The Federalist suspects a Cornell hoax; Wells Fargo fired the accused and prosecutors reopened the case.

…(cont) The lawsuit did what the first review had not. CBS News obtained video of the fraternity's own group Snapchat conversation from that night, material that was not part of the DA's original look at the case. And the prosecutor's office that once passed reopened it, this time saying it plans to put her account in front of a grand jury.

Now watch what moved, because none of it was rhetoric. Within days of the reopening, Wells Fargo fired Diego Sarabia, one of the men the suit names. That is a large bank with a compliance department and a legal department reading the same documents the DA is reading and reaching a decision about an employee in under a week.

In the same stretch, The Federalist ran the Cornell allegation under the line that the last elite-university gang rape was a hoax and Cornell might have one now too, adding that #MeToo diehards should hope that's not the case. The case it reaches back for is 2015, when Rolling Stone withdrew "A Rape on Campus" and, on 6 April that year, the University of Virginia fraternity Phi Kappa Psi announced it would pursue all available options against the magazine. Hold the two against each other. The 2015 story ended in a retraction and a fraternity's lawyers. It did not end with an employer terminating anyone or a district attorney taking testimony to a grand jury. This one has done both, and the outlet filed it under hoax anyway.

By that morning the story had traveled far enough that a national newscast read it as the day's second item, after new federal fuel-efficiency rules. Here is the part worth keeping. The group chat existed in 2024. It sat in the men's own phones while the file sat closed, and it took a civil lawyer and a television station to walk it across the street to the courthouse. Whether the state looks at evidence is now partly a question of who can afford to find it first.