# Sally Yates Comes to Cornell

The Woman Hired to Investigate the Institution That Hired Her

Cornell University has a problem. Actually, Cornell has several problems. A highly publicized sexual assault lawsuit. Questions surrounding its campus police department.
Cornell University has a problem.

Actually, Cornell has several problems.

A 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.

Enter Sally Quillian Yates.

Former 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.

On 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.

On October 20, Yates told the Cornell community:

"I assure you that our independence is not a formality."

That is reassuring.

Of 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.

At Cornell, those questions are anything but academic.

[Sally Yates Investigates Cornell](https://lucycraig.blog/media/722)


## 1. First, Let's Clear Something Up: This Is Not the Jane Doe Investigation

Before the media circus gets any further out of hand, an important distinction needs to be made.

Sally 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.

She was not appointed to determine whether the seven men named in Craig's civil lawsuit committed criminal offenses.

She is not a special prosecutor.

She is not a grand jury.

And 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.

Yates was hired to investigate Cornell University.

Specifically, Cornell's policies, investigative practices, disciplinary procedures, campus police operations, coordination with outside prosecutors, support services, fraternity oversight, and institutional governance.

Yes, 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.

But the mandate is considerably broader.

Cornell Board of Trustees Chair Anne Meinig Smalling said so herself when announcing Yates's appointment:

"The questions raised by the Jane Doe matter warrant a rigorous examination of Cornell's response to that case, but our responsibility is broader."

That is Cornell's own description of the investigation.


## Then Came the Fox News Interview

[Lucy Craig's Lolwyer Attempts To Distort The Scope of Sally Yates' Investigation](https://lucycraig.blog/media/698)

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.

The interview began with questions about Sally Yates.

Giuffra 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.

Much 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.

The interviewer did acknowledge at the outset that Yates was examining Cornell's handling of the Jane Doe matter and sexual assault issues more generally.

Nevertheless, the overall presentation was heavily centered on Giuffra's client.

And that emphasis matters.

The public should not confuse an attorney's media narrative about his client's case with the actual mandate of an independent institutional investigation.

Giuffra is entitled to advocate for Craig. That is his job.

But his advocacy does not define the boundaries of Yates's investigation.

The 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.

Those questions may produce findings favorable to Craig.

They may produce findings favorable to Cornell or the accused students.

They may also reveal a mixture of institutional successes, failures, unresolved disputes and systemic problems extending well beyond this particular case.

This is not a referendum on whether the public believes Lucy Craig. It is an examination of Cornell's conduct and institutional systems.

And no amount of television commentary should obscure that distinction.


## 2. Meet the Investigator. And Her Crisis Management Firm.

Sally Yates is unquestionably an accomplished attorney. Her experience at the Department of Justice is substantial.

But she is not presently working as a public prosecutor accountable to the government.

She is a partner at King & Spalding.

More specifically, according to her own firm's biography, Yates leads its Crisis Management practice.

And that distinction deserves attention.

In a June 25, 2026 announcement, King & Spalding described its crisis management practice as working with corporate boards and executives to:

"protect the enterprise"

The firm's description also emphasizes managing legal and regulatory exposure and reducing reputational harm.

Read that again.

The organization Cornell selected to investigate its institutional conduct also markets its expertise in protecting organizations during damaging public crises.

This 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.

But it creates a question worth asking:

When 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?

Cornell may have hired the right person to investigate its failures.

Or it may have hired an exceptionally experienced institutional crisis adviser.

The distinction will be determined by the investigation's methods, independence and public disclosures, not by the prestige of its lead attorney.


## 3. Remember the Carter Page Surveillance Applications?

Yates's government career includes a controversy that deserves closer scrutiny.

In 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.

These were applications seeking highly intrusive surveillance authority from a federal intelligence court.

In December 2019, the Department of Justice Inspector General released a devastating report on the FBI's handling of those applications.

The Inspector General identified at least 17 significant errors or omissions across the applications.

Investigators had failed to provide decision-makers with important information, including evidence that could have undermined the justification for continued surveillance.

Yates was among the senior officials who approved applications containing serious inaccuracies.

Importantly, 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.

Nevertheless, the applications passed through a process of supposedly rigorous review.

In August 2020, Senator Lindsey Graham questioned Yates about the defective applications.

When asked whether she would have signed an application had she known it contained incorrect information, Yates acknowledged that she would not have done so.

Fair enough.

But here is the problem.

The entire point of oversight is to identify material errors before important decisions are made.

