{"blocks":[{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Cornell University has a problem.\n\nActually, Cornell has several problems.\n\nA highly publicized sexual assault lawsuit. Questions surrounding its campus police department. A deeply contested Title IX process. Students protesting. Faculty demanding answers. Trustees facing scrutiny. And a university president attempting to navigate what has become a national public-relations crisis.\n\nEnter Sally Quillian Yates.\n\nFormer Deputy Attorney General of the United States. Briefly Acting Attorney General. Federal prosecutor. Washington legal celebrity. And now, apparently, the person who will help Cornell figure out what went wrong.\n\nOn October 6, 2026, a special committee of Cornell's Board of Trustees retained Yates and the international law firm King & Spalding to conduct what Cornell describes as an independent investigation into its handling of sexual misconduct allegations.\n\nOn October 20, Yates told the Cornell community:\n\n\"I assure you that our independence is not a formality.\"\n\nThat is reassuring.\n\nOf course, assurances of independence are usually most convincing when the person receiving them does not have to ask who hired the investigator, who controls the eventual report, and who gets to decide what the public sees.\n\nAt Cornell, those questions are anything but academic.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"Sally Yates Investigates Cornell","caption":"Sally Yates Investigates Cornell","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"722","text":"","type":"image"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"1. First, Let's Clear Something Up: This Is Not the Jane Doe Investigation","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Before the media circus gets any further out of hand, an important distinction needs to be made.\n\nSally Yates was not hired to conduct a new criminal investigation into Lucile H. Craig, publicly identified in this controversy as Lucy Craig and referred to in the civil litigation as Jane Doe.\n\nShe was not appointed to determine whether the seven men named in Craig's civil lawsuit committed criminal offenses.\n\nShe is not a special prosecutor.\n\nShe is not a grand jury.\n\nAnd her investigation is not a substitute for either the university's disciplinary proceedings or the separate criminal investigation overseen by New York Attorney General Letitia James.\n\nYates was hired to investigate Cornell University.\n\nSpecifically, Cornell's policies, investigative practices, disciplinary procedures, campus police operations, coordination with outside prosecutors, support services, fraternity oversight, and institutional governance.\n\nYes, her team will examine Cornell's response to Craig's 2024 allegations. That case is explicitly part of the assignment and a principal reason the review was commissioned.\n\nBut the mandate is considerably broader.\n\nCornell Board of Trustees Chair Anne Meinig Smalling said so herself when announcing Yates's appointment:\n\n\"The questions raised by the Jane Doe matter warrant a rigorous examination of Cornell's response to that case, but our responsibility is broader.\"\n\nThat is Cornell's own description of the investigation.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Then Came the Fox News Interview","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"Lucy Craig's Lolwyer Attempts To Distort The Scope of Sally Yates' Investigation","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"698","text":"","type":"video"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"On October 30, 2026, Fox News published a lengthy interview between correspondent Bryan Llenas and Thomas Giuffra, the attorney representing Craig in her civil lawsuit.\n\nThe interview began with questions about Sally Yates.\n\nGiuffra confirmed that Yates had recently contacted him and expressed confidence in her work. He anticipated that Craig and potentially members of her family would participate.\n\nMuch of the subsequent discussion revolved around Craig's allegations, her police statements, the district attorney's earlier decisions, and accusations that Cornell had mishandled evidence.\n\nThe interviewer did acknowledge at the outset that Yates was examining Cornell's handling of the Jane Doe matter and sexual assault issues more generally.\n\nNevertheless, the overall presentation was heavily centered on Giuffra's client.\n\nAnd that emphasis matters.\n\nThe public should not confuse an attorney's media narrative about his client's case with the actual mandate of an independent institutional investigation.\n\nGiuffra is entitled to advocate for Craig. That is his job.\n\nBut his advocacy does not define the boundaries of Yates's investigation.\n\nThe inquiry must examine whether Cornell complied with its policies, whether investigators properly handled evidence, whether accused students received fair procedures, whether reports were accurately communicated to prosecutors, and whether university officials fulfilled their responsibilities.\n\nThose questions may produce findings favorable to Craig.\n\nThey may produce findings favorable to Cornell or the accused students.\n\nThey may also reveal a mixture of institutional successes, failures, unresolved disputes and systemic problems extending well beyond this particular case.\n\nThis is not a referendum on whether the public believes Lucy Craig. It is an examination of Cornell's conduct and institutional systems.