President Donald Trump and New York Lawyer Basic Letitia James have spent years locked in high-stakes authorized battles over Trump’s enterprise dealings, alleged fraud, and insurance policies, however tensions escalated sharply on Oct. 9, when federal prosecutors, following weeks of stress from Trump, lastly indicted James on expenses of fraud and making false statements.
Based on the New York Occasions, the indictment, filed Thursday within the Jap District of Virginia, alleges that James misrepresented her intent to make use of a Norfolk, Virginia, residence as a secondary residence when she allegedly meant to hire it out as an funding property. That misrepresentation, prosecutors declare, allowed her to safe extra favorable mortgage phrases, saving practically $19,000.
The costs observe the Trump-directed indictment of former FBI Director James Comey simply two weeks earlier, intensifying issues over the president’s direct involvement within the justice system and elevating alarms in regards to the erosion of long-standing democratic norms amid what critics name a marketing campaign of political retribution.
On Thursday, James swiftly denied wrongdoing, calling the fees “baseless.”
“That is nothing greater than a continuation of the president’s determined weaponization of our justice system. He’s forcing federal regulation enforcement businesses to do his bidding, all as a result of I did my job because the New York State Lawyer Basic,” she mentioned in a press release.
“These expenses are baseless, and the president’s personal public statements clarify that his solely objective is political retribution at any value. The president’s actions are a grave violation of our Constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of each events. His determination to fireside a United States Lawyer who refused to carry expenses in opposition to me – and substitute them with somebody who’s blindly loyal to not the regulation, however to the president – is antithetical to the bedrock ideas of our nation.”
The strain between these two public figures doesn’t look like letting up anytime quickly. Let’s have a look again at Donald Trump and Letitia James’ contentious court docket historical past through the years.
November 2019
In June 2018, the New York Lawyer Basic filed a lawsuit in opposition to the Donald J. Trump Basis, alleging that its administrators had failed to satisfy their fiduciary duties below state charity legal guidelines. The go well with detailed how Donald Trump repeatedly used the Basis’s funds to serve his private, enterprise, and political pursuits, together with unlawfully coordinating along with his 2016 presidential marketing campaign.
The lawsuit claimed that through the first half of 2016, amid the Republican primaries, Trump leveraged Basis cash raised from public donations to mission a picture of generosity. Simply days earlier than the Iowa caucuses, his marketing campaign distributed $500,000 at a rally and later claimed credit score for the Basis’s full $2.8 million in grants, blurring the road between charity and marketing campaign technique, in line with the go well with.
As a part of a settlement reached in 2019, Trump admitted to personally misusing Basis funds and agreed to particular restrictions ought to he try to kind one other charitable group. He additionally consented to ongoing oversight by the Lawyer Basic’s workplace. His youngsters—Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump—have been required to finish obligatory coaching on nonprofit governance. The settlement additionally designated which charities would obtain the Basis’s remaining property as a part of its formal dissolution.
December 2021
Earlier than she formally filed her historic 2022 landmark civil fraud lawsuit, Trump and his group sued Letitia James in federal court docket in 2021, making an attempt to halt her investigation into his enterprise dealings. In his 2021 go well with, the Republican claimed political bias and due course of violations.
Paradoxically, the lawsuit was filed two weeks after James requested that Trump sit for a Jan. 7 deposition. He argued that her investigation, targeted partly on how the Trump Group valued its property, violated Trump’s constitutional rights and quantities to a “thinly veiled effort to publicly malign” him and his associates, in line with court docket paperwork obtained by NPR.
Trump’s authorized staff portrayed James, a Democrat, as harboring “private disdain” for him, citing public statements she made through the years, together with her participation in “die-in” protests in opposition to him, her marketing campaign boast of suing his administration 76 occasions, and tweets from 2018 declaring she had her “eyes on Trump Tower” and that Trump was “working out of time.”
September 2022
In 2022, James filed a landmark civil fraud lawsuit in opposition to Trump, three of his grownup youngsters, and senior executives of the Trump Group, alleging that that they had engaged in a years-long scheme to fraudulently inflate the worth of their property. The objective, in line with the lawsuit, was to deceive lenders, insurers, and tax authorities with a purpose to safe higher mortgage phrases, favorable insurance coverage charges, and decrease tax liabilities.
The lawsuit alleged that Trump, his firms, and his household dedicated practically $250 million in fraud and referred to as for the Trumps to be completely barred from holding government positions in any New York-based firm.
Notably, in Might of that yr, federal Choose Brenda Sannes dismissed Trump’s 2021 lawsuit in opposition to James, permitting her civil investigation to proceed.
February 2024
A landmark verdict for James’ civil fraud lawsuit was delivered in 2024. The New York Metropolis AG received a judgment ordering Trump, his sons, firms, and different associated events to pay greater than $450 million for fraudulently inflating his web value.
Trump was banned from serving as an officer or director of any New York firm for 3 years. The Republican and his firms have been additionally banned from making use of for loans from any New York financial institution or monetary establishment for 3 years.
August 2025
Sadly, in August 2025, a New York appeals court docket tossed out the civil fraud judgment handed all the way down to the president, his firms, and household. Whereas the greater than half-billion-dollar fantastic has been waived, the ruling nonetheless prohibits Donald Trump and his sons, Eric and Donald Jr., from holding government roles in any firm for a number of years, as beforehand reported.
A five-judge panel reviewing Trump’s enchantment in August failed to achieve a consensus on a number of key points however unanimously agreed that the unique civil penalty was “extreme.”
April 2025
In April, Letitia James highlighted the intensive authorized efforts her workplace had taken to defend New Yorkers in opposition to what she described as “harmful and unlawful” federal insurance policies carried out by Trump. Since Jan. 20, James revealed she had filed or joined 15 lawsuits and submitted 22 amicus briefs in collaboration with Democratic attorneys common throughout the nation. These authorized actions, she claimed, efficiently halted a number of of the Trump administration’s most dangerous initiatives. The efforts spanned a variety of points, together with the protection of birthright citizenship, safety of federal employees, and the preservation of entry to schooling, healthcare, and voting rights.
“We is not going to permit this administration to trample our Structure, strip Individuals of their basic rights, and dismantle crucial companies that hundreds of thousands of individuals depend on day-after-day,” mentioned Letitia James. “We stopped a few of their most unconstitutional insurance policies lifeless of their tracks, and we’re not slowing down. If this administration continues to bulldoze the Structure and ignore the regulation, they’ll discover all of us standing in the best way each single time.”
SEE MORE:
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A Timeline Of Donald Trump And Letitia James’ Heated Court docket Battles
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