The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James, Fox News has learned.

A source familiar with the matter confirmed that a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia sent out subpoenas related to accusations that James misrepresented a single-family home in Virginia as her primary residence to obtain more favorable loan terms.  

News of the federal probe follows a criminal referral from the Trump administration’s Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte, who requested the DOJ investigate James over that matter and another incident in which she allegedly misrepresented the number of livable units in a multifamily Brooklyn house to once again obtain better loan terms. 

‘These baseless and long-discredited allegations, put to rest by my April 24 letter to the Department of Justice, are suddenly back in the news just days after President Trump publicly attacked Attorney General James,’ James’ attorney, Abbe Lowell, said Thursday. 

‘This appears to be the political retribution President Trump threatened to exact that AG Bondi assured the Senate would not occur on her watch. If prosecutors are genuinely interested in the truth, we are prepared to meet false claims with facts.’

After Pulte’s criminal referral was sent to the Justice Department, specifically U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Lowell followed up with his own letter to Bondi and the Justice Department, accusing the president of seeking ‘political retribution.’ 

James has been part of a group of Democratic attorneys general who have sued to halt many of Trump’s orders during his first few months in the Oval Office. 

Additionally, James was the catalyst behind Trump becoming the first U.S. president sentenced as a felon. She was the lead prosecutor in a case she brought against Trump and the Trump Organization that alleged Trump and his company falsified business records to obtain more favorable loan terms.

Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and was ordered to pay $350 million in penalties and is appealing the conviction.

‘The stunning hypocrisy of President Trump’s complaint that the Justice Department had been ‘politicized’ and ‘weaponized’ against him is laid bare as he and others in his administration are now asking you to undertake the very same practice,’ Lowell wrote in his letter to Bondi.

Lowell, in his letter, pointed to instances when Trump has called for revenge and instances when the president has personally attacked James. 

Lowell also responded to the allegations, including the claim James listed a home in Virginia as her primary residence while serving as a state official in New York. According to Lowell, James had no intention of using the property as a primary residence, and her indication of this in a power-of-attorney letter was a mistake. Lowell pointed out there were other documents in which James indicated to her lender that the Virginia home would not be her primary residence. 

James is also accused of fraud for allegedly inflating the number of livable units in a multifamily Brooklyn home to receive better interest rates. Lowell accuses Pulte of disregarding updated documentation listing the residence as a four-unit multifamily residence and instead pointing to a certificate of occupancy from 2001. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence has a message for his old boss.

Pence is urging President Donald Trump, under whom he served as vice president in Trump’s first administration, not to raise the tax rate on wealthy Americans.

Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the signature domestic achievement of his first White House term, is scheduled to expire this year if it’s not extended by Congress.

The Trump White House and some congressional Republicans for weeks have mulled letting the tax reductions on the wealthy sunset as a way to pay for the rest of the tax cuts as well as Trump’s other pricey second-term priorities. 

And the president, during a Wednesday phone call, pushed House Speaker Mike Johnson to raise taxes on the highest income earners and close the carried interest loophole in the reconciliation process, Fox News Digital confirmed. The development was first reported Thursday by Punchbowl News.

A source familiar with Trump’s thinking said Trump is considering allowing the rate on individuals making $2.5 million or more to increase by 2.6%, from 37% to 39.6%.

But Pence, a fiscal conservative and budget hawk during his long political career in the House of Representatives, as Indiana governor and as vice president, strongly cautioned against upping the rates on the highest earners.

‘Any suggestion that I’ve heard among some in and around the administration that we raise the top margin rate, the so-called millionaires tax, would be an enormous tax increase on small business owners across America,’ Pence said. ‘It needs to be opposed.’

And the former vice president, in an interview with Fox News Digital this week, argued that ‘the majority of people that file taxes of a million dollars are simply individuals that own businesses, and they file their taxes as an individual, but then plow that money back into their company. If you raise that top margin, it would be an enormous tax increase on small business America.’

‘Let’s make all the Trump-Pence tax cuts permanent. That’s a way to really lay a foundation to grow the economy in the days ahead,’ Pence urged.

