Letitia James has been referred to the U.S. Department of Justice for mortgage fraud. This is the latest in a growing list of scandals involving the New York AG's office, including sexual assault allegations against her chief of staff, Tisha James.
00:00:49.740Tish James, who said, most famously, no one is above the law, may be prosecuted herself.
00:00:57.360Federal Home Loan Financing Agency Director Bill Pulte sent a criminal referral to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi accusing James of mortgage fraud this past Tuesday.
00:01:09.720Pulte said that James falsified records to meet certain lending requirements and receive favorable loan terms.
00:01:18.040Pulte cited a property in Virginia that James claimed as her principal residence and a property in New York, which she claimed as a four-unit investment structure instead of the required five, which she said that she could, which could mean that she was able to get different and more favorable loans.
00:01:39.840Now, there's a number of problems here.
00:01:43.240First of all, just weeks before President Donald Trump's so-called valuation trial, James signed a power of attorney in her application for a mortgage on a Virginia home, which she said would become her principal residence.
00:02:02.000Well, if it became her principal residence within the specified 60 days cited in the document that James signed, she would be constitutionally ineligible to be the attorney general of the state of New York.
00:02:21.120In the instance that someone holding statewide office changes their state of residence, the office is automatically vacated.
00:02:29.740On the other hand, if she did not move to Virginia, as stated, well, then she has committed essentially perjury on this sworn form.
00:02:41.560Another document shows that a property purchased by James with her father had her actually utilizing her father's balance sheet and his finances to justify the mortgage.
00:02:55.940But she's listed in the application for the mortgage and in the mortgage with her father as husband and wife.
00:03:07.760But she is listed correctly on the title as father and daughter.
00:03:13.780Now, while this was a long time ago, it raises serious concerns about the validity of Ms. James' representations on mortgage applications, said FHFA Director Pulte in his letter.
00:03:27.980It's ironic that James is likely to go to jail in part for falsifying business records, the very crime that she falsely accused President Donald Trump of committing.
00:03:38.760It's also interesting, two other areas.
00:03:44.980I believe that Attorney General Tisha James has covered up the sexual assault of three different women by her chief of staff.
00:03:54.280There is one existing lawsuit in that regard.
00:04:00.220Very recently, an appeals court very quietly let the suit go forward, despite a motion for dismissal by Letitia James, but dropped James from the suit.
00:04:13.880I think that was, as they say, wrongly decided.
00:04:18.500There are at least two other women that I have interviewed who claim, likewise, that they also were sexually assaulted by the Attorney General's chief of staff.
00:04:32.420I believe both of them to be credible.
00:04:35.800Then, on top of that, you have the burgeoning scandal of the fundraising by Letitia James.
00:04:43.400Letitia James, as a candidate for Attorney General, managed to raise millions of dollars using a Democrat payment processing company called ActBlue.
00:04:59.200ActBlue very conveniently allows people to give by credit card, while at the same time turning off the feature in which you check the address of the credit card holder against the card to make sure that it is legitimate.
00:05:18.140Based on just a cursory sample of her donors, you have a pattern of people who are not of particular means giving dozens of small and medium-sized contributions to Letitia James.
00:05:35.740When you go and knock on those people's doors and show them a spreadsheet of their donations that they allegedly made, well, at this point, seven out of ten interviewed say they never made any such contributions.
00:05:48.400In fact, they're unfamiliar with Letitia James or her race.
00:05:52.700Now, so far, the Attorney General has had no comment on any of this.
00:05:59.380This morning, when a New York Post reporter attempted to approach her, she was either on the cell phone or was she pretending to be on the cell phone.
00:06:07.860I kind of like the comment of George Washington University professor, law professor Jonathan Turley yesterday, who says that any response from James regarding these allegations, other than that the documents cited are forgeries, is hard to imagine.
00:06:28.400How can the woman who says no one is above the law respond to these various allegations, which, as we now believe, were fully investigated by the Federal Home Finance Administration?
