President Trump says the Cornell 7 will not get a fair shake with Letitia James running the rape probe, calling the New York attorney general a corrupt person.
President Trump told reporters at the White House that the seven Cornell University fraternity brothers accused of raping a classmate will not get evenhanded treatment now that New York Attorney General Letitia James has been put on the case.
Trump said James is “totally corrupt” and that anyone she investigates should expect bias, not justice. The remarks came after Gov. Kathy Hochul directed James to take over the criminal probe into the alleged October 2024 attack at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house.
The appointment puts a prosecutor with a long record of pursuing Trump and his businesses in charge of a high-profile campus sex-crime case. Trump made plain he sees the move as stacked from the start.
“She’s totally corrupt, and I can’t imagine it,” Trump said. “And I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake. Letitia James is a corrupt person.”
Hochul moved on Friday to strip local control and hand the matter to her attorney general. She said she had lost confidence in Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten after reporting raised questions about discrepancies in what the survivor first told campus police.
Van Houten later said his office was opening an investigation and would cooperate with James. Hochul framed the switch as protection for the accuser.
"This young woman had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable. And then at every turn she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her."
On James herself, Hochul offered full political cover. She said she had “every confidence in our attorney general to do what she has always done: Look at the facts, examine the record and draw the proper conclusions.”
James called the Cornell matter an “active criminal investigation” and pledged a standard process.
"We will review the facts, gather evidence, interview witnesses, and if warranted pursue prosecutions."
“I know that you want answers. I do, too,” she added. Asked about a Facebook post in which she had affirmed the young woman’s allegations, James replied, “I will not comment on a Facebook post.”
The criminal fight follows a 101-page civil lawsuit filed last month in Manhattan Supreme Court by a plaintiff identified as Jane Doe. The suit accuses seven fraternity brothers of pllying her with alcohol and ketamine and subjecting her to an hours-long sexual assault at the Phi Chi house in October 2024.
While the assault was underway, the lawsuit alleges, one of the men messaged a 50-person Snapchat group called “Chi Phi Actives” to announce there was “free p***y” in the house. The seven have denied the claims.
Jane Doe’s filing also says the university process produced little real punishment. Cornell ran a Title IX investigation with 12 hearings. The lawsuit claims only two of the seven were expelled and calls that outcome a slap on the wrist. University representatives said Cornell acted in line with police and banned the Chi Phi chapter from campus.
Days before Hochul’s order, Trump had taken a lighter tone on the campus case. On Wednesday he said, “I don’t know that much about it, but Cornell is a fine school, and I’m sure they’ll do what’s right.” The James appointment changed his assessment.
Trump’s distrust is not abstract. After he left office the first time, James brought a civil case against him, the Trump Organization, and his eldest two sons over alleged inflation of real estate values. A massive $454 million civil judgment followed. A state appeals court overturned that judgment last year.
Trump’s lawyers have challenged that fraud verdict as political targeting of his family, the same core complaint he voiced again at the White House.
James later faced her own federal case. In 2025, Trump’s Justice Department charged her with one count of bank fraud and one count of making a false statement to a financial institution. Prosecutors said she listed a Virginia second home as a primary residence on loan papers. A federal judge dismissed the indictment after finding that then-acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan had served beyond the 120-day limit without Senate confirmation.
That dismissal did not end the larger pattern of clashes. A federal judge later dismissed a separate James lawsuit tied to DOGE after the Treasury team involved disbanded, another legal setback in her running conflict with Trump-world targets.
Critics have long argued James uses the attorney general’s office as a political weapon. Trump attorneys have accused her of dodging court orders on evidence in the huge fraud case, keeping the fight over process as live as the fight over the underlying claims.
Separate accusations have gone further. Reporting has detailed claims that her office targeted Trump allies for political reasons, and a prosecutor has said the office ordered him to dig up crimes on Trump before evidence was deleted. Those disputes sit in the background every time James receives a sensitive new brief from a Democratic governor.
Now the same attorney general holds special-prosecutor power over seven college men whose names have not been released in the public reporting, in a case that mixes alcohol, alleged drugs, a fraternity group chat, a disputed campus process, and a local prosecutor the governor no longer trusts.
Sexual assault allegations demand serious investigation. Victims deserve a complete factual record. Defendants deserve a prosecutor who has not already publicly affirmed the accuser’s account on social media and who does not arrive with a years-long political war against the president now commenting on the case.
Hochul chose the official who previously chased Trump for hundreds of millions, who saw that judgment wiped out on appeal, and who then watched her own federal charges collapse on a technical appointment defect. Trump’s prediction was blunt: with James on the file, the Cornell 7 should not expect a fair shake.
When the same prosecutor keeps landing on cases that touch Trump’s world, or that a Democratic governor can nationalize for political effect, the public is right to ask whether the law is being applied evenly, or aimed.
