Trump suggests Cornell defendants won’t get a ‘fair shake’ from Letitia James
Letitia James (left), the New York attorney general, has become a major political target of US President Donald Trump’s second-term retribution campaign.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Oct 2 castigated Letitia James, the New York attorney general investigating the Cornell University sex assault case, as a “corrupt person”, and said that anyone she is scrutinising probably would not get “a fair shake”.
A day earlier, before James was put in charge of the investigation, Trump said he did not know much about the case. “Cornell is a fine school, and I’m sure they’ll do what’s right,” he told reporters.
His comments on Oct 2 were in response to a question about James’ involvement in the inquiry. Trump has a fraught history with her. In 2022, while running for re-election, James, a Democrat, brought a fraud case against him and his family.
“I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at, because they won’t get a fair shake,” Trump said, when asked about the decision by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, to appoint James as a special prosecutor in the case. “Letitia James is a corrupt person.”
James’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Oct 2.
A woman referred to in court documents as Jane Doe has sued Cornell over an alleged sexual assault at a fraternity in 2024. Prosecutors re-opened the case this week, and James was appointed to investigate it Friday.
For Trump, James’ involvement was enough to call the entire investigation into question. En route to a rally in Alabama, Trump jumped on social media and sent another missive using an insulting nickname for James: “Why would the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, appoint a Corrupt Prosecutor, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James, to represent the State in the highly controversial Cornell University rape case?”
James has become a major political target of Trump’s second-term retribution campaign, animated by the president’s belief that the justice system was weaponised against him. James ultimately won the fraud case against Trump when a New York judge held him liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth. A half-billion-dollar judgment against Trump was thrown out in 2025.
Three months into Trump’s second term, Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent a criminal referral letter to the Justice Department, saying that James “appeared to have falsified records” related to properties in Virginia and New York to receive favourable loan terms.
In August 2025, the Justice Department opened an investigation into James’ office, examining whether it had violated Trump’s civil rights with the fraud lawsuit. Two months later, James was indicted on bank fraud charges. A federal judge dismissed the charges against her last November, though federal prosecutors have tried several times to revive the case. James has called the charges baseless.
Jason Goldman, a criminal defence lawyer and a former prosecutor based in New York, said that the Cornell case had prompted both Republicans and Democrats to weigh in without knowing all of the facts.
“What’s concerning is the increasing willingness of powerful political figures to insert themselves into high-profile matters before due process has run its course, inevitably tainting the proceedings,” Goldman said. “In Trump’s case, given his long-standing conflict with Tish James, his comments risk looking less like a defence of fairness and more like political retaliation.” NYTIMES
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
