The indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James just got a whole lot more interesting.
Last week, James was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution over allegations she signed documents in 2020 that required her to occupy and use a three-bedroom home in Norfolk, Virginia, as her secondary residence – not as a rental property. That allowed her to obtain more favorable loan terms.
According to the Department of Justice, the AG did, in fact, rent out the home to a family. And now we are learning shocking new details about exactly who those alleged renters were.
On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Victor Davis Hanson, host of Victor Davis Hanson in His Own Words on The Daily Signal, to discuss the latest revelations and what it means for the case against James.
The Fugitive
New reporting from The Daily Mail and The New York Post reveal James has been housing family members with criminal histories at the Virginia properties at the center of the federal criminal scrutiny she has been facing over mortgage documents she signed.
James owns two homes in Virginia. The one featured in the indictment is the three-bedroom property in Norfolk purchased in 2020 for $137,000. She listed the house as a “second home” where she would be the primary resident, however, the house has actually been inhabited by her grandniece Nakia Thompson and her children.
James denied wrongdoing and Thompson apparently told the federal grand jury she was living rent-free in the home, but the feds claim James moved Thompson in and collected rent on the property soon after she bought it.
The Daily Mail discovered that Thompson is officially listed as “an absconder for willfully avoiding supervision by her probation officer” in North Carolina. An “absconder” is considered a fugitive, “so Tish James is accused here of harboring a fugitive at her fraudulently mortgaged Virginia property,” Megyn said.
The communications director for the North Carolina Department of Corrections said Thompson was sentenced to probation for misdemeanor convictions for assault, battery, and trespassing and has willfully avoided probation supervision.
Megyn then ran through her laundry list of other offenses: “In 2005, Thompson was placed on probation in Forsyth County, North Carolina, for simple assault. The following year, was handed a suspended sentence for two counts of assault against a governmental official. In 2011, she was given a suspended sentence for assault, battery, and second degree trespass… This appears to have been the offense for which Thompson became an absconder.”
According to The New York Post, Thompson and her sister, Cayla Hairston, were also caught up in an alleged theft scheme at Macy’s and Dillard’s in August 2019. She later pleaded guilty to one charge each of petit and grand larceny and was given two years probation and ordered to pay over $2,000 in fees.
The Felon
But that’s not all. James bought another property in the Old Dominion in 2023, where her niece (i.e. Thompson’s mother), Shamice Thompson-Hairston, and her other daughters, OnlyFans models Cayla and Cortney Hairston, live.
That home was part of the federal criminal referral Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte sent to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in April alleging multiple instances of mortgage fraud. Documents signed by the Empire State attorney general stated the home would be her “principal residence,” even though she is legally required to live in New York while serving as the top prosecutor.
The Post reported that Cayla has her own rap sheet. “She’s 21; she’s an OnlyFans star with a public X-rated social media presence; and she was charged in April 2024 with lying about her felony criminal record when she tried to buy a gun in Suffolk, Virginia, according to court documents,” Megyn noted.
According to The Post, Cayla was legally barred from owning a firearm due to an August 2020 felony charge of “malicious wounding,” which is defined as as a crime in which a person “shoots, stabs, cuts, or wounds any other person” or “by any means causes bodily injury with the intent to maim, disfigure, disable, or kill.” Those records are sealed because she was a juvenile at the time, but the charge was apparently pleaded down to a misdemeanor.
Cayla’s social media presence, meanwhile, mostly features scantily-clad photos and videos. The Post reported she recently announced she was pregnant and has posted numerous clips of herself dancing with her bare belly.
The Fallout
Megyn joked that it “sounds like an absolutely lovely family” and “Letitia James has got all of her ducks in a row.” And that is certainly the appearance the AG has tried to maintain since the indictment came down.
She told the adoring crowd at a recent rally for NYC socialist mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani that she knows “what it feels like to be attacked for just doing your job” and also “what it feels like to overcome adversity.” That is why she will not “break,” “bend,” “capitulate,” “give in,” or “give up.” She then claimed “we’re all in this together,” but Megyn wasn’t so sure.
“She has lost her mind. I don’t know if we are all in it together because I’m not harboring a felon and a fugitive respectively in my two homes for which I allegedly committed mortgage fraud down in Virginia,” Megyn quipped. “I don’t know, maybe she has a lot of people like that in her constituency.”
While James is trying to paint herself as the victim, Hanson said she is actually the “perpetrator” and “victimizer” thanks to her history of going after Donald Trump. “It is almost Orwellian for her to get up there after what she did by distorting and manipulating the law to go after a political opponent, and then to get elected on that basis, and then to play that she’s a victim and they’re going after her,” he noted. “I guess on the left that once you stake out this premise that you have been historically wronged or you’re a victim, then any type of behavior is okay and there won’t be consequences.”
Unfortunately, he thinks they are onto something. “When you get these very affluent people with multiple houses, big salaries, and then they talk as if they’re on the barricades and somebody’s out to get them, it seems to work at least with half the population,” Hanson conceded. “But it is destroying the country. Nobody has any confidence in the law anymore. They don’t feel that justice will be dispensed equally.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Hanson by tuning in to episode 1,174 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.