firing a whistleblower<\/a> who says he was forced to continue an insider trading case against the president despite findings that he didn\u2019t break a law.<\/p>\n\u201cIt undermined the work that we were doing,\u201d James said of an email former Assistant Attorney General Daniel Wiesenfeld blasted to the whole office.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
James claims her office is focused on higher-level operators like nursing home companies, instead of going after individual providers.<\/p>\n
Komatireddy also sniped James for touting the removal of 10,000 illegal guns from New York streets in her eight years in office.<\/p>\n
\u201c10,000 guns is pathetic. New Jersey seized 16,000 guns in one year,\u201d Komatireddy claimed.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Candidate for New York Attorney General Saritha Komatireddy offers remarks during a press conference at New Castle Town Hall in Chappaqua, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
\u201cMy 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,\u201d James charged, saying that Komatireddy doesn\u2019t understand Kendra\u2019s law, which allows judges to order someone into outpatient mental health treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we need is to provide resources to outpatient services and psychiatric beds,\u201d James said, noting that she\u2019s used some of the $3 billion her office helped secure as part of a settlement against opioid distributors on expanding psychiatric beds.<\/p>\n
But Komatireddy blazed ahead, promising to establish an \u201cOffice of Civil Commitment\u201d in order \u201cto make sure that people who are a danger to themselves and others, like those pushing New Yorkers onto the train tracks, are brought inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have a lack of authority. We don\u2019t have a lack of resources. We lack an attorney general who is willing to enforce the law. I will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Komatireddy made the same charge at James over antisemitism, saying she\u2019s refused to put real weight behind her office\u2019s power to prosecute hate crimes against Jews.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the problem. She just stands there. She doesn\u2019t do anything,\u201d she said, also arguing that she should use Title VI of civil rights law to go after colleges for allowing antisemitism on campuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
James fired back, arguing that she\u2019s built ties with Orthodox communities from when she used to represent Crown Heights and Williamsburg on the city council.<\/p>\n
But the Brooklyn pol wouldn\u2019t say whether she thinks Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are looking at the definition of antisemitism,\u201d James weakly said.<\/p>\n
The incumbent tried to pin down Komatireddy and force her to voice her disagreements several times during Thursday night\u2019s engagement hosted by NY1\/Spectrum News, but the GOP pol seemed more than happy to point out those disagreements.<\/p>\n
Komatireddy said she\u2019d defend New York\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She also said she\u2019d even follow through on her duty to defend New York laws she doesn\u2019t agree with \u2014 like newly passed anti-ICE legislation.<\/p>\n
To wrap up the night, James was unable to name her favorite former New York Attorney General, first blurting out \u201call\u201d the former AG\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, I support and work closely with Bob Abrams,\u201d she quickly interjected before moderators wrapped the program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York Attorney General Letitia James was ambushed by her well-prepared, locked-in GOP opponent, Saritha Komatireddy, who hammered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[393,4117,398,57,46937,9,11,10,13895,58],"class_list":["post-368662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-attorney-general","tag-debates","tag-letitia-james","tag-metro","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-ny-governor-election-2026","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}