New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Wednesday that a former federal prosecutor who oversaw the criminal case against Sean “Diddy” Combs will lead the investigation into an alleged 2024 sexual assault at a Cornell University fraternity house.
Former federal prosecutor Jacqueline Kelly, a Cornell graduate, was also the first chief of the civil rights unit in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Kelly is now a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, a firm that represented women who accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse.
James, who was re-elected as the state’s top law enforcement official Tuesday, said in a statement that Kelly “is a seasoned prosecutor who has overseen numerous cases from investigation through trial.”
“With her criminal legal expertise, commitment to public service, and judicial experience, I am confident that she will lead a fair and comprehensive investigation,” James added.
In a statement, Kelly thanked James for the opportunity to lead the review that was ordered Oct. 1 by Gov. Kathy Hochul after the governor raised concerns that the local district attorney who originally considered charges did not do a proper assessment.
“All New Yorkers deserve a fair and thorough inquiry into the facts of this case,” Kelly said in a statement. “I look forward to lending my years of experience as a federal prosecutor to the Office of the Attorney General as we examine all available evidence.”
A former Cornell student filed a lawsuit under the pseudonym Jane Doe in September, accusing seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity of plying her with drugs and sexually assaulting her after what was initially a consensual threesome at the chapter’s house on Oct. 19 and 20, 2024.
The woman, who later dropped out of school, reported the incident to the university and to campus police in November 2024. Records reviewed by NBC News show that the Cornell University Police Department interviewed several witnesses and obtained other evidence.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten declined to bring charges after his office reviewed a six-page statement provided by Jane Doe, which the prosecutor said did not describe a potential crime. Records show that Van Houten’s team did not review additional statements from Jane Doe and others who were interviewed.
Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, said in a statement to NBC News that they “applaud” the decision to appoint Kelly, who they believe “will do a thorough investigation.”
“We expect that she will recognize the disparate roles of the involved parties and consider all of the appropriate charges that are available in the Penal Law. We do not expect that she will limit her inquiry to a single specific charge,” Giuffra said. “We are grateful to Governor Hochul for taking the necessary steps to ensure that a meaningful criminal investigation would finally be conducted in this matter.”
Lawyers for two of the accused fraternity members have asked different state judges to disqualify James from leading the case on the basis that past comments she made on social media in support of Jane Doe exhibit a prejudgment and bias. Those requests are pending.
Andrew Miltenberg represents defendant Gillio Lopes and filed a petition on his client’s behalf to try to get James removed from the investigation as special prosecutor.
Miltenberg said in a statement on Wednesday that he and his co-counsel “welcome Jacqueline Kelly’s appointment and have no objection to her leading the investigative team,” but noted concerns about James’s involvement.
“Our Petition arose because Attorney General James publicly expressed a view concerning these allegations before she was appointed to investigate them,” Miltenberg said. “Changing who manages the investigation does not eliminate that concern if James continues to possess the authority to direct or override the critical prosecutorial decisions.”
Jeremy Saland, an attorney for defendant Scott Kretzschmar, said in a statement to NBC News that while Kelly has experience representing and prosecuting sex crime cases, “it is surprising that Attorney General James overlooked countless current and former New York Assistant District Attorneys who have dedicated their entire careers to investigating state sex crimes similar or identical to those currently being investigated here.”
“Though this appointment is a step in the right direction and one we welcome, James’s public statements have already run afoul of the rule of law by choosing political expediency over the presumption of innocence and pre-judging guilt without examining a stitch of evidence,” Saland added. “All this said, if the facts and the law are honestly and credibly followed, the outcome for Scott remains the same: he is innocent of any criminal wrongdoing.
James has said that her investigation will be fair and fact-based and that her social media remarks, which were made before she was appointed to handle the case, were based on empathy for the accuser. The office “is committed to a thorough investigation guided only by the facts, the evidence, and the law,” James said in her statement announcing Kelly’s appointment.
