The Rolling Corruption behind the Letitia James Prosecution
When Letitia James submitted her vindictive and selective prosecution motion on November 7, DOJ’s efforts to cover up Bill Pulte’s FHFA shenanigans got relegated to a footnote in the section in the request for discovery.
Any remaining doubt about the existence of DOJ’s possession of material that might go towards establishing AG James’ vindictive or selective claims was obviated by the Government’s November 4, 2025, filing of its Notice of Reasons for Not Providing Pre-Vindictive/Selective Prosecution Motion Related Discovery. See DE-46. The Government’s filing states that it “bears no such obligation until a defendant ‘overcomes a significant barrier by advancing objective evidence tending to show the existence of prosecutorial misconduct.’” Id. at 1 (quoting Wilson, 262 F.3d at 315).68 AG James has exceeded that burden, and more.
68 If the Government did not believe it possessed “vindictive/selective prosecution-related discovery,” DE-46 at 4, the Government could have so stated, without filing notice of its intent not to produce such discovery. Yet the November 4 Notice seemingly contradicts what the government has previously suggested, which is that it has in its possession some discovery relevant to the defense’s prosecutorial vindictiveness argument that would be produced. Id. at 2. The Government started that process of producing such discovery, and on October 30, produced just seven news articles about the James investigation or case. That is all. Then, in a move suggesting the Government found additional items which it did not want to reveal or produce, the Notice followed on November 4, suggesting more such discovery exists. Public reporting from the day before also indicated that FHFA’s acting inspector general, Joe Allen, was fired from his role on November 3 “after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in [Ms. Halligan’s] office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, . . . [or] potentially relevant in discovery.” Sarah N. Lynch et al., Exclusive: Trump ousts watchdog of US housing regulator involved in mortgage probes of his foes, sources say, Reuters (Nov. 3, 2025), https://perma.cc/56J2-V7VZ (emphasis added). The defense is left guessing at what other prosecutorial vindictiveness discovery exists in the government’s hands.
Then yesterday, after receiving 2TB of discovery last Wednesday …
5. Since the initial appearance, the government has produced a significant amount of electronic discovery to the defense, spanning five production volumes containing, in total, more than 17,000 documents and 115,000 pages. The latest production (Vol. 05) alone, received on Wednesday, November 12, included nearly two terabytes of data.
…And another several stories on Bill Pulte’s corruption, Attorney General James submitted a motion to dismiss because of outrageous misconduct motion that described the holes in the Bates stamps where the documents describing Pulte’s misconduct must be.
Additionally, the government is likely already in possession of discovery relating to Director Pulte’s conduct that has not been produced to AG James. Specifically, there is reason to believe that documents reportedly turned over by former FHFA Acting Inspector General, including the internal complaint about Director Pulte’s access to AG James’s loan file, have not been produced. Based on metadata (including filename/file path) and the presence of an additional Bates stamp (FM_EDVA_122_), over 100 pages of discovery likely turned over by the former FHFA Acting Inspector General has not been produced.
Accordingly, in addition to the communications listed above, AG James specifically requests that the government be ordered to produce:
- Any internal complaints filed against Director Pulte related to AG James.
- All documents bearing a “FM_EDVA_122_” Bates stamp, including:
- FM_EDVA_122_0000015–FM_EDVA_122_0000023
- FM_EDVA_122_0000042–FM_EDVA_122_0000055
- FM_EDVA_122_0000099–FM_EDVA_122_0000107
- FM_EDVA_122_0000113–FM_EDVA_122_0000125
- FM_EDVA_122_0000144–FM_EDVA_122_0000155
- FM_EDVA_122_0000574–FM_EDVA_122_0000579
James’ outrageous action motion also focused on comms among others in Trump’s administration.
The current record of “outrageous conduct” is more than sufficient to dismiss this indictment. But even if this Court finds that AG James should be required to point to more to meet her burden to prove outrageous government conduct, the basis for discovery and an evidentiary hearing has been well established. The facts outlined above merit, at the very least, fulsome discovery into the government’s conduct in bringing this case, including all communications among and between President Trump, AG Bondi, Ms. Halligan, Mr. Martin, Director Pulte, and their staffs regarding AG James.
That comes, of course, mere weeks after Judge Jamar Walker ordered a litigation hold in response to Lindsey Halligan’s stalking of Anna Bower.
The defendant presents evidence that government counsel communicated with a member of the media about this case using an encrypted messaging app that enables automatic deletion of messages. See generally ECF No. 21-1. The Court is not asked to decide now whether any communications between the government and media are or will become discoverable. But in the event that such communications take place and are discoverable (or are subject to a judicial determination about discoverability), it is important that the government preserve the evidence of those communications. Cf. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963) (“suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution”). Accordingly, the Court ORDERS a litigation hold preventing the deletion or destruction of any records or communications having to do with the investigation or prosecution of this case. This hold shall be in effect until further order of the Court.
And yet James may have to follow up on that order, given a letter from Jamie Raskin to Eagle Ed Martin demanding that he stop using Signal chats to weaponizing government against Trump’s adversaries.
My staff have received credible allegations that you have been using personal devices, platforms, and applications that do not adhere to federal laws and DOJ policies regarding records retention to conduct official DOJ business. This deliberate evasion of relevant rules of record retention appears to be part of an effort to conceal the Weaponization Working Group’s activities and your own conduct. Such conduct violates not only the Federal Records Act (FRA) and DOJ policy but also potentially relevant criminal statutes.4
The FRA requires all federal agencies and their employees to “make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency.”5 This obligation applies to all recorded information, “regardless of form or characteristics.”6 DOJ policies reinforce these statutory requirements. DOJ Policy Statement 0801.04, for instance, states that personal email and other electronic accounts should not be used for DOJ business except under “exigent circumstances,” and when used, employees must comply with FRA requirements by forwarding communications to official accounts.7
Instead of preserving those records, however, you are reportedly concealing and potentially destroying them. As you are well aware, as one of America’s top-ranking federal lawyers charged with supervising enforcement of these laws, you are obligated to follow the law yourself and preserve messages related to your DOJ work in the official DOJ systems. Your purported failure to do so is not only illegal but it also suggests that you are knowingly covering up incriminating conversations that you need to keep off the books.
