In a significant legal development, a federal grand jury in Virginia has refused to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James, delivering another setback to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to prosecute his political opponents. This decision comes just days after a federal judge dismissed the initial case against James, finding that the prosecutor appointed by Trump lacked legal authority to bring the charges.
The case against James alleged she committed bank fraud and made false statements to a financial institution regarding a mortgage loan for a three-bedroom property in Norfolk. Prosecutors claimed she obtained favorable loan terms by misrepresenting the property as her secondary residence rather than an investment property. Unnamed sources told US media that James had purchased the home for her great-niece in 2020, with the relative never paying rent.
James, who successfully brought civil fraud charges against Trump before his re-election campaign, consistently maintained the case was politically motivated. Following the grand jury’s decision, she released a statement saying, ‘As I have said from the start, the charges against me are baseless. It is time for this unchecked weaponization of our justice system to stop.’
Her attorney, Abbe David Lowell, characterized the grand jury’s refusal as ‘a decisive rejection of a case that should never have existed in the first place,’ adding that any further prosecution attempts would represent ‘a shocking assault on the rule of law.’
The cases against both James and former FBI Director James Comey were dismissed with prejudice, meaning the government could theoretically attempt to prosecute them again on the same charges, though legal experts consider this unlikely given the circumstances.
Grand juries, composed of members of the public, determine only whether sufficient evidence exists to proceed to trial rather than assessing guilt or innocence. According to CBS News, federal grand juries rarely decline prosecutors’ requests, with only six such rejections occurring among more than 150,000 cases investigated in 2016.
This development represents the latest chapter in the ongoing legal battles between Trump and his political adversaries. James previously brought a civil fraud case against Trump and the Trump Organization in 2022, resulting in a finding of liability for falsifying records to secure better loan deals, though an appeals court later threw out the $500 million penalty as excessive while upholding the fraud finding.