Trump weaponization czar urged New York Attorney General James to resign over mortgage probe

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s political weaponization czar sent a letter urging New York Attorney General Letitia James to resign from office “as an act of good faith” four days after starting his mortgage fraud investigation of her. Then he showed up outside her house.

Ed Martin, the director of the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group, told James’ lawyer on Aug. 12 the Democrat would best serve the “good of the state and nation” by resigning and ending his probe into alleged paperwork discrepancies on her Brooklyn townhouse and a Virginia home.

“Her resignation from office would give the people of New York and America more peace than proceeding," Martin wrote. "I would take this as an act of good faith.”

Then last Friday, Martin turned up outside James’ Brooklyn townhouse in a “Columbo”-esque trench coat, accompanied by an aide and New York Post journalists. He didn’t meet with James or go inside the building. A Post writer saw him tell a neighbor: “I’m just looking at houses, interesting houses. It’s an important house.”

James' lawyer Abbe Lowell shot back on Monday, telling Martin in a letter his blunt request for James' resignation defied Justice Department standards and codes of professional responsibility and legal ethics.

The Justice Department “has firm policies against using investigations and against using prosecutorial power for achieving political ends,” Lowell wrote. “This is ever more the case when that demand is made to seek political revenge against a public official in the opposite party.”

“Let me be clear: that will not happen here,” Lowell added.

Lowell also blasted Martin’s visit to James' home as a “truly bizarre, made-for-media stunt” and said it was “outside the bounds” of Justice Department rules. He included an image from security camera footage showing Martin, in his trench coat, posing for a photo in front of James’ townhouse. He said Martin looked as if he were on a “visit to a tourist attraction.”

The Associated Press obtained copies of both letters on Tuesday. A message seeking comment was left for Martin’s spokesperson. James’ office declined to comment.

The letters were the latest salvos in a monthslong drama involving Trump’s retribution campaign against James and others who've battled him in court and fought his policies.

James has sued the Republican president and his administration dozens of times and last year won a $454 million judgment against Trump and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he lied about the value of his assets on financial statements given to banks. An appeals court has yet to rule on Trump’s bid to overturn that verdict.

Earlier this month, the AP reported, the Justice Department subpoenaed James for records related to the civil fraud lawsuit and a lawsuit she filed against the National Rifle Association.

Martin’s investigation stems from a letter Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi in April asking her to investigate and consider prosecuting James, alleging she had “falsified bank documents and property records."

Pulte, whose agency regulates mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, cited “media reports” claiming James had falsely listed a Virginia home as her principal residence, and he suggested she may have been trying to avoid higher interest rates that often apply to second homes.

Records show James was listed as a co-borrower on a house her niece was buying in 2023. Lowell said records and correspondence easily disproved Pulte’s allegation.

While James signed a power-of-attorney form that, Lowell said, “mistakenly stated the property to be Ms. James’ principal residence," she sent an email to her mortgage loan broker around the same time that made clear the property “WILL NOT be my primary residence.”

Pulte also accused James of lying in property records about the number of apartments in the Brooklyn townhouse she has owned since 2001.

A certificate of occupancy issued to a previous owner authorized up to five units in the building, where James lives and has rented out apartments. Other city records show the townhouse has four units, a number James has listed in building permit applications and mortgage documents.

On Aug. 8, Bondi appointed Martin, a former Republican political operative, to investigate. Martin, the current U.S. pardon attorney and former acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., is also investigating mortgage fraud allegations against Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Schiff's lawyer called the allegations “transparently false, stale, and long debunked."

Lowell said it appears the working group Martin leads “is aptly named as it is ‘weaponizing’" the Justice Department "to carry out the President’s and Attorney General’s threats.”

FILE - Attorney Abbe Lowell arrives at federal court, June 6, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

FILE - Ed Martin speaks at the Capitol in Washington, June 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, File)

FILE - New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a news conference outside Manhattan federal court in New York on Feb. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

FILE - New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks Feb. 16, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Myanmar insisted Friday that its deadly military campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority was a legitimate counter-terrorism operation and did not amount to genocide, as it defended itself at the top United Nations court against an allegation of breaching the genocide convention.

Myanmar launched the campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh.

“Myanmar was not obliged to remain idle and allow terrorists to have free reign of northern Rakhine state,” the country’s representative Ko Ko Hlaing told black-robed judges at the International Court of Justice.

African nation Gambia brought a case at the court in 2019 alleging that Myanmar's military actions amount to a breach of the Genocide Convention that was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.

Some 1.2 million members of the Rohingya minority are still languishing in chaotic, overcrowded camps in Bangladesh, where armed groups recruit children and girls as young as 12 are forced into prostitution. The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed last year by U.S. President Donald Trump shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and have caused children to starve to death.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya Muslim minority to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982.

As hearings opened Monday, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said his nation filed the case after the Rohingya “endured decades of appalling persecution, and years of dehumanizing propaganda. This culminated in the savage, genocidal ‘clearance operations’ of 2016 and 2017, which were followed by continued genocidal policies meant to erase their existence in Myanmar.”

Hlaing disputed the evidence Gambia cited in its case, including the findings of an international fact-finding mission set up by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council.

“Myanmar’s position is that the Gambia has failed to meet its burden of proof," he said. "This case will be decided on the basis of proven facts, not unsubstantiated allegations. Emotional anguish and blurry factual pictures are not a substitute for rigorous presentation of facts.”

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi represented her country at jurisdiction hearings in the case in 2019, denying that Myanmar armed forces committed genocide and instead casting the mass exodus of Rohingya people from the country she led as an unfortunate result of a battle with insurgents.

The pro-democracy icon is now in prison after being convicted of what her supporters call trumped-up charges after a military takeover of power.

Myanmar contested the court’s jurisdiction, saying Gambia was not directly involved in the conflict and therefore could not initiate a case. Both countries are signatories to the genocide convention, and in 2022, judges rejected the argument, allowing the case to move forward.

Gambia rejects Myanmar's claims that it was combating terrorism, with Jallow telling judges on Monday that “genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that can be drawn from Myanmar’s pattern of conduct.”

In late 2024, prosecutors at another Hague-based tribunal, the International Criminal Court, requested an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military regime for crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power from Suu Kyi in 2021, is accused of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Rohingya. The request is still pending.

FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2017, file photo, smoke rises from a burned house in Gawdu Zara village, northern Rakhine state, where the vast majority of the country's 1.1 million Rohingya lived, Myanmar. (AP Photo, File)