Am I the most hated man in liberal America?

I’ve had hexes put on me by a university professor, had online vigilantes send packages of dogshit to my childhood home in New Jersey and been hounded by the trauma-informed journalists of the New York Times. CNN, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and other estimable sources have credited me with starting a dark new anti-#MeToo movement. Along the way, I have received tens of thousands of rabidly embittered phone calls, emails and texts. “Hope you get held down and raped for seven hours and wake up with a blistered fucking asshole,” is a fairly standard example of the unremitting torrent of vitriol. Naively, I had thought it would be a straightforward journalistic endeavor to seek out, corroborate and publish the identity of “Jane Doe.” She is the complainant in the Cornell 7 civil complaint involving questionable claims of an Ivy League drugging and gang-raping rampage. The names of the accused defendants were circulated far and wide effectively overnight; to keep the (adult) plaintiff anonymized indefinitely would amount to little more than witlessly enabling a hucksterish litigation tactic – one expressly aimed at extracting the largest possible settlement payouts.

As I embarked on this identification quest, a woman named Kelly Cuccolo emailed to implore me to change course and adhere to the journalistic code of conduct set forth by an organization called RAINN – or the “Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.” Ms. Cuccolo, who identifies as a “Senior Research Specialist” in something or other, and proudly touts her PhD in psychology from the University of North Dakota, wrote me on October 1: “Hello, here is a resource for you on how professional journalists cover sexual violence in the media.” She helpfully supplied a link to a RAINN-produced guide on how “responsible journalism” should be in furtherance of “survivor-centered advocacy.” This entails “best practices” for “trauma-informed” reportorial methodologies. First and foremost: never so much as dream of “identifying a survivor,” under any circumstances, regardless of whether “survivorship” has been established through any sort of reasoned evaluation or adjudicative process. “Survivor” status can be self-declared, and is then to be presumptively accepted. It should go without saying that these “guidances” are not for carrying out “journalism” as such, but are instead part of an ideological mission by political actors. Thanks to organizations such as RAINN, this “survivor-centered” paradigm has already been adopted as the default consensus across the media. Case in point (as with so much else that bedevils us in this troubled era): the New York Times.

On the evening of October 18, I had the honor of spending an hour on the phone with the NYT’s Amy Julia Harris. She and her “trauma-informed” colleagues were gearing up for a blockbuster of an article in which I would be cast as the viciously depraved ringleader of an online mob. Again: all I had ever sought to do was report on the individual whose use of the court system had spurred such a frantic upheaval, with enormous legal, political, and cultural consequences. Jane Doe’s lawyer Thomas Giuffra then started to complain that she was being badgered with nasty messages and made to feel unsafe. Which is a rare allegation I had no particular qualm with reflexively “believing.” However, I certainly had nothing to do with directing any of this purported unpleasantness. Yet Harris seemed to be interested in almost anything but the fact that I had accurately identified Jane Doe after talking to people who knew her at Cornell and in her hometown, cross-checking details with court records, university records, material from her sorority, her social media pages, and so on. This was done in service of a concrete journalistic objective I had stressed over and over: to contest the hysteria-fomenting, profit-seeking litigation scheme leveraged to great effect by Giuffra.

Harris was clearly hell-bent on suggesting that I had set out to maliciously “doxx” Jane Doe. But I hadn’t published her home address, phone number, email address, parents’ private information or anything like that. I even texted Jane Doe herself before publishing the identity, to make clear that I held no animus toward her as an individual – my focus was overwhelmingly on the shambolic, unscrupulous conduct of her counsel. Because if there’s anyone who could be said to have engaged in any “doxxing,” it’s Jane Doe’s own lawyer. Giuffra left her signature partially unredacted on the affidavit he had her sign, and let slip numerous other identifying details in his mad publicity scramble. He even published her former address in Manhattan on the public court docket. Yet here I was, being fingered by Harris and her band of NYT hall-monitors as the big bad doxxing culprit. “I mean, are you conceding that it’s correct at this point?” I asked Harris, in mild desperation. “Was the identity of the Jane Doe claimant that I reported correct? Because that’s what ultimately matters most here… right?” There came a pregnant pause. “I guess…” she finally mustered, before steering the conversation right back to ancillary queries about how personally disreputable I must be. “We’re not going to say that you were correct or incorrect.”

The article they eventually conjured would feature no fewer than 11 coauthors and “contributors,” as though they had all spent years doggedly laboring to uncover a byzantine classified CIA operation. Naturally, the article presents the disclosure of Jane Doe’s identity as something I, this weird “independent journalist” guy, had haphazardly “announced to his followers on X,” like I was just throwing out a random guess. As maddening as my interactions with Harris were, in the end she actually went against type and shared something rather startling and unexpected. Giuffra had reportedly told one of her colleagues that I’d phoned him up in shame to apologize for my dastardly deeds. Only problem: I have never spoken to Giuffra. He has never returned my calls, texts, or emails. I informed Harris that this alleged phone call never happened. Eventually, she said: “I don’t think we’re going to report that.” Which is strange, when you think about it. The lawyer who engineered this massive nationwide “gang-rape” uproar was going around making up completely fake conversations to the media.