\n\nAnd no amount of television commentary should obscure that distinction.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"2. Meet the Investigator. And Her Crisis Management Firm.","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Sally Yates is unquestionably an accomplished attorney. Her experience at the Department of Justice is substantial.\n\nBut she is not presently working as a public prosecutor accountable to the government.\n\nShe is a partner at King & Spalding.\n\nMore specifically, according to her own firm's biography, Yates leads its Crisis Management practice.\n\nAnd that distinction deserves attention.\n\nIn a June 25, 2026 announcement, King & Spalding described its crisis management practice as working with corporate boards and executives to:\n\n\"protect the enterprise\"\n\nThe firm's description also emphasizes managing legal and regulatory exposure and reducing reputational harm.\n\nRead that again.\n\nThe organization Cornell selected to investigate its institutional conduct also markets its expertise in protecting organizations during damaging public crises.\n\nThis is not evidence of corruption or a predetermined outcome. Crisis management and independent investigations are legitimate legal practices, and the same firm can perform both.\n\nBut it creates a question worth asking:\n\nWhen an investigator's professional business includes protecting an institution from reputational harm, how does the public independently verify that reputational considerations have not influenced the investigation?\n\nCornell may have hired the right person to investigate its failures.\n\nOr it may have hired an exceptionally experienced institutional crisis adviser.\n\nThe distinction will be determined by the investigation's methods, independence and public disclosures, not by the prestige of its lead attorney.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"3. Remember the Carter Page Surveillance Applications?","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Yates's government career includes a controversy that deserves closer scrutiny.\n\nIn 2016 and 2017, while serving as Deputy Attorney General, Yates approved the initial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application targeting Carter Page and its first renewal.\n\nThese were applications seeking highly intrusive surveillance authority from a federal intelligence court.\n\nIn December 2019, the Department of Justice Inspector General released a devastating report on the FBI's handling of those applications.\n\nThe Inspector General identified at least 17 significant errors or omissions across the applications.\n\nInvestigators had failed to provide decision-makers with important information, including evidence that could have undermined the justification for continued surveillance.\n\nYates was among the senior officials who approved applications containing serious inaccuracies.\n\nImportantly, the Inspector General found that the investigative team failed to provide senior officials with complete and accurate information. The report did not establish that Yates knowingly approved false representations.\n\nNevertheless, the applications passed through a process of supposedly rigorous review.\n\nIn August 2020, Senator Lindsey Graham questioned Yates about the defective applications.\n\nWhen asked whether she would have signed an application had she known it contained incorrect information, Yates acknowledged that she would not have done so.\n\nFair enough.\n\nBut here is the problem.\n\nThe entire point of oversight is to identify material errors before important decisions are made.\n\nA signature on a consequential document is supposed to represent something more than confidence that everyone below you did their homework.\n\nIf incomplete information can undermine an investigation at the highest levels of federal law enforcement, what safeguards will Yates use to ensure that Cornell's own investigative files contain the complete story?\n\nThat is not an accusation that she will repeat the failures of the FISA process.\n\nIt is a question informed by a very public example of why investigative oversight matters.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"4. The Yates Memo: Let the Institution Help Investigate Itself","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"In September 2015, Yates issued a Justice Department policy formally titled Individual Accountability for Corporate Wrongdoing.\n\nThe policy became known as the Yates Memo.\n\nIts objective was to hold individual corporate executives and employees accountable rather than simply allowing corporations to resolve misconduct allegations through financial settlements.\n\nAn admirable objective.\n\nBut the policy also attracted criticism because it placed substantial responsibility on corporations to investigate their own employees and provide information to government prosecutors.\n\nIn a 2017 Iowa Law Review article, law professor Katrice Bridges Copeland argued that the Yates Memo risked shifting investigative responsibilities from government prosecutors to corporations, potentially damaging attorney-client relationships and the integrity of internal investigations.\n\nNow consider the irony.\n\nA lawyer whose most famous corporate-accountability policy prompted academic criticism about institutional control of investigations has been retained by an institution to examine its own conduct.\n\nNo, the situations are not identical.