WASHINGTON — President Trump may be seeking “retribution” against his political foes in at least one case — and there’s a good reason why, according to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
The Justice Department’s so far unsuccessful prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James could be payback for James’ civil case against the president, where she won a $500,000 fine.
James has “half a billion dollars of his money!” Wiles said in an interview published Tuesday.
Wiles stressed to Vanity Fair that the 45th and 47th president was not “on a retribution tour” but is possibly eager to see his Department of Justice prosecute James for allegedly lying to secure a loan for a second home — after the New York AG dragged him into court for misrepresenting the value of his real estate empire.
“I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour,” Wiles told journalist Chris Whipple. “A governing principle for him is, ‘I don’t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else.’ And so people that have done bad things need to get out of the government. In some cases, it may look like retribution. And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”
Whipple asked whether “all of this talk … about accusing Letitia James of mortgage fraud” was part of that.
“Well, that might be the one retribution,” Wiles admitted.
“So you haven’t called him [out] on that, or said, ‘Hey, wait a minute,’” Whipple pressed.
“No, no, not on her,” the White House chief of staff responded. “Not on her. She had a half a billion dollars of his money!”
Wiles laughed when noting the whopping $500 million civil fine James secured in the case against Trump, according to Whipple.
She has since referred to the article as “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”
Then-Interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan secured a two-count indictment on Oct. 9 against James for bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution related to a $109,600 loan in 2020.
The Aug. 17, 2020, mortgage terms — which included a second home rider — prohibited the three-bedroom, one-bath house in Norfolk, Va., from being used as a rental investment property, but the New York attorney general listed it the following year on her state ethics disclosures as such.
Nakia Thompson, James’ grandniece, a 36-year-old mother of three with a criminal record who is currently wanted by North Carolina authorities for absconding while out on probation, moved in shortly after but denied to a federal grand jury earlier this year that she ever paid rent.
The charges against James have since been dismissed by a federal judge who ruled that Halligan was unlawfully serving as the interim prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia after her predecessor, Erik Siebert, was forced out of the job by Trump.
Halligan, 36, previously served as Trump’s personal attorney for his defense team as part of the federal classified documents case in South Florida.
Prosecutors have since tried to bring the mortgage fraud case before two juries in Norfolk and Alexandria, Va., but both times were unsuccessful.
Prosecutors — who still have a six-month grace period to refile any charges since it was dismissed without prejudice in late November — claimed in their initial indictment that the loan agreement for the “second home” was favorable and could have netted her nearly $19,000 in savings.
James has repeatedly denounced the charges as “baseless.” She faced up to 60 years in prison and a $2 million fine if she was convicted on both counts.
“The White House Chief of Staff admitting that President Trump turned the Justice Department into his weapon for political retribution against Attorney General Letitia James only confirms that this has been an improper vindictive prosecution,” said James’ attorney Abbe Lowell in a statement.
“This astonishing admission comes after President Trump publicly demanded Attorney General Bondi target Ms. James for doing her job and his DOJ ignoring career prosecutors and two grand juries that rejected the case,” Lowell added. “It all proves beyond any doubt that the attempts to bring charges against Attorney General James are nothing more than Trump’s political crusade. When they admit it’s not justice they’re after but pure revenge, believe them.”
The DOJ hasn’t signaled yet whether it will seek to indict James again or pursue an appeal process, as Attorney General Pam Bondi has promised to do.
