Leading Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani accused Andrew Cuomo of trying to win favor with President Trump following the Trump Justice Department’s indictment of New York’s Attorney General, Tish James, on Friday.

Mamdani criticized the former governor for not naming either James or Trump in his statement about the charges, suggesting that Cuomo avoided mentioning them “because his route to City Hall relies on the same billionaires who helped Donald Trump return to the White House.”

“He can’t say his name unless he has clearance to do so,” Mamdani declared during a press conference in lower Manhattan. “If you can’t mention Donald Trump today, how do you plan to oppose him in the future?”

James and Cuomo have been adversaries since James’ office found Cuomo guilty of sexual harassment, prompting his resignation, though he denies the accusations. She also challenged him on his COVID nursing home policies, revealing his administration underreported deaths there.

Cuomo shares a wealth donor base with Trump and has been appealing to the city’s conservative voters after Mayor Adams withdrew from the election.

In his defense against Mamdani’s statements, Cuomo replied, “Politicizing and misusing the justice system is wrong regardless of political affiliation,” indicating that this misuse “seems to be occurring” with James, as well as former FBI Director James Comey.

“It is wrong when Trump’s DOJ does it or when a democrat does it, and it must be universally condemned. I know firsthand as the White House weaponized the DOJ against me,” Cuomo continued, referring to a watchdog report that found Trump officials may have influenced the 2020 presidential election through media leaks targeted at Democratic state governors.

The Justice Department announced the indictment against James late Thursday, charging her with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution for allegedly misrepresenting her plans for a property purchased in Norfolk, Va., in 2020.

The five-page indictment, accuses the AG of saying she would use the home as a secondary residence and instead renting it to a family, and that the discrepancy could have netted her less than $19,000 in ill-gotten gains over the life of a mortgage loan.  The AG, scheduled to appear in court Oct. 24, has denied the allegations and called the case “a desperate weaponization of our justice system.”

James has long been a Trump target, serving as one of his loudest critics since running for AG in 2018 and later investigating and civilly charging him and his real estate empire executives for years of fraud.

At the press conference — outside the same courthouse where James took Trump to trial in her civil fraud case — Mamdani said the indictment was at “attack on our city.”

“This is blatant miscarriage of justice,” the candidate, flanked by several politicians, all women of color, said. “This is a shameless act of political retribution.”

Speaker Adrienne Adams lauded her former competitor in the Democratic mayoral primary for gathering “the sisterhood,” of Black women in city and state leadership.

“She saw through you in the beginning, and she saw through you in the end,” the speaker said of Cuomo. “And at the end of both spectrums, Donald Trump is still pulling the strings in your vocal cords.”

For his part, Mayor Adams opted against criticizing the Trump DOJ’s indictment of James, only saying at an unrelated press conference that he wants “the process to play out” before turning to talk about his own federal indictment and criticizing the press.

Adams’ corruption indictment, which accused him of taking bribes and illegal campaign cash from Turkish government operatives, was dropped by Trump’s DOJ as part of a controversial arrangement this spring.

“Many of you who covered me during that time were salivating at the thought that Eric will go to jail for 33 years, so don’t start asking me about what do I think about what’s going on now,” Adams, who has maintained he did nothing wrong, said when asked for a reaction to James’ indictment. “I want to know what y’all think about when my life was destroyed.”

Trump’s 36-year-old former lawyer and aide, Lindsey Halligan, who he recently appointed on an interim basis as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was the only prosecutor whose name featured on the indictment. She had no prosecutorial experience before her appointment, and brought the case against James after filing another against another of Trump’s longtime foes, former FBI Director James Comey.

Originally Published: October 10, 2025 at 5:46 PM EDT