Tag: new york

Letitia James Indictment: Here’s the Prosecution Memorandum for Federal and State Charges

A Prosecution Memorandum is an internal legal document prepared by prosecutors that summarizes the facts, law, and reasoning supporting (or recommending against) bringing criminal charges.

It is not filed in court, rather it’s an internal document the prosecutors use to guide decision-making. Below is a mock Prosecution Memorandum that could easily be used to consider charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

PROSECUTION MEMORANDUM

Re: United States v. Letitia James
Prepared for: Eastern District of Virginia, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York and Special Prosecutor’s Office

Date: September 21, 2025

I. Introduction

This memorandum addresses potential federal, Commonwealth of Virginia, and New York State charges against Letitia James, Attorney General of New York, arising out of an alleged 43-year pattern of mortgage-related fraud and false filings. The investigative reporting of Joel Gilbert (The Gateway Pundit), as well as Sam Antar (White Collar Fraud), provides documentary evidence and witness analysis suggesting that James repeatedly misrepresented the legal status of her properties, particularly a five-unit apartment building at 296 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn, as well as a residential home in Norfolk, Virginia in order to obtain loans and preferential loan terms she was not entitled to. James also is harboring a wanted fugitive in the Virginia home.

If corroborated, these acts constitute violations of both federal statutes (bank fraud, false statements to financial institutions, wire fraud, RICO) and New York State statutes (residential mortgage fraud, offering false instruments for filing, scheme to defraud, enterprise corruption).

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‘Sounding bodies:’ NEH spends $12,600 on professor’s ‘musical erotics’ book

The National Endowment for the Humanities underwrote a digital access book about sexuality in Victorian literature by a Siena College Professor.

The State University of New York received $6,600 to create an open access edition of Professor Shannon Draucker’s book, titled “Sounding Bodies: Acoustical Science and Musical Erotics in Victorian Literature.” The NEH’s Open Book Program “supports the conversion of recently published books funded by NEH into eBooks that are freely available online.” 

This is on the top of the $6,000 Draucker herself previously received for the book.

The book compares listening to music to orgasms, according to an NEH description.

“Can the concert hall be as erotic as the bedroom? Many Victorian writers believed so,” the description states.

The book reports how 19th-century “acoustical scientists” “described music as a set of physical vibrations that tickled the ear, excited the nerves, and precipitated muscular convulsions.”

“In turn, writers—from canonical figures such as George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, to New Women novelists like Sarah Grand and Bertha Thomas, to anonymous authors of underground pornography—depicted bodily sensations and experiences in unusually explicit ways,” the book states.

The Fix reached out to Draucker and asked via email if she believed she may have a harder time receiving grants from the NEH under the Trump Administration. She did not respond to emails and phone calls in the past month and a half.

The Fix also emailed Rebecca Colesworthy, the recipient of the open access grant, and asked what the money goes to and if she had any concerns about the funds being taken back by the Trump administration. She did not respond to an email on Sept. 19.

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New York Wants Online Digital ID Rules for Social Media Feeds Under “SAFE For Kids Act”

New York is advancing a set of proposed regulations that would require social media platforms to verify users’ ages before granting access to algorithm-driven feeds or allowing nighttime alerts.

Attorney General Letitia James introduced the draft rules on Monday, tied to the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) For Kids Act, which was signed into law last year by Governor Kathy Hochul.

Presented as part of an effort to reduce mental health harms linked to social media, the law would compel platforms to restrict algorithmic content for anyone under 18 or anyone who hasn’t completed an age verification process, which would mean the introduction of digital ID checks to access online platforms.

In those cases, users would be limited to seeing content in chronological order from accounts they already follow.

Platforms would also be barred from sending notifications between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. to those users.

The rules give companies some flexibility in how they confirm a user’s age, as long as the method is considered effective and designed to protect personal data.

Acceptable alternatives to submitting a government ID include facial analysis that estimates age. Any identifying information collected during verification must be deleted “immediately,” according to the proposal.

For minors to access personalized algorithmic feeds, parental permission would be required.

That too involves a verification step, with the same data-deletion requirements in place once the process is complete.

The SAFE For Kids Act targets platforms where user-generated content is central and where at least 20 percent of time spent involves engagement with feeds tailored to user behavior or device data.

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With Cigarette Taxes Sky High, More New Yorkers Than Ever Turn to the Black Market

In 2023, New York raised its cigarette excise tax by $1.00 to $5.35 per pack. New York City imposes its own tax of $1.50 per pack, and that’s before you include federal and sales taxes, making for the most expensive smokes in the country. That is, cigarettes are expensive in New York for those who pay those taxes. But state officials were warned that such a high rate would drive consumers to the black market, and that’s exactly what happened. According to recent research, more New Yorkers than ever are turning to tax-evading illicit sources for their nicotine needs.

