The headlines just keep looking worse for Letitia James.
The New York state attorney general — who rose to national prominence with her “no one is above the law” prosecution of then-private citizen Donald Trump for alleged fraud related to bank loans secured by real estate — has been in the spotlight for months after being accused of committing fraud herself in obtaining a mortgage on a Virginia home.
Last week, the news turned nightmarish for James when she was indicted by a federal grand jury in the case. And this week’s revelations aren’t helping her reputation.
According to the Washington Examiner, the property James purchased in Norfolk, Virginia, has for years been the home of a James relative — who happens to be a fugitive who faces arrest if she ever returns to North Carolina.
James’ grandniece, Nakia Thompson, has lived in the three-bedroom property since 2020, according to a report published Monday by the Daily Mail, a United Kingdom-based newspaper with significant U.S. coverage.
In June, Thompson told a separate grand jury that she had paid no rent in the time that she lived there, according to an overtly sympathetic New York Times report published last week.
(The lede tugged heartstrings from the very beginning: “Five years ago, the door of a modest yellow house on a quiet stretch of avenue in Norfolk, Va., swung open to admit a young family looking for a peaceful life after years of turbulence in several cities.”)
The problem for James is that, according to the grand jury indictment, the only person who should be living there is James, under the mortgage she secured to buy the property.
The indictment states that James purchased the property as a secondary home, “which required JAMES, as the sole borrower to occupy and use the property as her secondary residence, and prohibited its use as a timesharing or other shared ownership arrangement or agreement that requires her either to rent the property or give any other person any control over the occupancy or use of the property.”
Should James be prosecuted for bank fraud?
As The New York Times went to some lengths to note, the use of the home by family members is a gray area for the law as it relates to James’ fraud case.
But from a purely PR perspective, it does little for James’ image — reflects little of the devotion to duty Americans should expect from a state attorney general, much less one who makes a mantra of “no one is above the law” when it suits her.
In short, the chief law enforcement officer of an American state is not only accused of fraud in purchasing a property, she’s giving free use of it to a woman who is a literal fugitive from the legal system in another state.
The takeaway is that James — who pursued Trump in a rigged case of phantom fraud for her own political gain — has nothing but contempt for the law when it doesn’t further her agenda.
Thompson, according to the Daily Mail, failed to complete her probation in North Carolina on criminal charges of assault and battery and trespassing.
“Ms. Thompson … has willfully avoided probation supervision,” said Keith Acree, communications director for the North Carolina Department of Corrections, according to the Daily Mail.
“An absconder is considered a fugitive,” he said.
While the charges are considered too low for extradition between states, he said, Thompson faces arrest if she returns to North Carolina and runs into law enforcement.
UH-OH 🚨
Meet Nakia Thompson, she’s wanted in (NC) for (absconding) ‘Failing to complete the terms of her parole’
She’s been arrested in (VA) for Grand Larceny ~ Possesion of Burglary tools and contributing to the delinquency of a minor
She’s the Grand Niece of Letitia James… pic.twitter.com/DZAF7IzfyX
— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) October 15, 2025
Unfortunately for the contemporary Democratic Party — and the country as a whole — James’ behavior hardly seems an aberration in Democratic politics.
She’s not the only nationally prominent Democrat to face legal trouble for suspicious representations to achieve favorable mortgage loans.
Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, the pinched, deceitful face of the Trump “resistance” during his years in the House in Trump’s first term, is also facing accusations that he engaged in mortgage fraud by listing homes in both California and Maryland as “primary” residences.
Meanwhile, Lisa Cook, a board member of the Federal Reserve appointed in 2022 by then-President Joe Biden (a Democrat, readers might recall), is facing accusations of engaging in mortgage fraud related to a property she purchased in Atlanta while living in Michigan.
Cook is still on the board of the Fed, until the Trump administration can win its legal battle to fire her, but the damage she’s doing to the Fed’s credibility is similar to the erosion of respect for the law that James represents.
Like an attorney general should not be sheltering a fugitive, a member of the body that sets interest rates should not even be in a position of being accused of committing fraud to obtain favorable interest rates herself — and the accusations against Cook look far stronger than anything the Democrats threw at Trump during the years of trench lawfare between his presidencies.
Given the eruption of fraud charges against Democrats, Americans would be within their bounds to wonder whether any of the party’s top officials are actually honest. (Maybe that has something to do with the party’s public approval problem.)
But that’s the almost-inevitable result of the paths the party has taken since Bill Clinton was in the White House. Then, the party accepted, and disgracefully defended, a perjuring president.
During the Obama years, it willingly sacrificed its credibility on the altar of Obamacare. When it was punished by the American people with the loss of the House and Senate, it treated the “pen and phone” Obama presidency as though its pronouncements were divine edicts from on high.
Obama, in turn, bequeathed the country a corruption-riddled FBI, which dragged the country into the lying morass of “Russia, Russia, Russia,” and the Democratic Party’s relentless attacks on all things Trump.
(The remorseless character assassination that surrounded the confirmation of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the willingness to pump out obviously absurd accusations, utterly heedless of their truth, or even plausibility, told Americans all they need to know about the party’s future.)
That’s only a cursory, subjective sketch of the lowlights. Any conservative American with open eyes can add example after example. But the bottom line is, the Democratic Party has been essentially lawless for decades, operating only by the principle of raw political power.
With its current leaders having risen to prominence in that atmosphere, it can hardly be surprising they have no respect for the law, or that dark secrets are tumbling out now.
Human nature being what it is, it’s a virtual certainty that there are plenty more secrets that are not being told — under the protection of the progressive Praetorian Guard that makes up the American establishment media.
This point in American politics has been a long time building, and it’s going to be a long time running its course.
By those lights, Letitia James’ betrayal of the law — whether in actual fraud or in providing a haven for a fugitive from the law — is likely only the tip of the iceberg.
And as bad as things look for James, they’re likely to look a whole lot worse for Democrats before they’re close to looking better.
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