1 March 2022: A New Profile of NY AG Letitia James

The Object of Their Ire

New York Magazine ran a new profile of New York State Attorney General Letitia James. While it doesn't break much news, it does offer some behind-the-scenes information about James' independence led her to pursue cases against Andrew M. Cuomo's political interests, which ultimately opened the door to the flood of scandals that led Andrew M. Cuomo to resign in disgrace as New York's governor. Here are a series excerpts we've assembled into rough chronological order:

Then came James’s nursing-homes report. She had understood, going into that investigation, which was undertaken by her office’s Medicaid Fraud Control unit, “that there would be blowback,” she said. “But the concern was vulnerable senior citizens in nursing homes.” When the investigation was ready for publication, the AG’s office gave the governor’s office a call as a courtesy to let them know the report was coming.

DeRosa was furious. According to sources familiar with the exchange, she yelled, threw out insults, and implicitly threatened the AG’s office, demanding that the report not be released. A spokesman for Cuomo denied that DeRosa issued threats or insults.

Two months after the nursing-homes report, Cuomo’s back was against the wall. Amid cascading stories from women accusing him of inappropriate workplace behavior, and after unsuccessful attempts to put friendly judges in charge of an investigation into the allegations, Cuomo played his last card. He pleaded with questioners at a March 7 press conference, “Let the Attorney General do her job. She’s very good, she’s very competent, and that will be due process and then we’ll have the facts.”

“I know Tish did not relish the idea of doing that investigation,” said New York City comptroller Brad Lander, who has known James for years. “But what choice did she have?”...

The nursing-homes report led to the progressive uprising against Cuomo that made space for women to come forward; the harassment claims, in turn, led to his resignation, which led to the firing of his brother, Chris, from CNN, which led to the firing of CNN boss Jeff Zucker, who happens to be the television executive who helped create Donald Trump by green-lighting The Apprentice. James — the first Black woman to hold state office in New York — has directly or indirectly parted some of the state’s most powerful white men from their jobs, their book profits, their accountants, their perches high at the top of literal networks, systems they believed themselves born to command....

Now Cuomo is no longer governor of New York. He resigned in August 2021 after Attorney General James’s office released a 165-page investigative report that found he had sexually harassed 11 women. Those allegations emerged in the wake of another devastating report in January of that year: that the governor, who had fashioned a multimillion-dollar book and television persona from his stewardship of New York through the COVID crisis, had in fact drastically mismanaged the disease’s spread in nursing homes and undercounted deaths there by as much as 50 percent. That report was also released by James’s office.

We highlighted the parts that best summarize our ongoing analysis of how Andrew M. Cuomo deservedly fell from the peak of his power. Should James choose, her office has multiple avenues of pursuing Cuomo, with his role in perpetrating his deadly 25 March 2020 directive representing where Cuomo has not yet been held truly accountable.