A signature on a consequential document is supposed to represent something more than confidence that everyone below you did their homework.

If 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?

That is not an accusation that she will repeat the failures of the FISA process.

It is a question informed by a very public example of why investigative oversight matters.


## 4. The Yates Memo: Let the Institution Help Investigate Itself

In September 2015, Yates issued a Justice Department policy formally titled Individual Accountability for Corporate Wrongdoing.

The policy became known as the Yates Memo.

Its objective was to hold individual corporate executives and employees accountable rather than simply allowing corporations to resolve misconduct allegations through financial settlements.

An admirable objective.

But the policy also attracted criticism because it placed substantial responsibility on corporations to investigate their own employees and provide information to government prosecutors.

In 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.

Now consider the irony.

A 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.

No, the situations are not identical.

But the underlying question is familiar:

Can an institution be trusted to investigate matters that may expose its own leadership, employees and governance structures to serious criticism?

An independent outside lawyer can help answer that question.

But independence cannot be reduced to the fact that the lawyer has a different office address.


## 5. She Investigated Women's Soccer. Cornell Should Be Held to the Same Standard.

In 2021, U.S. Soccer retained Yates to investigate allegations of abusive behavior and sexual misconduct in women's professional soccer.

Her team conducted more than 200 interviews and reviewed approximately 89,000 documents and other materials.

The resulting October 2022 report was extensive, highly critical of institutional failures, and released publicly.

It documented systemic misconduct and failures to protect athletes.

That investigation is evidence that Yates can conduct a substantial inquiry and publish damaging findings about the organization that commissioned her work.

So why should Cornell receive anything less?

Here is what Cornell says in its official FAQ:

"The Board intends to share the results and recommendations with the Cornell community."

Notice what that does not explicitly promise.

The complete report.

The full investigative methodology.

A meaningful accounting of contradictory evidence.

An explanation of what investigators could not verify.

Disclosure of significant limitations on witness cooperation or document access.

And an account of whether the trustees themselves were subjected to genuine scrutiny.

Cornell may ultimately release a comprehensive report. Nothing in the FAQ rules that out.

But an intention to share results is not the same thing as a commitment to publish the complete findings.

If 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.

After all, universities routinely lecture students about transparency, accountability, academic integrity and ethical leadership.

It would be refreshing to see those principles applied upward.


## 6. Remember Denver Public Schools? This Is What We Do Not Want Cornell to Become.

[Denver School District Investigated Pedophile Director Tay Anderson](https://lucycraig.blog/media/723)

There is another case Cornell's trustees, and Sally Yates herself, would be wise to study.

In 2021, Denver Public Schools faced a serious institutional controversy involving one of its own elected Board of Education directors, Auon’tai “Tay” Anderson.

Anderson was publicly accused of sexual misconduct.

One 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.

The allegations included a reported group of 62 students.

Anderson denied the sexual assault allegations.

Denver Public Schools responded by hiring an outside investigative firm, Investigations Law Group, in April 2021.

Sound familiar?

An educational institution under intense public pressure.

Serious allegations involving students.

Questions about institutional accountability.

An outside firm hired to conduct an independent investigation.

And a promise of transparency.

What the Denver investigators actually found

The resulting report was issued in September 2021.

The investigators did not substantiate the most serious sexual assault allegations, including the claims involving 62 students.

That matters. It would be irresponsible to describe those allegations as established abuse when the investigation did not find sufficient evidence to substantiate them.

But the investigators did substantiate other troubling conduct.

Their findings included unwelcome sexual comments and advances involving members or associates of Never Again Colorado, a youth organization Anderson had previously led.

They also substantiated flirtatious social media communications with a 16-year-old Denver Public Schools student while Anderson was a school board member.

Investigators further found that he had posted social media material that could reasonably be interpreted as intimidating or coercive toward witnesses during the investigation.

Anderson said he did not know the student's age when the online communication began and stopped communicating when he learned she was underage.

The investigators did not find evidence of additional inappropriate conduct with that student.

On September 17, 2021, the Denver school board formally censured Anderson.

So the investigation did reach meaningful findings.

The problem was what happened to public access to the underlying report.


## Ninety-Six Pages. And a Whole Lot of Black Ink.

Denver Public Schools released a 96-page public report.

But substantial sections were redacted.

Some redactions concerned student records and privacy protections. Others concerned allegations involving Anderson's activities before his election to the school board.

Anderson had objected to the disclosure of portions of the report and asserted privacy interests.

