Cornell 7 Accuser Faces Online Mob as Lawyers Trade Barbs

Right-leaning writers argue that activists and celebrities substituted a public trial for adjudication. Doug Blair writes that progressives who otherwise seek to abolish police and prisons dropped “due process or the presumption of innocence” here—“the mob bays for blood”—citing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that “the culture of rape, sexual assault and pedophilia is protected” at elite schools “including Cornell,” Florence Pugh’s full endorsement of Doe’s account, and Sunny Hostin’s contrary view that Doe’s initial statement gave prosecutors “no valid basis to charge” and that blasting identities before charges was a “massive problem.” Blair says the accused have had their lives “deeply uprooted” and that the mob even targeted “an entirely unrelated man who shared a name with one of the accused,” concluding that guilt is being assigned by “oppressor versus oppressed” and “Believe all women.” Ann Coulter calls the coverage “flood-the-zone” while “the media consistently bury stories” of football-player rapes, including Baylor’s scandal; she writes, “Liberals are so desperate for white gang rapists, they have to make them up,” listing Duke lacrosse and UVA’s Rolling Stone story as “fake,” and says the Cornell defendants are “strikingly diverse” while the two who “vehemently deny any sexual contact,” Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, are “the only white guys.” Lisa Britton calls Cornell’s campus-wide social ban “collective punishment” for one already-shuttered chapter and argues that treating all-male spaces as “inherently problematic” and moving to abolish fraternities ignores evidence of brotherhood’s benefits and “will not help young men during this time of crisis.”