\n\nBut the underlying question is familiar:\n\nCan an institution be trusted to investigate matters that may expose its own leadership, employees and governance structures to serious criticism?\n\nAn independent outside lawyer can help answer that question.\n\nBut independence cannot be reduced to the fact that the lawyer has a different office address.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"5. She Investigated Women's Soccer. Cornell Should Be Held to the Same Standard.","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"In 2021, U.S. Soccer retained Yates to investigate allegations of abusive behavior and sexual misconduct in women's professional soccer.\n\nHer team conducted more than 200 interviews and reviewed approximately 89,000 documents and other materials.\n\nThe resulting October 2022 report was extensive, highly critical of institutional failures, and released publicly.\n\nIt documented systemic misconduct and failures to protect athletes.\n\nThat investigation is evidence that Yates can conduct a substantial inquiry and publish damaging findings about the organization that commissioned her work.\n\nSo why should Cornell receive anything less?\n\nHere is what Cornell says in its official FAQ:\n\n\"The Board intends to share the results and recommendations with the Cornell community.\"\n\nNotice what that does not explicitly promise.\n\nThe complete report.\n\nThe full investigative methodology.\n\nA meaningful accounting of contradictory evidence.\n\nAn explanation of what investigators could not verify.\n\nDisclosure of significant limitations on witness cooperation or document access.\n\nAnd an account of whether the trustees themselves were subjected to genuine scrutiny.\n\nCornell may ultimately release a comprehensive report. Nothing in the FAQ rules that out.\n\nBut an intention to share results is not the same thing as a commitment to publish the complete findings.\n\nIf Yates could produce a publicly accessible, detailed investigation of institutional misconduct in professional soccer, the Cornell community is entitled to ask whether the same transparency standard will apply to an Ivy League university.\n\nAfter all, universities routinely lecture students about transparency, accountability, academic integrity and ethical leadership.\n\nIt would be refreshing to see those principles applied upward.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"6. Remember Denver Public Schools? This Is What We Do Not Want Cornell to Become.","type":"heading"},{"alt":"Denver School District Investigated Pedophile Director Tay Anderson","caption":"Denver School District Investigated Pedophile Director Tay Anderson","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"723","text":"","type":"image"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"There is another case Cornell's trustees, and Sally Yates herself, would be wise to study.\n\nIn 2021, Denver Public Schools faced a serious institutional controversy involving one of its own elected Board of Education directors, Auon\u2019tai \u201cTay\u201d Anderson.\n\nAnderson was publicly accused of sexual misconduct.\n\nOne particularly serious allegation, conveyed through testimony by Mary-Katherine Brooks-Fleming before the Colorado legislature, involved claims that Anderson had sexually assaulted or engaged in sexual misconduct against dozens of Denver Public Schools students.\n\nThe allegations included a reported group of 62 students.\n\nAnderson denied the sexual assault allegations.\n\nDenver Public Schools responded by hiring an outside investigative firm, Investigations Law Group, in April 2021.\n\nSound familiar?\n\nAn educational institution under intense public pressure.\n\nSerious allegations involving students.\n\nQuestions about institutional accountability.\n\nAn outside firm hired to conduct an independent investigation.\n\nAnd a promise of transparency.\n\nWhat the Denver investigators actually found\n\nThe resulting report was issued in September 2021.\n\nThe investigators did not substantiate the most serious sexual assault allegations, including the claims involving 62 students.\n\nThat matters. It would be irresponsible to describe those allegations as established abuse when the investigation did not find sufficient evidence to substantiate them.\n\nBut the investigators did substantiate other troubling conduct.\n\nTheir findings included unwelcome sexual comments and advances involving members or associates of Never Again Colorado, a youth organization Anderson had previously led.\n\nThey also substantiated flirtatious social media communications with a 16-year-old Denver Public Schools student while Anderson was a school board member.\n\nInvestigators further found that he had posted social media material that could reasonably be interpreted as intimidating or coercive toward witnesses during the investigation.\n\nAnderson said he did not know the student's age when the online communication began and stopped communicating when he learned she was underage.\n\nThe investigators did not find evidence of additional inappropriate conduct with that student.\n\nOn September 17, 2021, the Denver school board formally censured Anderson.\n\nSo the investigation did reach meaningful findings.\n\nThe problem was what happened to public access to the underlying report.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Ninety-Six Pages. And a Whole Lot of Black Ink.","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Denver Public Schools released a 96-page public report.