This has been a very good year for Letitia James.
Over the past month, Ms. James, New York’s attorney general, has racked up hard-fought victories over two formidable opponents. First, in mid-February, her office won a staggering $454 million judgment against former President Donald J. Trump in a civil fraud trial stemming from accusations that he had inflated his net worth.
A week later, Ms. James, a Democrat, prevailed again, this time against the National Rifle Association and its longtime leader, Wayne LaPierre, who was found personally liable for more than $5 million in misused funds.
“It took a prosecutor with the mettle to get under the hood,” Nick Suplina, the senior vice president for law and policy with Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-violence prevention group, said of the N.R.A. case. “And that’s what Attorney General James did.”
The dual victories against figures viewed as villains by her fellow Democrats has, in some quarters, made Ms. James a hero, complete with the kind of résumé-burnishing accomplishments that can presage an ascent to the governor’s mansion or national office. Ms. James, who won a second term handily in 2022, is seemingly reveling in her reputation as an antagonist of right-wing political figures, some of whom have reacted to her public pronouncements with fury.
Ms. James’s other recent targets include neglectful nursing homes, anti-transgender bans and the world’s largest meat producer. But her outspokenness regarding Mr. Trump has underscored the tension between an attorney general’s pledge of impartiality and the political benefits of attacking a deeply unpopular Republican in a state where Democrats dominate.
Delaney Kempner, a spokeswoman for Ms. James, said Saturday that the attorney general had been elected “to take on the biggest threats to our state and to protect its people, and she has done exactly that.”
Ms. James is not the first in her position to celebrate big wins, including predecessors like Eliot Spitzer, known as the Sheriff of Wall Street, and Eric T. Schneiderman, who took on Mr. Trump over the former president’s namesake university.
Federal prosecutors, too, often make sweeping, accusatory statements about defendants before trial. Rudolph W. Giuliani, New York City’s former Republican mayor, was known for his showy briefings on criminal cases when he was the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.
Ms. James’s open antipathy toward Mr. Trump has been notable. Since Justice Arthur F. Engoron’s order that the former president must pay a penalty of more than $450 million in the civil fraud case, Ms. James has posted tallies of the interest that is accruing on that sum as well as the total amount Mr. Trump owes the state he once called home.
She has also been blunt about the possibility of seizing some of Mr. Trump’s properties in New York City if he does not pay, including a towering 1930 Art Deco skyscraper that bears his name and is just a short walk from her office, saying she looks “at 40 Wall Street each and every day.”
Her attitude about her win over the N.R.A. was equally punchy.
Ms. James’s post on a personal social media account about a Washington Post column lauding the verdict: “10/10, no notes.”
Such comments won laughs and plaudits from Mr. Trump’s opponents, including Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and Senate majority leader. He called Ms. James “a fighter” who “inevitably wins.”
On the flip side, her remarks have infuriated the former president’s supporters.
She was booed and met with “Trump!” chants at a New York Fire Department event on Thursday, behavior that John J. Hodgens, the chief of department, later called an “embarrassment.” After the verdict against Mr. Trump, envelopes containing white powder were sent to the Albany building that houses Ms. James’s office.
Conservative lawyers, commentators and Republican elected officials say she has perverted the cause of justice.
“Tish James has the dangerous combination of ignorance and arrogance,” said Mike Davis, the founder of the Article III Project, a group that helped push Mr. Trump’s judicial appointments when he was president. “You can have one or the other. You can’t have both.”
Mr. Davis, who also works as an outside lawyer for Representative Elise Stefanik, an upstate Republican, said he believed that Ms. James had “corrupted the whole case with unnecessary prejudicial statements” that could give Mr. Trump an avenue for appeal.
Mr. Trump sued Ms. James on such grounds in 2021 to stop her inquiries into his business, but a federal judge dismissed that case, rejecting Mr. Trump’s claim that Ms. James’s investigation was politically motivated. Justice Engoron also rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that the fraud case was political, saying in a 2022 decision that the motivation was “not personal animus, not racial or ethnic or other discrimination, not campaign promises.”
