FBI opens investigation into NY AG Tish James, reports say
In a criminal referral filed in April, the Trump-appointed director of the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency accused James of falsifying bank documents and property records in multiple instances in order to acquire government backed assistance loans and more favorable loan terms.
FHFA head William Pulte alleged in the referral that James potentially misrepresented property descriptions and claimed her primary residential status as Norfolk. He cited "media reports" as the basis.
On April 24, attorney Abbe Lowell sent a letter to the Justice Department arguing the accusations against James are meritless and that they are motivated by Trump's personal animus towards James.
"These baseless and long-discredited allegations, put to rest by my April 24th letter to the Department of Justice, are suddenly back in the news just days after President Trump publicly attacked Attorney General James," Lowell said in a May 8 statement on behalf of James. "This appears to be the political retribution President Trump threatened to exact that AG Bondi assured the Senate would not occur on her watch. If prosecutors are genuinely interested in the truth, we are prepared to meet false claims with facts."
The Justice Department declined to comment.
James is currently suing the Trump administration over cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services' and executive actions pertaining to elections that she says are unconstitutional.
At the White House on May 6, the United States attorney general, Pam Bondi, declined to comment on the referral.
"Well, I don't want to get involved in something that Pamela is involved with," Trump said, before he lit into James.
The president said James is a "disaster for New York" and called her a "horrible, horrible human being" and "total crook."
"That's just my opinion," he said. "Pam is going to have to do what she wants. She's a very bad person. She's a very, very bad, a very bad person who campaigned solely on, I'm going to get Donald Trump, over and over again."
Trump again said that his comments, made in the presence of his hand-picked attorney general, have "nothing to do with what Pam does. Pam is going to do what's right. She always does."
News outlets began reporting that DOJ had opened an investigation into James two days later.
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