Letitia James' 2013 campaign faced scrutiny and penalties from the New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) for various violations.
According to a report from the Observer dated November 18, 2016, the CFB fined Letitia James $5,705 for multiple infractions related to her 2013 campaign. These violations included:
Accepting illegal donations (e.g., from unregistered political committees, corporations, LLCs, or partnerships).
Failing to file required pre-election disclosure statements.
Making unauthorized post-election expenditures.
Not reporting certain transactions or providing required merchant account statements.
The fines and violations are excused as sloppy or non-compliant campaign management, but as we have seen, the perception of gross incompetence is often a mask for fraud.
Reports have surfaced alleging that Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, may have falsified the number of units in her Brooklyn apartment building to secure a favorable loan through the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) in 2011. These claims, primarily highlighted in articles by Joel Gilbert published on The Gateway Pundit and echoed across various platforms like WorldNetDaily and White Collar Fraud, center on discrepancies between James' loan application and official property records.
According to these reports, James purchased a four-story multi-family apartment building on Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn in 2001 for $550,000. Over the years, she refinanced the property multiple times, consistently declaring it as a four-unit residential building on mortgage applications. However, the Certificate of Occupancy, dated January 26, 2001, reportedly designates the property as a five-family dwelling. This distinction is significant because HAMP, a federal program designed to assist struggling homeowners, applies only to owner-occupied properties with one to four units. Properties with five or more units are classified as commercial, typically ineligible for HAMP and subject to higher interest rates and stricter lending terms.
In 2011, James allegedly secured a HAMP loan modification that reduced her mortgage interest rate to 2.7%, saving her an estimated $44,000 annually. To qualify, she submitted a financial hardship statement claiming insufficient income or liquid assets to meet mortgage payments. Yet, public records cited in these reports indicate she earned at least $126,390 that year—$122,500 from her role on the New York City Council, $3,890 from CUNY, plus additional rental income from the property. Critics argue this income level, for a single woman with no children, undermines her hardship claim, suggesting potential misrepresentation.
Further scrutiny comes from alleged handwritten notations on the HAMP agreement, as noted in a White Collar Fraud investigation. One note reportedly states “4 fam,” aligning with her application, while another ambiguously references “not more than 6 residential units,” conflicting with the official five-unit classification. These inconsistencies raise questions about whether James deliberately understated the unit count to qualify for HAMP and if the lender was complicit or negligent in approving the loan.
The irony highlighted in these reports is James’ high-profile prosecution of Donald Trump in 2024 for inflating asset values to secure better loans—conduct she condemned as harming “honest and hardworking people.” Her own actions, if proven, could mirror the financial misrepresentations she pursued legally, prompting calls for federal investigation into possible mortgage fraud, a crime under U.S. law carrying penalties like fines or imprisonment.
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Reports alleging that Letitia James lied on a home loan application by claiming to be borrowing with her father as "husband and wife" stem primarily from a March 20, 2025, article by Joel Gilbert published on The Gateway Pundit.
According to the Gateway Pundit report, in May 1983, when Letitia James was 24 years old and living with her parents in Brooklyn after graduating from CUNY’s Lehman College, she and her father, Robert James, took out a $30,300 real estate loan from Kadilac Funding Ltd. to purchase a small, 888-square-foot home at 114-04 Inwood Street in Queens, New York.
The loan documents allegedly list them as “husband and wife” in capital letters on both the first page and the signature page, reading “ROBERT JAMES AND LETITIA JAMES, HIS WIFE.” However, the property deed from the same day reportedly identifies them as “ROBERT JAMES AND LETITIA JAMES, his daughter,” highlighting a discrepancy. The article suggests that James, as a single woman with little or no income at the time (before starting law school at Howard University in 1984), may have misrepresented her relationship with her father to qualify for the loan, potentially constituting mortgage fraud.
Further, the report notes that when the loan was assigned to The Richard Grill Company on June 27, 1983, and later when the property was sold on May 4, 2000, the documentation continued to list them as “husband and wife.” Gilbert argues this could indicate a pattern of misrepresentation, as falsely claiming a marital relationship to secure better loan terms is illegal under federal and state laws. Mortgage fraud, including “False Representation” (providing misleading information on a loan application) and “Misrepresentation of Relationship” (lying about marital status), can carry penalties such as fines, civil lawsuits, or imprisonment.
The narrative ties this to James’ 2024 prosecution of Donald Trump for inflating asset values to secure loans, suggesting hypocrisy given her public stance that “no one is above the law.” Critics speculate that claiming “husband and wife” status might have helped James secure the loan at a time when single women faced lending discrimination, though no direct evidence of her income or loan denial risk at age 24 is provided.
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