New York AG holding Trump and Cuomo accountable
Letitia James has been making big legal waves, from investigating the Trumps to Cuomo’s nursing home scandal, generating a torrent of national attention
The two men were born a decade apart in Queens, New York, one the heir to a real estate fortune and the other to a political dynasty. Donald Trump went on to be president, and Andrew Cuomo became governor, like his father.
Over the course of their long and controversial careers, both men have seemed untouchable. But thanks to the recent work of one lifelong public servant, who was born into a big family in Brooklyn without legacy money or power, each man is suddenly facing a moment of unaccustomed accountability.
The state attorney general, Letitia James, the first woman of color ever to hold statewide elected office in New York, blasted a hole in the fable of Cuomo’s pandemic leadership with a report in January showing the state was under-reporting deaths in nursing homes by as much as half.
A quick succession of sexual harassment claims against Cuomo in the ensuing weeks has knocked him from his political perch and left open the question of whether he will withdraw his 2022 re-election bid – or even resign before his current third term ends.
Trump might be in even greater peril. Since 2019, James’s office has been conducting an investigation of business practices inside the Trump Organization and family. Trump has fought fiercely in court, but month after month, James has succeeded in unearthing financial records that appear to be adding up to a giant legal hazard for the former president, analysts say.
“He should be very concerned,” said George Albro, co-chair of the New York Progressive Action Network who has known James going back to when he was a union officer in New York City and she was a public defender. “She’s going to take this to its logical conclusion.”
The Trump case and the Cuomo nursing home scandal have generated a torrent of national attention for James, with people outside New York politics wondering how a single state officer could make such big legal waves.
People who know her from her time as public advocate in New York City – when she was the first woman of color to be elected citywide – and her time as a city council member before that nod in recognition: that’s Tish.
As state attorney general, James has aggressively pursued a full catalogue of progressive causes.
She sued the police department over brutality against people of color, blocked unlawful evictions during the pandemic, won a major sexual harassment settlement for women in the construction industry, filed an amicus brief before the supreme court opposing a rushed census, and sued to dissolve the National Rifle Association.
She also sued Amazon for allegedly failing to protect workers, sued Facebook as an alleged monopoly and investigated Google on similar grounds. She has asked federal regulators to clamp down on toxins in baby food and called for student debt relief.