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Left: President Donald Trump holds a note from Secretary of State Marco Rubio as he speaks during an event in the State Dining Room at the White House Oct. 8, 2025. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images). Right: New York Attorney General Letitia James reacts to her bank fraud indictment (X/New York State Attorney General).
On Friday, New York Attorney General Letitia James sought to have the mortgage fraud case against her dismissed. This case was initiated by interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia.
In her motion to dismiss, James argues that she is being unfairly targeted for performing her duties. Her work led to a successful civil fraud case involving former President Donald Trump and his family business.
“The government has pursued this action against Attorney General James due to the President’s disapproval of her protected political speech and her role in executing her legal responsibilities as New York Attorney General,” the 50-page motion to dismiss states. “This indictment is a result of a vindictive and selective prosecution, violating the Fifth Amendment. Given the unconstitutional nature of this prosecution, this Court should dismiss the indictment with prejudice.”
The civil fraud case, which began in 2019, was built on the testimony of Michael Cohen, a former ally and attorney of Trump. During a congressional hearing led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cohen alleged that the Trump Organization overstated assets to insurance companies and that similar discrepancies might exist in the company’s tax filings.
Following a thorough investigation, James filed a $250 million civil fraud lawsuit in September 2022 against Trump, his children, the Trump Organization, and other key figures within the company.
In September 2023, Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, several of their top lieutenants, and various corporate organizations that comprise the Trump Organization were found to have committed fraud by a Manhattan judge on motions for summary judgment filed by James. The court also issued costly cancellations of numerous licenses that allowed the Trumps to do business in New York.
A bench trial on the extent of liability was held between October 2023 and January 2024. In February 2024, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron arrived at a combined civil penalty of some $454 million. The judgment was reversed on appeal in August of this year.
Despite the appellate respite, the 45th and 47th president has been adamant James should find herself in legal jeopardy.
In late November 2024, while still president-elect, Trump, by way of eventual Solicitor General D. John Sauer – asked James to dismiss the civil fraud case.
On Oct. 9, the mortgage fraud indictment was filed.
James, in her motion, puts Trump’s own words – and the words of his allies – at the forefront of her claim that the entirety of the prosecution is the result of “genuine animus towards her exercise of her constitutional and statutory rights.”
“This lawsuit, and AG James’ outspoken criticism of the President, triggered six years of targeted attacks,” the filing goes on. “President Trump and his allies have used every insulting term in their vocabulary to deride AG James and call for criminal penalties in retaliation for the exercise of her rights and fulfillment of her statutory duties to fulfill her obligations as New York state’s attorney general.”
The Empire State’s top law enforcement official points to the timeline of events leading up to the controversial indictment:
Since his second inauguration, the President and his hand-picked Department of Justice officials exhausted every avenue to secure the payback that the President demanded. But even after stripping AG James’ security clearance, creating “working groups” on weaponization to find anything to substantiate a prosecution against her, commencing a five-month investigation, and sending a letter threatening her with prosecution if she failed to resign from her position, AG [Pam] Bondi and Mr. [Ed] Martin could not support a criminal charge. That did not sit well with the President. So the President removed what he viewed as the final roadblock to his plan—interim U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert—and installed his own lawyer, Ms. [Lindsey] Halligan, with the singular mission of churning out indictments against his political enemies. Ms. Halligan promptly obeyed.
In no uncertain terms, the scathing dismissal motion says the “indictment is unconstitutional.”
“The Fifth Amendment prohibits the Executive from abridging free speech, due process, and equal protection by undertaking vindictive or selective prosecutions,” the filing continues. “Because this prosecution violates the Constitution, the Government’s indictment must be dismissed with prejudice.”
The motion goes on to argue that the Trump administration is aware of several “similarly-situated individuals” who have “classified a property as a secondary residence, rather than as an investment property, and whose conduct is known to DOJ and/or widely reported, but who were not investigated or charged” and are also in regulatory or law enforcement roles. Those individuals, James says, include high-profile Republican elected officials and members of the Trump administration. But, James says, despite referrals for their prosecution, the president and his aforementioned allies “have been uncharacteristically silent on all of these instances of possible fraud.”
The dismissal bid continues on to argue that the charges against James evidence “discriminatory intent.” This conclusion, according to the filing, is supported by “six years of attacks, animus, and retaliatory actions for her protected speech and activities.”
The filing, while also asking for discovery in the alternative, says the current iteration of the DOJ under Trump is simply too compromised to keep the case against James alive.
From the motion, again, at length:
The Government’s conduct here has offended the very core of due process and equal protection principles in transforming the Department of Justice into the President’s personal agents of revenge. At every stage of the investigation and prosecution of AG James, the Government took unprecedented steps to circumvent traditional, constitutional, and statutory guardrails on prosecutorial and investigative power. This misbehavior has gravely prejudiced AG James, as she was charged for exercising her constitutional and statutory rights and without the benefit of a neutral prosecutor. The only remedy that will vindicate AG James’ rights is dismissal with prejudice, as the investigation and the Department of Justice are too tainted with unconstitutional motivation to bring these charges fairly against AG James.