Tangle - The Cornell rape accusations.

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

On September 28, New York prosecutors said they had reopened an investigation into an alleged sexual assault and gang rape by seven Cornell University students in October 2024. The woman who filed the suit, anonymously identified as Jane Doe, alleges that she was coerced into taking ketamine, encouraged to take alcohol and cannabis, and forced into sexual actions she did not consent to. Last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) appointed state Attorney General Letitia James (D) as special prosecutor in the case. Separately, Cornell tapped former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates to lead an independent investigation into the school’s handling of the allegations.Our latest YouTube video.A year after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., Assistant Producer Aidan Gorman visits the capital to ask: Have these troops made our capital safer? The answer isn’t straightforward. You can check out our latest YouTube video here.Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle’s podcast membership!Election season is here.As we gear up for election season, we need your support. Our team is now 13 people strong, and we’re preparing for the biggest few months of the year.You’re already supporting us as a Tangle member (thank you), but you can still drop a donation, follow us on Instagram, subscribe to our YouTube channel, or simply forward this email to friends and family and tell them to sign up.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Under the radar” story ⁠here⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Take the survey: What issues do you think are contributing to sexual assault on college campuses? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Carina Pacheco and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast. I am your host, the overly caffeinated associate editor, Karina Pacheco, and today we have a rather serious edition about the Cornell 7. We are also going to look at the Gaza Peace Plan on the third anniversary of Hamas's October 7th attack, and we will finish with an uplifting story of an intense physical endurance challenge. But first, a year after President Donald Trump sent the National Guard into Washington, D.C., our associate producer, Aidan Gorman, went to the capital to ask a simple question, have the troops made the city safer? Turns out, the answer is not so simple. You can watch

this full video on our YouTube channel, and we will put the link in the show notes. All right, I'm going to toss it to editor, Audrey Moorhead, to take us through what the left and right are saying, and then I will be back for my take. Audrey, over to you. Thanks, Karina. First up, we have today's quick hits. Number one, an estimated 250 to 450,000 French students, teachers, parents, and others demonstrated across the country in protest of understaffing and other resource challenges in schools. Number two, attorneys for Krista Pike said that she had regained consciousness after surviving two doses of lethal injection last Wednesday. Pike was sentenced to death

for the murder of her classmate in 1995. Number three. The U.S. trade deficit rose to a 17-month high of $105.6 billion. Number four. German authorities arrested August Hanning, the former head of the country's foreign intelligence agency on suspicion of treasonous espionage.

Hanning is reportedly suspected of illegally acquiring and selling state secrets. Number five. New York Governor Kathy Hokel declared a state of emergency in response to increasing cases of measles in the state. This morning, with pressure mounting on Cornell University, the administration announcing former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates will lead an independent investigation into the school's initial handling of an alleged gang rape at the Kai Phi fraternity house back in 2024. The probe promising to examine specific policies, including oversight of fraternities, how reports, of sexual assault are investigated and the role of campus police, who first investigated allegations from a female student, now known as Jane Doe,

against seven Kifai members that resulted in no criminal charges. On September 28th, New York prosecutors said they had reopened an investigation into an alleged sexual assault and gang rape by seven Cornell University students in October 24. The woman who filed the suit anonymously identified as Jane Doe alleges that she was coerced into taking ketamine, supplied alcohol and cannabis, and forced into sexual actions that she did not consent to. Last week, New York Governor Kathy Hockel appointed State Attorney General Letitia James

as special prosecutor in the case. Separately, Cornell tapped former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates to lead an independent investigation into the school's handling of the allegations. Warning, today's podcast includes explicit descriptions of sexual acts and drug use. The Tompkins County District Attorney published its anonymized summation of the events here.

