Tag: new york

Letitia James Calls Gateway Pundit Reporter as Felon Relative Faces Charges in Same Courthouse

“Hello, this is Letitia James. Your number showed up on my Caller ID. Who is this?”

The voice was unmistakable. I knew it was her. I had just finished calling about twenty phone numbers of New York Attorney General Letitia James’s seven siblings, hoping to learn more about her niece, Shamice Thompson-Hairston, with whom James had jointly purchased a home in Norfolk, Virginia. I wanted to know which of Letitia’s seven siblings was Shamice’s parent.

Half of the numbers I called were bad, while the rest went to voicemail. I hadn’t left any messages. Yet suddenly, here was Letitia James herself on the line.

I decided to play it straight. “Yes, Ms. James, I’m a reporter working on an article about your family background. Can you tell me who is the father or mother of your niece, Shamice?”

James hesitated. “What is this for?”

“An article about your family background,” I repeated.

Her answer was abrupt: “No comment!” – and she hung up.

Checking my Caller ID, I saw the number was 212-416-8051. Upon a quick Google search, it turned out to be one of the main lines at the New York State Attorney General’s office.

My interest in Shamice Thompson-Hairston stemmed from Letitia James’s unusually large financial involvement in the lives of her niece and her two children. James had purchased two homes in Norfolk, Virginia for them, both with problematic legal issues as regards their mortgages.

In 2020, James purchased a property at 3121 Perone Avenue in Norfolk, Virginia, signing a document claiming it would serve as her primary or secondary residence, rather than a rental property, which allowed her to obtain a lower mortgage interest rate. That misrepresentation recently became part of the criminal indictment against James for mortgage and bank fraud, carrying a potential 30-year prison sentence. James was arraigned yesterday in Norfolk, Virginia in that case.

In 2023, James bought a home at 604 Sterling Avenue in Norfolk, Virginia with Shamice Thompson-Hairston as co-borrower. Per Sam Antar, Letitia qualified for the loan only after certifying in an updated application that it would be her “primary residence”, even though she lived in Brooklyn. I believe this could soon be the subject of a superseding indictment against James.

Speaking before the Association for a Better New York, James claimed her motives for the home purchases were purely familial, they were in order to provide a home for her niece Shamice’s “kids”.

But as I detailed in The Gateway Pundit in Crime Runs in the Family! Letitia James Buys Home for Niece’s Jailbird Adult Kids, James’s explanation, that she was a “good aunt” merely helping her niece and her children, was misleading.

The “children” whom James’s statement implied were minors, were both adult felons with long rap sheets, including Nakia Monique Thompson who today is a wanted fugitive with an active arrest warrant in North Carolina.

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Biden Judge Gives Letitia James Her First Win

A Biden-appointed judge gave Letitia James her first win on Friday.

Corrupt New York Attorney General Letitia James was arraigned in court in Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday morning.

Letitia James’ federal criminal case was assigned to US District Judge Jamar Walker, a Biden appointee.

Jamar Walker was appointed by Joe Biden in 2023.

James was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia earlier this month.

According to the DOJ, Letitia James was charged with two crimes: Bank Fraud under 18 U.S.C. Section 1344 and False Statements to a Financial Institution under 18 U.S.C. Section 1014.

The charges are related to a mortgage loan on a property James owns in Norfolk, Virginia, referred to as “the Perrone Property.”

According to the indictment, James was to use the property as her secondary residence and prohibited its use as a timesharing or other shared ownership arrangement or agreement that requires her either to rent the property or give any other person any control over the occupancy or use of the property.

Letitia James treated her Perrone property like an investment property on her Schedule E form and paid taxes on the rental income, further contradicting her claims of secondary residence.

“If convicted, Letitia James faces penalties including up to 30 years in prison per count, up to a $1 million fine on each count, and forfeiture,” the DOJ said.

On Friday Letitia James filed a motion to dismiss the federal indictment arguing that US Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as interim US Attorney is in violation of the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.

“Attorney General Letitia A. James, by and through undersigned counsel, pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b) moves this Court to dismiss the Government’s indictment because purported interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan had no authority to bring the charges in this case. As explained further below, Ms. Halligan’s purported appointment as interim U.S. Attorney was invalid under 28 U.S.C § 546 and in violation of the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution,” James’s attorney argued in a motion reviewed by The Gateway Pundit.

James also asked Judge Jamar Walker to consolidate her motion challenging the appointment of Halligan with James Comey’s motion in a separate case.

Recall that fired FBI Director James Comey also filed a motion to disqualify Lindsey Halligan after he was indicted by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.

