A journalist at Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Friday press conference asked Attorney General Letitia James about a Facebook post she wrote on the Cornell 7 case. James declined to answer.
Megyn Kelly watched the footage and put it on the air. The conservative podcaster played the clip during her Friday show on Sirius XM, then turned on both Democrats.
“This is so f–ked up! That’s the woman who is now going to decide whether charges are brought against the Cornell 7,” Kelly said once the video ended.
Hochul had named James to take over the investigation into an alleged gang rape at the Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University in October 2024. Seven fraternity brothers are at the center of the case.
Kelly, 55, accused the governor of rigging the outcome. She said Hochul fixed the high-profile case by putting a “rabid, fire-breathing hack” in charge of it.
“[Hochul] has now appointed someone even more abhorrent and hateful than she is — Letitia James — as special prosecutor in this case,” Kelly said.
She followed with a prediction. “And what that means is these boys are f’d!” she said.
The post Kelly targeted went up on James’ Facebook page last week. James addressed the accuser, who is identified only as Jane Doe. She described the suspected crimes as “horrific and unacceptable” and wrote, “We stand with you.”
To Kelly, those words settled the question of fairness. She said James had “chosen a side” before opening her investigation.
“A prosecutor’s obligation is to seek justice, not to choose one side or the other,” said Kelly, a former political commentator at Fox News and NBC.
Kelly then shifted to the seven students. She said she felt concern for them and described their alleged conduct as “a night of debauchery.”
“I am very worried for them. I am seriously concerned for these seven young men, who appear to have engaged in a night of debauchery, [and some] sent out — in the case of one or two of them — f—king stupid, offensive text messages,” she said.
She named X as her yardstick for those messages. “Hello! Spend a day on X. I challenge you not to find multiple of those. And now [they] are about to stare down the possibility of decades in prison, because of those two women,” Kelly said.
Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the seven fraternity brothers last month. The filing pushed the Cornell case into the national spotlight.
Friday was not Kelly’s first broadcast on the subject. Earlier in the week, she criticized celebrities who commented publicly without knowing all the facts.
On Wednesday, she aimed that criticism at “Law & Order: SVU” actress Mariska Hargitay. Hargitay had reshared posts about the case on social media. One read, “Yes, I think we should ruin the futures of adult men who drug and gang-rape a woman.”
“Now she wants to lecture us on what should happen in a case like this!” Kelly said.
The allegations have also fueled a broader debate over Greek Life and fraternities. Kelly rejected the idea that American college campuses have a cultural problem with rape and sexual assault.
“The notion that an Ivy League university or any university in America — its instincts would be to go easy on the guys and dismiss the word of the woman as a nothing … is just so absurd,” she said.
Kelly closed with her view of the accuser. She said she would like to speak with Jane Doe and agreed that the night in October 2024 was clearly “traumatic” for her.
“I think it’s extremely traumatic because I think she consented. And I’m sure she’s having to live with the shame and awfulness of that, of being treated like a piece of meat who didn’t matter, who’s basically just a f–kbuddy by these guys at this fraternity,” Kelly said.
“I don’t blame her for being traumatized. I bet she really is. But that doesn’t mean she gets praised as a national hero, folks,” she added.
