Democratic mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani accused Andrew Cuomo on Friday of trying to appease President Trump in the wake of the Trump Justice Department’s indictment of state Attorney General Tish James.
Mamdani called the ex-governor out for omitting both James’ and Trump’s names in a statement reacting to the charges, saying he played it safe “because his narrow path to City Hall is paved by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump back in the White House.”
“He cannot speak his name lest he has permission already to do so,” Mamdani continued at the lower Manhattan press conference. “If you are unwilling to do so today — if you cannot say Donald Trump’s name today — how will you stand up to him tomorrow?”
James and the former governor have been at odds. Cuomo resigned after James’ office found he had sexually harassed several women, allegations he denies. James also took him on for his handling of nursing homes during COVID, finding his administration undercounted deaths in nursing homes.
Barry Williams/ New York Daily News
New York Attorney General Letitia James. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
Cuomo shares an overlapping wealthy donor base with Trump, and after Mayor Adams’ exit from the race, has made efforts to reach out to the city’s conservative voters.
“The weaponization and politicization of the justice system is wrong no matter which side you are on — period,” Cuomo said in response to Mamdani’s attacks, adding that it “appears to be happening” with James, as well as former FBI Directer James Comey.
“It is wrong when Trump’s DOJ does it or when a democrat does it, and it must be universally condemned. I know firsthand as the White House weaponized the DOJ against me,” Cuomo continued, referring to a watchdog report that found Trump officials may have influenced the 2020 presidential election through media leaks targeted at Democratic state governors.
The Justice Department announced the indictment against James late Thursday, charging her with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution for allegedly misrepresenting her plans for a property purchased in Norfolk, Va., in 2020.
The five-page indictment, accuses the AG of saying she would use the home as a secondary residence and instead renting it to a family, and that the discrepancy could have netted her less than $19,000 in ill-gotten gains over the life of a mortgage loan. The AG, scheduled to appear in court Oct. 24, has denied the allegations and called the case “a desperate weaponization of our justice system.”
Barry Williams/ New York Daily News
Zohran Mamdani speaks at a press conference Friday in Manhattan. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
James has long been a Trump target, serving as one of his loudest critics since running for AG in 2018 and later investigating and civilly charging him and his real estate empire executives for years of fraud.
At the press conference — outside the same courthouse where James took Trump to trial in her civil fraud case — Mamdani said the indictment was at “attack on our city.”
“This is blatant miscarriage of justice,” the candidate, flanked by several politicians, all women of color, said. “This is a shameless act of political retribution.”
Speaker Adrienne Adams lauded her former competitor in the Democratic mayoral primary for gathering “the sisterhood,” of Black women in city and state leadership.
“She saw through you in the beginning, and she saw through you in the end,” the speaker said of Cuomo. “And at the end of both spectrums, Donald Trump is still pulling the strings in your vocal cords.”
For his part, Mayor Adams opted against criticizing the Trump DOJ’s indictment of James, only saying at an unrelated press conference that he wants “the process to play out” before turning to talk about his own federal indictment and criticizing the press.
Adams’ corruption indictment, which accused him of taking bribes and illegal campaign cash from Turkish government operatives, was dropped by Trump’s DOJ as part of a controversial arrangement this spring.
“Many of you who covered me during that time were salivating at the thought that Eric will go to jail for 33 years, so don’t start asking me about what do I think about what’s going on now,” Adams, who has maintained he did nothing wrong, said when asked for a reaction to James’ indictment. “I want to know what y’all think about when my life was destroyed.”
Trump’s 36-year-old former lawyer and aide, Lindsey Halligan, who he recently appointed on an interim basis as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was the only prosecutor whose name featured on the indictment. She had no prosecutorial experience before her appointment, and brought the case against James after filing another against another of Trump’s longtime foes, former FBI Director James Comey.
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