It could be the ultimate irony: The New York Attorney General, who infamously tried to “jail Trump,” is now in a brutal re-election battle that is dogged by her own legal controversies.
Attorney General Letitia James is now under federal investigation and is facing a resurgent Republican opponent as the 2026 election looms. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is the President of the United States, and his Department of Justice is investigating her for far more substantial criminal complaints than she brought against her imagined nemesis.
In April, the Federal Housing Finance Agency flagged James to the Department of Justice over allegations she misrepresented key details on a mortgage application for a Brooklyn property. Investigators claim she may have lied about living there full-time, the property’s layout, and her personal connections—possibly to secure better loan terms.
Her legal team dismisses the claims as minor clerical errors, but the FBI opened a criminal investigation in May. Conservative watchdog group America First Legal has since filed ethics complaints, accusing James of misconduct. Her lawyer called the accusations politically motivated retaliation for her prosecutions of Trump and former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Meanwhile, Republican attorney Michael Henry, who nearly upset James in 2022 with 45% of the vote, is seizing the opportunity. He’s already attracted over 6,000 donors—1,200 of whom qualify for public matching funds—allowing him to amplify his message across the state: clean up the Attorney General’s office and depoliticize its mission.
The political winds in New York may be shifting. Trump gained surprising ground in 2024, even in historically Democratic areas like Brooklyn and Queens—James’s home turf. Suburban voters, anxious about crime and living costs, are showing new openness to GOP candidates.
Internal Democratic tensions aren’t helping. Governor Kathy Hochul now faces a primary challenge from her own lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado. James, closely tied to the party establishment, risks being caught in the crossfire of broader party unrest.
Trump, reviving his feud with James, has labeled her “corrupt” and “incompetent,” pointing to the mortgage probe as proof of bias in New York’s legal system. His allies are using the investigation to argue that James abused her authority for political gain.
Despite her national profile and progressive track record, James now faces a more urgent question: not whether she can beat her Republican challenger, but whether New Yorkers still believe she should hold the job at all.
James, the first Black woman elected to statewide office in New York, was once seen as a lock for reelection after rising to national prominence. Her high-profile legal battles—most notably a civil fraud case that hit Donald Trump’s business empire with nearly $500 million in penalties—cemented her status as a progressive hero.
But that legacy is now in jeopardy. She is now poised to become an attorney general and a convicted criminal. That could lead to hefty fines, disgrace, and potential disbarment. She could become a walking lesson to other prosecutors out there who abuse their offices: What goes around, comes around.
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said, in an op-ed for the liberal New York Magazine, that the legal issues James is facing with the Trump administration are of her own making since she first chose to weaponize the law against the president.
“James started it when she ran for New York AG and won in 2018 primarily on an explicit platform of Vote for me, fellow resistance warriors, and I’ll nail Trump. James tweeted that, if elected, she would be ‘leading the resistance against Donald Trump in NYC.’ She solicited campaign donations by vowing to take down the president. Before she had access to any evidence, James declared conclusively that Trump ‘engaged in a pattern and practice of money laundering; and ‘can be indicted for criminal offenses.’ The day after she won office, still having seen no actual evidence, the new AG exulted, ‘We’re going to definitely sue him. We’re going to be a real pain in the ass. He’s going to know my name personally.’ For what? Who knows. Just something,” Honig said.
“James did sue Trump, of course, and won (for the moment). After a circuslike bench trial focused on Trump’s habitual overvaluation of his assets in bank loan applications, New York State judge Arthur Engoron found Trump civilly liable for fraud and slammed him with damages amounting to over $500 million, including mounting interest. During the trial, James made a series of wildly inappropriate out-of-court statements that would ordinarily get a prosecutor fired; at one point, she publicly branded Trump and his family members as liars, while they were testifying,” the legal analyst said.
“Despite the judge’s verdict, James’s theory of liability was so flimsy that it barely concealed her previously acknowledged motivation to stick one to Trump by any means available. The purported fraud victims were multibillion-dollar banks that were repaid in full on their loans to the Trump Organization and made millions in profits through interest payments. Unsurprisingly, a New York appellate-division panel voiced pointed skepticism of James’s victimless case and seems poised either to substantially reduce the verdict or throw it out,” he wrote.