Tangle has decided to withhold the names of the accuser and the accused. For more context, in November 2024, Jane Doe filed a police report detailing her experience at Cornell's Kai-5 fraternity alleging sexual assault. At the time, the Tompkins County District Attorney's Office chose not to prosecute her case because the evidence did not support the filing of criminal charges. Cornell held a Title IX sexual assault investigation in January 2025. later expelling two of the men named in the suit,

suspending two, mandating a bystander intervention and sexual assault prevention training for two others, and barring the seventh who had since graduated from campus. Public scrutiny of the case increased in September 26, when Jane Doe filed a civil suit against her alleged attackers. Shortly afterward, the student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, ran a story publicizing the names of the seven accused men.

On September 29th, CBS New York, obtained messages from a Snapchat group for members of the Kai-5 fraternity. The messages show one of the men implying that Doe was available for sex. Other messages obtained by the New York Times showed Doe's understanding of the events changing, eventually concluding that she had been assaulted. Three of the men broadly deny any criminal wrongdoing. The four others have not released any public comment. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten called the facts of the case

presented in the civil suit dramatically different from the testimony Doe presented to authorities in 2024. Van Houghton said, quote, Jane Doe's sworn statement in November of 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped. On the contrary, Jane Doe's statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual. Seeking justice sometimes requires us to reconsider or reopen cases when we are provided with additional evidence, end quote. Next up, you'll hear from the left and the right about the case. Then, Associate Editor Karina Pacheco will be back with her take. We'll be right back after this quick break.

First up, what the left is saying. Many on the left call for more accountability for men's actions in cases like these. Some suggest the prosecution's case will be unsuccessful. Others express concern about the role of alcohol on college campuses. In Salon, Amanda Marcotte suggested the case shows hashtag Me Too didn't go far enough. In 2017, the hashtag Me Too movement took the nation by storm, A veritable flood of women and some men spoke out about their own experiences with sexual abuse. Despite this, it was barely weeks before the backlash began, with countless articles about how hashtag Me Too had gone too far, despite scant evidence that innocent men were getting entangled.

The Cornell case shows, though, that the Me Too movement didn't go far enough. For many people in institutions, it still feels much easier to make the issue go away by suppressing accusations than dealing with these cases, which are, admittedly, often complex. Despite the hysterical claims of its critics, hashtag Me Too was never about ruining the lives of innocent men. In a very real sense, the movement was about leveling the playing field, which is so dramatically tilted against victims that it makes justice nearly impossible to achieve. In MS Now, Mimi Roka said the case was set up for failure. The backlash has now led the office of the Tompkins County District Attorney in upstate New York to take the unusual step of reopening a criminal investigation.

In my view, this is too little too late. According to the DA statement and multiple media interviews, the district attorney's office relied solely on an investigation done by Cornell's campus police and making its determination not to pursue a criminal investigation in 2024. The CUPD is employed by the entity that has a specific interest in the investigation and its outcome. It is also not equipped to conduct a complex, fact-based sexual assault investigation. Conducting an investigation of this type years later, after multiple witnesses have reportedly been interviewed for the Title IX investigation,

and after digital and forensic evidence has likely been lost, makes a meaningful investigation so much more challenging, if not impossible. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jonathan Zimmerman called for an overdue discussion about the role of alcohol and sexual assault. Sexual assault is rampant on American campuses, and we need much better systems for preventing and prosecuting it. But here's one thing you probably haven't heard. If we want to reduce sexual assault at our call,

will also have to bring down student drinking. There, I said it. Alcohol can increase aggression and decrease inhibition. It makes it harder to interpret social cues, and it makes victims less capable of giving sexual consent and resisting sex they don't want. In every sexual assault, the sole responsibility lies with the perpetrator, period, full stop. But we shouldn't let that fact blind us to another one, that if one or more partners are drunk, they're more likely to do something the other one doesn't want. At least one of the men accused in the assault had been drinking and the victim had too. If we shrink from telling the truth about alcohol and sexual violence, we will all share the blame for whatever comes next.

Now what the right is saying. Many on the right criticize Governor Hockel's choice of Letitia James as special prosecutor. Others note that the men are considered innocent until proven guilty. Some question whether a culture of sex positivity contributes to unsafe environments. In the New York Post, Jonathan Turley wrote about about the complex Cornell case. Conflicts and testimony, as there is in the Cornell case, does not mean that there was no rape.

