A novice prosecutor for the Trump administration this week obtained a grand jury indictment accusing Letitia James, the New York attorney general who investigated President Trump for financial crimes, of mortgage fraud.

Mr. Trump last month demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi find a way to charge Ms. James and several other of his political adversaries with crimes, and he pushed out a U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia who balked at doing so based on the available evidence. The president replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, his former personal lawyer, who signed the indictment.

Here is a closer look at the James case.

What is the accusation?

The indictment says that when Ms. James took out a $109,600 loan in August 2020 to purchase a house in Norfolk, Va., the terms of her mortgage required her to use the property as her secondary residence and not as an investment. But, it says, she never used the house herself and instead rented it out.

Because of her alleged misrepresentation, the indictment says, Ms. James obtained a lower interest rate and a higher seller credit than her bank was offering for mortgages on investment properties, which would save her a total of $18,933 in “ill-gotten gains” over the life of the loan.

Ms. Halligan accused Ms. James of “intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust.” Ms. James called the indictment “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system” and said she would “fight these baseless charges aggressively.”

What are the specific charges?

Ms. James is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making a false statement to a financial institution. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of a $1 million fine and up to 30 years in prison.