Cornell Case Update: Letitia James Takes Over, New Evidence, Calls & Punishments

Jordan Berman (0:00)

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Welcome back to UNBIASED Politics. It's Tuesday, October 6th. And today we're doing a quick catch up on the Cornell case. So I don't typically release episodes on Tuesday.

Yesterday was a travel day for me. So as I warned about on Thursday, I didn't do an episode yesterday. However, I did want to get this catch up episode out for two reasons. Number one, we've learned a lot since Thursday's episode about this Cornell case. So I want to make sure that we stay on top of it. And two, I don't want the Cornell story to take up the bulk of this Thursday's episode, because we have a lot of other things to talk about. So I just want to make sure we kind of get all of the updates from Thursday out of the way here. And then we can move on to regularly scheduled programming on Thursday. I do also just want to take a second to shout out all of my new listeners and viewers on YouTube. I know I have a lot of new eyes and ears tuning in after last week. So I just want to say, I'm so thankful you're here and I hope you stay a while. Unbiased news is a beautiful thing in my humble opinion. And the more people that we have on the unbiased train, the better we'll all be for it. So thank you for being here. And again, like I said, I hope you stay a while. All right, let's get right into today's episode. So the last time we talked about this Cornell case was Thursday, of course. And as I said then, this is a story that is changing by the hour, right? And it has. Since Thursday, we've learned a lot more. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has taken the criminal investigation away from the Tompkins County DA's office and appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor. We've learned more about what information the original DA's office was offered and chose not to review. We now know what punishment each of the seven men received from Cornell. We have a recorded phone call between Jane Doe and Matthew Engels. We have a recorded phone call between Jane Doe and Winston Lee. We've received more messages involving some of the fraternity members. Cornell's president has spoken out. There's a vote of no confidence taking place. So there's a lot to go through here, but we're going to start with the biggest development, which is the criminal investigation. On Friday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul removed the Tompkins County DA's office from this case and directed Attorney General Letitia James to take over as special prosecutor. Now, under New York law, the Attorney General normally doesn't prosecute ordinary local crimes. That is typically the job of the district attorney in the county where the alleged crime occurred. However, New York executive law specifically allows the governor to issue an executive order and direct the Attorney General to take over a criminal case. Now when that happens, the Attorney General essentially steps into the shoes of the local DA for that case, right? So James's office will now be in charge of investigating what happened, interviewing witnesses, gathering evidence, and potentially appearing before a grand jury and prosecuting the case. So the Tompkins County DA is no longer overseeing this case, is no longer in control. Now, as far as why Hochul made this decision, she said, quote, newly released information continues to raise serious questions about the investigation conducted by the Cornell Police Department and the decision by the Tompkins County District Attorney not to prosecute an alleged sexual assault on Cornell's campus, on Cornell University's campus in October 2024 This has in turn undercut my faith and the public's faith in the district attorney's ability to effectively investigate and prosecute the crime at this time. For this reason, I've issued an executive order appointing Attorney General James as special prosecutor in this case. The young woman at the center of the case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued. This action will ensure that the matter is fully and thoroughly investigated without conflict or bias and handled independently with the rigor that this matter demands. End quote. Hochul then said in a subsequent press conference, quote, In what world would the police learn from a victim that she had literally been gang raped while intoxicated by five men in a fraternity house and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney? In what world does the district attorney not even interview her or anyone else involved or even request the full transcript? End quote. Hochul said she was, quote, unquote, deeply disturbed by how Cornell Police handled the case, saying, quote, them sending a partial record over to the Tompkins County DA is in my judgment a failure. We'll have the attorney general and others find out if this is actually the case of what happened. But somebody knew more than they were letting people know. But when the district attorney received something and it has information about allegations that have happened with an encounter with five people at a fraternity, and you don't take the time to interview this young woman and ask more questions and rely on a partial record, this is what I'm talking about, end quote.