NORFOLK, Va. >> In the summer of 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James helped her niece buy a modest house in Norfolk, Virginia, by becoming a co-borrower on the mortgage loan.

A top housing official in the Trump administration has now seized on a document in that transaction to argue that James should be prosecuted for bank fraud, asking the U.S. Justice Department in a letter to open a criminal investigation into the Democrat.

The request for an investigation comes as the administration has pursued a campaign of retribution against President Donald Trump’s longtime foes in the legal world. James won a $454 million judgment against Trump last year in a lawsuit claiming he had lied about the value of his assets on financial statements given to banks. James called the allegations against her “baseless.”

“It is nothing more than a headline, nothing more than retaliation against all the actions I have taken successfully against Donald Trump,” she said Wednesday in an interview on the New York cable news station NY1.

In an April 14 letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking for an investigation, U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte cited “media reports” claiming James had falsely listed a home in Virginia as her principal residence.

As evidence, Pulte cited a legal form James signed on Aug. 17, 2023, in which she gave her niece, Shamice Thompson-Hairston, the authority to sign documents on her behalf in connection with the sale two weeks later. Those forms are required when a person involved in buying a house can’t be present for the closing.

That form included a line that says, “I hereby declare that I intend to occupy this property as my principal residence.”

“At the time of the 2023 Norfolk, VA property purchase and mortgage, Ms. James was the siting Attorney General of New York and is required by law to have her primary residence in the state of New York — even though her mortgage applications list her intent to have the Norfolk, VA property as her primary home,” Pulte wrote in the letter asking for an investigation.

James’ office, however, shared a partial copy of a loan application in which she appeared to disclose that she didn’t intend to live in Virginia.