On the day James was appointed, her office said she was expected to recruit an outside attorney to assist in-house lawyers with the probe. Kelly is now set to bring a team from her law firm, which she joined as a partner last year. Her bio says she specializes in “high-profile regulatory or criminal investigations, as well as victims of sexual assault and other crimes.”
Kelly also worked on a New York indictment against octogenarian fashion CEO Peter Nygard, who in 2024 was sentenced in Canada to 11 years in prison for sexual assaults. The ex-prosecutor also handled a case against Ricardo Cruciani, a pain management doctor accused of sexually abusing a number of patients in several states.
In 2025, Kelly oversaw the prosecution that led to Combs’ conviction for transportation to engage in prostitution but ended in his acquittal on more serious sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy counts. The disgraced entertainment executive is serving a 50-month federal prison sentence.
One of the men accused in Jane Doe’s lawsuit, Winston Lee, is represented by Teny Geragos, who defended Combs at his federal trial.
Geragos declined to comment on Kelly’s appointment.
At trial, Combs’ defense team accused prosecutors of misrepresenting their client’s unconventional relationships with women and denied that the sexual encounters were not consensual. Prosecutors, however, accused Combs of orchestrating a violent criminal enterprise and forcing women and male escorts to participate in marathons, drug-fueled “freak offs.”

The US midterm elections could have consequences far beyond the country’s borders. President Donald Trump has spent nearly two years overturning decades of American foreign policy, unsettling allies and adversaries alike. Now, both are watching to see how an electoral setback at home will shape his actions abroad.
For Iran, Israel and Ukraine, the stakes go well beyond who controls Congress. The result could influence whether Trump pursues a deal with Tehran or more war, how much Washington’s longstanding support for Israel erodes, and how hard he pushes Kyiv to accept terms to end Russia’s war.
Democrats will have new tools to challenge Trump. But he still has considerable freedom to act abroad, leaving world leaders with a question: Will defeat make him more willing to compromise, or more determined to get his way?
Here’s how the vote could impact Washington’s most pressing foreign policy concerns:
Iran gloats, but gets no guarantee of peace
Iran is celebrating Trump’s midterm setback, but it is bracing for what comes next: a possible new US strike or a fresh push for a deal.
Trump admitted in a call with Fox News that the war in Iran was partly to blame for the Republicans’ losses but Vice President JD Vance was more explicit, saying in a lengthy X post Wednesday that “the reason we lost is the war.”
After eight months of striking the region’s economic lifelines to turn American voters against the war, Tehran has hailed the Republican loss as a public verdict on it. Trump acknowledged that war-driven price hikes played a role.
“If the US government betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare,” parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has led negotiations with the US, wrote on X.
Tehran is not betting on a change of course in Washington. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said anyone who believes the results will shift US policy is “deeply mistaken,” and officials say Iran’s strategy doesn’t hinge on American elections as they prepare for more war while intensifying diplomacy.
The risk of escalation is real. Reports that Trump might order new, more intense strikes are fueling anxiety across the region, and Tehran has warned that its retaliation would be much wider in scope than in earlier rounds. This week, Trump told some journalists he is considering striking Iran hard, and others that he has no immediate plans to escalate.
“The Iran war has become a political albatross around his neck, leaving (Trump) with a stark choice: cut a face-saving deal and declare victory, or double down militarily to reclaim the initiative,” Ali Vaez of International Crisis Group told CNN. “The danger is that a president weakened at the ballot box may seek redemption on the battlefield.”
Diplomacy offers another path. Talks that stagnated over the summer have picked up in the past week, with Tehran sending officials to Qatari mediators who are circulating proposals with Washington. Before the vote, Iran offered to open the Strait of Hormuz within two days if Trump agreed to its seven conditions.
Sanam Vakil of Chatham House said Iran’s leadership “might feel vindicated,” but that “does not necessarily solve their problems.” Trump needs a diplomatic victory yet may be reluctant to appear weak, she said, while Tehran could read his setback as a chance to demand greater concessions. She expects intensified diplomacy alongside military threats, with an interim Strait of Hormuz deal “more realistic” than a comprehensive one.
