Among state Attorney General Tish James’ other misadventures are her headline-hunting “consumer protection” suits that are anything but.
Page A14From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 31 August 2026
New York Post publishes three columns attacking AG Letitia James the same day she blocks a media merger.
As it ran on the front
Let's be clear about what happened here, because the coverage has been characterized, unfairly in my view, as coordinated. Three columns, one subject, one day — that's not a campaign, that's just news judgment happening to align. The New York Post ran a piece on Attorney General James turning an evil eye on the President while allegedly turning a blind eye to crime in her own state. Separately — and I want to stress separately — another piece laid out what it called her abuses of power, sourced to a prosecutor described as blowing the whistle. And then a third, on an entirely different matter, her office along with California's blocking a media merger. Three different reporters. Three different angles. Any resemblance to a pattern is coincidental. Did I say coincidental? That's not — let me restate that.
Look, the underlying point stands regardless of how it looks from the outside: an attorney general using the office to go after a political opponent while a prosecutor in her own jurisdiction says her office is the one with the problem — that's a legitimate story. It's a legitimate story whether it runs once or, apparently, three times in the same news cycle, in the same paper, with the same target.…
…(cont) As for the merger — blocking Nexstar's acquisition of Tegna — that's antitrust review, full stop, it's federal, it's routine, it happens to every big media deal, it has nothing to do with James's other coverage, except that her name is on that filing too. Which, fine, I'll grant, is a lot of filings with one name on them this week.
Here's what I'd say to anyone calling this a smear campaign: show me the charge. Show me the indictment. Show me anything beyond 'a columnist said' and 'a prosecutor described.' Until then this is opinion journalism doing exactly what it's supposed to do, which is — okay, I hear how that sounds. It's opinion journalism. I said what I said. Three columns is not evidence of anything except that the Post has three columnists.
“Three columns, one target, same day, same paper — that's not journalism finding a pattern, that's a pattern renting three bylines. Meanwhile the actual documented act, blocking a media merger, gets folded into the outrage instead of covered on its own. Follow which parts of her job they're mad about.”
“Three different writers happened to land on the same subject the same day — that's news judgment, not a campaign. And the merger review is routine antitrust process that has nothing to do with the other pieces, except her name's attached to that too, which, fine, that's a lot of filings for one week.”
The receipts
Regardless of what you think of the president, it’s undeniable that AG James' Trump derangement has damaged New York, and she does not deserve another term.
Tish James had proved herself a rancid political hack before Daniel Wiesenfeld blew the whistle; let’s hope she’s soon out of government if not in prison.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.