‘Cornell 7’ Case Turns Political as Kathy Hochul Gets Involved with Executive Order

With media attention growing in the case of an alleged gang rape at Cornell University, and a re-election battle looming in November, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has officially entered the arena.

In a statement released Thursday, Hochul announced an executive order establishing New York Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor in the case.

But whatever investigation James conducts, it appears she has already made up her mind about the case — and that the accuser is correct, which means the accused are already guilty.

“What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable,” James wrote in a post on Wednesday. “I’m holding her in my heart and in my prayers.

“To her, and to all survivors: you’re not alone. We stand with you.”

And Hochul’s statement appointing James made it clear that the governor herself has already made up her mind.

“The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued,” Hochul said.

Establishing James as special prosecutor, Hochul said, “will ensure that the matter is fully and thoroughly investigated without conflict or bias, and handled independently with the rigor that this matter demands.”

That remains to be seen, as the case has already become a lightning rod for leftist politicians.

According to Fox News, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, traveled to Ithaca on Sunday for a speech at a university town hall where she denounced the incident and blamed “the culture of rape, sexual assault, and pedophilia,” which is “protected in elite institutions across the United States and including Cornell University in this instance.”

As The New York Times reported on Thursday, the complicated case began Oct. 19, 2024, when a 20-year-old woman was drinking illegally in a bar in Ithaca, New York.

She left the bar and walked to the university’s Chi Phi fraternity house to meet a fraternity brother — a distance of about a mile, according to the outlet.

After that, things get murky, with continued drinking, the use of marijuana and the drug ketamine, and sex involving the woman and a group of fraternity brothers, now often called the “Cornell 7.”

Another summary published by The New York Times noted that the woman waited until Nov. 8 to report the incident to the Cornell Police Department, the campus police force.

“In a statement to the police, parts of which were publicly released by the Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, on Monday, she indicates that she had voluntarily participated in some drug use and sexual activity that night,” The New York Times reported.

But the situation spiraled and other fraternity members got involved after a member wrote that “free p*ssy” was available in an upstairs room, CNN reported.

After the woman went to the police, according to the Associated Press, the school said it investigated the incident and expelled some of the students involved, suspended the others, and closed the fraternity chapter.

A six-page summary of the woman’s statement was forwarded to the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office, which declined to press charges.

“That document was thorough, it was comprehensive, it was candid — it said exactly everything that happened,” District Attorney Matthew Van Houten told Fox News on Tuesday.

“While… the conduct of these men was disgusting, despicable, and clearly wrong morally, the allegations, if accepted as true, did not allege violations of the penal law,” he said.

“There’s no probable cause to charge these men at that point with crimes.”

With information that has come to light since — particularly the full transcript of the woman’s statement to Cornell police — Van Houten announced Wednesday he was reopening the investigation, according to ABC News.

However, Hochul’s order takes it out of his hands.

According to The New York Times summary, the case came to life again Sept. 16 when the woman filed a lawsuit against Cornell, the Chi Phi fraternity, the seven members she claimed raped her, and her own sorority, Delta Delta Delta. She is also suing the bar where she was drinking, the Associated Press reported.

And now enters Hochul, who is pulling out all the stops in her re-election race to defeat Republican candidate Bruce Blakeman.

In naming James as the special prosecutor — with the attorney general’s high-profile status in Democratic circles, particularly when it comes to persecuting President Donald Trump — Hochul is taking the case out of the realm of civil law, out of the realm of criminal law, and placing it firmly in the political sphere.

And that means political pressure on a matter of justice.

In the New York Post on Wednesday, columnist Miranda Devine noted that the young woman deserves sympathy and acknowledged that the men behaved appallingly.

But, she noted, they “don’t deserve to have their lives ruined if the evidence shows they committed no crime.”

It appears Hochul and James have already made up their minds about that.

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