On Oct. 1, Gov. Kathy Hochul named Attorney General Letitia James special prosecutor in the Cornell 7 case. A former Cornell student says seven fraternity men drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2024. James will decide whether to bring them before a grand jury.
For almost 12 years, a woman named Angel S. DuBose has made a similar accusation against Letitia James.
DuBose says that after an office Christmas party in 2014, she was drugged, put into James's car, and sexually assaulted. James has called it "an outright lie." No prosecutor has taken it to a grand jury.
No public record shows James being questioned under oath about DuBose's allegations.
The Cornell student got a special prosecutor two weeks after she filed her lawsuit. DuBose is still waiting.
THE PARTY AT WOODROW'S
In 2014, DuBose was an outreach coordinator for James, who was then New York City's Public Advocate. She earned $35,000 a year and was raising two daughters. Ibrahim Khan was James's chief of staff.
On Dec. 22, 2014, the office held its holiday party at Woodrow's Bar & Grill on Murray Street, near City Hall.
DuBose says Khan called her to the end of the bar and ordered her a drink. She says his hand hovered over the glass while he stared at her. She took a sip.
She says she went outside to smoke. James's black Lincoln Town Car, the Public Advocate's city car, pulled up. She says two of James's staffers, Wayne Collins and Christopher Marshall, grabbed her from behind. One put an arm across her face, and she believes they used a liquid. She began drifting in and out of consciousness.
She says they put her in the back seat next to James, and she heard James ask twice: "Is she out?"
DuBose says she was taken to a nearby location, where a chanting woman led a ritual and as many as a dozen people, men and women, sexually assaulted her. She woke up outside in the rain, without her coat or bags, hailed a cab, and went to her sister's apartment.
WHAT SHE DID NEXT
The next day, she had a sexual-assault forensic exam at a hospital, about 14 to 16 hours after the party. The toxicology screen was negative for the drugs it tested for. It did not test for GHB, certain benzodiazepines, or other drugs used in assaults.
On Jan. 5, 2015, her first day back after the holidays, she gave her supervisor, Laura Acosta, a four-page written complaint.
Two days later, Acosta and the office's lawyer, Jennifer Levy, handed her a page-and-a-half memo to sign.
both documents.
Her complaint describes being drugged, abducted, and assaulted, and names the people she says were involved. The memo names no one. It says she lost her purse, a second bag, and her coat and couldn't recall how. It quotes her as saying she just wants to move on and do her job.
The city's Department of Investigation got the memo. It closed the matter four business days later.
In 2017, she went to the Manhattan District Attorney. She says she told the prosecutor about the car and James's question, and that her statement replaced James's name with "a woman's voice."
She says she was told the case wouldn't go forward because she hadn't said "stop." According to DuBose, prosecutors did not interview any of the people she identified.
That September, the New York Post ran her story and named Khan. James's spokeswoman called it "an outright lie." DuBose says James then fired her.
DuBose later sued to force DOI to investigate. A judge dismissed the case, and an appeals court upheld that this year, ruling only that DOI could decide not to investigate, not whether the assault happened.
THE SAME LAW, TWO WOMEN
The Cornell case turns on New York's consent law. On Sept. 28, Tompkins County DA Matthew Van Houten explained why he didn't charge the seven men in 2024.
Under the law, he wrote, a person is incapacitated if a drug was given to her without her consent. He said the Cornell student's sworn statement described her drug use as voluntary, and that each time she asked the men to stop, they stopped.
DuBose's account is the opposite. She says the drug was given to her against her will, in a drink and with a liquid over her face.
If her account is true, that's exactly what the law covers. A person drugged against her will doesn't have to say "stop."
Yet DuBose says prosecutors told her they would not proceed because she had not said it.
WHO IS PROSECUTING CORNELL
As of last year, Jennifer Levy, who DuBose says helped turn her complaint into a lost purse, was First Deputy Attorney General, second in command of James's office. Collins and Marshall, the two men DuBose says put her in the car, worked in the AG's office. Anna Brower, the spokeswoman who called DuBose a liar in 2017, was James's chief of staff.
That's the office now investigating whether seven men drugged and assaulted a woman.
Three days before she got the case, James posted that what the Cornell student endured was "horrific and unacceptable" and called her a survivor.
On Oct. 2, a reporter asked her why she had sided with the accuser before investigating. "I will not comment on a Facebook post," she said.
The Cornell student is entitled to a prosecutor who takes her seriously.
The seven men are entitled to one who hasn't already decided.
Angel DuBose is entitled to one who isn't the person she accuses.
An independent prosecutor might find DuBose is telling the truth, or that she isn't, or that no one can tell.
New York found a special prosecutor for the Cornell student in two weeks. It can find one for Angel DuBose. It shouldn't be anyone who works for Letitia James.
April 20, 2025: From #MeToo Crusader to Cover-up: Letitia James's Silence on Alleged Serial Predator Ibrahim Khan
June 5, 2025: 'IS SHE OUT?': Letitia James Named in Shocking Abduction Allegation
June 29, 2025: More Info on Angel DuBose's Christmas Party Accusation: Will It End Letitia James's Career?
Sept. 5, 2025: DuBose Says Letitia James's Staff Drugged and Restrained Her Before Assault in Official Vehicle
Sept. 11, 2025: The Two Documents: How Letitia James's Aides Recast a Sexual Assault Allegation as a 'Lost Purse' Complaint
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