A transgender inmate in Indiana convicted of reckless homicide of a baby is suing President Donald Trump over alleged sexual assaults caused by the president’s “transphobic” and “extremist rhetoric,” court documents filed on April 1 show.
Jonathan C. Richardson, who goes by Autumn Cordellioné, claims in the handwritten complaint that, due to Trump’s “extremist rhetoric and transphobic hate speech,” he has “emboldened the Defendants and the assailants that brutally assaulted and raped plaintiff, not once, but multiple times, to act on their hate and prejudices, constituting the cause in action and his liability in this case. Therefore, President Trump was negligent due to his alleged knowledge that others may act on his words.”
Cordellioné also claims the alleged assaults came after being transferred from New Castle Correctional Facility (NCN), where he was being “housed in protective custody,” to Westville Correctional Facility (WCA), an all-male prison. Fox News Digital reached out to the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) to find out whether the transfer was due to Trump’s executive order mandating federal prisoners be housed in units according to their biological sex.
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When reached for comment about the lawsuit, a White House spokesperson said: “President Trump has vowed to defend biological women from gender ideology extremism and restore biological truth to the Federal government.”
The inmate is seeking $3.5 million in compensatory damages from Trump, alongside the other defendants, including prison employees and 12 other “gang affiliated inmates,” who allegedly “stabbed” and sexually assaulted the inmate over a four-day period in January.
“Trump’s president now, and we won’t even get in trouble for f—–g you trannies up, we’re patriots and even if you tell on us, Trump will pardon us and probably give us a medal,” Cordellioné claimed one of the offenders said, according to the complaint.
Cordellioné further alleged the unit team manager and case manager also said similar things during the alleged assaults.
“I’ve seen your case on the news, and I personally don’t think us tax payers should have to pay for your surgery,” the case manager allegedly said.
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The lawsuit alleges that the offenders had violated Cordellione’s Eighth Amendment rights and committed gross negligence under Indiana tort law.
Cordellioné’s years-long legal battle began in August 2023, when, with support from the ACLU, Cordellioné sued the Indiana Department of Correction over a state law that bans taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for inmates.
Since then, Cordellioné—serving a 55-year prison sentence for the reckless homicide of an 11-month-old stepchild—has filed several complaints, including a civil lawsuit against the prison chaplain for allegedly prohibiting the wearing of a hijab outside of immediate bedquarters, despite identifying as a Muslim woman.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has been defending the state’s law and submitted a brief in January to a court of appeals defending Indiana’s law barring sex-change operations for inmates. The attorney general argued that the Eighth Amendment doesn’t require the state “to provide experimental treatments generally, and it certainly doesn’t here, when multiple doctors have said this inmate is a poor candidate for surgery,” a spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital.
In March, Judge Richard Young, a Clinton appointee, ordered the IDOC to arrange sex reassignment surgery for Cordellioné at the “earliest opportunity.”
Fox News Digital scooped earlier this month that states failing to comply with federal orders to house inmates based on their biological sex can expect “imminent changes” and funding cuts. Trump’s orders also bar federal funds from being used for sex reassignment surgeries for inmates.
