President Trump tore into New York Attorney General Letitia James at a Syracuse rally, calling her a disgusting dog and corrupt Hochul sidekick while telling voters to clean house on November 3.
On Friday, October 9, at The Oncenter in Syracuse, New York, President Donald Trump went after James by name and pressed the crowd to remove her from office. He tied her directly to Gov. Kathy Hochul and cast both as part of the Albany problem ahead of the midterms.
Trump told supporters the people of New York need to clean house starting with the governor and her attorney general. He branded James corrupt and told the crowd to deliver a simple message to both officials.
A Yahoo News report carried his remarks from the stage, including the personal labels he applied to James and his call for voters to act on November 3.
Trump said:
"The people of New York need to clean house in Albany Nov. 3, starting with Kathy Hochul and her totally corrupt sidekick, Letitia 'Peekaboo' James. She's corrupt,"
He also referred to her as a "disgusting Leticia dog" and urged the audience to tell James and Hochul, "You're fired!"
James is running for reelection. Her campaign did not stay silent.
A spokesperson for the reelection campaign answered the rally attack by claiming Trump lacks results and therefore turns to insults.
The spokesperson said:
"Donald Trump doesn't have successful policies to run on, so he resorts to personal attacks,"
The exchange sits inside a longer fight that includes James’s civil fraud case against Trump and her new role as special prosecutor.
On October 1, Hochul appointed James to oversee a reopened criminal investigation tied to a civil lawsuit. A woman identified in court papers as Jane Doe alleges she was drugged and sexually assaulted by seven members of Cornell University’s Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024. She filed the civil suit in September 2026. Attorneys for several of the named men have denied wrongdoing. No criminal charges had been filed as of the latest reporting.
Hochul said she had concerns about how local prosecutors handled the matter. The next day, October 2, Trump told reporters he felt badly for anyone James might investigate because, in his view, they would not get a fair hearing. James’s office responded that it would follow the facts and the law.
New Yorkers watching public integrity cases have seen other local controversies surface, including a Mount Vernon mayor hit with Hatch Act warning over city-stamped campaign mailers.
Trump’s Syracuse speech kept the focus on James’s record and on the November 3 ballot. He framed the attorney general as Hochul’s partner in Albany and told voters the fix starts there.
In 2024 a judge found Trump liable for business fraud and initially ordered him to pay hundreds of millions of dollars. Trump disputed the case and challenged the ruling. The Justice Department later opened a probe into whether James’s office violated his civil rights through that lawsuit; James denied the claims. The federal investigation was dismissed in November 2025.
A New York appeals court in August 2025 threw out a $454 million civil fraud judgment against Trump as excessive, another major setback for the attorney general’s signature case.
Fresh pressure arrived from inside her own ranks. Whistleblower prosecutor Daniel Wiesenfeld described top-down orders to keep chasing Trump even after investigators found no evidence. Wiesenfeld said he was placed on leave after clashing with supervisors and speaking about the internal pressure. Trump shared the exclusive on Truth Social.
Wiesenfeld stated:
"Tish was the boss and what Tish wanted, Tish got. So we had to keep it going."
The New York Post detailed those claims and the court reversal that wiped out the oversized judgment.
Questions about selective enforcement and ignored wrongdoing have followed James before, including reporting on how the New York AG Letitia James ignores alleged waste and self-dealing at a $100 million Harlem nonprofit.
Taxpayers and lawful residents expect an attorney general to pursue real crime without fear or favor. Instead the public record shows a high-profile civil case that produced a later-tossed judgment, a dismissed federal civil-rights probe of her office, and now an internal account of pressure to continue a case after evidence ran out.
Federal prosecutors elsewhere continue to bring fraud cases of their own, from a $10 million daycare fraud scheme in San Diego to public officials who admit pandemic unemployment theft.
In Syracuse, Trump kept the choice simple for New York voters: clean house on November 3 or keep the same leadership in Albany. He named Hochul and James together and repeated that both should hear “You’re fired.”
James’s campaign answered with a policy dig. The appointment to the Cornell-related probe, the earlier fraud battle, the dismissed Justice Department inquiry, and the whistleblower account all remain part of the same public ledger voters can examine before they cast ballots.
New Yorkers who want equal justice under law, not score-settling from the state’s top lawyer, now have a clear date on the calendar to deliver that verdict.