\n\nBut substantial sections were redacted.\n\nSome redactions concerned student records and privacy protections. Others concerned allegations involving Anderson's activities before his election to the school board.\n\nAnderson had objected to the disclosure of portions of the report and asserted privacy interests.\n\nThe Denver school board initially wanted greater disclosure of at least some of the disputed material.\n\nBut after the redacted report was published, two news organizations stepped in.\n\nThe Denver Post.\n\nThe Denver North Star.\n\nBoth sought access to information the public had been prevented from reading.\n\nThe newspapers were represented by attorney Rachael Johnson of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.\n\nTheir argument was straightforward: the public had a legitimate interest in understanding the investigation and independently assessing whether Anderson's public characterization of its findings was justified.\n\nDenver Public Schools then asked the court to determine whether the withheld material could legally be released.\n\nThe dispute landed before Denver District Court Judge J. Eric Elliff.\n\nOn February 14, 2022, Judge Elliff ruled that the report was a public record but that the disputed information fell within Colorado's statutory exemption for sexual harassment complaints and investigations.\n\nThe result?\n\nThe disputed portions stayed redacted.\n\nThe court recognized the public importance of the investigation, but the Colorado statute controlled the disclosure question.\n\nThe public received findings, but not full access to the material underlying those findings.\n\nThat distinction is important.\n\nIt is also precisely the kind of outcome Cornell should address before its own investigation reaches the publication stage.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"We Do Not Need Another Expensive Report That the Public Cannot Fully Evaluate.","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"The Denver investigation was not meaningless.\n\nIt identified misconduct, rejected allegations that could not be substantiated, and led to a formal censure.\n\nBut its public release also demonstrated how difficult independent scrutiny becomes when substantial portions of the reasoning and evidence remain unavailable.\n\nIn Denver, the dispute was ultimately resolved under a specific Colorado public-records statute.\n\nCornell operates under a different legal framework, including federal student privacy law and New York law. The Denver ruling does not govern Cornell.\n\nNevertheless, the broader institutional problem is familiar.\n\nAn outside investigator gets access to the records.\n\nThe institution receives the findings.\n\nThe public receives a version selected or restricted through legal processes.\n\nThen everyone is expected to accept that the investigation has answered the important questions.\n\nNo. Not this time.\n\nCornell should establish its publication commitments now, not after the investigation is finished and the lawyers have spent weeks discussing what the university would prefer to keep confidential.\n\nLet the facts lead wherever they lead.\n\nIf university officials made mistakes, identify the officials and explain the mistakes.\n\nIf administrators ignored warnings, identify the administrators and document the warnings.\n\nIf campus police withheld information, failed to communicate material evidence, or acted properly despite public criticism, explain precisely what happened and who was responsible.\n\nIf a witness's material account changed, explain what the evidence establishes about those changes, with appropriate protections for sensitive personal information.\n\nIf accused students were denied procedural protections, identify the procedural failures and the officials responsible.\n\nIf Cornell's leadership acted correctly, say that too.\n\nWe want names, dates, decisions, documents and explanations. Not another institutional exercise in creative black-marker artistry.\n\nThat does not require publishing the identities of minors, confidential complainants, private medical information or intimate details unrelated to institutional accountability.\n\nIt requires separating legitimate privacy protections from the concealment of public-interest findings.\n\nDenver offers a warning about how those interests can become entangled.\n\nCornell has an opportunity to avoid repeating the same transparency dispute.\n\nAnd Sally Yates has an opportunity to insist upon that distinction before she submits a single final recommendation.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"7. The Evidence Should Be the Investigation. Not the Narrative.","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"The Cornell controversy has involved allegations, witness statements, university disciplinary proceedings, police investigations and civil litigation.\n\nThose records do not all serve the same purpose, and they do not necessarily apply identical evidentiary standards.\n\nBut they must be examined carefully.\n\nThat includes identifying material differences between accounts, determining when witnesses supplied information, verifying contemporaneous documents and distinguishing genuine contradictions from reasonable clarification or additional recollection.\n\nAnd it applies to everyone.\n\nThe complainant.\n\nThe accused students.\n\nOther witnesses.