Administration fails again to indict N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James
The Justice Department once again failed to persuade a grand jury to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James, an embarrassing loss for a law enforcement agency that has repeatedly tried to charge the president’s foe in a mortgage fraud case that career prosecutors have long viewed as weak.
The refusal by the grand jury in Alexandria on Thursday was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive grand jury matters. It marked the second time in two weeks that panels have refused the government’s efforts to indict James.
The refusals marked a highly unusual occurrence in a justice system in which the threshold to indict is low and grand jurors rarely decline a prosecutor’s case. One study of federal cases in 2016 found that grand juries declined indictments in only six of 130,000 prosecutions.
Prosecutors first indicted James in the Eastern District of Virginia in October on two charges related to her application for a mortgage on a home she bought in the state. A judge dismissed the indictment late last month after determining that President Donald Trump’s pick to run that U.S. attorney’s office, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed and had no authority to bring the case against James.
The judge also dismissed a case against another of Trump’s foes, former FBI director James B. Comey.
Judges do not typically make a public announcement when a grand jury rejects a case. On Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William B. Porter read through a handful of cases in which the Alexandria grand jury had voted to indict that day. He noted that jurors had declined to indict in one case, but did not mention James by name.
Last week, prosecutors returned to a grand jury in Norfolk in an effort to reindict James. Grand jurors declined to charge her based on the evidence that the attorneys presented to them.
Prosecutors allege that when James bought a Virginia property in 2020, she lied on a mortgage application to gain more favorable loan terms. They accuse the New York attorney general of saving almost $19,000 in mortgage-related costs and fees through that move.
James has denied any wrongdoing in connection with that mortgage application.
In a statement, her attorney, Abbe Lowell, called the case against James a “political vendetta” by Trump. “This unprecedented rejection makes even clearer that this case should never have seen the light of day,” Lowell said. “Any further attempt to revive these discredited charges would be a mockery of our system of justice.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon. After the previous grand jury rejection last week, administration officials had vowed to press ahead with the case. There is no law that would prohibit prosecutors from presenting the case again to a grand jury although doing so after two rejections would be highly unusual.
Trump has long referred to James as a political foe. In her 2018 campaign for attorney general, she pledged to pursue litigation against Trump, whom she called an “embarrassment.” In 2022, she brought a civil fraud case against Trump and his real estate empire which, two years later, resulted in a judge ordering Trump and his company to pay more than $350 million in fines and interest. In August, a New York appeals court voided the fine but left intact the judge’s finding that Trump and others in his company had committed fraud.
The U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia has experienced massive turmoil during the Trump administration. In September, Trump pushed out his pick for U.S. attorney there, Erik S. Siebert, over his decision to not indict James and Comey.
That prompted Trump to install his former personal defense lawyer and close ally, Halligan, as the top prosecutor in the office. Despite having no prosecutorial experience, Halligan personally presented the Comey and James cases to Virginia grand juries, securing indictments in both instances.
Late last month, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed both cases after determining that Halligan was unlawfully appointed—a decision that the Justice Department has not appealed, although officials still have a couple of weeks before the deadline for doing so.
The Justice Department has recruited prosecutors from other U.S. attorneys offices across the country willing to work on the James and Comey prosecution.
Still, Trump administration officials have allowed Halligan to remain as the top prosecutor in the office—even allowing her signature to remain on court filings submitted by the office alongside another senior prosecutor in the office.
That decision has drawn questions from judges—questions that Attorney General Pam Bondi dismissed this week as “undemocratic judicial activism.”
Last week, U.S. District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff said in court that he found it “difficult to reconcile” Halligan’s continued use of the “U.S. attorney” title with the ruling disqualifying her. Nachmanoff had been overseeing the criminal case against Comey.
“Lawyers have a responsibility to submit pleadings that are in conformity with the rules of the court,” the judge said, according to a transcript obtained by The Washington Post.
During Thursday’s court session, Porter—the magistrate judge who accepted the returned indictments in Alexandria—appeared to question why prosecutors were still submitting indictments with Halligan listed as the U.S. attorney. The prosecutors responded that they were following guidance they had been given.
Porter directed that a reference be added below Halligan’s signature line on new indictments noting Currie’s decision in the Comey and James cases that Halligan’s appointment was invalid.
Halligan’s nomination for a full term as the Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney is pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but because of Senate custom, it is unlikely to move forward without support from Virginia’s two senators—Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, both Democrats.
In a recent joint statement the senators said of Halligan: “By putting someone so unqualified in charge of one of the most important law enforcement offices in the country, Trump has made clear that he doesn’t care about keeping Virginians safe, only about weaponizing the justice system to punish his political opponents.”
In paperwork submitted to the committee, Halligan listed the cases against James and Comey as among the most significant she’d handled in her career. Despite the judge’s ruling ending them both, Halligan described James’s case as “ongoing” and said Comey’s remains “pending.”
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