The Denver school board initially wanted greater disclosure of at least some of the disputed material.

But after the redacted report was published, two news organizations stepped in.

The Denver Post.

The Denver North Star.

Both sought access to information the public had been prevented from reading.

The newspapers were represented by attorney Rachael Johnson of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Their 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.

Denver Public Schools then asked the court to determine whether the withheld material could legally be released.

The dispute landed before Denver District Court Judge J. Eric Elliff.

On 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.

The result?

The disputed portions stayed redacted.

The court recognized the public importance of the investigation, but the Colorado statute controlled the disclosure question.

The public received findings, but not full access to the material underlying those findings.

That distinction is important.

It is also precisely the kind of outcome Cornell should address before its own investigation reaches the publication stage.


## We Do Not Need Another Expensive Report That the Public Cannot Fully Evaluate.

The Denver investigation was not meaningless.

It identified misconduct, rejected allegations that could not be substantiated, and led to a formal censure.

But its public release also demonstrated how difficult independent scrutiny becomes when substantial portions of the reasoning and evidence remain unavailable.

In Denver, the dispute was ultimately resolved under a specific Colorado public-records statute.

Cornell operates under a different legal framework, including federal student privacy law and New York law. The Denver ruling does not govern Cornell.

Nevertheless, the broader institutional problem is familiar.

An outside investigator gets access to the records.

The institution receives the findings.

The public receives a version selected or restricted through legal processes.

Then everyone is expected to accept that the investigation has answered the important questions.

No. Not this time.

Cornell 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.

Let the facts lead wherever they lead.

If university officials made mistakes, identify the officials and explain the mistakes.

If administrators ignored warnings, identify the administrators and document the warnings.

If campus police withheld information, failed to communicate material evidence, or acted properly despite public criticism, explain precisely what happened and who was responsible.

If a witness's material account changed, explain what the evidence establishes about those changes, with appropriate protections for sensitive personal information.

If accused students were denied procedural protections, identify the procedural failures and the officials responsible.

If Cornell's leadership acted correctly, say that too.

We want names, dates, decisions, documents and explanations. Not another institutional exercise in creative black-marker artistry.

That does not require publishing the identities of minors, confidential complainants, private medical information or intimate details unrelated to institutional accountability.

It requires separating legitimate privacy protections from the concealment of public-interest findings.

Denver offers a warning about how those interests can become entangled.

Cornell has an opportunity to avoid repeating the same transparency dispute.

And Sally Yates has an opportunity to insist upon that distinction before she submits a single final recommendation.


## 7. The Evidence Should Be the Investigation. Not the Narrative.

The Cornell controversy has involved allegations, witness statements, university disciplinary proceedings, police investigations and civil litigation.

Those records do not all serve the same purpose, and they do not necessarily apply identical evidentiary standards.

But they must be examined carefully.

That includes identifying material differences between accounts, determining when witnesses supplied information, verifying contemporaneous documents and distinguishing genuine contradictions from reasonable clarification or additional recollection.

And it applies to everyone.

The complainant.

The accused students.

Other witnesses.

University administrators.

Campus police.

Title IX investigators.

Nobody should be insulated from factual scrutiny simply because their account is politically popular, emotionally compelling or institutionally convenient.

Nor 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.

The purpose of investigation is to test evidence, not to manufacture certainty.

Yates 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.

And when the evidence cannot resolve a dispute, the final report should say so.

An investigator's job is not to produce the most satisfying narrative. It is to establish what the evidence actually supports.

That principle should be especially familiar to someone who once approved surveillance applications later found to contain significant omissions.


## 8. The Cornell Board Is Hiring Someone to Examine Cornell's Board

Cornell's official investigation announcement specifically includes institutional leadership and board oversight within the review's scope.

The special committee responsible for retaining Yates is chaired by Cornell Board of Trustees Chair Anne Meinig Smalling.

The other publicly identified committee members are:

Jennifer L. Davis

Tara Holm

Howard L. Morgan

Beckie Robertson

Stephen C. Robinson

Martin F. Scheinman

Robert W. Selander

These are the individuals Cornell identifies as members of the special committee receiving the investigation's findings and recommendations.

There is no allegation here that any of these trustees personally engaged in misconduct.

But they are the named decision-makers responsible for the oversight framework of this investigation.

And the public should know who they are.

What happens if the investigation identifies failures involving trustees?

What happens if members of Cornell's senior administration challenge the findings?

