New York governor Kathy Hochul appointed attorney general Letitia James as special prosecutor to investigate an alleged 2024 gang-rape at Cornell University. Hochul said she lost faith in the local district attorney’s ability to handle the case. Both leaders will speak today to provide an update on the ongoing investigation.
Letitia James is no stranger to high profile investigations involving powerful individuals and institutions.
Her most prominent case in recent years was the civil fraud action against Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. In February 2024, a New York judge ruled in her favour and ordered Trump to pay a $450m penalty after finding he fraudulently overstated his net worth to dupe lenders. A five-judge panel tossed the financial penalty last year, but James’s office has appealed to reinstate it.
In this profile of James in February 2024, Guardian US reporter Lauren Aratani wrote:
double quotation markRaised in Brooklyn with her seven siblings, James attended public schools before getting her law degree at Howard University in Washington DC. She rose through the ranks as a public defender before entering New York politics as a councilmember and then as public advocate, the first Black woman to hold the watchdog role and one where she filed a record number of suits on behalf of people with disabilities, seniors and tenants.
When she won the attorney general’s office, another first for a Black woman, James vowed to “take that power back” from corporations and corrupt politicians.
“The law is the great equalizer and the biggest pillar of our democracy,” she said in her inaugural speech in 2019. “I will shine a light into the murkiest of swamps and act as a steward of justice.”
The profile is more than two years old but still worth a read for useful background on James’s career and her involvement in several of the big cases that have defined her tenure as attorney general.
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Updated at 07.12 EDT
New York governor to provide update on Cornell gang-rape case after appointing special prosecutor
The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has named New York attorney general Letitia James as special prosecutor to investigate an alleged gang-rape at Cornell University in 2024, saying she had lost faith in the local district attorney’s ability to handle the case.
Both Hochul and James are due to speak today to provide an update on the investigation following the attorney general’s appointment.
Hochul said newly released information raised questions about the investigation conducted by Cornell police and the decision by Tompkins County prosecutors not to file charges.
“This has, in turn, undercut my faith, and the public’s faith, in the district attorney’s ability to effectively investigate and prosecute the case at this time,” she said in a statement.
James will oversee the investigation and, if warranted, present evidence to a grand jury, Hochul added.
Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, declined at the time of the alleged assault to file charges, saying his office chose not to prosecute because the victim’s testimony did not establish a lack of consent.
But with renewed attention on the case and mounting public pressure, Van Houten said on Monday that his office would reopen the investigation.
A woman, known as Jane Doe in court documents, filed a civil lawsuit last month alleging she had been drugged with ketamine and raped by a group of men at a fraternity house near Cornell University’s campus in October 2024. She reported the incident to the Cornell University police department several weeks later, but no criminal charges were filed.
James said her office would “fully and fairly” investigate the allegations.
You can read our latest report on this story here:
In other news:
Donald Trump is heading to Alabama today as part of his near month-long midterm campaign blitz. He began the 32-day tour yesterday in safe Republican territory, starting with Texas and Oklahoma and continuing to Ohio this weekend and Nebraska on Monday. The US president is expected to campaign almost daily ahead of November’s midterm elections, as the Republicans wrestle to retain its slim majorities in both the House and Senate.
The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish its employment report today, with Reuters reporting that US job growth likely slowed in September while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% for a third month in a row.