00:06:44.680Letitia James is typical of the corrupt politician in a one-party state who believes that she herself will never be questioned.
00:06:53.880I frankly think we haven't heard the end of this, as there will be new revelations about the Attorney General.
00:07:02.500Once again, she's right when she says no one is above the law.
00:07:09.420Just to be clear, I have been following this issue quite simply because I read a blog called whitecollarfraud.com.
00:07:18.940Whitecollarfraud.com is published by a man named Sam Antar.
00:07:24.060He has an interesting history himself.
00:07:26.400He was once the CFO of a big Northeastern electronics firm that many will be familiar with called Crazy Eddie.
00:07:34.300By his own admission, he, Sam Antar, was involved in one of the largest security frauds in American history.
00:07:41.940He went to trial, was convicted, served his time, paid his debt to society.
00:07:47.640But when he came out, he took his considerable forensic and research skills, and he has used it to uncover corruption by politicians, institutions, and others.
00:08:02.380It is his website, whitecollarfraud.com, that I learned about the serial mortgage fraud by Letitia James.
00:08:13.760It's amazing to me that nobody at the New York Post or the New York Times or the New York Daily News or the Chicago Tribune or the L.A. Times or the Associated Press or Bloomberg News, it's right there under your nose.
00:08:27.460But nobody sought to write any of this to report it, even though Sam Antar on his website links to all of the actual documents.
00:08:44.440But until a letter from the head of the Federal Home Finance Agency to the U.S. Attorney General leaked late yesterday afternoon, no place could you find this in the mainstream press.
00:09:00.260We've been reporting it here in the Stone Zone for several weeks, and we will continue reporting on it as this story develops.
00:09:07.620In the meantime, there is a burgeoning scandal way south of New York in the state of Florida,
00:09:15.140where the Tampa Bay Times, the Miami Herald and Politico have revealed that the administration of Governor Ron DeSantis orchestrated a $10 million, shall we say, payment last year to a charity founded by the governor's wife,
00:09:29.280actually taking that money away from Medicaid, funds that were meant to pay for health care for the poor, the elderly, and those who are disabled were diverted to a dark money fund controlled by Governor Ron DeSantis and his wife.
00:09:49.720We're going to come back and talk about that, and we're going to interview the chairman of the House Committee in Florida who is investigating that breaking scandal.
00:10:01.040So if you're interested in politics and you want the stone-cold truth, you're in the right place.
00:10:06.000This is the Stone Zone on the Red Apple Audio Networks to get all the breaking news and all the dirty details of both of these epic scandals.
00:11:03.380Now we're looking in the Sunshine State for a burgeoning scandal that threatens not only the governorship of Governor Ron DeSantis, but the putative candidacy of his wife, Casey DeSantis, who the governor has made very clear in recent days, intends to run for governor of the Sunshine State herself.
00:11:23.920In a nutshell, the DeSantis administration pressured a major state contractor to make a $10 million donation to the Hope Florida Foundation, this extremely controversial charity that is spearheaded by First Lady Casey DeSantis.
00:11:39.980It was part of a settlement negotiated with the Centene Corporation after the state's largest Medicaid contractor overbilled the state by at least $67 billion.
00:11:50.900Days later, Hope Florida transferred that $10 million to a pair of dark money nonprofits.
00:11:58.460The state-backed charity gave $5 million each to Save Our Society from Drugs, an anti-marijuana group founded by a Republican megadonor, and Secure Florida's Future, a political vehicle controlled by executives at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the big business lobbying group.
00:12:17.000Then days after that, Save Our Society from Drugs and Secure Florida's Future gave a combined $8.5 million to keep Florida clean, a political committee chaired by Ron DeSantis' then chief of staff, who now most inconveniently, he most recently appointed attorney general of the state of Florida.
00:12:38.260This was a fund created to oppose Amendment 3, the amendment on last year's ballot that would have allowed Floridians to use marijuana recreationally rather than solely for medicinal reasons that that amendment was defeated.
