Letitia James’ criminal kin have been charged 11 times in 5 years — but keep getting off easy
NORFOLK, Virginia — New York Attorney General Letitia James’ troubled grandnieces have been charged with a combined eight felonies and three misdemeanors in the past five years — but had their charges downgraded or dropped every time.
The women live in James’ Norfolk, Va., homes, which have been the subject of intense federal scrutiny in recent months over mortgage documents James signed — including a federal criminal indictment that has New York’s top law enforcer facing 60 years in federal prison.
Cayla Thompson-Hairston, 21, an OnlyFans model with an X-rated social media presence, was hit with felony charges in April 2024 for allegedly lying about having a felony criminal record when she tried to buy a gun in Suffolk, Va., according to court documents.
Cops said she was barred from owning a handgun due to a juvenile felony charge of malicious wounding in August 2020.
However, the weapons charges were later dropped entirely.
Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi, a Democrat, said prosecutors later learned the juvenile charges were pleaded down to a misdemeanor.
Suffolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Narendra Pleas, also a Democrat, did not respond to The Post’s request for clarification on why she dropped the charges.
One legal observer said it was concerning that the charges were dropped entirely — particularly in light of Thompson-Hairston’s violent criminal history.
“There’s nothing I saw that explains why the prosecutor would not go forward with some sort of consequence for this behavior,” said Andrew Kersey, a former prosecutor in Fairfax County, who looked over the court documents obtained by The Post.
“Prosecutors have a lot of power, and they can be merciful, but they just don’t drop the charges like that.”
In June last year — while still on bond weeks after her gun bust — Thompson-Hairston was arrested for grand larceny after stealing around $1,600 worth of merchandise from a Walmart store in Norfolk, court documents alleged.
She later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor petit larceny and was given a suspended prison sentence of 12 months — never seeing the inside of a prison cell — and placed on unsupervised probation for the same amount of time.
Thompson-Hairston was also banned from all Walmart and Sam’s Club stores and ordered to pay restitution of $2,500, according to an arrest warrant viewed by The Post.
Fatehi told The Post that the sentence was on par with Virginia guidelines, and that charging her with a misdemeanor instead of a felony was “proper, just, and consistent with our values as Americans.”
“Labeling Ms. Hairston a ‘felon’ just because we could would have put virtue-signaling over public safety, making it more difficult for her to work and be a citizen, ultimately costing the rest of us money,” he said.
As for the dropping of the weapons charges, Fatehi said he was “confident” that if the Suffolk prosecutor’s office “had the evidence to convict Ms. Hairston, they would have done so.”
Fatehi said he was unaware of Thompson-Hairston’s familial connection to James, but in April, he said that the criminal investigation of James’ properties in his district was “political retaliation.”
He has also frequently battled local officials who accuse him of going light on shoplifting cases.
Another grandniece of James, Cayla’s big sister Nakia Thompson, 36, has an extensive rap sheet of her own and is currently deemed a fugitive in Forsyth County, North Carolina, for failing to finish her probation, according to authorities.
In addition to being arrested twice for assaulting cops in North Carolina, Thompson and Thompson-Hairston were busted in August 2019 for stealing nearly $2,000 worth of merchandise from Macy’s and Dillard’s in Chesapeake, Va., where they lived before moving into James’ homes.
Thompson was hit with two grand larceny charges, as well as petit larceny 3rd offense, possession of burglary tools, and three charges of contributing to delinquency of a minor, due to her having her then-teenage sister and two young children in tow at the time, records obtained by The Post show.
But the charges all but evaporated by the time she stood before a judge.
Thompson pleaded them down to one charge each of petit and grand larceny. She was sentenced to six years in jail, with all but six months suspended.
She was also given two years of supervised probation, ordered to pay $2,020 in fees and barred from all Macy’s and Dillard’s stores for 10 years, documents show.
James has vehemently denied the charges against her, vowing, “I will not bow” in a defiant speech at a rally for NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani this week.
The charges against James revolve around the house where Thompson lives, which she labeled a “second home” in mortgage docs.
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