U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has appointed a “special attorney” to probe mortgage fraud allegations against Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James, two administration officials told NBC News.
The Justice Department is also in the initial stages of an investigation of James over her successful civil fraud case against President Donald Trump, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Bondi tapped Ed Martin, a conservative activist and former interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., as special attorney to investigate Schiff and James, both prominent Democratic opponents of the president, the two administration officials said.
A senior law enforcement official said a grand jury seated in the Eastern District of Virginia will investigate the James mortgage fraud allegations and a grand jury in Maryland will investigate the allegations against Schiff.
Martin met Friday morning with Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, who sent a criminal referral for the California senator to the Justice Department in May, the administration officials said. Pulte sent a referral for James in April, prompting the Justice Department to open an investigation into allegations that she made false statements on mortgage loan applications.
Trump had previously called for both Democratic officials to be prosecuted because of the mortgage fraud allegations.
Schiff and James have denied wrongdoing.
Preet Bharara, who is representing Schiff, said in a statement Friday that the allegations against the senator “are transparently false, stale, and long debunked.”
Schiff previously blasted Trump’s claims in a video statement in July. “This is the kind of stuff you see tinpot dictators do. It is designed to intimidate his political opponents and somehow try to silence them,” he said then.
The U.S. attorney’s probe of James is focused on whether her office used its authority to violate Trump’s legal rights through its civil lawsuits against the president and his businesses, according to three people familiar with the matter.
That investigation is also looking at whether the National Rifle Association’s rights were violated by her civil suits, the three sources said. It is being run out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York, two of those sources said.
In response to an NBC News inquiry, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said: “Any weaponization of the justice system should disturb every American. We stand strongly behind our successful litigation against the Trump Organization and the National Rifle Association, and we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers’ rights.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office did not return a request for comment.
James, a Democrat, successfully sued Trump and his company over what her office said were fraudulent misrepresentations of his wealth and financial statements. A judge awarded James’ office over $300 million in the case, an amount that’s since swelled to over $500 million with interest. Trump is appealing the judgment.
James’ office also sued the NRA and its leadership with mixed results. The attorney general had sought the dissolution of the NRA in what is commonly referred to as the corporate “death penalty,” but a judge struck down those claims.
In 2024, James’ office did win its civil corruption case against the longtime head of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, with a jury finding him liable for diverting millions of dollars from the gun group for his own personal lifestyle.
The gun group said it was “gratified” to find out about the investigation.
“She uses her powers as an elected official to try, in her words, to ‘dissolve the organization in its entirety,’ thus silencing the voice of millions of our members,” NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Doug Hamlin said in a statement. “That she now expresses concerns over ‘weaponization’ is the height of hypocrisy — an utter lack of self-awareness at the very least.”
