Cornell accuser's lawyer rebukes Megyn Kelly over appearance remarks

The lawyer for the former Cornell University student suing seven of her former classmates over an alleged gang rape rebuked the broadcaster Megyn Kelly for remarks about his client's appearance, and asked why Kelly waited more than a decade to report her own harassment allegations.

Thomas P. Giuffra, a partner at Rheingold, Giuffra, Ruffo, Plotkin and Hellman, represents the woman identified in the lawsuit only as Jane Doe. He told The Daily Beast that Kelly's attacks were "mean-spirited" and that answering them "simply gives individuals a platform to be abusive to women by objectifying and minimizing their worth."

Kelly, 55, told listeners of her SiriusXM program that nobody would consider the possibility that the woman chose to have sex with four men and enjoyed it. The reason she gave was the woman's body. She called her "not the most attractive gal," said she was "extremely beefy in her arms and her legs," and pointed to a video online in which the accuser discusses her cankles.

What Kelly said on air

Kelly also said the woman "possibly enjoyed being admired" and that the attention was "probably a first for her." She said the accuser "clearly didn't grow up the incredibly beautiful one," counted the night in her inebriated state as a win, and that "that's why she kept saying yes." She added: "I'm not trying to be insulting."

The remarks aired on the Oct. 5 edition of The Megyn Kelly Show. HuffPost described the comments as an apparent reference to images circulated by social media users who said they showed the accuser.

Ms. Kelly has publicly condemned Ms. Doe for taking two weeks to go to the police. I would ask Ms. Kelly why it took her over a decade to report unwanted sexual advances from her boss?

Giuffra said that "when people with a following attack, it gives others permission to attack." He added: "Perhaps she should reflect why it is difficult for women to come forward under these circumstances and honor the courage that it takes."

Kelly's account of Roger Ailes

Kelly posted a clip of her commentary to X alongside a line asking whether a woman who had been violently gang raped repeatedly over the course of an evening would take three weeks to call campus police. On the show she said the delay, the chatting with the friends and the decision to go to campus police said a lot to her, International Business Times reported.

X users attached a Community Note to the post, saying Kelly "did not report her own sexual harassment by then Fox News CEO Roger Ailes for over a decade" and that she "repeatedly spoke positively of him in the interim before finally reporting his unwanted sexual advances."

Kelly described Ailes's conduct in her 2016 memoir, Settle for More, writing that she was barely a year into her Fox News career when he made unwanted advances toward her. She has said the incident happened in 2006 and that she told a supervisor, who advised her to avoid Ailes. She went public in 2016, saying an earlier complaint "would have been a suicide mission for me and my career."

Ailes denied the allegations, and Kelly's account was later featured in the 2019 film Bombshell, with Charlize Theron portraying her.

Milano, Rodrigo and the backlash

The actress and activist Alyssa Milano published an open letter to Kelly on Substack on Oct. 8 asking, "What the f*ck is wrong with you?" Milano wrote that Kelly owed women an apology for promoting misogyny and owed Jane Doe an apology "for making her body part of your dumb argument," according to Mediaite. Kelly's audience, she wrote, was owed a correction.

Kelly also turned on the singer Olivia Rodrigo, who wrote on Instagram, "Shame on Cornell and on every institution who protects rapists and abusers over women. I stand with Jane Doe." Kelly told her to "shut up and stick to singing" and said she preferred her "in front of a microphone singing your weird little depressing songs."

Kelly went further on the same program, telling Rodrigo to sit down and be quiet or she would begin examining the singer's music and lyrics, a review she said would not end well for her, TMZ reported.

The media watchdog group Media Matters for America posted a clip from the Sept. 30 edition of the show in which Kelly said that if the accuser's identity is revealed, she is going to name her. Kelly has been among the most vocal commentators questioning Doe's allegations and defending the accused students, Mediaite reported.

SiriusXM and the broadcast

The Megyn Kelly Show is carried by SiriusXM, and clips are posted to YouTube. The Daily Beast reported on Oct. 7 that the satellite radio company had not responded to its requests for comment, and that it had also contacted Rodrigo's representatives. TMZ said it had contacted Rodrigo's representative and had not heard back.

No criminal charges have been filed against the seven men named in the lawsuit, all former members of the Chi Phi fraternity, who have rejected the allegations and maintain either that the sexual contact was consensual or that they were not present, The Daily Beast reported.

The case behind the dispute

Jane Doe, a former Cornell undergraduate who was 20 at the time, alleges in her lawsuit that she was drugged and gang raped by seven men during a party at the Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca, New York, on Oct. 19 and 20, 2024. She sued the university and the seven men on Sept. 16, 2026.

Two of the seven men named in the lawsuit were expelled, two were suspended and the other three received lighter punishments, HuffPost reported. The accuser ultimately dropped out of school. Cornell's interim president, Michael Kotlikoff, described "serious and deeply disturbing allegations of drug abuse and sexual violence at the Chi Phi fraternity house" in a statement in November 2024, according to ABC News.

What the transcripts show

Kelly's central complaint has been the three weeks between the party and the accuser's report to campus police. Doe said she felt shame but did not initially acknowledge that she had been raped, The Daily Beast reported, citing transcripts obtained by The New York Times.

The accuser arrived at the party already intoxicated after drinking at her sorority house and at two bars, according to investigation documents described in an ABC News timeline of the case. She said she kept drinking at the fraternity house and accepted drugs before agreeing to a sexual threesome and then losing consciousness. One of the drugs she says she was forced to take is ketamine.

In the early hours of Oct. 20, one of the fraternity members allegedly messaged the chapter's Snapchat group to say there was free sex upstairs. The accuser kept texting the man who invited her in the days that followed. "My reputation is destroyed and I'm utterly ashamed," she wrote on Oct. 23, 2024.

Where the investigation stands

Jane Doe reported the alleged assault to Cornell University police on Nov. 8, 2024, and gave a formal statement on Nov. 14 that campus police referred to the Tompkins County District Attorney's Office, which decided not to file charges. The office reopened the investigation in late September, and Governor Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, Mediaite reported.