On Tuesday, the Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Comey’s motion challenging Halligan to be transferred to Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, a Clinton appointee.

On Friday, Judge Jamar Walker granted Letitia James’ request to consolidate her motion with Comey’s similar motion so the Clinton judge can decide whether Lindsey Halligan will be disqualified in both cases.

The fix is in.

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The Shadow Of Terror: Zohran Mamdani’s Radical Islam Problem

New York City’s 2025 mayoral race has thrust Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist and New York State Assembly member, into the spotlight as the Democratic nominee. His candidacy, while historic as potentially the first Muslim and Indian-American mayor, raises serious concerns due to his (1) adherence to the Shi’a Twelver sect, (2) support of Hamas jihadist terrorists and its parent group, the Muslim Brotherhood, (3) rabid antisemitism, and (4) devastating economic implications of his socialist policies. Mamdani’s candidacy is a natural result of decades of failed NYC policies toward Islamists and jihadists, which have almost turned the city into a Muslim Brotherhood sanctuary. Mamdani’s candidacy is a symptom of a larger Islamist problem in NYC.

While many American Muslims in New York City are patriotic and capable of great leadership, Mamdani’s religious and ideological stances demand scrutiny. Mamdani wants to rule New York City, but who rules Mamdani?

New York City is home to over half a million Muslims, many of whom contribute significantly to the city’s vibrant fabric. Numerous Muslim leaders possess the vision, integrity, and capability to serve as mayor, championing policies that align with American values and the U.S. Constitution; however, Mamdani is not among them. He belongs on a terror watchlist and not in a mayoral race.

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Zohran Mamdani Boasts ‘Free’ NYC Bus Plan Would Cost $700 Million a Year

New York City mayoral candidate and state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani defended his proposal to make all city buses free during Wednesday night’s final mayoral debate, estimating the initiative would cost roughly $700 million annually and arguing it would ultimately benefit the city’s economy and environment.

Mamdani said the proposal “addresses the fact that today, in the wealthiest city, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one in five New Yorkers cannot afford the bus fare.” He described the measure as both an economic and social investment, explaining that “It could cost $700 million a year to make the slowest buses in the country fast and free,” but claimed the city would “generate more than double in economic revenue for New Yorkers across the city.”

He added that eliminating fares would “reduce assaults on bus drivers,” “increase ridership on those buses,” and “actually have environmental impacts as fewer New Yorkers would drive their own car or take a taxi and would instead get on the bus.” Mamdani stated he was confident in the plan’s feasibility because, as a state assemblyman, he “delivered it as the state assembly member who won the first free buses in New York City’s history.”

The cost projection drew comparisons to other cities that have experimented with fare-free transit, most notably Kansas City, which became the first major U.S. city to eliminate bus fares in 2020. After several years, city officials moved to reinstate fares amid ongoing financial and operational challenges. According to an April 2025 KCUR report, the Kansas City Council voted to bring back $2 fares and reduce route frequency after the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority warned that, without new funding sources, it could be forced to cut 13 of its 29 routes. The council’s six-month plan allocated $46.7 million to keep the system running through October while the agency seeks additional funding to sustain operations in the long term.

Mamdani’s comments come as his economic platform continues to draw attention for its sweeping government-led initiatives. The democratic socialist has previously proposed city-run grocery stores and increasing property taxes in “richer and whiter neighborhoods,” as well as backing measures to buy private housing for communal use. Polling reported by Breitbart News shows Mamdani leading the mayoral race with 43 percent of support citywide, bolstered by strong backing from foreign-born voters and younger residents.

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Why Zohran Mamdani’s ‘Sewer Socialism’ Won’t Help Poor People

New York City is poised to elect a Jew-hating, jihadi-loving, police-defunding socialist for mayor. But New York Times contributor E.J. Dionne thinks that this is fine, because Zohran Mamdani wants to be a “sewer socialist.” Which is to say that “he is far more interested in the practical task of being a successful mayor than in the impossible dream of turning a single city into a socialist paradise.“

Dionne is the sort of self-described Catholic Democrat who prefers the party platform to the catechism of his church, and so he is a willing mark for Mamdani’s efforts to reassure voters that he isn’t a dangerous radical. Per Dionne, Mamdani understands that the best advertisement for socialism is success, and he therefore seeks to revive a tradition of socialist mayors who eagerly worked on “the grubbiest of urban amenities because doing so underscored their aim of running corruption-free governments that did whatever they could to improve the lives of working-class people.” 