00:12:55.040So this was a daisy chain that may have transferred $10 million of public money, money meant to pay for health insurance for the poor, the elderly, and people who are disabled, into funding of an anti-marijuana political campaign.
00:13:13.280Governor DeSantis, of course, has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing wrong, while at the same time lashing out with an increasingly vitriolic rhetoric at everyone from the Republican Speaker of the State House to the newspaper reporters digging into this story.
00:14:08.160At least one prominent Republican lawmaker, Representative Alex Andrate, a Pensacola Republican, has been presiding over hearings in To Hope, Florida.
00:14:20.140He told both the Miami Herald and the Tampa Times that the transaction chain, quote, looks like criminal fraud by some of those involved.
00:14:29.300Clearly, this all looks very bad, but it's not an isolated incident.
00:14:34.380In fact, it's part of a larger pattern of potential abuses that Ron DeSantis has committed beginning last fall when he chose to turn the power of state government against two citizen-led constitutional amendments, which appeared on the November ballot.
00:14:50.320Those would be amendments three and four.
00:14:52.460It is amazing that the governor seeks to distract from his own culpability here, but more importantly, from the actions of his now attorney general.
00:15:05.720Again, the governor is furious that Republicans in the state legislature are asking serious questions about a charity closely aligned with his own wife, who he's made pretty clear he intends to succeed him as governor.
00:15:19.100I haven't heard of anything like that since Lurleen Wallace succeeded her husband, George Wallace, as the governor of Alabama when Governor Wallace was term limited.
00:15:30.000Yesterday, DeSantis attacked State Representative Alex Andrade for daring to hold a hearing on the charity in question, Hope, Florida, and its movement of money into political advertisements.
00:15:44.840Speaking in front of Hope, Florida, the governor, as you heard, said anybody who asks questions is not serving you well.
00:15:52.400Now, this scandal is essentially trying to cover up $10 million that Centene, a Medicaid-managed care provider, was supposed to pay to the state of Florida.
00:16:03.980Instead, again, Centene was directed by the state to send $10 million to the first lady's pet project.
00:16:24.480Now, many are horrified that it wound up in the possession of a political committee controlled by James Uthmeyer, the former chief of staff to Governor DeSantis, who has since been appointed Florida Attorney General.
00:16:38.880The money, as I say, was then used for political ads when its intended purpose was to help poor people get health care.
00:16:45.860The volunteer president of Hope, Florida, a gentleman named Joshua Hay, stated in a hearing to Representative Andrade that he had no idea how the money was going to use, and he had no idea how the money was used.
00:17:02.180Hay works for a corporation that receives millions in Florida state contracts.
00:17:06.200Turns out that then DeSantis Chief of Staff, Uthmeyer, directed Hope, Florida to give that $5 million to these various dark political committees.
00:17:16.980Joining us next is the chairman of the Health House Care Budget Subcommittee that is investigating this scandal.
00:17:26.520We'll be joined by Alex Andrade, and we'll get the answers directly from him.
00:17:31.780So if you're looking for the inside skinny on this burgeoning scandal right here in the Sunshine State, and whether it threatens the political future of not just First Lady Casey DeSantis, but also Governor Ron DeSantis, who still sees himself, strangely enough, as a 2028 presidential candidate, despite the fact that he did not willingly campaign for President Donald Trump.
00:17:56.160And you want to hear more, well, whatever you do, don't touch that dial, you'll be right back in the Stone Zone, and we will bring you the Stone Cold Truth.
00:18:04.600The Stone Zone, on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:18:10.520The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative.
00:18:57.020I watched you yesterday on Matt Gaetz's show on OAN.
00:19:01.820I thought it was an excellent presentation.
00:19:04.420I learned a lot more about this burgeoning scandal.
00:19:07.920I found it interesting that while you were conducting a very effective public hearing that I think informed the public about what's going on here,
00:19:17.860the governor was in your home district attacking you and insisting that there's nothing to see here.