Still, in February, Ms. Stefanik herself called for Ms. James’s disbarment, filing a detailed complaint with a New York committee that oversees attorney discipline. In the complaint, she cited comments by Ms. James that Ms. Stefanik said indicated a “personal vendetta” against Mr. Trump, including calling him a “bully” who lives “in a fantasy land.”
In an interview, Ms. Stefanik, who endorsed Mr. Trump early in his campaign for the Republican nomination in this year’s presidential race and is considered a potential running mate, said Ms. James had shamed New York with her statements before, during and after the trial.
“It does not meet the standards of attorneys in New York State, let alone the attorney general,” Ms. Stefanik said.
Ellen C. Yaroshefsky, a professor of legal ethics at Hofstra University, dismissed the idea that Ms. James’s statements could have tainted the case against Mr. Trump, noting that it had been decided not by a jury but rather a single judge unlikely to be swayed.
“This is weaponizing ethics rules for political grandstanding,” Professor Yaroshefsky said of Ms. Stefanik’s complaint, adding, “It’s just not a credible claim.”
As the first Black person and first woman to be elected as New York’s attorney general, Ms. James has also sometimes been the target of racially charged comments: Indeed, Mr. Trump, who has often found political foils in women of color, has used a nickname for her that is reminiscent of a racial slur.
Mr. Trump, subject to — and in violation of — a gag order during the civil trial, used his Truth Social account to attack Ms. James, calling her “Bats..CRAZY (and Racist!)” “Evil, and Corrupt,” and the “WORST ATTORNEY GENERAL IN THE UNITED STATES.”
Ms. Kempner, the attorney general’s spokeswoman, said: “Blaming politics for your own misconduct is the oldest — and thinnest — trick in the book, and it’s a paltry defense when you’re up against the facts and the law.”
Ms. James’s supporters say that her own posts regarding the interest owed by Mr. Trump are not taunting but simply true. They also point out that her successes have also included hard-hitting investigations of other Democrats, including former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who resigned after a 2021 inquiry by the attorney general’s office into sexual harassment allegations.
Ms. James’s national profile has been years in the making. A Brooklyn native, she began her career as a public defender for the Legal Aid Society, which represents indigent clients. She was elected as New York City’s public advocate in 2013 after 10 years on the City Council.
She campaigned for attorney general in 2018 on a platform that included pursuing Mr. Trump. She suggested in her victory speech that he was “an affront to all that I believe in” and “someone who we must keep in check by the long arm of the law.”
“I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn,” she said that night.
Bruce Green, who directs a center for law and ethics at Fordham University School of Law, said political calculations should not influence legal decisions.
“The expectation is that you’re not going after someone for political reasons, that you’re following the evidence and the law, that you’re making decisions based on the facts and not based on bias,” he said.
But, Professor Green added, most state attorneys general are elected to office. “And if you’re an elected candidate,” he said, “you need to be able to run for office and make the kinds of arguments that, as a candidate, help get you elected.”
Despite the Republican critiques, the winning streak has encouraged speculation that Ms. James, who ran a short-lived campaign for governor in 2021, could eventually pursue higher office in a state in which Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two-to-one.
“She’s got a high profile, she’s respected,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat who is the deputy majority leader in the Legislature’s upper chamber and his party’s chief political strategist there. “There’s a lot of checks in the plus column.”
Mr. Suplina of Everytown for Gun Safety said he deeply appreciated Ms. James’s taking on the N.R.A., which he said had “been this seeming invincible political juggernaut for years.”
Such unstinting praise would cheer any politician, and Ms. James has been demonstrating her high spirits. On Valentine’s Day, she posted a bit of doggerel online that included a stern message.
“Roses are red and violets are blue,” it read. “No one is above the law, even when you think the rules don’t apply to you.”