That sounds nice. It would be good for the Big Apple if Mamdani delivered on this ideal. Indeed, if the Democrats who run our nation’s cities focused on good government, it would be good for their constituents, their party’s political fortunes, and the nation as a whole, which is harmed when Leftists such as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson run our cities into the ground. But an outbreak of good government via urban socialism is not going to happen, no matter how much credulous liberals such as Dionne want to believe.

The first barrier is ideological. Socialism has changed since the early 20th century days that Dionne pines for. It is not about taking from the haves to give to the have-nots anymore (if it ever was). Rather, today’s socialism is an amalgamation of woke ideology, from intersectionality to anti-colonialism. Its advocates don’t care about sewers in working-class neighborhoods nearly as much as they do about climate change and letting sex offenders into the girls’ locker room. Today’s Left will enthusiastically take food from poor kids to pressure schools into implementing the rainbow agenda.

The result is an incoherent agenda that will hurt those whom Mamdani claims to want to help. For example, because socialism views excellence with suspicion, he wants to eliminate gifted programs for young public-school students. This will do nothing to advance the interests of the working class; it will only sabotage the chances of bright kids whose parents cannot afford private school tuition. Likewise, his antipathy toward law enforcement will undermine his signature initiatives, such as free busses. It is not just that “free” busses will, by his own estimate, cost taxpayers billions, but that people will avoid them because the Left refuses to enforce the laws that keep public spaces safe.

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Mamdani Vows To Shut Down Rikers Island, Release Almost 8K Criminals

If New York City voters elect Muslim democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor, they will come to appreciate H.L. Mencken’s maxim that “democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

The latest on the far-far-far left radical goes well beyond raising taxes on whites, providing free day care and bus transportation, and, famously, “seizing the means of production.”

Last night, during the final mayoral debate against independent candidate and former Governor Andrew Cuomo and radio talker and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, Mamdani vowed again to shut down the Rikers Island prison facility in 2027, as city law requires. The problem: Other jails cannot be built before the deadline.

Result: Almost 8,000 dangerous criminals would be loosed upon the city. Not that Mamdani would care. Aside from the other communist ideas he espouses, he would also abolish jails and prisons.

Rikers Island is a 413-acre property with 12 facilities, almost all the city’s jails. In 2019, the city passed a law to close the facility and replace it with jails in four of the city’s five boroughs. That was a pipe dream, and now, the deadline for shuttering Rikers looms.

Answering a debate moderator’s question about it, Cuomo said “you cannot close Rikers in 2027 because there’s no place to put the people unless you’re going to release 7,000 people.” Noting that Mamdani would release them, Cuomo added that “I’m not going to release 7,000 criminals into New York.”

Releasing the criminals is the Democratic Socialists’, and therefore Mamdani’s, policy, Cuomo said. The former Empire State governor would build new jails on the island.

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New York AG Urges Public to Send Footage of ICE Raids

New York State’s attorney general on Wednesday called on the public to send her office photos, videos, and other documentation of federal immigration operations for review, just a day after an enforcement operation targeted street vendors in Manhattan’s Chinatown turned to chaos as protestors confronted agents.

Attorney General Letitia James said her office would comb over footage and further documentation of federal immigration operations via a “Federal Action Reporting Form,” stating that “every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation.”

James has also requested that New Yorkers submit photos or videos of Tuesday’s enforcement operation in Chinatown to her office, so that her office can determine if any laws were broken.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said James’s call for videos and photos “looks like obstruction of justice.”

The immigration enforcement operation took place on New York City’s Canal Street, a well-known area with a reputation for street vendors selling imitation goods, sparking resistance from city residents, many of whom were seemingly on their way home from work.

Shortly after 4 p.m. on Tuesday, federal agents began the operation, with an Associated Press reporter saying they saw dozens of agents detain a street vendor.

Protestors encircled the officers and tried to prevent their vehicles from leaving while shouting “ICE out of New York” and calling on other pedestrians to join in the protest.

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Border Patrol, and other federal agencies then attempted to disperse the crowd. The confrontation grew, and an unknown number of federal agents retreated on foot, which was cheered on by protestors and honking cars. Federal reinforcements with long guns and tactical gear then arrived on scene.

“During this law enforcement operation, rioters who were shouting obscenities became violent and obstructed law enforcement duties, including blocking vehicles and assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin said.

Altogether, federal authorities said 14 people—illegal immigrants and demonstrators—were arrested in Tuesday’s operation, including illegal immigrants from Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, and Guinea. Some had prior criminal arrest histories.

