President Donald Trump said Friday that he feels “badly” for the seven men accused of gang-raping a young woman at Cornell University, as well as the Ivy League school, the local DA and university police after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James to investigate them all over the allegations and their handling.
James successfully prosecuted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records, a felony, in a case which ended months before Trump was re-elected in 2024. The president spoke to reporters before departing the White House for Mobile, Alabama and was asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy about the upstate New York case being handed to his nemesis.
"Well, Letitia James is a corrupt person. She's totally corrupt and I can't imagine it. I feel badly for whoever she's looking at because they won't get a fair shake,” said Trump.
The alleged rape case shocked Americans after it was publicly revealed in a new lawsuit filed by Jane Doe, the unnamed accuser, against the university over its handling of her alleged 2024 gang rape by seven male students and members of a fraternity, who reportedly discussed the acts in a larger group chat with other fraternity members. The 101-page civil complaint was filed September 14 in New York County Supreme Court and alleges the assault occurred in October 2024 at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca, New York.
The comments Friday afternoon were Trump’s second remarks about the Cornell situation, and his second without offering empathy or condolences to the unnamed victim. The lawsuit alleges that she suffered shocking sexual abuse over the course of several hours at a fraternity house.
Cornell officials have denied wrongdoing or having mishandled the case, but revelations about both the school and local authorities’ handling of the case have raised outrage and alarm nationwide, reinvigorating discussions about sexual violence on college campuses and the treatment of women who report sexual assault or rape. Trump, on Thursday, told reporters that he didn’t know much about the situation but trusted the school’s leadership to do the right thing: “Cornell's a fine school, and I'm sure they'll do what's right.”
James was named by New York’s Democratic governor on Friday after Hochul said she’d lost faith in local police and prosecutors to handle the case.
“As governor I will not allow anyone to sweep this case under the rug,” Hochul declared at a press conference.
The president then headed towards Marine One as it left for Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, the first stop on his campaign trip to Alabama where the president will deliver remarks Friday evening.
Moments later, he added on Truth Social: “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?”
Alabama is not home to any major congressional or statewide races this cycle, given its deep-red Republican bent and the Democrats’ focus on races elsewhere in the country, including neighboring Georgia. But political analysts watching the president’s strategy in 2026 see Trump taking a national eye to his fight to preserve Republican majorities in the House and Senate. With the midterms now just a month away, the president has sought to keep eyes focused on Washington and on his actions in the White House, where he hosts near-daily press availabilities that feature extended rants about his administration’s wins or perceived successes. In Alabama, they see Trump seeking the kind of massive audience he was able to summon to his rallies in 2024, at the height of his political power.
In October, Trump is reportedly planning frequent campaign events to back Republican candidates, and Friday’s rally in Mobile comes just a day after a two-state swing through Texas and Oklahoma, the former of which is hosting both a high-profile Senate race and gubernatorial contest, alongside several competitive House races. Formerly a red bastion like Alabama, Texas’s growing Hispanic and Latino populations have pushed the state into purplish territory and the Democratic candidate for Senate, James Talarico, has led his GOP opponent in most polling for months.
