James was indicted in October on the basis that she used her Virginia home as a rental property despite obtaining a loan under a different assumption.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in court papers on Nov. 17 that Trump administration officials had engaged in “outrageous conduct” that should prompt a federal judge to dismiss the indictment alleging she committed mortgage fraud.
“Perhaps in one case before this court has there been a more shocking case of government conduct,” James’s attorneys said in the motion.
They are alleging that Justice Department attorneys and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte reached for a case against James and violated her right to due process.
James was indicted in October on the basis that she used her Virginia home as a rental property despite obtaining a loan under the assumption that she would not use it for those purposes.
“The scheme involved falsely representing the [property] as a secondary residence to obtain favorable mortgage terms, while using it as an investment property with no intended or actual personal occupancy or use by her,” the indictment reads.
James has denied wrongdoing and filed multiple motions to dismiss outside of the one filed on Nov. 17.
Each motion portrays the Trump administration as bypassing normal procedures to retaliate against James, who prosecuted then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2023.
She has long been considered one of his political foes.
Her latest motion alleges that the Trump administration turned Pulte’s agency into a “political weapon” and suggested he might have improperly or illegally accessed mortgage documents.
Her motion also targets Justice Department attorney Ed Martin, saying that he intended to create negative pre-indictment publicity about her and abused his authority to intimidate her into resigning.
She pointed to, among other things, Martin posing for a photo in front of her home in Brooklyn.
“It is clear Mr. Martin—a high-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice—undertook these strange antics to intimidate and prejudice AG James outside the bounds of DOJ and relevant ethics rules,” James’s motion reads.
The Justice Department and Federal Housing Finance Agency did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment before publication.
By Sam Dorman