Four people were arrested for allegedly assaulting law enforcement, and another for obstruction of justice, according to DHS.

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NY lawmakers claim Hochul is targeting them for ongoing probe into alleged $11B Medicaid program scandal

State lawmakers are accusing Gov. Kathy Hochul of retaliating against them for continuing a probe into mounting claims her administration rigged the contract for a massive $11 billion Medicaid homecare program.

State Sens. Jim Skoufis (D-Orange) and Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx) plan to send a letter Tuesday demanding Hochul’s administration turn over evidence surrounding bid rigging and other allegations centering on her overhaul of the $11 billion per year Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program.

While the lawmakers were finalizing plans to move the investigation forward last week, Hochul took the unusual step of vetoing several of Skoufis’ bills, including one that would reimburse pharmacies for consulting patients on abortion procedures.

The Hudson Valley lawmaker, who shocked many with his full-throated attacks on Hochul during this year’s budget votes, accused the Democratic governor of vetoing his bills as payback for pushing the probe.

“The Governor wanted me to suppress critical information related to the CDPAP investigation, plain and simple. Kathy Hochul is barking up the wrong tree if she’s looking for a hack to shamelessly cover for her administration,” Skoufis said.

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Thousands of Orthodox Jews rally in New York to protest change in Israel’s military draft rules

Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews packed the streets and sidewalks for blocks around the Israeli consulate in New York City on Sunday to protest issues including a potential end of an exemption for religious students from compulsory service in Israel’s military.

The protest at the consulate, a block from the United Nations campus in Manhattan, illustrated the complex relationship between Israel and segments of the large population of very religious Jews in New York and its suburbs.

The two influential, and often rival, grand rebbes of the Satmar community both called on adherents to participate in the demonstration. The Central Rabbinical Congress of the U.S.A. and Canada, a consortium of Orthodox Jewish groups, said it helped organize the protest.

It comes after Israel’s Supreme Court last year ordered the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into the military. There had been a longstanding enlistment exemption – dating to the founding of Israel in 1948.

The ultra-Orthodox worry that mandatory enlistment will impact adherents’ ties to their faith. But many Jewish Israelis have argued that an exemption is unfair. Rifts over the issue have deepened since the start of the war in Gaza.

Rabbi Moishe Indig, a Satmar community leader, said he’s not sure organizers expected so many people to show up but he said he felt urgency building around the issue.

He said he was appreciative of the governments in New York and the U.S. “for giving us the freedom and liberty to be able to live free and have our children go to school and study and learn the Torah.”

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How Letitia James’s Fake Marriage to Her Dad Sparked a Lifetime of Mortgage Fraud

How did Letitia James’s claim that she married her father in order to qualify for her first loan evolve into a lifetime of mortgage and bank fraud?

It all began in the spring of 1983, when a 24-year-old Letitia James and her father, Robert James, posing as “husband and wife,” took out a real-estate loan for $30,300 from Kadilac Funding Ltd. for the purchase of a two-story townhome in Queens. The loan document, signed by both, listed “ROBERT JAMES AND LETITIA JAMES, HIS WIFE” in three separate places. This was no clerical error.

At that time, young Letitia likely lacked sufficient income or credit to qualify for a mortgage as a single woman. The fraudulent claim of marriage to her father allowed her to obtain financing she otherwise couldn’t have, an act that meets the legal definition of mortgage fraud under state and federal statutes.

This deception set a precedent for her. Once Letitia discovered that falsifying personal information could deliver tangible financial rewards without consequence, the act of misrepresentation for loans became a lifelong habit.

Decades of mortgage misrepresentations followed. Even after she became the high-profile Attorney General of New York state on January 1, 2019, James continued the same behavior pattern.

In 2020, James purchased a property at 3121 Perone Avenue in Norfolk, Virginia, signing a document claiming it would be her primary or secondary residence, rather than a rental property, to secure a lower interest rate. That misrepresentation recently became part of the criminal indictment against her for mortgage and bank fraud, carrying a potential 30-year prison sentence.

In 2021, James applied for a $200,000 line of credit mortgage from Citizen’s Bank on her 5-unit apartment building in Brooklyn, but in mortgage documents James claimed it only had one apartment unit. Accordingly, James received a lower residential mortgage interest rate she was not entitled to, and avoided a higher commercial loan rate and much higher closing costs.

In 2023, James bought a home at 604 Sterling Avenue in Norfolk, Virginia. Per Sam Antar, Letitia qualified for the loan only after certifying in an updated application that it would be her “primary residence”, even though she lived in Brooklyn.

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