New York Attorney General Letitia James has been indicted by a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia. She faces two separate charges, one count of bank fraud and one count of false statements to a financial institution.

Alexandria

New York Attorney General Letitia James has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The indictment accuses James of misrepresenting the intended use of a property purchased in 2020, allegedly claiming it was a secondary residence while renting it out as an investment property, resulting in more favorable loan terms and financial gain.

James has responded to the indictment, describing the charges as baseless and a continuation of political attacks. The case follows recent indictments of other political figures and comes amid ongoing scrutiny of investigations involving former President Donald Trump. Legal experts note the similarities in language between this indictment and previous high-profile fraud cases, though the alleged financial gains in James' case are significantly lower.

Federal grand jury indicts New York AG Letitia James

But, of course, we are going to start tonight with that breaking news. New York Attorney General Letitia James has been indicted by a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia. Now, she faces two separate charges, one count of bank fraud and one count of false statements to a financial institution. The indictment comes exactly two weeks after a grand jury voted to indict former FBI Director James Comey on charges of lying to Congress. Last month, President Trump publicly called on Attorney General Pambani to target his political foes in this social media post. James' office sued the president and the Trump Organization for fraud in 2022. Trump was ordered to pay $355 million in penalties for inflating property values. The New York Attorney General responded earlier, saying, quote, this is nothing more than a continuation of the president's desperate weaponization of our justice system. She added that she will, quote, fight these baseless charges aggressively. CBS News Justice Department reporter Jake Rosen joins us now. So, Jake, you have been calling this minute by minute here. What are we learning from the indictment? Well, according to the indictment, Letitia James purchased a home in 2020 for a bit over $100,000. Part of that money, about $109,000, was taken as a loan from a federal loan agency. And part of that indictment is that she used this money to buy this home as a secondary residence. That being said, the Department of Justice alleges in this indictment that she made false statements when she said that because she ended up renting that house out to another family. Again, not a super concrete charge, not a very long indictment, but at the same time, we know President Trump did direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after and find a way to indict James Comey. They found a way to successfully convince a jury, a grand jury, to do that. Now, the same thing happens two weeks later, as you said. And we reported back in May and again in August that this investigation into Letitia James had expanded from just this mortgage fraud investigation into also investigating the investigations into President Trump and whether those investigations violated President Trump's civil rights. That part of the investigation that the Department of Justice had is not answered for in this, so it's certainly possible additional charges are brought at some point against the New York attorney general. And do we know yet when James might appear in court, Jake? Yeah, and she's very likely to be in court on October 24th in Norfolk, Virginia, and expect legal challenges that will slow this case down once that initial appearance is made. We saw James Comey's attorney say the appointment of Lindsey Halligan was not proper and that there was a vindictive prosecution against them because of those true social messages. Expect Abby Lowell, longtime Democrat lawyer here in D.C., to potentially make those same arguments in Norfolk in the next couple of weeks. Jake Rosen, thank you so much for hopping on with us at the top here. All right. Also with us is CBS News legal reporter Katrina Kaufman. So you've been going through the indictment. We've gotten bank fraud. We have false statement charges. Break down what this means and if anything stuck out to you in the indictment. I mean, Kelly, the first thing that stood out to me about this indictment was some of the language, because it reminded me of sitting in the New York civil fraud trial of President Donald Trump himself, where he was accused of falsifying financial statements, business records, inflating the values of his property, ultimately to get ill-gotten gains amounting to almost half a billion dollars. Now, in this case, they're saying that James received favorable loan terms by misrepresenting how this property was going to be used. She said it was going to be a secondary home. They're saying, actually, it was a rental property, an investment property. And she got better loan terms because of it. And then she received, they said, a total ill-gotten gains of about $18,933 over the life of that loan, so substantially less than what was at issue in the case of President Donald Trump. So the language is striking here to me. So today's indictment, we said, right, it comes just two weeks after James Comey was indicted. Both James and Comey have been seen as political opponents. What's the context here? I mean, we know, for one, that President Donald Trump had put a post on Twitter saying that he wanted Pam Bondi to go after James Comey, to go after Letitia James. We know that he has wanted this indictment for quite some time. And also, there had to be change in that office to have this brought in the Eastern District of Virginia. The U.S. attorney there was not going to bring these charges. The career prosecutors in that office have said that there wasn't enough evidence here. He installed Lindsey Halligan. She has now indicted James Comey, indicted Letitia James. And this has all happened just in a matter of weeks. Just yesterday, there was that arraignment for James Comey. So the timing of this is all very striking. But enough for a grand jury to bring down that indictment. It's true. Yeah. Thank you so much, Kashinda Coffin.

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