On the morning closing arguments were to begin at Donald Trump’s drama-filled New York fraud trial, a small crowd of protesters briefly blocked traffic to denounce the former president. “No dictators in the USA,” the group chanted.
When a black SUV rolled up to the courthouse, the protestors changed course. “Thank you, Tish! Thank you, Tish!” they cheered as Letitia James ascended the courthouse steps.
The end of Trump’s fraud trial marked the closing of the New York attorney general’s highest-profile case to date. Though a team of lawyers from her office led the case, James has been the public face of the trial since its start. Sitting behind Trump in court and sometimes casting meme-worthy, incredulous looks at Trump and his team, she has inevitably become a target of his vitriol inside and outside the courtroom.
“I DID NOTHING WRONG, MY FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ARE GREAT, & VERY CONSERVATIVE, THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE HIGHLY POLITICAL & TOTALLY CORRUPT NEW YORK STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL SAYS,” Trump wrote, in all caps, on Truth Social in January. “THE CORRUPT AG WANTS $370M AS BUSINESSES FLEE NEW YORK. THEY SHOULD PAY ME.”
James kept her comments on the trial brief, posting summaries of the trial’s happenings each week on social media and sometimes offering comments outside the courthouse. On the last day of the trial, long after Trump had left the courthouse after delivering a bizarre closing statement, James told reporters: “The personal attacks don’t really bother me.”
On Friday, James was given a stunning victory. The judge overseeing the case, Arthur Engoron, handed her almost everything she had asked for. Trump was fined more than $350m plus pre-judgment interest and he and his eldest sons were banned from doing business in New York for years.
“Today, justice has been served. This is a tremendous victory for this state, this nation and for everyone who believes that we all must play by the same rules – even former presidents,” James said in a statement. “For years, Donald Trump engaged in massive fraud to falsely inflate his net worth and unjustly enrich himself, his family and his organization.
“Now, Donald Trump is finally facing accountability for his lying, cheating and staggering fraud. Because no matter how big, rich or powerful you think you are, no one is above the law.”
It is an argument that James campaigned on when she ran for the attorney general seat in 2018. At the time, the position was embroiled in scandal following abuse accusations against the former attorney general, Eric Schneiderman.
Raised in Brooklyn with her seven siblings, James attended public schools before getting her law degree at Howard University in Washington DC. She rose through the ranks as a public defender before entering New York politics as a councilmember and then as public advocate, the first Black woman to hold the watchdog role and one where she filed a record number of suits on behalf of people with disabilities, seniors and tenants.
When she won the attorney general’s office, another first for a Black woman, James vowed to “take that power back” from corporations and corrupt politicians.
“The law is the great equalizer and the biggest pillar of our democracy,” she said in her inaugural speech in 2019. “I will shine a light into the murkiest of swamps and act as a steward of justice.”
Even as Trump’s fraud trial comes to an end, James is pursuing other high-profile cases, including a civil case against top officials of the National Rifle Association (NRA). James has accused them of violating non-profit law by using NRA funds for their personal benefit.
The case could ultimately see the dissolution of the once-powerful gun lobbying group. Wayne LaPierre, the longtime NRA president at the center of the case, resigned in early January before the trial began, in what James said in a statement was an “important victory” for the case.
James has also found rivals in the Catholic church, which she has sued for mishandling child sexual abuse, and the NYPD over its treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. James also filed a lawsuit against Pepsi in November over its single-use plastic polluting the Buffalo River in New York, teeing up a major environmental lawsuit against the beverage company, which is based in New York.
Critics of James – a longtime New York City councilwoman before she became the state’s attorney general – are usually political or legal opponents like Trump, and have tried to paint her as an opportunist who uses her office to grab national attention.
When James investigated former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, once an ally, for sexual assault, Cuomo accused her of using the investigation for political motives.
“There are many agendas and there are many motivations at play,” Cuomo said during his farewell address in August 2021, after James’ investigation found that he had sexually assaulted 11 women.
When it came to Trump’s trial, he lobbed similar accusations against James, saying inside and outside the courtroom that she was conducting a “witch-hunt” in pursuing her own political agenda.
“She’s a political hack, and this is a disgrace that a case like this is going on,” Trump said during one of the untethered rants he made on the witness stand in November. “This is a political witch-hunt, and I think she should be ashamed of herself.”
Serving as a state attorney general is seen as a good launching point for a shot into a state’s governor’s mansion. James briefly ran for governor in 2021, a campaign that lasted only six weeks. She dropped out of the race when it became clear that much of the state’s Democratic party stood behind Kathy Hochul, the lieutenant governor who replaced Cuomo after he resigned.
When James dropped out of the race, she said she had to “continue my work as attorney general”. At the time, her office was well underway in its investigation into the Trump Organization’s finances.
“There are a number of important investigations and cases that are underway and I intend to finish the job,” James said.
It is unclear what specific ambition James has for her future, especially given that there are no term limits on New York’s governor or its attorney general.
While James has positioned herself as an ally to Hochul, who is seen as a more moderate Democrat, she has distanced herself from the governor on some issues. In August, James took the unusual step of declining to represent Hochul over the handling of migrants who were being brought to the state. Hochul was focused on requiring only New York City to house migrants, a requirement James said she believed applied to the whole state.
For now, James has continued to emphasize that her focus is on the cases in her office. When she was running for her second term in 2022, a race she would win by nine points, her Republican opponent told the New York Times that she had lost sight of New York taxpayers while focusing on her own political ambitions.
In response, James told the Times that ignoring Trump or the NRA would have been a “dereliction of my duty”.
“We’ve been very active,” she told the paper. “And I make no apologies, because this is who I am, and this is what I do.”
• This article was amended on 17 February 2024 to clarify that the ruling against Donald Trump also includes pre-judgment interest.
