It is stunning how the Axis-biased legal analysts attacking the recent indictment of NY Atty General Letitia James for mortgage fraud manage to forget, or ignore, or intentionally omit how James campaigned as AG on a promise to somehow, some way, “stop” Donald Trump, meaning to lock him up or cripple him financially so he couldn’t run for President.

The day after she was elected in 2018, Letitia James was asked by a community activist if she was gonna sue President Trump. She said, “Oh, we’re definitely gonna sue him. We’re gonna be a real pain in the ass. He’s gonna know my name personally.” James didn’t hide the fact that she would be emulating Stalin’s henchman Beria, who infamously said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” She wasn’t the only Democrat looking for ways to use political lawfare against Trump: it was basically the primary strategy of the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party as the 2024 election loomed. (Back up strategy: Claim Trump is Hitler.)

James ultimately settled on charging Trump with loan fraud, alleging that he inflated the value of his properties to get bank loans. It was classic selective prosecution (at the trial, the banks agreed that indeed “everybody does it”) and the evidence showed that there were literally no damages: Trump’s organization paid back the loans with interest, the banks made money, and nobody was harmed. Never mind: thanks to a flagrantly partisan judge, Trump was hit with more than a half-billion in damages, which was ridiculous. As every objective commentator predicted, they were thrown out as “excessive.“

Meanwhile, as James was doing her party’s bidding, she was tweeting statements like this: “Roses are red. Violets are blue. No one is above the law. Even when you think the rules don’t apply to you. Happy Valentine’s Day!” How professional. Then there was this:

Boy, talk about putting a “Kick me!” sign on your own back!

Condign justice arrived in the form of a Federal indictment because James repeatedly listed her Virginia home as an “investment” property in financial disclosure forms. Those claims to a bank obtained a favorable loan that barred her from using the house as a rental property. The three bedroom Norfolk, Va., home James purchased in August of 2020 was listed in the “real estate” section of James’ 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 disclosures to the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government as an “investment,” valued at between “$100,000 to under $150,000.” But in her 2024 ethics filing, she raised the estimated the value of the single-family home to “$150,000 to under $250,000” and designated the Norfolk home as “real property,” rather than an “investment.” Federal prosecutors allege that James misrepresented how she would use the property when she obtained her $109,600 mortgage loan, backed by Fannie Mae, to purchase the $137,000 home in 2020. James agreed to a “Second Home Rider” when she took out the loan, which required the attorney general to “occupy and use the property as her secondary residence, and prohibited its use as a time-sharing or other shared ownership arrangement or agreement that required her either to rent the property or give any other person any control over the occupancy or use of the property.” Yet the Norfolk property “was not occupied or used by James as a secondary residence and was instead used as a rental investment property.”

James, then, obtained a mortgage rate that would not have been available had she informed the lender that she planned to rent the property. James also represented on a homeowners’ insurance application that the house would be “owner occupied.” But in her federal tax forms James treated the Norfolk home as “rental real estate,” reporting “thousand(s) of dollars in rents received” and “claiming deductions for expenses relating to the property,” according to the indictment.

James’s defense is apparently going to be a lack of mens rea (it was all just a big misunderstanding) and that Trump’s Justice Department is engaging in vindictive and selective prosecution. Hmmmm, where have I read that phrase before?

It’s pretty simple. You can pronounce both Trump’s prosecution and James’ as politically motivated or neither. However, there is little doubt that the case against James is the more valid one. There were real damages resulting from her misrepresentations. She profited, and the public lost money as a result.

And there is another point: the use of Tit-for-Tat, usually an unethical motivation (and on the Unethical Rationalizations List, #7), has a utilitarian exception. Knowing that if you engage in an unethical tactic against an individual that same unethical tactic will later be used against you is a powerful incentive not to engage in that tactic. In litigation, for example, a legal ethics expert admitted on his blog that he prevented himself and his clients from being the victims of discovery abuse, an unethical litigation tactic but a common one, by making it clear to adversaries that if they did not play fair in responding to his discovery requests, neither would he when responding to theirs. He wrote that without the threat of retribution and Tit for Tat, discovery abuse would be the rule rather than a taboo.

That is a justification for prosecuting James. Unlike in litigation, however, I doubt that Trump’s revenge, and his various (stupid) tweets on the matter leave little doubt that this is what his pursuit of James is, will prevent a further deterioration in politics and law that the Biden/Democratic Party targeting of Donald Trump launched. They broke an important unwritten rule (or democratic norm, as it is called when Republicans breach one). It’s not going to be fixed any time soon, and until it is, I’ll be happy to see Letitia James get what she deserves.

_____

Sources: Victory Girls, PBS, Daily Caller