Pence, who was interviewed in Boston after receiving the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage award, gave ‘President Trump all the credit in the world for an historic victory last November, and for sparing the country one more liberal Democrat administration.’

He also praised Trump ‘not only for his victory, but for securing our southern border, for restoring morale and recruitment in our military, for taking the fight to the Houthis.’

But he argued that ‘I truly do believe that some of the other steps the president is taking away from that conservative agenda should be a concern that would work against his legacy and ultimately the success of our party or our country. And so we’re going to continue to be a voice against them.

‘I really do believe that for prosperity … for the success of our country, we need to stick to those time-honored principles of strong defense, American leadership on the world stage, less government, less taxes, traditional moral values and the right to life, and I’m going to be a voice for that,’ Pence added.

An analysis of the Trump administration’s efforts to end diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the federal government during the president’s first 100 days in office revealed that nearly 750 DEI employees have been placed on leave or fired for a savings of more than $2 billion.

The analysis provided by the White House showed that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the Department of Labor saw some of the biggest savings. The trio of agencies fired or placed on leave 256 DEI employees, saving taxpayers over $1.3 billion, the analysis noted.

Overall, the Trump administration let go of 745 employees working in DEI offices or on DEI-related programs throughout the government and saved taxpayers roughly $2.33 billion. 

‘President Trump ordered the end of radical and racist DEI propaganda in government, and the administration is swiftly enacting the president’s order,’ White House principal deputy communications director Alex Pfeiffer told Fox News Digital. ‘Common sense has returned to government.’

In addition to savings and staff cuts, the White House’s analysis highlighted the various grants that were slashed and other changes made as a result of the Trump administration’s efforts to rid the federal government of DEI.

Those programs included race-based grants or quota programs at multiple agencies and race-based promotion commitments. Multimillion-dollar grants for DEI training and DEI-focused activist groups were also among the cuts at most agencies.

At the State Department, a $5 million grant to ‘strengthen organizational capacity leadership and impact for mid-sized autonomous intersex and trans human rights organizations’ was cut. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) saved $1.7 million by eliminating four years of DEI staff training on topics ranging from ‘microaggressions’ to ‘identifying and preventing racism in your marketing.’ 

‘You must accept what has happened and what you have done,’ a narrator of one of the LinkedIn training sessions funded through these grants stated. ‘If you can’t accept what the marketplace is telling you, that this piece of content is sexist, racist, homophobic … you can’t move forward as a leader.’  

Other USDA grants, according to the White House’s analysis, spent money on staff training aimed at ‘cultivat[ing] an Eye for Inequity,’ while Trump administration staff also found ‘DEI Bingo’ cards left over from the Biden administration. The bingo cards included spaces to be checked off, like, ‘I know what the ‘I’ in LGBTQIA+ means’ and ‘I have pronouns in my signature line.’

USDA also dispersed race-based grants, such as money for ‘LATINX Growers’ and ‘Black Women’s Regenerative Farming,’ according to the White House analysis. The analysis also indicated that the USDA spent $600,000 on research into the menstruation of biological males and $361,000 to support queer and trans farmers.

Similar DEI-related materials were found at the Department of Education, including a white board with bullet points about race-centric priorities. Below the heading ‘Projects’ was a bullet point that said ‘Black male resource doc,’ while ‘Goals of the Week’ included ‘Tighten up Black Ed Roundtable’ and ‘PAC pictures.’ Another box on the whiteboard said, ‘Black male political appointees.’ 

The Education Department under President Donald Trump has also slashed grants promoting racial hiring quotas and numerous teacher training sessions on topics like resisting ‘settler patriarchy’ and how America’s education system is one of the ‘settler-colonial realities.’

According to the administration’s analysis of its DEI cuts, almost 100 antisemitic incidents were left unresolved by the former Biden-Harris administration’s Office of Civil Rights within the Education Department. According to the analysis, staffers in the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights were also told by the last administration to ‘sit on’ a civil rights complaint against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. 

The Biden administration also reportedly neglected Freedom of Information Act requests about its DEI efforts. The White House’s analysis recorded as many as 4,000 outstanding requests sent to the Department of Labor, which, under President Joe Biden, promoted DEI-based hiring and mandatory training programs for staff.

