a co-signer, even though the records inaccurately identified them as “husband and wife” in 1983 and 2000.
“While this was a long time ago, it raises serious concerns about the validity of Ms. James’ representations on mortgage applications,” he wrote.