National Democratic Party Leaders are Showing Extreme Cowardice in the Letitia James, Lisa Cook Mortgage Fraud Cases
- Donald V. Watkins
- 10 hours ago
- 4 min read
By Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on September 8, 2025
An Editorial Opinion
I first noticed the cowardice in 2002 when President George W. Bush's federal law enforcement posse lynched distinguished Baltimore, Maryland investment banker and University System of Maryland Board of Regents Chairman Nathan A. Chapman, Jr., on bogus business fraud charges. National Democratic Party leaders did absolutely nothing to protect an innocent Nathan Chapman from this lynching.
I witnessed this cowardice again when the federal law enforcement posse came for Baltimore state prosecutor Marylyn J. Mosby in January 2022. In 2015, Mosby charged six police officers with criminal offenses ranging from false imprisonment, to manslaughter, to murder for the death of arrestee Freddie Gray in police custody. Unfortunately, Mosby did not win criminal convictions in these cases. In the aftermath of the Freddie Gray-related trials, the local Baltimore law enforcement establishment turned against Mosby. With the blessing of the incoming Biden administration, the federal law enforcement posse opened an investigation into Mosby's home mortgages in March 2021 and charged her with bogus perjury and mortgage fraud offenses. No National Democratic Party leader came to Mosby's rescue to prevent her law enforcement lynching.
At the instigation of Donald Trump, the federal law enforcement posse came for New York Attorney General Letitia James in April 2025. In February 2024, James obtained a $527 million civil fraud judgment against Trump and his sons. In August 2025, an New York state appeals court affirmed the jury's finding that Trump and his sons committed business fraud, but reversed the amount of the court judgment rendered against the Trump defendants. James is now fighting for her career and freedom in a MAGA-controlled federal law enforcement system that is persecuting her and preparing to lynch her on bogus mortgage fraud charges.
In August 2025, Trump’s law enforcement posse came after Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa D. Cook. Like Letitia James, Cook is fighting for her career and freedom on bogus mortgage fraud charges in a MAGA-controlled federal law enforcement system that priorities the punishment of Trump’s political enemies and the protection of his army of rich, powerful, and politically connected pedophile friends, business associates, and investors.
The National Democratic Party calvary is NOT coming to rescue Letitia James and Lisa Cook, who are awaiting their turn to swing from Donald Trump’s lynching tree on bogus mortgage fraud charges.
Trump's Disparate Treatment in Mortgage Fraud Investigations
It must be noted that Trump Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a country club in Arizona. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in Long Island and another one in Washington, D.C., according to loan records reviewed by ProPublica.
Yet, Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency Director and MAGA political operative who made criminal referrals of Letitia James and Lisa Cook to Pam Bondi's DOJ, has not referred the three Trump-appointed Cabinet members to DOJ for a criminal investigation and prosecution on mortgage fraud charges.
Likewise, Pulte has not investigated MAGA Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for mortgage fraud or referred his case to the DOJ for a criminal investigation and prosecution, even though Paxton claimed primary residences on three home mortgage loans.
In law, Pulte's failure to investigate and refer Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Sean Duffy, Lee Zeldin, and Ken Paxton to the DOJ for a criminal investigation and prosecution, while investigating and referring Letitia James and Lisa Cook to the DOJ for a criminal investigation and prosecution on substantially similar claims of mortgage fraud is called "selective prosecution." Selective prosecution is unlawful.
National Democratic Party Leaders Have Fallen Silent
Despite these blatant examples of disparate treatment and unlawful selective prosecution by Trump's law enforcement posse, there has been no outcry from Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton, Ben Crump, or other Democrats with national stature about the impending DOJ lynching of Letitia James and Lisa Cook. These Party leaders have been as silent as a church mouse on this issue.
Callie House, the leader of the national movement for pensions for ex-slaves, had more national support from Black leaders than James and Cook enjoy today, and House’s law enforcement lynching on bogus federal fraud charges occurred in 1916.
Why I fight for Lynching Victims
People always ask me why I fight so hard for Marylyn Mosby, Letitia James, and Lisa Cook when none of them fought for me during my Lawfare ordeal from 2017 to 2022.
The answer to this question is simple: I was specifically trained in the art of social justice warfare by my parents (Levi and Lillian Watkins), siblings (Marie, Pearl, Levi, Jr., Tina, and James), grandfathers (Adam Watkins and Rev. Willie L. Varnado), schoolteachers at Alabama State College Laboratory High School, community leaders (Dr. E.D. Nixon, Ms. Rosa Parks, and Ms. Johnnie Carr), and childhood church pastors (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, and Rev. Samuel Augustus Owen).
I knew when I entered the legal profession as a young civil rights lawyer in 1973 that the odds were very high that I would be killed or jailed because of my aggressive, successful, high-impact, landmark civil rights cases in Alabama -- "The Heart of Dixie" and "Cradle of the Confederacy." However, it was a price I was willing to pay.
Alabama's white power structure began its Lawfare efforts to imprison me in 1975.
Their racially-motived Lawfare campaigns continued on nine occasions over the next four decades. My specialized training as a social justice warrior enabled me to survive and/or minimize the adverse impact of continuous, improper, COINTELPRO-like, Lawfare tactics, including a judicial lynching.
Marylyn Mosby and Letitia James came out of law school a generation after me. Lisa Cook does not have a law degree. These women were not trained to deal with the Lawfare initiatives that targeted them. What is old-school, COINTELPRO-like Lawfare to me is new to them.
I fight for Mosby, James, and Cook in the court of public opinion because it is the right thing to do. They are Lawfare targets, not criminals.
Black women are the mothers of all humanity. This truism combines the genetic evidence about human origins with the resilience, cultural significance, and divine connection of black women. I am not going to sit back and let an unhinged political despot lynch two iconic black women without one hell of a fight from me.