A bar complaint asks Letitia James to step away from the Cornell Chi Phi investigation.

A grievance complaint is a request that a lawyer step aside or be disciplined. It is not an order taking Letitia James off the Cornell file, and it is not a finding about what happened at the Chi Phi house. The New York Post reported the complaint treats a post she wrote before the appointment as proof she had already picked a side. Gillio Lopes and Winston Lee have already asked judges for the same removal. Those requests are still pending.

The New York Post reported Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, that the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center filed a bar ethics complaint against New York Attorney General Letitia James. The Post reported the complaint says that two days before Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed James special prosecutor, James posted on X on Sept. 28: "What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable." The same post said, "To her, and to all survivors: you're not alone. We stand with you." The Post reported the complaint argues that by showing whose account of the night she believed, before the investigation began, James compromised herself. It quotes the complaint: "It is clear that she must recuse herself from having anything to do with this case to preserve the impartiality and integrity of any investigation and prosecution." A complaint that asks for recusal is an argument about who should run the file. It does not change who is running it.

The Post reported the filing is nine pages and was submitted to the court's Attorney Grievance Committee, and the Post also described it as filed in New York State Supreme Court. The complaint says, according to the Post, "This kind of public statement exhibiting clear bias on a highly publicized case by the highest law enforcement officer of New York violates New York rules of professional conduct." The Post reported that legal ethicist Jack Marshall included an expert report with the complaint. Marshall said, "The violation is flagrant, obvious and therefore shocking," and, "I find it remarkable that the top lawyer in the state of New York could possibly be so unfamiliar with the professional ethics standards of her own state, which have the force of law." He also said James's statement "raises suspicion of a rigged, pre-determined and illicit investigation," the Post reported. Those sentences are the complaint's case. The grievance committee has not adopted them.

James answered the underlying criticism before the Post's report. The Post reported that at Thursday night's attorney general debate against Republican challenger Saritha Komatireddy, James said, "Those comments demonstrate empathy," and, "And what we need now more than ever in our body politics is more empathy." She said, "Politics stops at the door in my office." A spokesperson for her office told the Post, "In this and every investigation, the Office of the Attorney General is committed to conducting a comprehensive review of nothing but the facts, the evidence and the law." Empathy is her account of the post. The complaint's account is that the same sentences picked a side. Neither account is a ruling.

The appointment the complaint is aimed at is already in place. Hochul named James special prosecutor on Oct. 1 and tasked her with investigating what happened at Cornell's Chi Phi house on Oct. 19, 2024, and, if warranted, presenting evidence to a grand jury, the Post reported. The woman at the center of the civil lawsuit is identified in court papers as Jane Doe. The Post reported that two of the men named in that suit, Winston Lee and Gillio Lopes, have already filed court papers asking that James be removed, and that those papers say she made clear she had already concluded the defendants are guilty. No criminal charges have been filed. A bar complaint stacked on top of those petitions gives a grievance committee a separate question from the one the judges have. It still does not answer what happened in the house. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.