\n\nUniversity administrators.\n\nCampus police.\n\nTitle IX investigators.\n\nNobody should be insulated from factual scrutiny simply because their account is politically popular, emotionally compelling or institutionally convenient.\n\nNor should a reporting party be treated as unreliable simply because a later statement contains additional detail. Trauma, memory, reporting circumstances and questioning methods all require careful consideration.\n\nThe purpose of investigation is to test evidence, not to manufacture certainty.\n\nYates should therefore explain whether her team will independently review the original materials, including recordings and contemporaneous records where available, rather than relying exclusively on summaries prepared by Cornell.\n\nAnd when the evidence cannot resolve a dispute, the final report should say so.\n\nAn investigator's job is not to produce the most satisfying narrative. It is to establish what the evidence actually supports.\n\nThat principle should be especially familiar to someone who once approved surveillance applications later found to contain significant omissions.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"8. The Cornell Board Is Hiring Someone to Examine Cornell's Board","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Cornell's official investigation announcement specifically includes institutional leadership and board oversight within the review's scope.\n\nThe special committee responsible for retaining Yates is chaired by Cornell Board of Trustees Chair Anne Meinig Smalling.\n\nThe other publicly identified committee members are:\n\nJennifer L. Davis\n\nTara Holm\n\nHoward L. Morgan\n\nBeckie Robertson\n\nStephen C. Robinson\n\nMartin F. Scheinman\n\nRobert W. Selander\n\nThese are the individuals Cornell identifies as members of the special committee receiving the investigation's findings and recommendations.\n\nThere is no allegation here that any of these trustees personally engaged in misconduct.\n\nBut they are the named decision-makers responsible for the oversight framework of this investigation.\n\nAnd the public should know who they are.\n\nWhat happens if the investigation identifies failures involving trustees?\n\nWhat happens if members of Cornell's senior administration challenge the findings?\n\nWho determines which portions of the report become public?\n\nCan the investigative team publicly disclose conclusions that the board considers damaging?\n\nWill Cornell explain the terms of the engagement, including any contractual provisions governing publication?\n\nAnd who decides whether the investigation has been sufficiently thorough?\n\nAs of November 2, the public documentation reviewed for this article does not resolve all these questions.\n\nThere is no basis here to claim that the trustees have interfered with Yates's work or that Yates has accepted restrictions compromising her conclusions.\n\nBut the existence of unanswered questions is precisely why independent oversight requires more than a press release.\n\nCornell's trustees should not expect a standing ovation simply for hiring someone famous enough to generate impressive headlines.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"9. An Investigation Without Subpoena Power Has Limits","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Yates's previous investigation of women's soccer illustrates another important limitation.\n\nPrivate investigative counsel do not possess the compulsory investigative powers of a criminal grand jury.\n\nThey may request interviews and records, but they generally cannot force an unwilling outside witness to cooperate merely because an institution has hired them.\n\nIn the soccer investigation, some individuals declined to participate or provided written statements instead of interviews.\n\nThe same problem could arise at Cornell.\n\nFormer students, lawyers, outside witnesses and other parties may decline voluntary cooperation.\n\nMeanwhile, Cornell can provide its own investigators with extensive internal records and access to employees.\n\nThe result can be an uneven evidentiary landscape.\n\nOne side has institutional archives and salaried personnel.\n\nOther participants may be represented by independent counsel, involved in pending litigation or unwilling to speak.\n\nThat does not make an investigation worthless.\n\nIt makes transparency about missing evidence essential.\n\nIf Yates cannot interview someone, her report should disclose the limitation where legally and ethically appropriate.\n\nIf records are unavailable, readers should know.\n\nIf findings depend heavily on one witness's account, the report should distinguish direct evidence from uncorroborated testimony.\n\nA professionally written report can still be incomplete.\n\nAnd a prestigious signature on its cover does not cure that problem.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"10. Independence Is Not a Job Title","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Sally Yates's appointment has generated considerable institutional praise.\n\nHer federal experience is real.\n\nHer investigative background is extensive.\n\nAnd her 2022 soccer report demonstrates that she has previously issued conclusions deeply critical of powerful organizations.\n\nNone of that should be dismissed.\n\nBut neither should it place her beyond scrutiny.\n\nHer role in approving defective FISA applications is part of the public record.