Who determines which portions of the report become public?

Can the investigative team publicly disclose conclusions that the board considers damaging?

Will Cornell explain the terms of the engagement, including any contractual provisions governing publication?

And who decides whether the investigation has been sufficiently thorough?

As of November 2, the public documentation reviewed for this article does not resolve all these questions.

There is no basis here to claim that the trustees have interfered with Yates's work or that Yates has accepted restrictions compromising her conclusions.

But the existence of unanswered questions is precisely why independent oversight requires more than a press release.

Cornell's trustees should not expect a standing ovation simply for hiring someone famous enough to generate impressive headlines.


## 9. An Investigation Without Subpoena Power Has Limits

Yates's previous investigation of women's soccer illustrates another important limitation.

Private investigative counsel do not possess the compulsory investigative powers of a criminal grand jury.

They may request interviews and records, but they generally cannot force an unwilling outside witness to cooperate merely because an institution has hired them.

In the soccer investigation, some individuals declined to participate or provided written statements instead of interviews.

The same problem could arise at Cornell.

Former students, lawyers, outside witnesses and other parties may decline voluntary cooperation.

Meanwhile, Cornell can provide its own investigators with extensive internal records and access to employees.

The result can be an uneven evidentiary landscape.

One side has institutional archives and salaried personnel.

Other participants may be represented by independent counsel, involved in pending litigation or unwilling to speak.

That does not make an investigation worthless.

It makes transparency about missing evidence essential.

If Yates cannot interview someone, her report should disclose the limitation where legally and ethically appropriate.

If records are unavailable, readers should know.

If findings depend heavily on one witness's account, the report should distinguish direct evidence from uncorroborated testimony.

A professionally written report can still be incomplete.

And a prestigious signature on its cover does not cure that problem.


## 10. Independence Is Not a Job Title

Sally Yates's appointment has generated considerable institutional praise.

Her federal experience is real.

Her investigative background is extensive.

And her 2022 soccer report demonstrates that she has previously issued conclusions deeply critical of powerful organizations.

None of that should be dismissed.

But neither should it place her beyond scrutiny.

Her role in approving defective FISA applications is part of the public record.

Her signature corporate-accountability policy generated substantive academic criticism.

Her law firm openly markets its expertise in institutional crisis management and reputational risk.

And her Cornell investigation operates under arrangements in which the university's trustees retain the law firm and receive the findings.

Those are facts deserving attention.

Whether they ultimately affect the independence or quality of this investigation remains an open question.

Denver Public Schools offers an additional lesson: even when investigators make specific findings, the eventual public record can remain substantially incomplete.

The 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.

That means documenting the investigative scope, disclosing meaningful limitations, protecting procedural fairness and making a substantial final report available with appropriate privacy safeguards.


## The Final Question for Sally Yates

Cornell University has asked Sally Yates to investigate an institutional controversy that has already damaged public confidence.

Yates has promised an independent review.

We would like to believe her.

But confidence should be earned through investigative rigor, not borrowed from a former government title.

So here is the question we would put directly to Ms. Yates:

If 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?

And a second question:

Will the public receive a report detailed enough to evaluate your reasoning, rather than merely the conclusions Cornell's leadership chooses to release?

The Denver Public Schools investigation demonstrated that commissioning an outside investigation and publishing a report are not necessarily enough to produce full public transparency.

Cornell should learn that lesson now.

We do not want another expensive report filled with unexplained redactions.

We do not want an executive summary substituted for the underlying findings.

We do not want unnamed administrators, unidentified decision-makers or vague institutional references when specific officials can be identified from the evidence.

And 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.

We want the evidence.

We want the reasoning.

We want the names of those institutionally responsible for significant decisions.

And we want the conclusions published whether they are popular or not.

Let the chips fall where they fall.

If the evidence supports Craig, publish it.

If the evidence supports the accused students, publish it.

If the evidence demonstrates institutional failures, identify the responsible officials.

If Cornell acted properly, document that conclusion with the same rigor.

And if an allegation cannot be substantiated, say so plainly rather than disguising uncertainty as a definitive finding.

Because Cornell does not need another expensive exercise in managing an institutional crisis.

It needs a thorough examination of what happened, what can be established, what cannot, and who bears responsibility for any documented failures.

The reputation of an Ivy League university should not determine the truth.

Neither should the reputation of the lawyer investigating it.

Ms. Yates, your independence is not a formality. We agree. Now show us what that means.

**Evidence note:** 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.