Within days of a former Cornell student suing seven fraternity men for allegedly drugging and gang-raping her, a big part of the conservative media world had its answer. President Trump said the men “won’t get a fair shake.” Fox News host Will Cain called it “mob justice.” Megyn Kelly said the woman probably enjoyed it because she’s “not the most attractive gal.” Matt Walsh said the men should sue her for rape.
All of them say they’re defending due process. That’s a real principle, and the seven men are entitled to it. But due process means waiting for the facts. Most of what the right has said about this case isn’t waiting. It’s picking a side, and it’s the same side Trump picked in 1989, just reversed.
What are the Cornell 7 accused of?
In a civil lawsuit filed September 16, a former Cornell student identified as Jane Doe says that on the night of October 19, 2024, she was pressured into taking ketamine and raped for hours by multiple men at the Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca. She’s suing Cornell, the fraternity and seven former members. All seven deny wrongdoing. Some say the sex was consensual, and others say they weren’t involved.
Nobody has been charged. Cornell’s Title IX panel found she was sexually assaulted by two of the men, and two were expelled. The local district attorney didn’t bring charges in 2024, saying her statement then described what happened as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.” After the lawsuit, he reopened the case, and Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor.
The evidence cuts both ways, and anyone honest has to say so. Days after that night, according to ABC News, she texted one of the men that “non of the sexual stuff was illegal.” About two weeks later she wrote, “90% of what happened that night was not consensual,” and told campus police she’d been raped by 8 to 10 men. A fraternity Snapchat group, according to the complaint, told members there was “free” sex upstairs, and one message read, “Boys come whip it out.”
What did Trump say about the Cornell 7?
Trump didn’t talk about the evidence. Leaving the White House on October 2, he went after the prosecutor:
Letitia James is a corrupt person. She’s totally corrupt and I can’t imagine… I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake.
President Trump, October 2
Trump has a long-running feud with James, who brought a civil fraud case against him. But note what he chose to say. He didn’t say he feels badly for a 20-year-old who says she was raped. He said he feels badly for the men.
What did Will Cain say?
Cain devoted an episode of his Fox News podcast, Will Cain Country, to the case on October 1. Fox’s own description says the case “likely won’t even make it to trial” and that new texts “tear a glaring hole in Jane Doe’s claims.” The episode was titled “The Cornell 7: Did the Mob Decide Before the Facts?”
On the show, according to a transcript of the episode, Cain said he has “a natural aversion to mob justice” and that mob justice is wrong “like 90% of the time.” Then he gave his own verdict anyway: he said he’s “probably in the 80-90 range” that the evidence points to a “drug-fueled orgy.” His guest, Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones, focused on her texts: “She never tells her friend that you rape me. I’m hurting here.”
Cain said doxxing aimed at the accused men’s mothers and parents is “beyond grotesque.” He’s right about that, and the same standard should apply to the woman, who, her lawyer says, has received threats demanding she drop the case. One message called her a “drugged-out prostitute.” At least three other women wrongly identified online as Jane Doe have been threatened too.
What did Megyn Kelly say?
Kelly, a former Fox News anchor who now hosts her own SiriusXM show, started with due process. “The mob has decided they’re guilty and ought to be put to death,” she said on Monday’s show, according to TheWrap. “This is deeply immoral. There are two sides to every story.”
Then she told her audience which side she believed, and why. Apparently reacting to photos and video posted online that claim to show Jane Doe, she said:
No one will even consider the possibility that this woman made a decision to get it on with four men total, not seven, and enjoyed it because, I’m just going to be honest, she’s not the most attractive gal. She’s extremely beefy in her arms and her legs.
Megyn Kelly, The Megyn Kelly Show, October 5
She went on: “She’s probably thrilled to be so admired because she clearly didn’t grow up the incredibly beautiful one.” And: “I’m not trying to be insulting.” Kelly also argued the woman “made the decision to drink and then show up at a fraternity house at 11 o’clock.”
Set aside how cruel that is. Kelly was judging the body of a woman in images that only claim to be the accuser, in a case where strangers have already misidentified and threatened at least three other women. That isn’t two sides to every story. It’s one side, delivered with a body-shaming punchline.
What are Matt Walsh and other conservative voices saying?
