Letitia James to Appear in Court as Battle Over Trump-Urged Prosecution Begins

New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, is set to appear in federal court in Norfolk, Va., on Friday morning for an arraignment where she is expected to plead not guilty to charges lodged by the Trump administration that she misled a bank to get more favorable mortgage terms.

The hearing for Ms. James, her first court appearance since being indicted this month, is a routine opening procedure in a prosecution that is anything but. How her case, which was pursued at President Trump’s demand over the objections of career prosecutors, plays out could hold signals for the president’s wider efforts to seek retribution against his perceived enemies.

Ms. James has said the charges against her — one count of bank fraud and one count of making a false statement to a financial institution — are “baseless.” Her indictment, she has said, is “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.”

Ms. James stands accused of lying about her purpose in buying a house in Virginia in 2020. Prosecutors say that while she said the house would be a secondary residence, she in fact used it as a “rental investment property,” renting it to a family of three.

But Ms. James’s great-niece has lived in the house since 2020, and testified to a Norfolk grand jury that she does not pay rent. Ms. James has reported only $1,350 in rent from the property on her tax forms.

Career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia who had reviewed the evidence had concluded it did not support criminal charges, but the president abruptly forced out the U.S. attorney who had been overseeing the office and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who had no prosecutorial experience.