Sunny Hostin Defends Decision to Not Charge Cornell 7, Claims the Sexual Assault Case Is Being Reported 'Inaccurately' and 'Unfairly'

During the Tuesday, September 29, broadcast of The View, co-host and former federal prosecutor Sunny Hostin defended the Tompkins County District Attorney’s 2024 decision not to charge seven Cornell University fraternity brothers accused of gang r---.

Hostin argued that under New York State law, the case has been reported "inaccurately" and "unfairly" by ignoring the legal rules surrounding voluntary intoxication and consent.

Hostin, a former s-- crimes prosecutor, pointed out that in the victim's original 2024 statement, the complainant voluntarily recounted drinking and using ketamine.

She also asserted that "there is no way, according to her statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would’ve brought forth a case," defending Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten’s original choice not to file criminal charges.

Hostin said the original 2024 police statement described consensual sexual activity.

"I will say that under current New York State law, voluntary intoxication or drug use — and she voluntarily drank a lot; she voluntarily took snorted ketamine off of one of the boys’ body parts; she [was] also highly intoxicated when she arrived at the frat house [and] had made plans to meet one of the young men," she explained. "She allowed other boys and consented to other boys snorting ketamine off of her body, and under New York law, voluntary intoxication or drug use that merely impairs judgment does not legally constitute an inability to consent to sexual activity. So that means if you voluntarily ingest drugs, you voluntarily take alcohol, you can agree to have threesomes, which, in her statement, she agreed to have two separate threesomes."

“One young man did walk in and say, ‘Everybody out.’ So there was one person that did that, and according to her statement, three of the young men did not touch her…. All that’s to say, the pictures of these young men who have not been charged, not been adjudicated, are being plastered all over the internet," the mother-of-two continued. "I think people are reporting this story inaccurately. I think they’re reporting it unfairly. And while this is something that we have to take very seriously, there is no way, according to her statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would have brought charges."

“Now, I’ve prosecuted s-- crimes for 10 years. I believe women. I am not saying that we shouldn’t believe her, but in 2024 she said one thing, and now in 2026 she’s saying another," she added.

She faced immediate pushback from her co-hosts.

"How about the fact that the girl says that seven guys r---- her, and they tell them to write essays about it?” Joy Behar asked.

While Alyssa Farah Griffin conceded that Hostin was technically accurate about the text of New York law, she blasted the law itself for failing to protect heavily intoxicated individuals.

“How can the law protect and argue that somebody who, we know when she arrived had had 10 drinks, how could you — this is the law, Sunny is absolutely right on this — how could you possibly consent? How could you possibly be in a decision-making space? My issue is with the law there,” Griffin shared.

Griffin also noted that the university denied the essays were a form of punishment, to which Hostin replied, “I think you have to think about it from a legal position at this point, but I will also say this: I think corporate governance or a university’s governance has to be even-keeled. It has to be the same all around. I mean, in the spring of 2024, Cornell suspended something like 18 students for participating in pro-Palestinian protests. Yet this happens in 2024, and some of the kids write essays.”

Jane Doe's attorney, Thomas Giuffra, has publicly disputed Hostin’s characterization, maintaining that his client declared a sexual assault from the beginning and was legally incapable of consenting.

The seven individuals explicitly named as defendants in the lawsuit are Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar.

The lawsuit alleges that after the victim became heavily intoxicated, fraternity members pressured her to ingest ketamine, causing her to lose consciousness.

Following Cornell University's initial internal investigation in 2024 into the Cornell 7, two of the seven accused fraternity members were expelled, while the remaining five received lesser sanctions, including suspension and the aforementioned essays, which the university disputed as being a sanction.

The men are then accused of using a Snapchat group chat titled "Chi Phi Actives" to invite other fraternity brothers upstairs to participate in the multi-hour sexual assault.

Following a recently filed civil lawsuit and the leak of fraternity group chat logs, the local District Attorney has officially reopened the criminal investigation and announced plans to present the case to a grand jury.

In screenshots of texts obtained by CBS, an unnamed male defendant seems to apologize to the victim for “how things went down,” adding his memory was “kinda fuzzy.”

He also said he and another male present at the gang r--- regretted that they were too drunk to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”

The victim, who was 20 at the time of the alleged assault and has since left Cornell, said her memory was “super clouded too,” adding that “none of the sexual stuff was illegal,” stating that she liked being with him and another man. She later suggested they smoke together again, “but like leave out the extra 5 billion men and ketamine.”