The Health and Human Services Department also saw steep cuts to DEI programs during Trump’s first 100 days. 

At the National Institutes of Health alone, over $350 million in DEI projects were slashed, including grants for studying ‘multilevel and multidimensional structural racism’ and ‘gender-affirming hormone therapy in mice,’ among others.

In addition to all the cuts, the Trump administration has taken steps to rectify the Biden administration’s DEI focus. It ended DEI-related training courses within the DOT online learning management system and disabled an internal email feature at the Department of Transportation that let users list their pronouns. The administration did the same with other pronoun policies at other agencies.

The administration has also taken proactive steps at other agencies, such as removing DEI criteria from more than 2,900 supervisory performance standards at the Energy Department. At the Department of Interior, the agency’s ‘DEIA Council’ was terminated. It had a stated purpose of embedding diversity, equity and inclusion principles into ‘everything’ the agency does.

Trump’s crusade against DEI began on the first day of his second presidency with an executive order, ‘Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.’ In the order, President Trump accused the Biden administration of forcing ‘illegal and immoral’ DEI programs on the American people. 

‘This was a concerted effort stemming from President Biden’s first day in office,’ Trump’s order insisted. 

A former top aide in President Donald Trump’s first administration is arguing that Republicans raising taxes on wealthy Americans ‘makes no sense.’

Marc Short, the former chief of staff to ex-Vice President Mike Pence, was an integral part of negotiations for Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). He also served in Trump’s first White House as director of legislative affairs from 2017 to 2018.

‘Raising taxes on America’s highest earners and biggest job creators makes no sense. I don’t understand why there are some inside the current administration who are pushing Congress to raise the top rate, because again, these are America’s job creators,’ Short said.

‘So many small businesses file taxes as individuals. And so you’re actually going to be raising taxes on many small businesses, not just individuals.’

Congressional Republicans are working on a massive piece of legislation that Trump has dubbed his ‘big, beautiful bill,’ aimed at advancing his policies on tax, border security, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt.

The tax policy portion is expected to be the costliest, and House negotiators are working on identifying a number of areas to cut a total of at least $1.5 trillion to offset the new spending.

A source familiar with Trump’s thinking told Fox News Digital he’s considering allowing the rate on individuals making $2.5 million or more to revert from 37% to the pre-2017 39.6%. 

It will help pay for massive middle- and working-class tax cuts as well as protect Medicaid, the source said.

The TCJA lowered the tax rate for the top income bracket — currently $609,350 for single filers — to 37%, a cut that’s expiring at the end of this year.

Creating a new, higher tax bracket for people earning significantly more than that would help pay for extending the 2017 tax cuts as well as implementing Trump’s new priorities: eliminating taxes on tips, overtime pay and retirees’ Social Security checks.

But Short, who helped get the 2017 package passed, dismissed those new Trump priorities as short-sighted political sweeteners.

‘I feel like some of the administration’s new requirements are somewhat gimmicky. I’m not sure many Americans who earn their income based on tips are even paying taxes on those tips right now. And I think we should begin to extend that to say no tax on overtime,’ he said.

Short said those changes would create ‘a lot of additional hurdles for businesses to comply with.’

‘I think the no tax on Social Security, it seems like what we’re trying to do is different from 2017, when we passed the Tax Cuts and Job Act,’ he said. ‘We tried to simplify the tax code, make it flatter and fair for all Americans, as opposed to creating carve-outs for certain constituencies.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for a response to Short’s remarks.

Some conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity are also wary of a potential tax hike for the wealthy.

Richard Stern, director of the Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation, said the group is opposed to efforts to raise tax rates to 40% or higher.

‘Congress needs to get its fiscal house in order, but it must do so by tightening its own belt, not by forcing American taxpayers to tighten theirs. A higher top tax rate would be counterproductive, discouraging hard work and entrepreneurship,’ Stern said.

Americans for Prosperity chief government affairs officer Brent Gardner said in a statement, ‘Raising taxes on any American should be completely off the table.’