It’s unlikely that Lindsey’s single Loaner AUSA will ever be able to prove the case against James, 2TB of data and all.
But along the way, she and her co-conspirators are leaving a trail of corruption and crime a mile wide. They’re doing it in the same courthouse where Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s conduct is already the focus of scrutiny.
Trump’s DOJ won’t prosecute this, and Trump will pardon all of his minions at some point. But they decided to perform their corruption for judges, and that may not work out the way they want.
Thanks for the update on Eagle Ed’s Inquisition. I am glad to see Jamie Raskind is explicitly telling Mr. Martin that his shady, brownshirt tactics are not going unnoticed. What could possibly be relevant to Letitia James’ prosecution for alleged mortgage fraud in 2 terrabytes of data? Did they digitize every real estate document in Virginia? Seems like supersleuth Ed Martin is trying to throw up so much bullshit into the air (as Steve Bannon advises) that people are overwhelmed and just give up trying to enforce the law. This man is vile.
Throwing 2TB of data into discovery also helps ensure that the cost to the defendant is increased, serving the additional goal of using the courts to drain Trump’s enemies of money and energy. It is punitive.
It does look like overkill on production in an effort to flood the defense with documents, but with modern electronic search methods less time is needed to pick through things than in the past. Additionally, there is a risk in this kind of document dump that the side producing the documents will not have gone through them carefully, and may inadvertently produce harmful things they are not even aware of. That can be very damaging in the course of litigation in a deposition or testimony when confronting a witness with something their lawyers had not highlighted during witness prep.
Doing a little math, 2TB divided by 17,000 documents is about 100MB per doc. 115,000 pages divided by 17,000 docs is close to 7 pages per doc.
I don’t know how you get a 7 page doc to take up 100MB, unless it contains 90MB of metadata or they scanned each doc at 10,000 dpi. Also, I’m not up to snuff on electronic search technology, so I don’t even know if a scanned doc can be searched.
Eagle Ed is certainly vile. But he could not pull off the James prosecution without his partner in crime Bill Pulte, who seems to have gotten himself in a wee bit of trouble on this one. Specifically, he appears to have accessed James’s mortgage records illegally. I know: imagine that.
I’m sure I have mentioned this before, but I had a boss at a mainly cash business where the opportunity for stealing was high. It was fairly easy to catch people at it. His comment when we discussed it was “thieves are lazy.” Too lazy to cover their tracks, did not think it thru, etc. The incompetence of these people makes it virtually impossible for them to cover their tracks. I guess in the past, 47 had only a few employees who were somehow more or less honest. At this point, we see these people are just flat out lacking any finesse or skill sets. Peter principle and all that. Incredible.
The “presumption of regularity” generally granted to the DOJ is taking a severe beating in the federal courts, with no sense that it’s going to get better rather than worse. Add in the talks about payments to people like Michael Flynn ($50M for wrongful prosecution?). Add in the likely mass future pardons mentioned at the end of Trump’s term. Add in three more years of temporary Insurance Lawyers cosplaying as prosecutors with their Loaner AUSAs holding their hands.
And imagine who will become the AG, should Bondi’s position become untenable? Matt Gaetz would surely be licking his chops, but with the focus on Epstein these days, his confirmation hearings would be quite something, and likely not anything Trump would want to see. But whomever Trump finds, it would be someone whose chief qualification would be loyalty.
The more Trump follows this path, the perverse result will be that the DOJ will have less ability to achieve convictions in otherwise straightforward cases that have nothing to do with politics.
A pardon would stop a criminal prosecution, but does it stop a bench referral to the Bar for yanking a law license? I suspect the usual suspects (looking at you, FL) will find ways to pretzel logic (i.e. ‘she’s no convicted any more’) making that decision but I count several federal judges with ample grounds to sanction the entire crew. Whether it’s incompetent lawyering, failure to grasp what the 4th Amendment, 5th Amendment and 6th Amendment require from prosecutors, grand jury shenanigans, potential conspiracy charges, coverups and other games, any one of these will get disciplinary actions and in aggregate should mean disqualification.
1. Nope, disbarment does not require a criminal conviction. Ethical lapses are enough.
2. Accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt.
3. Accepting a pardon prevents you from claiming Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination on the topic.
4. Bondi and Halligan will face referrals to the Florida Bar Association the moment they leave office. An earlier referral against Bondi was punted solely on basis that “We won’t do that to the current AG.”
The logical outcome of such a laissez-faire attitude is that a corrupt AG who fully anticipates losing their bar licence, but only after departing office when assured of no dismissal, has every incentive to continue to misbehave without constraint. (“Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb”, as the old saying goes.)
In first a dime, in for a “doll”, her
Halligan has already been referred to both FL and VA bars.
I suppose that all of these assholes are counting on autopen coming to their rescue should Mr Big Mouth keel over before their paperwork has been processed.
Any successor in such circumstances might feel no great need to deploy that autopen. New priorities might apply.
Plus, I truly wonder if Trump, exiting at end of term ailing and disillusioned, with no prospect of further office-aided extortion, might not bother pardoning anyone but himself.