The newly-revealed communications add to mounting evidence of procedural and other flaws in the mortgage fraud case against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The defense team representing New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday cited internal communications from Fannie Mae showing the government-controlled company’s top fraud investigators believed the mortgage fraud case against James was relatively weak.
Sean Soward, Fannie Mae’s director of mortgage fraud investigations, told the company’s vice president of financial crimes that “the LJ case is certainly not clear and convincing evidence” of fraud during a June 13 discussion of the investigation into James, according to new documents submitted by James’s lawyers in the case.
Defense attorneys said the internal conversation also includes additional evidence that Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte was directly and potentially inappropriately involved in the investigations by Fannie Mae and the FHFA that ultimately led to James’ indictments.
In response to Soward, Fannie Mae’s vice president of financial crimes, Jennifer Horne, told the chief mortgage fraud investigator that the “director [is] asking how we know that the neice [sic] has lived there since oct 2020,” an apparent reference to James’ grandniece, Nakia Thompson, who has reportedly lived in the home at issue in the case since it was purchased in 2020. Defense attorneys told U.S. District Judge Jamar Walker that the statement clearly demonstrates “Director Pulte’s intimate and direct involvement in the investigation.”
FHFA did not immediately return request for comment.
The newly-revealed communications add to mounting evidence of procedural and other flaws in prosecutor Lindsey Halligan’s cases against James and former FBI Director James Comey, both of which were brought at the urging of President Donald Trump. Earlier on Monday, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie laid out a list of unusual maneuvers underlying the indictment against Comey, holding that “government misconduct” may have tainted the case and ordering prosecutors to turn over records of typically secret grand jury proceedings to defense attorneys.
James’s defense team asked the judge to dismiss the charges on the ground that Pulte and Halligan’s office engaged in “outrageous government conduct” that violates her due process rights.
Pulte wrote a criminal referral to the Department of Justice in April accusing James of claiming a home she owned in Norfolk, Virginia, as a primary residence to get a more favorable loan. Though James wasn’t indicted on those allegations, she now faces separate mortgage fraud charges.
The FHFA director has been accused of circumventing standard procedures and his agency’s Inspector General’s office, which is typically the component that makes criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
Senate Democrats — including Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee ranking member Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin of Illinois — sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office on Monday calling for an investigation into Pulte’s “potential misuse of federal authority and resources to publicly accuse prominent Democrats and President Donald Trump’s perceived political enemies of mortgage fraud.”
James earned national attention for launching lawsuits against the president’s first term policies and suing Trump’s company for fraud.
Pulte posted on X in October that, “We have some new mortgage fraud investigations coming soon.”