However, there is ample reason to withhold judgment until more is known. Legally, the extreme intoxication and drug use undermine claims of consent. While she admits that her memory was super clouded, it is hard to imagine anyone believing that a student in her condition was capable of giving knowing consent.

There are obviously problems with the case. In New York, one threshold issue will focus on her voluntarily drinking to excess. Like other states, a mentally incapacitated individual cannot legally consent to sex. But there is an exception for those who voluntarily consumed alcohol to the point that they became incapacitated. Hockel's appointment of Letitia James maximizes the chances of a criminal charge in the case. James has always followed the policy of the Queen of Hearts in Allison Wonderland. Sentence first, verdict afterward.

In the free press, Kat Rosenfield said the Cornell 7 have not been proven guilty. In the wake of the Me Too movement, a disturbing consensus has emerged that the protections afforded by our criminal justice system to those accused of sexual misconduct are a real drag, an outrageous inconvenience to be subverted by relocating the litigation of rape into the extra-legal realm of social media wherever possible. There's a reason why the wheels of justice turn slowly as compared with the fast, bright flare of human passions. The system is designed to allow the time for cooler heads to prevail, for the truth to come out.

At least two of the men who have been publicly smeared as gang rapists have denied ever touching the accuser or even being in the room during the alleged assault. It is impossible to know if they're telling the truth, just as it is impossible to know if she is. What does seem certain, though, is that by the time the accused and accuser alike have their day in court, the truth will have ceased to matter. In National Review, Caroline Downey suggested the sex positivity movement invited a world of depravity. According to the legal standard of consent in New York State, Jane Doe was capable of consent and both exercised and withdrew consent during the multi-hour stretch. None of this morally excuses the men's conduct, which is reprehensible.

We're told that under modern feminism, the sexes are totally equal, as are all the many sexual lifestyles. Anything goes in the sexual arena, with the one caveat being consent. The drama at Cornell lays bare the perils and false promises of sexual liberation. It opened Pandora's box, from which sprang hookup culture on college campuses, only fans, and rampant pornography, which no doubt influenced the seven men's behavior that October night. With consent as its only moderating principle, the sex positivity movement invited a world of depravity with blurred lines and infinite regret. That's it for views from

the left and the right. Now back to Karina for her take. Thanks, Audrey. When the Cornell story broke into the mainstream media, everyone had strong initial reactions. I was no exception. My overwhelming feeling was simply discomfort. This moment certainly feels like a social reckoning, where post-Me2 feminism is testing itself out. And while the Me Too era illuminated pervasive, reckless, and callously misogynistic cultures across the country, many critics argued too many women overreached and decided to cash in on the cultural tide of cancellations.

Though it's tempting to jump to broader themes, this situation requires looking at the facts by themselves, which are uncomfortable. Discomfort is a powerful emotion. It tells us to look away when we should look harder. On the opposite side of that coin is certitude, which tells us we've seen enough because we've found the side that feels good to be on.

It feels pretty good to jump on the Moral Crusade bandwagon against the depraved fraternity rapists or the lying promiscuous sorority girl, doesn't it? I'm skeptical of the assuredness on either side. The situation out of Cornell may be the most complicated, alleged rape case litigated in the court of public opinion in my lifetime. This isn't Brock Turner assaulting a passed out woman

behind a dumpster at Stanford in 2015. This isn't Brandon Vandenberg and his football teammates assaulting an unconscious women at Vanderbilt in 2013. On the other side of the spectrum, this doesn't seem like the 2006 Duke LaCross case or members of the team were falsely accused of rape. The allegations here are messy.

Everyone was drunk. They were all snorting ketamine off each other. Some of them had sex together. Some of them watched. She said yes at times, no at times, and claims she felt coerced into numbly saying nothing at other times. Everyone's level of clarity seems to have varied from minute to minute, and the extent of those fluctuations is disputed.