\n\nHer signature corporate-accountability policy generated substantive academic criticism.\n\nHer law firm openly markets its expertise in institutional crisis management and reputational risk.\n\nAnd her Cornell investigation operates under arrangements in which the university's trustees retain the law firm and receive the findings.\n\nThose are facts deserving attention.\n\nWhether they ultimately affect the independence or quality of this investigation remains an open question.\n\nDenver Public Schools offers an additional lesson: even when investigators make specific findings, the eventual public record can remain substantially incomplete.\n\nThe university should not ask the public to accept independence as an article of faith. It should provide enough transparency for the public to evaluate it.\n\nThat means documenting the investigative scope, disclosing meaningful limitations, protecting procedural fairness and making a substantial final report available with appropriate privacy safeguards.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"The Final Question for Sally Yates","type":"heading"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"Cornell University has asked Sally Yates to investigate an institutional controversy that has already damaged public confidence.\n\nYates has promised an independent review.\n\nWe would like to believe her.\n\nBut confidence should be earned through investigative rigor, not borrowed from a former government title.\n\nSo here is the question we would put directly to Ms. Yates:\n\nIf your investigation uncovers evidence that Cornell's trustees, administrators, campus police or disciplinary officials mishandled this matter, can you guarantee that those findings will reach the public without institutional interference, subject only to legitimate legal and privacy protections?\n\nAnd a second question:\n\nWill the public receive a report detailed enough to evaluate your reasoning, rather than merely the conclusions Cornell's leadership chooses to release?\n\nThe Denver Public Schools investigation demonstrated that commissioning an outside investigation and publishing a report are not necessarily enough to produce full public transparency.\n\nCornell should learn that lesson now.\n\nWe do not want another expensive report filled with unexplained redactions.\n\nWe do not want an executive summary substituted for the underlying findings.\n\nWe do not want unnamed administrators, unidentified decision-makers or vague institutional references when specific officials can be identified from the evidence.\n\nAnd we certainly do not want the findings filtered to create a more comfortable public narrative for Cornell, Lucy Craig, the accused students or anyone else.\n\nWe want the evidence.\n\nWe want the reasoning.\n\nWe want the names of those institutionally responsible for significant decisions.\n\nAnd we want the conclusions published whether they are popular or not.\n\nLet the chips fall where they fall.\n\nIf the evidence supports Craig, publish it.\n\nIf the evidence supports the accused students, publish it.\n\nIf the evidence demonstrates institutional failures, identify the responsible officials.\n\nIf Cornell acted properly, document that conclusion with the same rigor.\n\nAnd if an allegation cannot be substantiated, say so plainly rather than disguising uncertainty as a definitive finding.\n\nBecause Cornell does not need another expensive exercise in managing an institutional crisis.\n\nIt needs a thorough examination of what happened, what can be established, what cannot, and who bears responsibility for any documented failures.\n\nThe reputation of an Ivy League university should not determine the truth.\n\nNeither should the reputation of the lawyer investigating it.\n\nMs. Yates, your independence is not a formality. We agree. Now show us what that means.","type":"paragraph"},{"alt":"","caption":"","height":420,"html":"","media_id":"","text":"This article is commentary based on publicly available records as of November 2, 2026. It raises questions about investigative independence, methodology and institutional accountability. It does not allege that Sally Yates or King & Spalding has engaged in misconduct in the Cornell review. The most serious allegations against Tay Anderson discussed in the Denver comparison are still unanswered because to date there is no unredacted file copy of the the independent investigators' reprot. Allegations in the underlying Cornell sexual assault litigation remain contested, and this article does not determine the guilt or innocence of any participant.","type":"evidence"}],"canonical":"https://lucycraig.blog/article/sally-yates-comes-to-cornell","description":"The former Deputy Attorney General has arrived with an impressive r\u00e9sum\u00e9, a controversial history, and a law firm that specializes in managing institutional...","keywords":["cornell","investigation","yates","institutional","report","evidence","denver","findings","cornell's","whether","investigative","sally"],"markdown":"https://lucycraig.blog/article/sally-yates-comes-to-cornell.md","published_at":"2026-11-02T13:10:27+00:00","section":"Legal Commentary","subtitle":"The Woman Hired to Investigate the Institution That Hired Her","summary":"Cornell University has a problem. Actually, Cornell has several problems. A highly publicized sexual assault lawsuit. Questions surrounding its campus police department.","title":"Sally Yates Comes to Cornell","updated_at":"2026-11-02T13:12:03+00:00"}