Taxes Into Good Health—or Not

When the New York excise tax was hiked, the Albany Times-Union noted, “it’s the nation’s highest and brings a pack of cigarettes at many retailers to about $12….Health advocates hailed the increase, saying it will lead to fewer smokers and cancer deaths. Anti-tax groups, though, predicted it will increase trafficking in illicit untaxed cigarettes in the state.”

Health advocates like taxing vices on the theory that raising taxes simultaneously generates government revenue while escalating prices for allegedly bad things—like cigarettes—out of reach of many consumers. What they rarely consider is that there are other options, such as buying cigarettes smuggled from jurisdictions with lower levies.

“New York has created a cigarette-smuggling empire, and the worst is yet to come,” Todd Nesbit, an economics professor at Ball State University, and Michael LaFaive, of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, warned even before the 2023 tax increase. “It’s the unavoidable consequence of the state’s decadeslong history of raising the cigarette tax.”

“If enacted, consumers will go across borders to do their shopping or rely on black-market suppliers,” agreed the Tax Foundation’s Adam Hoffer. “Tax revenues will fall, illicit activities will thrive, and law enforcement spending will need to increase.”

In fact, as Nesbit, LaFaive, and Hoffer emphasized, even before the dollar-per-pack tax hike, more than half of cigarettes sold in the state of New York lacked local tax stamps and were smuggled from elsewhere. Since 2023, illicit dealers appear to have claimed even more market share.

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“Above the Law” Landlord: Letitia James Caught Violating New York’s Rent Stabilization Laws

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, long claiming to be a public champion of tenants’ rights, has herself been in violation of New York City’s rent stabilization laws for more than two decades.

Since purchasing a four-story apartment building at 296 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn in 2001, James has failed to register the property with the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) as required for rent-stabilized buildings.

By failing to register, she denied her tenants the protections of rent stabilization, while collecting rents above the legally regulated amounts for 24 years.

New York City’s housing code is based on its “Rent Stabilization Law of 1969,” which was designed to shield tenants from large rent raises, unlawful deregulation, and eviction abuses.

It sets yearly allowable rent increases, typically at around 3% per year. The law applies to qualifying buildings and requires landlords to register with DHCR and file annual reports on tenants, rents, and lease terms.

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Major NYC strip club group bribed state auditor with lap dances, avoided $8M in taxes: AG

What a bunch of boobs.

A major strip club group bribed a state auditor — including with lap dances — to avoid paying more than $8 million in New York City sales taxes over the last 14 years, prosecutors charged Tuesday.

The State Attorney General’s Office unsealed a 79-count criminal indictment against the company, RCI, and five of its executives, accusing them of engaging in a naked, tax fraud scheme.

The affair was so brazen, a top RCI accountant even allegedly made at least 10 trips from Texas to New York to treat the former auditor at the company’s Manhattan jiggle joints, Rick’s Cabaret, Vivid Cabaret and Hoops Cabaret and Sports Bar, court papers state.

“RCI’s executives shamelessly used their strip clubs to bribe their way out of paying millions of dollars in taxes,” said AG Letitia James. “I will always take action to fight corruption and ensure everyone pays their fair share.”

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Radical Mayoral Candidate Receiving Big Money From Leftists Outside of NYC

According to The New York Post, socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is raking in funds from leftists outside of the City who will not have to deal with, or suffer from, the radical agenda he hopes to enact.

From The New York Post:

Deep-pocketed, out-of-state donors account for 78% of the nearly $2.4 million raised by a super PAC backing Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral campaign.

Lefties outside the Empire State wrote fat checks totaling $1,831,706 to the group, New Yorkers for Lower Costs, as of Friday, records showed.

The sum included $762,631 from 26 California donors, with most of it coming from just two people.

Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign spokesman, Todd Shapiro, noted, “Mamdani’s campaign isn’t about New York City — it’s about fueling a national socialist movement bankrolled by donors in California and beyond … with Hollywood and out-of-state activists trying to dictate the future of our city.”

Mamdani’s radical plans include transforming the city by hiking property taxes for “richer and whiter neighborhoods.’

He has also waged a longstanding campaign aimed at defunding the New York Police Department, which he claims is designed to “control black, brown and poor New Yorkers.”