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh went further on X. “I’m not kidding when I say that the Cornell frat guys should file a counter suit accusing the woman of raping them,” he wrote, arguing that some of the men were drunker than she was. In another post, he called it “the most open and shut case we’ve ever seen.” And in a longer post, he wrote that feminists “fundamentally reject the idea that women can ever be truly responsible for any wrongdoing,” so “the woman is somehow automatically the victim.”
Breitbart’s John Nolte wrote that new texts “appear to unravel” the allegations, though he called everyone’s behavior “revolting.” The pro-Trump blog The Conservative Treehouse headlined its post “Hochul Appoints AG Letitia James to Weaponize False Rape Allegations,” calling them false before any investigator had finished. A Washington Examiner op-ed warned James was turning the case into “Duke lacrosse 2.0.”
Did any Republicans side with Jane Doe?
Yes, and it’s worth saying. Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican, wrote on X that as a father of two daughters he’s “deeply disgusted and angered” by the story. “Sexual assault is a crime, not a campus disciplinary matter,” he wrote, calling for New York to send these cases straight to law enforcement. “Any of our daughters could be Jane Doe, and they deserve better.”
Lawler didn’t declare anyone guilty. He also didn’t mock the woman or call it a hoax. That’s what a due-process position actually sounds like.
Has the left gotten ahead of the facts too?
Yes. At a town hall in Ithaca, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “seven men drugged and gang raped a 20-year-old woman” as a statement of fact. Letitia James posted support for the accuser before she was named special prosecutor, telling survivors “we stand with you,” which conservative law professor Jonathan Turley rightly flagged as a problem for someone now running the case. Celebrities called for arrests, and actress Jameela Jamil suggested “legal castration.”
That’s wrong too. And not every due-process argument has come from the right. The View‘s Sunny Hostin said the men “have not been charged, not been adjudicated” and questioned the coverage. Due process is a fair argument. Mocking the accuser’s arms isn’t part of it.
What did Trump say about the Central Park Five?
In 1989, a woman jogging in Central Park was raped and beaten, and five teenagers, four Black and one Latino, were arrested. Before any trial, Trump paid for full-page ads in four New York papers: “Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” The five were convicted largely on confessions they later recanted and said were coerced. In 2002, DNA and a confession from a serial rapist cleared them. New York City paid them $41 million in 2014.
In 2019, a reporter asked Trump whether he’d apologize. “You have people on both sides of that,” he said. “They admitted their guilt.” There was no talk of a mob, or a fair shake.
The BeezLoop Take
The presumption of innocence is one of the best things about American law. The seven men named in this lawsuit are entitled to it, and so is everyone else accused of a crime: the kid in an interrogation room with no lawyer, the immigrant arrested off a viral video, the defendant whose family can’t afford to put out a statement. If you believe in it, you believe in it for all of them.
That’s not what’s happening here. Trump wanted five Black and Latino teenagers executed before a jury heard a word, and still won’t take it back after DNA cleared them. Now he feels badly for Ivy League fraternity men who haven’t even been charged. Will Cain warns about the mob and then announces his own 80 to 90 percent verdict. Megyn Kelly says there are two sides to every story, then tells her listeners the woman probably said yes because she “didn’t grow up the incredibly beautiful one.” Matt Walsh says the accuser should be sued for rape.
None of that is due process. It’s choosing who deserves the benefit of the doubt, based on who’s accused and who’s accusing. The facts here are messy, and a prosecutor and maybe a jury will sort them out. Until then, the honest position is the one Lawler took: take it seriously, and let investigators do their jobs.
So here’s the question for everyone defending the Cornell 7 today. The next time the accused aren’t Ivy League students with good lawyers, will you ask for the same fair shake?
Also on BeezLoop: A judge permanently ended the Reflecting Pool case against Olympian David Hearn, citing pressure from the president, and a senator accused Jack Smith of perjury over a Hawks game.
Sources: ABC News 4 (Trump remarks) · Will Cain Country (Fox News Audio) · Will Cain Country transcript · Yahoo/The Independent (Megyn Kelly) · TheWrap (Megyn Kelly) · Primetimer (Matt Walsh) · Breitbart · NBC News (threats) · ABC News (text messages) · Newsweek (reactions) · Jonathan Turley · NBC News (Central Park Five)
