New York Attorney General Letitia James was ambushed by her well-prepared, locked-in GOP opponent, Saritha Komatireddy, who hammered the incumbent Dem over New York’s bail laws, the rise of antisemitism and massive amounts of Empire State medicaid fraud.
While Komatireddy labeled James a “political hack” for her prosecution against President Trump, the Democrat had few answers to her opponents’ attacks besides repeatedly labeling her a “Trump puppet.”
“The laws are broken and Letitia James broke them. She was the largest champion for having this catch-and-release system,” Komatireddy charged, blaming James for endorsing New York’s lax bail laws preventing judges from setting bail in many cases.
She cited an NYPD officer recently stabbed ten times in the chest by two undocumented migrants with prior criminal records for weapons and burglary.
Komatireddy said there’s an easy fix: giving judges discretion to consider the “dangerousness” of a defendant before considering whether to release them pending trial.
“It doesn’t make sense. This is a way forward without repealing the entire bail law. It’s just about having a common sense solution. It has bipartisan support,” she said.
James, asked to defend New York’s bail laws, ignored the question and plowed straight ahead into a response about tying Komatireddy to Trump.
“My opponent unfortunately is supported by the president of these United States, which has cut funding to New York State mental health crisis [services]. Has my opponent said anything? No,” James said.
“All she wants to do is prosecute individuals and institutionalize [them]. No compassion. No understanding of the issues,” James said, before her opponent got the last word on the topic.
“Just to be clear, she won’t change the bail laws,” Komatireddy interjected.
She also went on the offensive, arguing that James prejudiced the sick Cornell University gang rape case by saying she stood with the victim prior to being named as a special prosecutor in the case by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
“She’s certainly never prosecuted a sexual assault case and she’s already screwed this one up,” Komatireddy said.
But James defended her handling of the matter.
“Those comments demonstrate empathy and what we need now more than ever in our body politics is empathy,” James said.
“Politics stops at the door in my office,” she added.
James had the same answer when pushed to defend her investigations of Trump and his various businesses, especially as she’s under fire for firing a whistleblower who says he was forced to continue an insider trading case against the president despite findings that he didn’t break a law.
“It undermined the work that we were doing,” James said of an email former Assistant Attorney General Daniel Wiesenfeld blasted to the whole office.
Komatireddy also ripped into James with the numbers, accusing her Medicaid fraud control unit of only collecting $19 million per year in penalties and eight convictions from bad operators, compared with the $250 million and 100 prosecutions it used to reel in.
James claims her office is focused on higher-level operators like nursing home companies, instead of going after individual providers.
Komatireddy also sniped James for touting the removal of 10,000 illegal guns from New York streets in her eight years in office.
“10,000 guns is pathetic. New Jersey seized 16,000 guns in one year,” Komatireddy claimed.
The two had vastly different outlooks on how to tackle subway crime as well as mentally ill and homeless people who often take refuge in the transit system.
“My opponent believes that we can go down to the subways of MTA and remove individuals who are struggling with mental illness. She wants to turn back the clock of progress and institutionalize people who are suffering from mental illness,” James charged, saying that Komatireddy doesn’t understand Kendra’s law, which allows judges to order someone into outpatient mental health treatment.
“What we need is to provide resources to outpatient services and psychiatric beds,” James said, noting that she’s used some of the $3 billion her office helped secure as part of a settlement against opioid distributors on expanding psychiatric beds.
But Komatireddy blazed ahead, promising to establish an “Office of Civil Commitment” in order “to make sure that people who are a danger to themselves and others, like those pushing New Yorkers onto the train tracks, are brought inside.”
“We don’t have a lack of authority. We don’t have a lack of resources. We lack an attorney general who is willing to enforce the law. I will.”
Komatireddy made the same charge at James over antisemitism, saying she’s refused to put real weight behind her office’s power to prosecute hate crimes against Jews.
“This is the problem. She just stands there. She doesn’t do anything,” she said, also arguing that she should use Title VI of civil rights law to go after colleges for allowing antisemitism on campuses.
“She has used it for other students but not for Jewish students who have been barricaded in libraries because of their race got no help from Tish James,” she said.
James fired back, arguing that she’s built ties with Orthodox communities from when she used to represent Crown Heights and Williamsburg on the city council.
But the Brooklyn pol wouldn’t say whether she thinks Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city hall or other entities should adopt a standard definition of antisemitism, something critics say has legally prevented hate crimes against Jews from being sufficiently identified and prosecuted.
“We are looking at the definition of antisemitism,” James weakly said.
The incumbent tried to pin down Komatireddy and force her to voice her disagreements several times during Thursday night’s engagement hosted by NY1/Spectrum News, but the GOP pol seemed more than happy to point out those disagreements.
Komatireddy said she’d defend New York’s abortion laws, would sue to ensure grant money flows like the funds frozen for homeland security grants last year, and fight any federal attempts to federalize or wrestle control of state election processes.
She also said she’d even follow through on her duty to defend New York laws she doesn’t agree with — like newly passed anti-ICE legislation.
To wrap up the night, James was unable to name her favorite former New York Attorney General, first blurting out “all” the former AG’s.
“Actually, I support and work closely with Bob Abrams,” she quickly interjected before moderators wrapped the program.
The post Letitia James’s GOP opponent for attorney general Saritha Komatireddy trounces in fiery NY AG debate appeared first on New York Post.
