The bad blood between President Donald Trump and New York Attorney General Letitia James, which has led to Thursday’s federal indictment, has been building for seven years after the New York Democrat called out the president and successfully litigated him.
James made Trump and his policies the forefront of her 2018 campaign for the attorney general seat.
“I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president,” James said in a video after winning the Democratic primary that year.
After winning the election, James told her supporters that as attorney general, she would “be shining a bright light into every dark corner of [Trump] real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn.”
Trump pushed back in interviews and tweets, accusing the attorney general of bias.
“It is very hard and expensive to live in New York. Governor Andrew Cuomo uses his Attorney General as a bludgeoning tool for his own purposes. They sue on everything, always in search of a crime,” Trump tweeted in 2019.
James slammed the president on the social media site.
“Make no mistake: No one is above the law, not even the President. P.S. My name is Letitia James. (You can call me Tish.),” she posted on Twitter.
In March 2019, the New York AG’s office, which had already challenged the administration on a number of its policies, including the travel ban, began to probe the Trump Organization into alleged fraud.
James’ office probed allegations that the organization inflated the former president’s net worth by billions of dollars and cheated lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements.
Trump and his business officials did not cooperate with subpoenas and other court orders over the three years that the probe took place. Eventually, the then-former president gave a deposition in August 2022, but repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights.
A month later, James filed a civil lawsuit against Trump, his three adult children and former president, the Trump Organization, and two of its executives, Allan Weisselberg and Jeff McConney.
Trump, who pleaded not guilty, repeatedly denied the allegations and accused James, who is Black, of being racist.
The case went to trial in October 2023 and lasted into January.
On Feb. 16, 2024, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled, “In order to borrow more and at lower rates, defendants submitted blatantly false financial data to the accountants, resulting in fraudulent financial statements.”
Engoron temporarily barred Trump and his sons from leading New York-based companies and ordered Trump to pay a fine of more than $454 million. That number increased to around half a billion dollars based on interest accrued on the judgment.
Trump blasted the judge and James after the ruling.
“A crooked New State judge just ruled I need to pay a fine,” he said.
James, however, touted her office’s meticulous investigation.
“The scale and scope of Donald Trump’s fraud is staggering — and so, too, is his ego and his belief that the rules don’t apply to him,” she said.
Trump appealed the decision and even requested that James drop the case after the election, but the New York attorney general refused.
After the ruling, Trump continued to rail against James during the campaign trail and once being elected into office, repeated his claims that she was crooked and her case against him was biased.
In August, a New York appeals court upheld Trump’s liability; however, it voided the penalty as excessive. James said she intended to appeal the ruling.
Trump ramped up his attacks on James and in April, Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent the DOJ a criminal referral about James over a mortgage application.
The referral alleged James committed fraud in 2023 during a home purchase by falsely indicating the property would be her primary residence. The New York Attorney General’s office accused the administration of “weaponizing the federal government.”
“She will not be intimidated by bullies — no matter who they are,” the office said in a statement in April.
“It looks to me like [James] is very guilty of something, but I really don’t know,” Trump told reporters last month.
The investigation, however, has run into controversy.
Erik Siebert, the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had expressed doubts internally about bringing cases against James and former FBI Director James Comey, sources told ABC News.
Following a five-month investigation and interviews with more than a dozen witnesses, federal prosecutors uncovered no clear evidence against James, sources told ABC News.
Siebert resigned last month, following pressure from the administration. Trump replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, one of Trump’s former personal attorneys who has no prosecutorial experience, as the acting head of the EDVA.
James continued to speak out against the president after she was charged, calling the charges “baseless.”
“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General,” she said in a statement Thursday.