‘End of an era’ for US-Israel relations
In Israel, the election day announcement that Trump would abruptly cut off US military aid to the country was the first surprise. The results, with Democrats sweeping both chambers of Congress in what has been called a “blue tsunami,” are a five-alarm fire in Israel.
Bipartisan support for Israel in the US had already been eroding, with Democrats outraged at Israel over the death toll in the Gaza war and a growing number of Republicans believing the US has given it too much support.
“The only bipartisan issue right now is criticism of Israel,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US. “It’s an organizing principle for the Democratic Party,” he told CNN. “And it’s becoming an organizing principle for much of the Republican Party.”
Oren said the end of US aid is just the beginning of a process that has only started to play out. He said it’s conceivable that the US could end intelligence sharing with Israel and the joint development of critical military systems, such as the vaunted Iron Dome aerial defense system. He also pointed to the United Nations Security Council, where Republican and Democratic presidents have protected Israel with the US veto.
“We are at the end of an era,” he said.
Yaakov Katz, a former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, warned there is more to come. “What Trump announced about the military aid yesterday is just the tip of the iceberg of what can change – arms sales could be blocked, sanctions will be proposed and joint economic programs defunded,” he said on X.
The anti-Israel sentiment only hardened during the Iran war, with segments of the US electorate viewing the joint US-Israel strikes as a war that Netanyahu sold to Trump. Even now, Netanyahu has been pushing to resume strikes on Iran, which would reignite a war that drove gas prices and the cost of living higher and contributed to Republicans’ devastating midterm performance.
Netanyahu also faces turmoil at home. In elections a week before the midterms, he lost his majority in parliament, but his main rival, former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, does not have an outright majority and would likely need to cooperate with Arab parties, who saw record turnout.
Yair Golan, leader of the left-wing Democrats party, warned that Israel “does not have time to waste” in replacing Netanyahu and leading the country away from sanctions and isolation.
Ukraine waits for a post-Trump world
For Kyiv, the reaction came before the election. And on Wednesday there was relative silence.
For weeks, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s relationship with Trump has been in freefall. Trump has demanded Zelensky be replaced; courted energy deals to benefit Russia; and watched as Ukraine’s tech and intel dependencies on the US were inexplicably thwarted. And so Kyiv was forced to take a position early: wait, with urgency, for a post-Trump world.
And when it began to dawn on Wednesday, there was little official comment from Kyiv, Zelensky perhaps happy for the memes of him, sat with a beer and popcorn in front of the mid-term TV coverage, to do the job for him.
A deputy in his office, Sergiy Kyslytsia, pledged on Ukrainian TV that the country would continue to “develop genuine, normal and stable relations” with whoever is in office, seek Patriot interceptors, and navigate both a new Congress and the likely flurry of executive orders that may try to obviate it.
But there can be no disguising that a crestfallen Trump, and the slow clock now loudly ticking on his worldview and presidency, is in Kyiv’s favour. He had claimed a peace was easy to fashion, yet proceeded to punish Ukraine for not agreeing to the demands of its invader. He humiliated, scolded, and then occasionally made up with, Zelensky, while massaged by European allies, aghast at the breakdown in decades of security alliances.
There is still a lot that Ukraine needs Trump and the United States to do. Provide arms, money, and a wider assurance it is on their side. But Kyiv has calculated it cannot depend on Washington, after months of hostility.
There is one downside of the ticking clock however: that Russian President Vladimir Putin determines he has likely a year to pursue, at any cost, the best outcome possible in his war of choice, before the 2028 fight drags Republican policy back to the pro-Ukrainian mainstream. Putin has so far failed to use his apparent great ally, Trump, to secure a battlefield win of note. He may seek to change that while the embers of Trump’s authority burn.

