ALBANY — Saritha Komatireddy, a former federal prosecutor who is challenging state Attorney General Letitia James in this year’s election, is criticizing the incumbent for saddling taxpayers with nearly $20 million in contracts for private law firms that did work Komatireddy said the office is supposed to handle.
Komatireddy, a Republican who formerly worked as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, also criticized the Democratic incumbent attorney general for supporting a measure inserted in last year’s state budget by Democratic lawmakers that established a $10 million fund that could be used by James or other state officials to cover legal fees for actions taken against them by President Donald J. Trump’s administration.
“Letitia James runs one of the largest law firms in New York. She has more than 700 assistant attorneys general, a vast majority of whom are assigned to civil matters. They’ve gotten a raise every single year since 2019, and fancy new offices in downtown Manhattan,” Komatireddy said in a statement issued by her campaign. “Yet she’s outsourced $20 million of her work to expensive private law firms, at the taxpayers’ expense. That’s a racket.”…