Did NY AG Commit Mortgage Fraud?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Apr. 16, 2025) — Allegations made in a little-noticed article dated April 1 in White Collar Fraud which President Trump posted on his TruthSocial timeline last week have apparently been acted upon by Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte.

According to the FHFA website, “The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is an independent agency that was established by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA). The agency is responsible for the effective supervision, regulation, and oversight of the housing mission of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), and the Federal Home Loan Bank System, which includes the 11 Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks) and the Office of Finance (OF). The FHFA’s mission is to ensure that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises) and the FHLBanks (together, “the regulated entities”) fulfill their mission by operating in a safe and sound manner to serve as a reliable source of liquidity and funding for housing finance and community investment. Since 2008, FHFA has also served as conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

James was first elected New York Attorney General in 2018 and reelected four years later.

“With decades of experience and a long record of achievements, she is a powerful, effective attorney and lifelong public servant,” James’s official website states. “When she was elected in 2018, she became the first woman of color to hold statewide office in New York and the first woman to be elected Attorney General.”

James’s 2018 campaign included her determination to investigate the Trump Organization, Trump family, and then-president. In public comments James termed the then-president a “con man” and “carnival barker” and promised supporters, “I will be shining into every dark corner of his real-estate dealings…demanding truthfulness at every turn.”

After the election, NY1 reported:

For the past four years, Letitia James has been the city’s public advocate. It’s supposed to be a watchdog role, but the office has almost no teeth when it comes to rooting out wrongdoing.

That’s about to change.

As she assumes the office of state attorney general, James has put President Donald Trump on notice: she’ll pursue every legal avenue to investigate him and his financial dealings.

In a letter dated April 14, 2025 to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche outlining the criminal referral, Pulte wrote, “Based on media reports, Ms. Letitia James has, in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms. This has potentially included 1) falsifying residence status for a Norfolk, Virginia-based home in order to secure a lower mortgage rate and 2) misrepresenting property descriptions to meet stringent requirements for government backed loans and government assistance…Primary residence mortgages receive more favorable loan terms, including lower interest rates, than secondary residence mortgages.”

Pulte attached documentation evidencing James claimed the Virginia property, purchased in August 2023m to be her “primary residence” while also identifying a New York property as her “residence.”

New York State requires the elected attorney general to be a minimum of 30 years old and to have been “resident of state 5 years immediately preceding election.”

In addition, Pulte wrote in the letter, in 1983 and 2000, James identified her father as her spouse on loan applications and claimed a five-unit apartment building she owned in Brooklyn consisted of only four units.

“Spanning the last two decades, Ms. James has consistently misrepresented the same property as only having four units in both building permit applications and numerous mortgage documents and applications,” Pulte wrote on page 2. “This even includes a 2011 application for the Home Affordable Modification Program (“HAMP”). See Exhibit D. And most recently a 2019 mortgage refinancing through a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lender. See Exhibit E. Conforming loans, or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-backed mortgages, have favorable rates and terms to traditional private market mortgages for the explicit purpose of availability to lower and middle-income borrowers. Conforming single-family loans are subject to a cap of four dwellings per property. A building that exceeds four units must be treated as a multifamily property, and typically has larger down payment requirements and higher interest rates terms—with interest rates being between 0.75-1 percent higher—due to lenders viewing multifamily loans as significantly riskier.”

James is well-known for having sued Trump for alleged fraud in the valuation of some of his New York, Illinois and Florida properties while he was a private citizen between terms. Trump and his two older sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, who were also named defendants, denied the allegations, and bank representatives testifying in the case denied having been defrauded as to the properties’ values.

Nevertheless, James’s civil case resulted in an unprecedented $464 million judgment against the Trump Organization in the form of a bond. Judge Arthur Engoron also imposed a “receiver” on the Trump Organization, writing in his ruling, “The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience.”

“Engoron found that Trump’s phony wealth claims were critical to his success, affording him lower loan interest rates and allowing him to build projects he wouldn’t have otherwise been able to finish,” the AP reported on February 17, 2024. “The judge determined that those savings and windfall profits were ‘ill-gotten gains’ and ordered him and his co-defendants to cough them up to the state, with interest.”

Trump’s legal team, which then included Blanche, appealed the ruling, and just over a year ago, an appellate court reduced the bond amount to $175 million which the Trump organization paid. No opinion has yet issued following a September 26 appeal hearing.

Laura Ingraham of “The Ingraham Angle” featured Pulte’s decision to make the criminal referral with analysis by Georgetown University School of Law professor Jonathan Turley.

“Well, obviously, the irony is perfectly crushing,” Turley told Ingraham. “This is a person who prosecuted Trump for everything short of ripping a label off a mattress, and among the charges that were brought in New York in not just the civil but the criminal case was making false or misleading statements to financial institutions. And one of these sections, Section 1014 of the federal code, is prosecuted. It took me about 60 seconds of a search to find cases that the Department of Justice brought against people who falsely claimed that property was their principal residence in order to get loans…As for James, if we apply the Letitia James standard that she created, there’d be little question here…”

On Wednesday, White Collar Fraud reported on Pulte’s letter and, unlike other outlets, posted it in full.

In late 2023, citizen journalist Laura Loomer titled a Substack post, “Dark Money Loan Possibly Tied To Anti-Trump Media Operatives,” including evidence of unpermitted alterations to a “four-story” apartment building James owned in Brooklyn.

A trend on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday night and Wednesday is “Letitia James.”

“If her residence is in a different state her job is vacated, NY law does not allow you to hold public office,” “Chicago Ray” posted late Wednesday morning. “Which means her prosecution of Trump was unlawful, she wasn’t the legal AG of the state.”

He included a video of a broadcast of Vince Coglianese, who replaced now-FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino in his longtime role, stating, “If her resident is officially in a completely different state, her job is vacated…This case goes far beyond just who does she defraud when it came to some banks; it goes to to what extent did she defraud the people of the State of New York…”