Video transcript
And now the Trump Justice Department may be a pain in her, you know what. The angle has obtained shocking allegations leveled by the Trump administration against New York Attorney General Letitia James. The Federal Housing Finance Agency has sent a criminal referral to the DOJ accusing James of mortgage fraud. In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director Bill Pulte says James appears to have falsified records in order to meet certain lending requirements and receive favorable loan terms. He cited a property in Virginia that she's allegedly claimed as her principal residence and a property in New York that she claimed as a four-unit structure instead of a five, which Pulte says means she was able to get a different type and more favorable loan. Joining me now is Jonathan Turley, Fox News contributor and law professor at GW University. Jonathan, mortgage fraud is rampant in the United States. There's all sorts of fraud that's rampant. There's disability fraud that they've vowed to crack down on in the Trump administration. But this is another thing that they have vowed to crack down on because it costs real money. Your reaction to these allegations? Well, obviously the irony is perfectly crushing. 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. So this is well-tread areas for the Justice Department. As for James, if we applied the Letitia James standard that she created, there'd be little question here. This seems pretty straightforward. What the administration is saying is this was not her principal residence. In fact, as a New York elected official, she had to say that her principal residence was in New York. This was an out-of-state residence. But also, they claim that in some of these forms, she actually states that her father is her husband in order to file as a married couple. So there's a lot of those questions. And as you know, the Supreme Court just stated earlier in March, in a case called Thompson, that they want to see knowing false statements under sections like 1014, not just misleading statements. These are misleading statements. Either it's your principal residence or it's not. Either you're married to your father or he's your father. So this can satisfy the Thompson standard. Well, Jonathan, we reached out to the DOJ, and they have no comment on this referral. We also reached out to Attorney General James, who did not respond to us either. So again, everyone wants the best interest rate you can get. I understand that. But she's a lawyer. She knows that when you sign a mortgage application, that mortgage application, if you're borrowing money, if you're not borrowing money, nobody cares whether it's your principal residence, except where you file your taxes. But she decided to state that that was her principal residence, knowing it was not her principal residence. I didn't even know she had property. I guess she had property in Virginia and she has rental or investment property in New York. That's fine. But in the New York matter, to get the favorable rate, the building could only have four units. But for it looks like the entirety of this building, it had five units, meaning it was in violation of the actual loan agreement. And again, this is not a novel application of the law, Jonathan, as you stated during the persecution of Donald Trump. She was using all these novel applications of law to go after him. This isn't novel. This is a black and white issue. You either did or you didn't. Right. And this has been prosecuted in the past. Now, we have not heard her side of this, but these documents themselves are quite damning. It's hard to see how the residences listed were her principal residence. The business about her father is just bizarre. Now, I'll note that one of the things that Letitia James stressed in her case against Trump is that Trump had to review documents that were filed in his name. And so she dismissed the argument that this was something that Trump's people put together. She said he's ultimately responsible. So they alleged that she gave a power of attorney in a couple of these instances. But according to her own standard, that's not enough.
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