Not only is the moral line blurry, but it's very possible for immoral acts to be legal. But when one of those men messages in a fraternity group chat that, quote, free pussy is upstairs, then another follows up to explain how brothers might go about introducing themselves, quote, like you can walk in and whip it out. And then that woman finds herself in a room with more men, all that feels, very different. Those messages don't prove rape, but they are evidence of how some of these young men viewed the accuser as an object. The messages and the decisions to act on them are reprehensible. These pieces of evidence are unsettling, and they could ultimately combine with the claims about who

consented when and create a guilty verdict in a court of law. Time will tell. In the meantime, loud factions in the court of public opinion have already acted as judge, jury, and would-be executioners. Some by doxing the men and calling their jobs and threatening them and their families, all before any criminal conviction. An online swarm even mistakenly doxed and harassed someone with no relation to the case.

I understand the motivation. Critics think the university didn't do enough to punish these men, with viral claims that their punishments were reduced to writing essays about what happened. In reality, Cornell opened a Title IX investigation, expelled two students, suspended others, banned one from campus, and disbanded the entire fraternity. And yes, some of the alleged assaulters wrote essays to the school. Essays and suspensions might seem like light fare against jail time for sexual assault and rape.

But the county prosecutor said the initial statements in 2024 did not include allegations of rape. Simply put, this story is more complicated than Cornell just dropping the ball or letting the accused off easy. Do I think the accuser was violated? Yes. Do those violations amount to sexual assault or even rape? In my opinion, and apparently Cornell's, the answer is also yes. But the repercussions for the alleged perpetrators should range in severity based on the individual actions of the accused. Even after the claims percolating online that an unconscious girl was violently gang-raped by a group of seven men were contradicted by the woman's own accounts, finding the accused guilty in a court of law would not satisfy the people urging us to, quote,

castrate the Cornell 7. Their goal is not justice. It is white-hot tunnel vision revenge. Even the newly appointed special prosecutor Letitia James has made social media posts that presume the alleged assault is fact. We can simultaneously confront cases of sexual assault and institutions or norms that defend it, while also examining the other social elements at play. we could reevaluate social acceptance of cultural forces like porn or hookup culture or drugs and alcohol that cloud people's judgment. But we don't because it's uncomfortable. As onlookers, we could avoid rushing to conclusions on complicated cases and doubling down when honest analysis doesn't match up with our preferred side of the story. But we rush in anyway because it's satisfying.

I keep wondering about the role porn plays in sexual encounters like the one described here. Sexual promiscuity and experimentation have always been a thing, but now the most extreme possibilities are mainstream instead of fringe and more accessible than ever. At the risk of sounding like a total prude, how else do young men come to believe that women are receptive to sexual encounters involving multiple unfamiliar male partners? How did young women come to believe that young men wanted such scenarios in the first place? Where else would they all get the idea that it's hot to take turns on the first place?

same partner. Porn narratives rarely consider awkward post-orgie social interactions, so I'm not very surprised that there was minimal regard given to how this might play out on the quad the next day. At the intersection of porn consumption and long-standing college drunken hookup culture is the idea that sex means nothing or is consequence free. We want to pretend that there is no stigma around casual sex and that the free love principle is applied to men and women evenly, but it is not. And when alcohol and drugs are involved, questions about responsibility and accountability become even more contentious. If the act is outlandish but consensual, the woman bears the pariah status of slut. If the act was at any point non-consensual, now she's a rape accuser who immediately becomes the subject

of skepticism and scorn. If she actually manages to prove that she was a victim, then she is the subject of pity or even a martyr. And if the accused are acquitted, both parties become irrevocably tarnished. There is no clean win in any scenario after an event like this, especially not for her. Our society needs to recalibrate and be honest about all the factors that lead to these horrible stories. It is not victim blaming to tell your daughter to watch how much she drinks and to be defensive of her body. It is not woke to tell your son that real men do not use women as toys. It is not prudish to tell teenagers that porn is not real life and that ketamine and vodka cloud everyone's judgment. As Hannah Stotland wrote for Slate, every possible interpretation

of the terrible night at Kai Fee leads to the same conclusion. Everyone would be better off if it had never happened. Deep inside the web of conflicting testimony and recollections and lawsuits and countersuits is a legal question that remains very much unresolved. But it is a question for jury to decide in a court of law, not for me or any online mob should answer. Justice is not one-size-fits-all. It's not reserved for one party on one side of a lawsuit. Justice seeks to find the truth and uphold the law, and the accuser and the accused all deserve to see that happen.

