type: timeline_event
A federal grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia declined to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James on December 4, 2025, marking an extraordinary rejection of the Department of Justice's attempted prosecution on bank fraud charges. The refusal came just ten days after U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed the original indictment, ruling that prosecutor Lindsey Halligan—a former Trump personal attorney with no prosecutorial experience—was unlawfully appointed as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The grand jury's decision is extraordinarily rare: Justice Department statistics show that in fiscal year 2016, federal prosecutors investigated more than 150,000 people, yet grand juries declined to indict in only six cases. The rejection represents a significant rebuke to what legal experts and a coalition of 21 state attorneys general characterized as a politically motivated prosecution targeting James for her successful civil fraud lawsuit against President Trump and his company.
The original charges alleged James misrepresented a 2020 Norfolk property purchase as a second home rather than an investment property to obtain favorable mortgage terms, potentially saving approximately $19,000 over the loan's life. Judge Currie's November 24 dismissal centered on a critical constitutional violation: Attorney General Pam Bondi attempted to install Halligan as interim U.S. attorney after the statutory 120-day appointment authority expired on May 21, 2025. Federal law grants exclusive authority to district judges to fill vacancies once this window closes. The Justice Department's attempt to retroactively designate Halligan as a "Special Attorney" was rejected by Judge Currie, who stated it would allow "the Government [to] send any private citizen off the street" into grand juries as long as post-hoc approval followed.
Attorney General James responded to the grand jury decision with a statement emphasizing the baseless nature of the charges: "As I have said from the start, the charges against me are baseless. It is time for this unchecked weaponization of our justice system to stop." Her attorney, Abbe Lowell, stated the prosecution "should never have existed in the first place" and warned that further prosecution would constitute "a shocking assault on the rule of law."
Former U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, who previously served in the Eastern District of Virginia and refused to bring charges against James, characterized the evidence as "pathetically weak," a sentiment shared by career prosecutors who found no basis for federal fraud charges. Stanford criminal justice expert Robert Weisberg noted that the prosecution demonstrated how Justice Department norms separating the White House from individual charging decisions had been "systematically broken," with the indictments "built on shaky legal ground and thin narratives."
The New York City Bar Association issued a statement declaring that Letitia James became "the latest to face a politically motivated indictment at the urging of the President of the United States." Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown led a 21-state coalition condemning what they termed a "politically motivated investigation," accusing the DOJ of "weaponizing law enforcement as retribution" for James' legal battles with Trump.
Despite the grand jury rejection, the Justice Department declined to comment on the matter and sources indicated the department was considering presenting the case to a third grand jury in Richmond, Virginia. A second grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia subsequently declined to indict James on December 11, 2025, marking an unprecedented double rejection that further underscored the weakness of the government's case and the politically motivated nature of the prosecution.