New York — NEW YORK (AP) — It was January 2004, and Donald Trump and Letitia James, a fellow New Yorker who would later become his enemy, were embarking on new projects that would launch their political careers.
Trump’s show “The Apprentice,” which introduced him to a new generation of Americans, premiered on NBC. James was sworn in as a newly elected member of the New York City Council, representing Brooklyn.
James became New York’s attorney general in 2019 and began a legal dispute with Trump that is still ongoing.
She has battled Big Tech, opioid manufacturers and the National Rifle Association. But it was the Democrat’s barrage of lawsuits against Trump, suing him for fraud and challenging his administration’s Republican policies, that shaped her tenure and angered him.
Now, Trump is fighting back. After pressure from the Justice Department, James was charged on Thursday Charged with mortgage fraud. She denied any wrongdoing and accused Trump of using the criminal justice system as a weapon of revenge.
James, 66, and her seven siblings grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives. Her father worked in maintenance, and her mother, Nellie, worked in customer service for AT&T.
James graduated from Lehman College of the City University of New York and Howard University School of Law. Before entering politics, she was a public defender and assistant state attorney.
James ran for City Council in 2001 but lost to former police officer James Davis in a primary election delayed by the September 11 attacks. Davis was murdered at City Hall two years later by a political rival. James went on to win election to replace Davis and held the seat from 2004 to 2013.
James was the city’s public defender, an elected ombudsman position, from 2013 to 2018.
She has pushed for police accountability and compiled an annual list of the “worst landlords.” In her final year in office, she described the city’s public housing agency as the worst. She also pushed for police officers to wear body cameras and to appoint special prosecutors in police misconduct cases.
James said her work as a public defender was an introduction to her approach as a prosecutor.
James ran for Attorney General after the man who held that position, Eric Schneiderman, He resigned suddenly in 2018 After being accused of mistreating women.
At the time, James said she was considering running for mayor. But she decided to enter the race for attorney general after one of her neighbors asked for help managing Trump’s immigration policies. She said her personal experiences with discrimination have given her a different perspective than others who have held the position.
James He was called “the people’s lawyer” They pledged to make the attorney general’s office a firewall against Trump’s policies. In her victory speech, she called the president a “con man” and “carnival barker” and pledged to shine “a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings.”
Backed by support from the then government. Backed by union powerhouse Andrew Cuomo and rapper Nicki Minaj on social media, James became the first black woman elected to statewide office in New York, the first black attorney general and the first woman elected to that office.
In a 2018 interview with The Associated Press, James acknowledged her notable accomplishments, but said, “I’m not here to make history. I’m here to get things done.”
James sued Trump and his administration dozens of timeschallenging cuts in counterterrorism funding, his efforts to abolish birthright citizenship and other policies.
In 2019, it finalized an agreement to close his charitable foundation, the Trump Foundation, after it was found to have misspent funds to advance his political and business interests.
In 2022, James He filed a lawsuit alleging that Trump inflated his net worth by billions dollars by misleading banks and insurance companies about the value of assets such as Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.
judge Trump last year ordered the payment Huge financial penalty. Court of Appeal later He delivered the punishmentwhich increased to more than $500 million with interest, but confirmed the lower court’s finding that Trump committed fraud.
She has also filed a lawsuit against the tech giants Facebook and Google; Manufacturers and distributors for Opiate pain relievers; the Roman Catholic Church; and NYPD.
In 2021, it is He oversaw an investigation into allegations that Cuomo sexually harassed womenWhich led to his resignation. Cuomo complained at the time that the investigation was riddled with “politics and bias.” His employees, without providing evidence, accused James’ office of leaking information about him to the media.
Two months after Cuomo’s resignation, James announced her candidacy for governor and then abandoned it to run for re-election as attorney general, saying she wanted to “finish the work” she was elected to do.
She also filed a lawsuit against National Rifle Association and its longtime boss, Wayne LaPierre, alleging that its leaders misspent millions of dollars. The jury found that LaPierre, who resigned from the NRA, was required to repay nearly $4.4 million.
Conservatives argued that James just wanted to destroy the country’s most prominent gun rights group.
In 2022, after a draft of the U.S. Supreme Court opinion invalidating Roe v. Wade was leaked, James She revealed that she had an abortion Nearly two decades ago when she was a newly elected city council member.
James told protesters at a rally in Manhattan that she “makes no apologies” for her decision.