“It doesn’t matter how big, rich or powerful believe you are, nobody is above the law.”
Those words of the attorney general of the State of New York, Letitia James, echoed the media, the media, leion to his office assured a trial against Donald Trump for false commercial practices, including the witnesses of the invocation room in the loan documents.
Ecological even stronger this week can be made, since James is the subject of a criminal derivation for committing an alleged financial fraud to ensure their own real estate loans.
On April 14, William J. Ablicte, director of US Federal Housing (FHFA), sent a reference letter to the Department of Justice that details the alleged false statements made in the fillings by James to obtain housing loans.
For a attorney general who has just prosecuted Trump for everything that starts a mattress label, the details in the references are particularly condemnatory.
In fact, the greatest danger is that the Department of Letitia James could be applied to Letitia James to ensure that “no one is above the law.”
The accusations against James run from the demonstrably false to the frankly strange.
By ensuring a loan for a house in Norfolk, Virginia, James is accused of claiming through his representative that the property would be the main residence.
As the reference points out, primary residences receive more advantageous rates.
However, as “New York Attorney General in New York in New York [James] The law requires that its main residence has its main residence in the state of New York. ”
Normally, the Department of Justice has prosecuted those who have committed this common fraud.
For example, in 2017, he charged a man in Puerto Rico of false statements on an inverse mortgage loan application in which he falsely claimed property as his main residence.
He stressed that “mortgage lenders provide capital so that people can buy homes, not enrich themselves illegally.”
There are other cases similar to less than 18 USC 1014 and related laws.
James could say that these representations were made by a third party that acted on Reisalf.
However, that is precisely the argument that she repeatedly rejected in the case of Trump, insisting that she was legally forced to review all the presentations made in her name or those of her classmates.
James is also a battery or erroneous representation of a property of five units in Brooklyn as a property of four units “to receive better interest rates … and receive mortgage assistance [the Home Affordable Modification Program]. “
The reference also includes a statement that James presented documents that were listed by his father as a married couple.
The reference indicates that last year, the state prosecutor of Baltimore, Marilyn Mosby, was sentenced by the Biden administration to submit a false mortgage application.
Another case results in a guilty statement last week by fraudulent files in a mortgage loan.
The moment for James could not be worse.
Trump’s civil case has longed for appeal for months with a long opinion.
The appeal argument was not good for James in the case that resulted in a grotesque fine of half a billion dollars in a case where no one lost a penny.
James accused Trump or inflating the value of the property in fillings, a common practice in the real estate field.
It didn’t matter if the company warned banks to make their own evaluations.
It did not matter that bank officials testified to earn money in the agreement. In fact, the “victim” wanted more Trump businesses.
None of that matters.
James not only demanded an equally greater fine because to execute Trump’s properties after Trump had to ensure a ridiculous bonus of $ 455 million to simply ensure the appeal review.
Through that case, James repeated his mantra that would not be exceptions to the rich and powerful.
She insisted that precision in such financial records is essential and must be applied rigorously.
Many of us opposed that James was selectively pointing to Trump after she ran for the position in the promise of nailing him in an unpalified crime.
James insisted that this was not the law and that she would process any guilty or false or misleading in the financial archives. She now is supposedly that person.
It is not clear what James’s defense will be with these accusations.
However, you can quote the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Thompson v. United States, which ruled in March that on the 18 of the USC § 1014 does not criminalize the statements that are simply misleading but are not false.
The problem is that, if demonstrated, these statements are not misleading.
They are false.
Or this was James’s main residence, or it wasn’t.
Or this was a property of four units, or it was not.
The accusation is that these statements coincided with the loan conditions that James would give a financial advantage.
James has a probable advantage.
It is unlikely to be processed by New York prosecutors using the ridiculous law against Trump.
She emphasized that Trump did not have to produce a single penny or loss for a victim to be beaten with half a billion dollars in fines.
But that was Trump and this is New York.
There will be no demanding charges of the mafia or the frenzy of the media.
Certainly there will be James explaining how such prosecutions are essential “because it does not matter how big, rich or powerful it creates that you are, nobody is above the law.”
Jonathan Turley is the professor of law of public interest at Shapiro at George Washington University and the author of “The indispensable right: freedom of expression at Anage of Rage”.