At the Center of Letitia James’s Indictment, a House in Norfolk, Virginia

Five years ago, the door of a modest yellow house on a quiet stretch of avenue in Norfolk, Va., swung open to admit a young family looking for a peaceful life after years of turbulence in several cities.

The family, Nakia Thompson and her children, have lived at the address ever since, according to two people familiar with the home, and until this week, the plan for a more placid existence had largely gone as expected. Several times a year, the people said, a great-aunt who had purchased the house in 2020 with Ms. Thompson in mind would come for an extended stay.

This week, with the filing of court papers some 200 miles north, the plan came to an abrupt end. The great-aunt — Letitia James, the New York attorney general — was indicted by President Trump’s Justice Department. The yellow house, with its gabled roof and tidy lawn, was revealed to be at the heart of the case that Mr. Trump’s chosen prosecutor brought against Ms. James, one of the president’s most prominent adversaries.

In the indictment, the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, accuses Ms. James of having misrepresented the purpose of the house when she purchased it in August 2020 for $137,000. The indictment says that while Ms. James indicated to her mortgage broker that she expected to use the house as a second home, she had instead used it as a “rental investment property, renting the property to a family.”

But in June, Ms. Thompson testified to a grand jury in Norfolk that she had lived in the house for years and that she did not pay rent, a person familiar with her testimony said. She was not asked to testify again, and the grand jury that voted to indict Ms. James was not seated in Norfolk, but in Alexandria.

The specter of Mr. Trump’s revenge campaign has so far overshadowed the facts of the case, given how he has pushed for Ms. James’s punishment. For years, he has railed against her on social media, calling her a “crook” and “corrupt.” Last month, he also appointed Ms. Halligan, once one of his personal lawyers, to replace Erik S. Siebert, the previous U.S. attorney in Eastern Virginia. Mr. Siebert had cast doubt on the case, as had career prosecutors in the office.