The Gateway Pundit reported on another method of delivering funds to his campaign via potentially illegal tax-exempt charity-funded operations are being funnelled to Mamdani, disguised as community activism.

In his July 2025 article, How Elite Money Flows Through Working Families Party Network, forensic investigator Sam Antar exposes a hidden financial web he calls “grassroots laundering” with Mamdani’s rise as a case study.

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Longtime head of Mexican megachurch is indicted in New York on federal sex trafficking charges

The longtime head of a Mexican megachurch who is serving more than 16 years in a California prison for sexually abusing young followers has been charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking for allegedly victimizing members of the church for decades, authorities said Wednesday.

A federal grand jury in New York returned the indictment alleging that Naasón Joaquín García, 56, and five others exploited the church for decades to enable the systemic sexual abuse of children and women for the sexual gratification of García and his father, who died in 2014.

The newly unsealed indictment said the criminal activity included the creation of photos and videos of child sexual abuse.

García was taken into federal custody early Wednesday in Chino, California, where he is serving a more than 16-year sentence after pleading guilty in 2022 to two state counts

His lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

García is the head of La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World), which claims to have 5 million followers worldwide. Believers consider him to be the “apostle” of Jesus Christ.

Prosecutors in California have said that he used his spiritual sway to have sex with girls and young women who were told it would lead to their salvation – or damnation if they refused.

Besides García, one defendant charged in the case was taken into custody in Los Angeles while another was arrested in Chicago, authorities said. Three others were at large.

According to the indictment, two of the defendants and others tried to destroy evidence and prevent victims of the sexual abuse from speaking to law enforcement after García was arrested.

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Mamdani for years used July 4 to promote self-styled ‘Taliban’ rapper who ‘worshipped’ 9/11 hijacker

New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani for years marked the Fourth of July by sharing a photo of a rap group that is infamous for its glorification of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and for its praise for one of the 9/11 hijackers.

Mamdani wished his social media followers a “Happy 4th” on Independence Day in 2021, 2023, and 2024 — less than one year before the failed rapper and socialist activist became the Democratic Party’s nominee — in tweets accompanied by a picture from a music video of the two lead singers of the controversial rap group called The Diplomats (also known as Dipset), who were famous — and infamous — for some of their pro-terrorism-tinged lyrics.

Mamdani, a longtime rap aficionado who took a largely unsuccessful stab at being a rapper himself, has tweeted “Happy 4th” exactly four times — sharing the picture of the pro-terrorist Dipset rap group on the Fourth of July in 2021, 2023, and 2024 — and then, only after becoming the Democratic nominee, sent out a much more anodyne, standard-fare, politician-style tweet in 2025 wishing his followers “Happy 4th” featuring pictures from a Democratic Club BBQ held in Queens.

Rappers “worship” ringleader of 9/11 hijackings that murdered almost 3,000 people

The Harlem-based rap group’s own lyrics from the 2003 album that Mamdani repeatedly promoted describe the hip-hop collective as the “Dipset Taliban”, “Harlem’s own Taliban”, and “Harlem’s Al-Qaeda” and described the group’s songs as “9/11 music” — while one of the group’s main singers compared himself favorably to Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and declared in a song that “I worship the prophet” Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the 19 terrorist hijackers on 9/11 and who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

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New York Health Dept Defies FDA: Hochul’s Emergency Order Pushes Off-Label COVID Shots For Kids As Young as 3

New York’s department of public health released a series of odd guidances to pharmacists and physicians on Friday to promote COVID vaccines to children and adults for “off label” use, meaning in conflict with FDA’s official label. Signed by Governor Kathy Hochul, New York’s executive order 52 declares a “disaster in the state of New York due to federal actions related to vaccine access.”

“A friend of mine said they’re contacting the nurse’s union,” a New York City nurse texted me, shortly after New York released their new COVID vaccine guidance. “They don’t know wtf to do with that!”

A New York physician sent me documents the state’s health department sent to physicians and pharmacists, called “providers” in healthcare lingo. She and the majority of her colleagues no longer get COVID boosters, and she’s worried that the new guidance for “off label” use makes no sense, does not fully inform patients, and might be illegal.

Pfizer pled guilty to criminal charges and paid a record $2.3 billion fine for illegal, off label promotion of multiple drugs in 2009. As previously reported here, Biden’s FDA Commissioner and CDC Director both promoted COVID vaccines for uses that the FDA admitted were off label. No evidence exists that pharmaceutical companies helped to shape New York’s off label policy, but CNBC reported in 2021 that Governor Hochul’s daughter-in-law is a top lobbyist at a pharma firm that has sought to influence NY lawmakers.

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