By Georgia Fearn | Updated on Oct 09, 2026 at 04:43 PM
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ probe of an alleged rape at Cornell University came under fire during a debate with her Republican opponent, who said James “already screwed this one up by prejudging it.”
Sarita Komatireddy, the GOP candidate for New York’s top law enforcement job, on Thursday night called James a “political hack” and brought up a Sept. 28 Facebook post in which the attorney general said that “what this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable.”
Komatireddy, a former federal prosecutor, claimed James had already decided the guilt of the male students accused in the case. The investigation “requires someone who approaches the case with fairness, impartiality and integrity,” Komatireddy said during the debate.
James’ social-media post was made days before Governor Kathy Hochul appointed her special prosecutor to examine the case. One of the Cornell students accused of rape has petitioned to have James removed from the case as biased.
James rejected Komatireddy’s criticism during the debate, saying her previous comments demonstrated “empathy” for the woman at the center of the case. “Kathy Hochul assigned me to analyze this case and to judge it and to do it without bias,” James said.
Read More: Cornell Rape Case Puts Letitia James Back in National Spotlight
The female student filed a lawsuit last month claiming she was sexually assaulted by members of a fraternity in 2024 while she was intoxicated.
Cornell has said its own investigation resulted in suspensions and expulsions and the fraternity chapter remains barred from campus. The university recently announced it was launching a review of its handling of the matter. The New York Times, which reviewed nonpublic documents from the university’s earlier internal investigation, has reported that the men denied wrongdoing during the school’s probe.
Hochul appointed James on Oct. 1 after saying new information had undermined her confidence in Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten’s initial handling of the investigation. Van Houten’s office declined to bring charges in 2024 but reopened the case last month after the civil lawsuit brought renewed attention.
Komatireddy faces long odds of defeating James in heavily Democratic New York. The Republican’s attack on James’ handling of the Cornell investigation reflected her broader argument that James has politicized the office of attorney general. On Thursday night, she accused James of “using our taxpayer money for her political purposes.”
James is best-known for driving state lawsuits challenging the Trump administration and for winning a civil fraud case alleging that Donald Trump inflated the values of his properties as a New York real estate developer. As president, Trump has sought to have James prosecuted for alleged mortgage fraud, but an indictment against her was swiftly dismissed on the grounds that the prosecutor was improperly appointed.
In Thursday’s debate, James sought to tie Komatireddy to Trump, who is deeply unpopular in New York.
Komatireddy distanced herself from Trump, who endorsed her in August. “As Attorney General, I don’t answer to the president, to the governor or to the mayor of any city,” she said, “I answer to you, New Yorkers. I will never base a case on politics.”
A Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for Brett Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge and spent more than a decade as a Brooklyn federal prosecutor, Komatireddy was nominated by Trump to be a federal judge toward the end of his first term. But her nomination did not progress in the Senate. She’s now in private practice and also teaches at Columbia Law School.