I certainly hope that this question sees its day in court, and I hope we will all be ready to push past our discomfort, reject urges for self-satisfaction, and look the truth in on when that day comes. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take. I'm going to pass it off to managing editor Ari Weitzman for a staff concurrence. This is Tangle, Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with a staff concurrence to Karina's take. I share Karina's opinion that the men in this case obviously crossed the line.

Several of them acted on a message advertising a woman as a sex object for their pleasure. We know that happened. I want to emphasize Corina's central interpretation. This was reprehensible, and it should be investigated then, if merited by the findings, tried in a court of law, not the court of public opinion. But I'm concerned about the age-old intersection of those two courts, the public and the legal. When a case garners this much media scrutiny, the prosecution had better be certain about what it's doing. Unfortunately, the state of New York stumbled out of the date. First, in appointing Letitia James to this case, Governor Houcho elevated it to partisan political status. Second, James' social media posts

implied that she has accepted a certain version of events before her office even has made the decision whether or not it's going to bring charges. We don't have to look past James' own resume to see the risks of this approach. She accused then former President Trump of civil fraud in a suit that has been appealed into a state of legal limbo and is now used as evidence by some of the president's supporters to say that Trump did nothing wrong. Worry that could happen here. If I can anticipate the publicity risks, then Hocchel and James, both elected officials, should also be able to do so. Some online reactionaries are already throwing their hands up and questioning other prominent sexual assault cases, like whether Brock Turner even

did anything wrong. So imagine the reaction if James makes a lot of noise and then this case gets dismissed. I worry that Hocchel and James have taken the first steps towards a worst-case outcome. Overzealous charges, exonerations, and fodder for the belief that rape accusations are almost always frivolous. The public deserves better than that. Thanks, Ari. Now for our under-the-radar story. Wednesday marks three years since Hamas's October 7th attacks in Israel, and approximately one year since Hamas and Israel agreed to a U.S. brokered ceasefire as part of a plan to end the war. In the ensuing 12 months, the sides have not returned to all-out fighting, an increased humanitarian aid is reaching Gaza, but Israeli airstrikes have continued.

The U.S. plan called for Israel to gradually withdraw to a yellow line that left it in control of 53% of the enclave, but its military presence has instead expanded to roughly two-thirds of the territory. Separately, a 15-point roadmap for Hamas to disarm has stalled, and a planned international stabilization force has yet to be formed. Reuters has the story and you can find the link in the show notes. Finally, we have a have a nice day story. In 2022, Tommy Price was training for the grueling Bobby Graham round, a 66-mile circuit summiting the highest peaks in England's Lake District, when hypothermia caused his heart

to stop. Price was clinically dead for roughly four hours before receiving medical care at a hospital in Newcastle, where he was revived and slowly recovered during a five-day medically induced coma. Just nine months later, he completed the London Marathon in just over three hours. Then, after raising 10,000 pounds for the Keswick Mountain Rescue team that saved him, Price returned to the Lake District to attempt the Bobby Graham again. This time, he completed the course in 23 hours and 35 minutes. Price said, quote, it's unlucky that it happened to me, but in another sense, it's lucky that that's happened to me, because I can raise awareness and

raise money for mountain rescue, and I can still do all this crazy stuff. I should be dead, really. ITVX has the story and you can find the link in the show notes. That's it for today's podcast. If you would like to support our work, head over to readtangle.com, where you can buy a newsletter subscription, a podcast subscription, or a bundle membership that gets you a discount on both. We will be right back here tomorrow. In the meantime, this has been editor Audrey Moorhead.

On behalf of Karina, Ari, Isaac, and everyone else. Have a great day and peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kback and associate editor's Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.