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New York Attorney General Letitia James has steered more than $54 million in taxpayer-funded grants to six legal groups fighting to “dismantle public safety,” claims a bombshell analysis by her GOP election foe.
Nearly one-quarter of the $226 million in grants that the attorney general’s office has shelled out since James took office in January 2019 have gone to anti-police or criminal-friendly groups, according to the report by Saritha Komatireddy, a former federal prosecutor now running to try to unseat the Democratic AG.
The candidate’s report focuses on the Homeowner Protection Program, or HOPP, set up in 2012 by James’ predecessor, former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, to help New Yorkers facing foreclosure after the subprime mortgage crisis a generation ago.
The state’s AG has sole discretion over how its millions of dollars in annual outlays — once derived from mortgage settlement funds and now paid for through the state budget — is spent and who gets it.
The Post last year reported that legal and migrant advocacy groups fighting to block New York from helping the Trump administration enforce US immigration laws had been awarded more than $600 million in taxpayer dollars from the city and state governments.
“The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the state. She is supposed to be a trusted law enforcement partner,” Komatireddy said in a statement.
“AG James is the opposite. While law enforcement and many local DAs across the state are working hard with limited resources to combat rising crime, AG James is colluding with the criminals.”
The controversial $54 million she awarded was divvyed up as per below:
- $3,350,116 to Mobilization For Justice — whch provides legal servcies to low-income residents and publicly called to “Defund the NYPD” while collecting James’ state checks. “Defund the police because during a pandemic, we need food, shelter, and healthcare. Not police. Defund the NYPD and redistribute the funds to services that actually benefit people,” the group said in 2020. James more than tripled her office’s grant funding to Mobilization for Justice.
- $6,495,936 to The Legal Aid Society, James’s former employer, which “fights to make pretrial detention obsolete” and “challenge the use of money bail” and works toward “a collective future without jails,” the report said. James more than tripled the grant funding received by Legal Aid.
- $6,971,387 to the New York Legal Assistance Group, which fights to bar police from interacting with the homeless. James more than tripled OAG’s grant funding to the New York Legal Assistance Group.
- $8,192,613 to the Empire Justice Center, which has campaigned to ban police from making traffic stops for traffic violations. James more than doubled grant funding to the Empire Justice Center.
- $20,905,619 to Legal Services NYC and its borough affiliates which are campaigning to remove police from New York City public schools. James more than tripled grant funding to Legal Services NYC and its borough affiliates.
- $8,238,213 to the Western New York Law Center — currently suing the Buffalo Police Department for increasing its neighborhood presence after community members asked for help. James more than tripled grant funding to the Western New York Law Center.
Komatireddy accused James of diverting other funds intended for affordable housing to anti-police groups.
Nearly all of the “soft-on-crime” groups funded through HOPP spend more on non-housing services such as criminal defense and immigrant advocacy than homeowner protection or tenant advocacy, the analysis said.
“Every dollar coming out of the Attorney General’s office should go towards protecting innocent New Yorkers, supporting victims of crime, and making New York safer – not towards efforts to defund the police, enable the revolving door of repeat offenders, and eliminate jails,” Komatireddy said.
“The effect is doubly detrimental. Not only is this a blatant misuse of funds – diverting housing money to far-left anti-police advocacy. It also actively undermines public safety in New York. This ends when I become Attorney General,” Komatireddy said.
James’ campaign defended the groups she funded to provide legal housing assistance and called the criticism a cheap “political stunt” and a “smear.
“Saritha Komatireddy would rather play politics than protect homeowners,” a James campaign rep told The Post.
“Under New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Homeowner Protection Program (HOPP) has remained a lifeline that has helped keep tens of thousands of New Yorkers in their homes, funding free legal services and housing counselors so no homeowner loses their house just because they can’t afford a lawyer.
“Komatireddy is cherry-picking figures to smear a program that stops deed theft, foreclosure scams, and predatory lenders from taking working families’ homes out from under them. New Yorkers see this for what it is: a political stunt from a candidate with no record of her own to run on.”
James, 67, is seeking a third term as attorney general.
She has sued President Trump numerous times and won a civil fraud conviction against the business tycoon for inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to dupe banks and insurers over the course of a decade.
An appeals court tossed the nearly $500 million in fines as excessive but upheld the conviction.
The Trump Justice Department, meanwhile, indicted James for alleged mortgage fraud regarding a personal property she owns in Virginia, but a judge tossed the case.
James also commissioned a scathing report that accused former Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment, forcing him from office. Cuomo, who failed in his comeback bid for mayor last year, claimed he did nothing wrong and accused James of unethical conduct.
Komatireddy, 41, is a former federal prosecutor and chief of staff at the Drug Enforcement Administration.
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