A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Justice Department followed President Trump's public calls and brought charges against his top rivals.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
New York Attorney General Letitia James was indicted Thursday on bank fraud and false statement charges. This comes after the same office indicted former FBI director James Comey. President Trump replaced the top federal prosecutor there with one of his former lawyers, and that's the person who secured this indictment.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas joins us now. Ryan, so what more can you tell us about the charges against James and the prosecutors who are bringing this case on?
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Well, as Leila just mentioned, James faces two charges here - one count of bank fraud, one count of false statements to a financial institution. And the indictment alleges that James bought a house in 2020 in Norfolk, Virginia, but prosecutors say she falsely claimed it as a second residence to get better terms on her mortgage. And the indictment says, with those more favorable terms, she would have saved a total of almost $19,000 over the life of the loan.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now, the indictment was handed up by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. So is - that's the same place where the former FBI director, James Comey, was indicted just a few weeks ago.
LUCAS: That's right. And there's...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
LUCAS: ...Been a huge amount of turmoil in that U.S. attorney's office there in the past few weeks because of the Comey case and this case against James. The career DOJ attorney who had been the top prosecutor there had basically concluded, after lengthy investigations, that the evidence in the separate cases against Comey and James was too weak to bring charges. The White House didn't like that. They pushed that prosecutor out. In his place, President Trump installed Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer who had once served as Trump's personal attorney, but she has no prosecutorial experience. Days later, Halligan secured the indictment against Comey, and now, a few weeks on, she presented the case yesterday against James to the grand jury.
Now, these two indictments against Letitia James and James Comey came after President Trump publicly called on the Justice Department to prosecute them. And that has alarm bells ringing that Trump is using the Justice Department, weaponizing it to target his perceived political enemies.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, nationwide, people might know who James Comey is, but maybe not Letitia James as much. So what is Trump's issue with Letitia James?
LUCAS: So when James campaigned to become New York's attorney general, she vowed to investigate Trump. Once she was in office, she did exactly that. Ultimately, she sued Trump and his company for inflating the value of some of their assets. She won that case in court - a massive $450 million judgment, although that financial penalty was later tossed out on appeal. But Trump has repeatedly lashed out at her. During the presidential campaign last year, for example, he said that she should be arrested and punished. And then in a social media post last month, Trump urged the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to go after James and other political foes, saying that they were guilty and that justice must be served.
MARTÍNEZ: Has James said anything in response to all this?
LUCAS: She put out a video on social media. She called the indictment a continuation of Trump's weaponization of the justice system. She also said this.
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LETITIA JAMES: These charges are baseless. And the president's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.
LUCAS: James said she's being targeted because she did her job as New York state attorney general. She said she stands behind her office's investigation in the civil fraud suit against Trump. And she said she's not afraid and that she is going to continue to do her job.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas. Ryan, thanks.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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