Just two months after Gov. Kathy Hochul assumed office, a well-known colleague — Letitia James, the New York attorney general — declared that she would challenge the governor in the Democratic primary.
Ms. James eventually reconsidered, and Ms. Hochul went on in 2022 to capture her first full term as governor of New York.
Roughly five years later, the two women find themselves locked arm in arm, both running for re-election as the closest of allies on a range of issues.
The latest evidence of this partnership came on Thursday, when Ms. Hochul named Ms. James special prosecutor to investigate a woman’s allegation that she had been raped inside a fraternity house at Cornell University in October 2024.
The governor’s decision to intercede in the matter by enlisting Ms. James as a special prosecutor may carry implications for the investigation and beyond.
For Ms. Hochul, appearing as a take-charge governor may help her counter accusations from her Republican rival, Bruce Blakeman, that she has been weak on crime. It also allows her to tell voters that she stands up for the state’s most vulnerable, whether they are immigrants or victims of sexual assault.
Ms. Hochul said on Saturday that it was important for New Yorkers to see two female leaders — Ms. Hochul and Ms. James are the first women to be governor and attorney general in New York — who “are fighters who won’t put up with any crap.”
“So I’ve heard from a lot of people,” Ms. Hochul added. “The image gives them comfort to know that two women perhaps are looking at this differently than men would in the same position.”
There are fewer immediate political implications for Ms. James, who is all but assured re-election next month. But Ms. James, who has frequently challenged the Trump administration’s policies, has also been the target of a multiyear pursuit by the Justice Department to prosecute her on a range of charges.
Her involvement has added a layer of complexity to the investigation, as her stance as a legal bulwark to President Trump has already led to questions of impartiality.
After the office of the Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, said earlier this week that he would revisit the 2024 sexual assault accusations, Ms. James wrote on social media: “What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable.”
Asked by a reporter on Friday whether it was appropriate to affirm the victims’ allegations before she had looked into them, Ms. James said: “I will not comment on a Facebook post.”
Ms. James’s opponents were quick to attack her and to impugn her work this week, with Mr. Trump saying on Friday that the attorney general was a “corrupt person.”
“I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake,” the president said in Washington.
Ms. James has been locked for years in a multipronged legal war with Mr. Trump, which has included suing both his administration and his businesses on multiple occasions. When Mr. Trump’s lawyers appealed a half-billion-dollar judgment in a civil fraud case, they pointed to Ms. James’s past comments maligning the president as reason she should not have brought that case.
The penalty was thrown out last year by a divided state appellate court. In their ruling, several of the justices denounced Ms. James for having called Mr. Trump’s presidency “illegitimate” and promising to investigate him while she was campaigning in 2018. Some of the justices said there was no merit to Mr. Trump’s assertion of political persecution, even as they criticized Ms. James.
“Her habit of basically making statements about matters and individuals she is investigating does call into question her discretion as a prosecutor to not prejudge things and to actually handle these matters fairly,” said John Faso, a former Republican congressman and lawyer who has endorsed Ms. James’s opponent in this fall’s election.
“I mean, let’s face it,” Mr. Faso said. “Tish James is a politician, not a prosecutor.”
Ms. James insisted that she would be impartial and that she would allow the facts to dictate her decisions.
“My office enforces our state’s laws to protect all New Yorkers,” she said in a statement released on Saturday. “I am committed to leading a comprehensive investigation they can trust, guided only by the facts, the evidence and the law.”
This is not the first time that Ms. James’s ability to be impartial has been questioned as she investigates a politically charged issue. In 2021, Andrew M. Cuomo, then the governor of New York, asked Ms. James to appoint an independent counsel to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against him, which he denied.
The resulting report led in part to Mr. Cuomo’s resignation. He later filed an ethics complaint against Ms. James, arguing that the final report was misleading and that it had been brandished for political cudgel by the attorney general in her brief run for governor against Ms. Hochul.
“AG James cynically manipulated a legal process for personal, political gain,” Mr. Cuomo’s lawyers wrote in their complaint.
Ms. James’s campaign for governor lasted about a month in 2021 before she dropped out to run for re-election. Ms. Hochul said in an interview on Saturday that apart from “that one month, we’ve been tight.”
Ms. Hochul and Ms. James were slated to appear together on Saturday morning at a campaign event for canvassers in the Bronx. The attorney general ended up leaving before the governor arrived, which spokeswomen for both campaigns chalked up to packed schedules and overlapping events across the city.
That Ms. James and Ms. Hochul were to appear so soon after the announcement of Ms. James’s appointment at a political event speaks directly to concerns about the politicization of this case and others handled by the attorney general.
Last month, the Cornell student, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, sued the university, her sorority, the fraternity and the seven men she claimed had been involved in the assault. None of the accused have been charged with a crime, and all have denied wrongdoing. Four said they had consensual contact with the woman at a party, and the others denied that they had been involved in the assault.
Ms. Hochul insisted on Friday, and again on Saturday, that Ms. James would follow the facts, and that she could be trusted to handle the case with integrity.
“She knows how to do her job,” Ms. Hochul said in an interview on Saturday.
The symbolism of having two women leading the state in this tense moment was woven through the remarks of Ms. Hochul, Ms. James and others.
“With the current events, the person that we needed the most right now has been appointed to oversee a very serious case,” Nathalia Fernandez, a Democratic state senator whose district includes the southeast Bronx, said on Saturday at the campaign event.
“We all know what’s happening at Cornell University,” she added.
The post Cornell Case Carries Far-Reaching Implications for Hochul and James appeared first on New York Times.
