Cornell Rape Case Explodes: Frat Brother Says HE Was Assaulted & Cornell Ignored Him ft. Megyn Kelly

Ashleigh Banfield (0:05)

Hey, everyone, I'm Ashleigh Banfield and this is Drop Dead Serious. There are some new developments in the Cornell case. And if you have been following along with us, oh God, you know how much is riding on the facts, what actually happened inside that fraternity house.

And facts are all that matter. Your opinions are great, but they don't matter when it comes to a case, a legal case. Let me be really clear about something.

Because this is a very sensitive case and people are really triggered by it. I am not weighing in on this case based on any personal morals or opinions. That is not what this is about. I'm looking at this like a lawyer, and I'm looking at this like a DA, and I'm looking at this like a defense attorney, and I'm looking at this like an attorney general of New York should. I'm looking at the reports, the filings, the facts, the witness statements, the quotations, but I'm not looking at it from TikTok. I am not reading the headlines and getting angry. I am truly boiling this case down where the chips could fall. The way I see it, because I've got a lot of experience in this business. I've been doing it forever. I've been in crime and justice and legal reporting for 38 fucking years. I got admonished by a judge in the 80s for chewing gum in court. That's how old I go back. So anyway, I just want to be really clear. If you're angry with me, that is fine, but you shouldn't be angry at fact. And again, this is not my opinion. These are not my moral speaking. This is just the case bare tactics. And listen, you may be watching right now and you may be a survivor of sexual assault because there are millions. And I want to tell you, I stand with you. I believe women. This case is not like that. This is not about that. And my assessment of this case is not about that. It is just about the facts. But I want to also remind you, when you hear how I see this case, please also remember that when the Stamford rapist, Brock Turner, did what he did to the survivor in that case, I was the one that convinced the CNN president that I wanted to dedicate my entire hour on CNN to read her statement to the judge of how she did not get justice in that case. And I did it. So I understand and I believe women and I stand with survivors, but every case has to be looked at on its own merits. So let's just dive right in. Okay. And if you need to pour a drink, I'm with you. When another piece of the investigation comes out, I jump all over it. I want to know what each little morsel says, right? And the last one that I just got kind of stopped me in my tracks because it flips the script on this whole damn story. Because now one of the accused seven fraternity brothers has come out. Well, he didn't come out. It's been unearthed that that boy sent an email to Cornell University, not in the last couple of weeks, not in response to a lawsuit he's now facing. The accuser is saying seven men in that fraternity sexually assaulted her. It's not in reaction to that. No, no, no, this is from two years ago. It's what we say in the business, contemporaneous stuff.

This is an email that happened just after, like within the months after the incident in the fraternity house. So there's no, you know, there's no lawsuit, there's no, there is an investigation, and there's a Title IX investigation going on at Cornell.

But this is a contemporaneous email from one of the boys in that actual alleged incident, right? This boy sent Cornell an email demanding to know why Cornell had not treated him as a sexual assault survivor. Again, just a couple months after the incident, he is saying to Cornell, hey, what the hell with you guys not giving me my rights and letting me know what my rights are? And he talks about specific evidence that they're in possession of that would define him that way. And he's accusing Cornell of saying, and I will tell you what the evidence is in a minute, and it is big. But he said, you had this evidence about me, about something happened to me.

And it is like within the definition of sexual assault and you didn't tell me that I have rights. Again, super important because this is contemporaneous. This is two years ago. This is not now trying to, you know, shape the narrative as people would accuse, but no, this is from back then. And that's really important in this story. If you want to be fair in assessing this story, you have to open your eyes to everything that happened and when it happened. Okay. So according to ABC News, this student was telling Cornell that he had been too intoxicated during that whole sexual escapade in the frat house. He'd been too intoxicated to consent. He said that to Cornell.