The accusation by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, that the criminal fraud case against her is “outrageous” and ought to be dismissed is her latest effort to thwart President Trump’s effort to send her to prison.

The motion to dismiss, filed on Monday in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, calls the prosecution of Ms. James “patently unconstitutional.” She urges the presiding judge, Jamar Walker —an appointee of President Biden and Virginia’s first openly gay federal judge — to toss the case “with prejudice,” meaning that it cannot be refiled. 

Ms. James is represented by a high-profile attorney, Abbe Lowell who is currently also representing the former governor of the Federal Reserve, Lisa Cook and the former National Security Advisor John Bolton in their legal ordeals. The Department of Justice declares in a statement with respect to Ms. James that “No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust. The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.”  

Ms. James is charged with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The allegations stem from a loan of some $100,000 she secured toward her purchase of a modest Norfolk home where her niece is thought to now live. The terms of the loan, the government contends, prohibited her from using the house as an investment property. The Department of Justice contends that she reaped some $18,000 in “ill-gotten gains” by violating the terms of her loan.

The criminal case against Ms. James was launched in the wake of her securing a $500 million fraud verdict against Mr. Trump, his two adult sons, and their family business. Ms. James during her campaign for attorney general vowed to “shine a bright light” into Mr. Trump’s business practices and called him an “illegitimate” president. An appeals court has thrown out the outsized verdict while keeping the underlying verdict intact. 

Mr. Trump has publicly called for Ms. James’s prosecution in a Truth Social post directed at  Attorney General Pam Bondi. He has also called her “racist,” “a fraud” and “peekaboo.” Mr. Trump’s detractors point out that peekaboo rhymes with an archaic and racist slur. Mr. Trump’s spokesperson vociferously denied the word “peekaboo” was racist.

In her brief, Ms. James, writing as if she’s delivering  a stump speech, argues that “Perhaps in no case before this Court has there been a more shocking course of government conduct. The unprecedented, extensive, and outrageous misconduct in this case reached its apex when President Donald Trump, as part of his revenge campaign, decided that AG James needed to be indicted, no matter the cost.”

Ms. James reasons that “if this brazen, continuous disregard for the law and the Constitution is not outrageous government conduct, nothing is.” She claims that the DOJ’s conduct was so “shocking” that it amounted to a violation to the Constitution’s Due Process Clause, which prohibits the deprivation of “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

New York’s attorney general argues that the case against her was tainted from the beginning. The road to an indictment began when the director of the Federal Housing Finance agency, William Pulte — himself an heir to a home construction fortune — issued a criminal referral to the Department of Justice. The FHFA oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Ms. James alleges that Mr. Pulte illegally obtained her mortgage records.

Ms. James also accuses the Special Attorney for Mortgage Fraud, Ed Martin, of a “well-documented series of actions that cannot be described as anything but outrageous.” She highlights his suggestion, in an August letter, that she resign from office “for the good of the state and nation” and “give the people of New York and America more peace than proceeding.” Ms. James underscores that the “DOJ has firm policies against using investigations and prosecutorial power for achieving political ends such as forcing a public official to resign.”

Two days after that letter, Mr. Martin, with a New York Post photographer in tow, appeared outside a Brooklyn brownstone owned by Ms. James — one that Mr. Pulte alleges that she misrepresented in another mortgage document. Ms. James calls that a “bizarre media stunt” and her motion describes Mr. Martin as “adorned in an Inspector Gadget-inspired beige trenchcoat, in the middle of an August summer day.”

Ms. James reckons that “it is clear Mr. Martin—a high-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice—undertook these strange antics to intimidate and prejudice AG James outside the bounds of DOJ and relevant ethics rules.” Mr. Martin, who was formerly the interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, told Ms. James’s Brooklyn neighbors that he was “just happy to be on a block looking at houses . . . just looking at houses, interesting houses.”  

Mr. Martin later told Fox News that “I’m a prosecutor . . . I wanted to lay eyes on it. . . . I wanted to see the property,” but Ms. James argues that “DOJ rules and policies, as well as rules of professional conduct, squarely address prosecutors seeking to harass or even speak with a represented person such as AG James, or use media to announce investigations … Mr. Martin deliberately flouted those rules to create unfavorable pre-indictment publicity.”

During Mr. Trump’s first term, Ms. James – while she was investigating his business interests – publicly taunted the President, writing that “Make no mistake: No one is above the law, not even the President” and that “You can call me Tish.” She’s also no stranger to broadcasting details of her investigations in the press. 

The next target of Ms. James’s wrath is the interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan. She is leading the cases against Ms. James and the former director of the FBI, James Comey. Both Ms. James and Mr. Comey have argued that Ms. Halligan was unlawfully appointed, and here Ms. James thunders that “the government engaged in a series of illegal and extraordinary maneuvers to install Lindsey Halligan as the purported U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.”

Ms. James argues that the “Trump directed quartet of Director Pulte, Mr. Martin, AG Bondi, and Ms. Halligan set out to do what they had been ordered to do: indict AG James.” The prosecutor argues that the Trump Administration’s behavior “violates the very foundations of justice and fairness … the administration of justice in this case has been irreparably tainted.” 

Trial is set for January 26 — unless the case is dismissed first.