'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."
Page A4From§Eachthe noon edition — 29 September 2026
DA calls Cornell frat conduct 'disgusting, despicable, clearly wrong,' rules it not a crime.
As it ran on the front
In 2024, a woman told the Tompkins County District Attorney's office that seven men raped her over several hours inside Cornell's Chi Phi fraternity house. The office reviewed it and brought no charges. The file sat closed for two years, until the woman sued the university, and the lawsuit is where the new material starts: one of the men, the complaint says, typed "Free p—y" while the assault was underway, and Cornell's response to the accused men was to offer them a chance to mitigate their conduct by writing essays. On September 29, District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced the case was reopening.
A prosecutor had reopened a file; a bank had already closed the man's employment file for good, on the strength of the same allegations the DA had not yet charged.…
…(cont) That is not what happened here. Standing in front of cameras that same day, Van Houten described what the men did as "disgusting, despicable, and clearly wrong morally." Then he finished the sentence: the conduct, "if accepted as true," did not allege violations of the penal law. Two years on the original complaint. Eleven days on the lawsuit. Hours on the new texts. What came back was three adjectives and a decision not to charge.
Read that quote twice. A district attorney does not reach for "disgusting" and "despicable" to describe conduct he thinks is borderline. Those are the words a prosecutor uses when the facts are ugly enough that he needs the public to know he saw them — right before he tells the public he is not going to do anything about them. The vocabulary is doing the work the charging decision won't. The Tompkins County DA read the same file, plus two more weeks of evidence, and decided it could not support a case.
A bank moved faster than a prosecutor working from the exact same set of facts. That is not how this is supposed to work, and on the record, the only one who says so in writing is the district attorney himself.
“A bank fired the guy off the same facts the county says aren't a crime — Wells Fargo's compliance department did a better job protecting people than the DA's office did. This isn't a legal system failing to find evidence, it's a prosecutor building a paper trail of his own outrage right up to the line where he'd have to act on it. Notice who never loses a paycheck over any of this: the office that gets to keep saying "disgusting" forever without ever having to prove it in front of a jury.”
“Look, the DA did his job — he read the penal code, not the group chat, and the penal code is the penal code, that's not doublespeak, that's due process. Sure, "disgusting and despicable" is a strong way to describe something you're declining to prosecute, but prosecutors are allowed to have opinions — wait, are they supposed to editorialize on cases they're not charging? Did I just defend a guy for grading conduct he won't put in front of a jury? That's not — that's not what I meant.”
Earlier in this story
- Oil industry pays $1 billion for policy priorities, collects weaker mileage rules days later. By Ruth · the coffee break edition, 29 September 2026
- Outlets brand Cornell a hoax days after a bank firing and a grand jury date. By Sal · the coffee break edition, 29 September 2026
- Senate Republicans call Jack Smith's evidence-based prosecution abuse, demand the same standard for Hunter Biden and Trump Jr. By Lou · the breakfast edition, 29 September 2026
- The Federalist suspects a Cornell hoax; Wells Fargo fired the accused and prosecutors reopened the case. By Sal · the breakfast edition, 29 September 2026
- Prosecutor found no case in 2024, reopens it after a lawyer found the evidence they missed. By Sal · the sunrise edition, 29 September 2026
The receipts
Prosecutors have reopened the case of a woman who said she was sexually assaulted on campus in 2024. The woman’s lawsuit brought renewed pressure to reopen the investigation.
CBS News New York has exclusively obtained screenshots from a source presented as text messages between Jane Doe and one of the defendants in a lawsuit alleging rape at a fraternity house at Cornell University in 2024.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten is speaking out on the investigation into an alleged rape case at Cornell University in 2024 involving at least seven male students and an unidentified woman. CBS News' Lilia Luciano reports.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.