Photo: Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images News / Getty Images
New criminal referrals targeting New York Attorney General Letitia James are putting her back in the crosshairs of a Trump administration official after earlier federal efforts to prosecute her stalled.
According to NBC News, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte sent two criminal referrals on Wednesday (March 25) alleging James may have committed insurance fraud tied to homeowner’s insurance applications for two properties in Norfolk, Virginia. One referral reportedly went to U.S. Attorney Jason Quiñones in the Southern District of Florida, and the other to U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros in the Northern District of Illinois, where the insurance companies involved are based.
NBC reported that Pulte’s referrals relied on documents publicized on X by conservative attorney Mike Davis. In the referral to Boutros, Pulte wrote that James “made representations that the house would be occupied by a single adult, with no children. Instead, according to the post, she knew the house was actually occupied by four people — three children and her niece.”
In the referral to Quiñones, Pulte also said James “made false representations that her property would be unoccupied five months out of the year. According to the post, this was false. The house was, in fact, occupied year-round by her niece.”
James’ attorney, Abbe Lowell, pushed back hard. In a statement, per NBC News, Lowell said, “Trump and his political enablers keep abusing their power to pursue a vendetta against her by trying to rename, refile, and repeat baseless allegations.”
He added, “They continue this improper revenge campaign instead of helping bring down the rising cost of living in this country. These desperate tactics will fail — just as every previous attempt has failed — and exposes an Administration that has abandoned its responsibility to the American people in favor of petty political payback.”
The new referrals land after the Justice Department already failed multiple times to move forward with an earlier criminal case against James over mortgage-related allegations.
James was indicted in October 2025 on bank fraud and false-statement charges tied to a Norfolk property, but that prosecution ran into repeated setbacks. Grand juries in Alexandria, Virginia, declined twice in December 2025 to re-indict her after the original case unraveled.
One major turning point came in November 2025, when a federal judge dismissed the original indictment after finding that interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan had been unlawfully appointed. Court records and case summaries show the dismissal did not end the broader effort to investigate James, but it did force prosecutors back to the grand jury — where they failed to secure new indictments.
That history matters because James has long argued the investigations are political retaliation for her civil fraud case against Donald Trump and his company. In January, James said the federal probes were payback for her 2022 lawsuit against Trump’s family business. That case resulted in a fraud judgment against Trump, though an appeals court later voided the financial penalty while leaving the underlying fraud finding intact.
Pulte has played a visible role in pushing some of these matters forward. He bypassed established ethics channels in 2025 while making criminal referrals against several Trump critics, including James, Adam Schiff, and Lisa Cook.
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