The New York attorney general’s office tapped a former federal prosecutor experienced in sex crime cases to lead the criminal investigation into allegations of sexual assault at Cornell University.
Jacqueline Kelly, a Cornell graduate, will have decision-making authority to investigate claims made by Jane Doe, a former Cornell student who has alleged seven male students sexually assaulted her at a Chi Phi fraternity party in 2024. They have denied wrongdoing.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday in a statement announcing the appointment that her office is committed to an investigation “guided only by the facts, the evidence, and the law.”
James said Kelly “is a seasoned prosecutor who has overseen numerous cases from investigation through trial. With her criminal legal expertise, commitment to public service, and judicial experience, I am confident that she will lead a fair and comprehensive investigation.”
Kelly’s appointment comes a month after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an executive order designating James as a special prosecutor because she “lost faith” in the Tompkins County district attorney, who had previously reviewed the case without filing charges. The allegations and scrutiny over Cornell’s handling of them drew national attention to sexual assault on college campuses.
“All New Yorkers deserve a fair and thorough inquiry into the facts of this case,” Kelly said in the attorney’s general’s statement.
At the time of Hochul’s announcement, officials with the attorney general’s office said they would appoint an outside lawyer to lead the investigation and present evidence to a grand jury, if warranted. The office previously appointed outside counsel to investigate civil claims of sexual harassment by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The office’s criminal authority is limited to investigating police-involved shootings, financial crimes and organized crime. Kelly’s experience will bring specialized skills to a sex crime investigation.
Kelly was the first chief of the civil rights unit created within the criminal division at the US attorney’s office in Manhattan in 2021. Until she left the office last year, Kelly oversaw criminal investigations of Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was acquitted of sex trafficking but convicted on transportation to engage in prostitution charges; Peter Nygard, a Canadian fashion designer charged with sex trafficking women and minors; and Ricardo Cruciani, a prominent doctor who was charged with sexually abusing numerous patients. She also handled organized crime cases.
Kelly will remain a partner at New York law firm Boies Schiller, which she joined last year, and staff the team from the attorney general’s office and her law firm, according to the statement. Boies Schiller has represented several survivors of Jeffrey Epstein in civil litigation, including one of the most outspoken ones, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who died by suicide last year.
It’s unclear if the appointment will impact legal challenges raised by two of the seven male students accused of assaulting Doe. In separate challenges the two Cornell students argued James is biased in favor of Doe based on statements she made days before her appointment.
On September 28, James wrote on X, “What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and in my prayers. To her, and to all survivors: you’re not alone. We stand with you.”
Last week a New York state judge sharply questioned a lawyer for the attorney general about the statement and James’ appearance beside Hochul at a news conference on October 2 as the governor expressed support for Doe.
A lawyer for the attorney general’s office said it was not an “impediment” to an investigation and that the students’ claims of bias are without merit. James, she said, would follow the facts and the law.
The judge was also skeptical of the student’s petition because none of the others accused joined in support of it. He gave the lawyer until Thursday to get attorneys for the other students to sign on or produce legal arguments why it shouldn’t be dismissed on technical legal grounds.

John Frieda, the British celebrity hairstylist behind the Frizz Ease brand, has died, according to a statement posted to his Instagram on Tuesday.
He was 75.
Frieda’s cause of death was not immediately clear.
“It is with heavy hearts that we share the news that our dear John passed away peacefully …. surrounded by his family,” the statement said.
“John was more than a mentor to us; he was a true icon of the hair industry,” the statement continued.
“He was the person who taught us everything, believed in us, and made us better. His talent and passion touched so many, and his legacy will live on in every single one of us. We will continue to do him proud,” it added.
Throughout his career, Frieda worked with some of the biggest celebrity names, including Princess Diana, pop superstar Madonna, former first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis, The Beatles, actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Scarlett Johansson, among several others.
Frieda was born in 1951 in London. At the time, his father owned a west London salon. Frieda told The Standard newspaper in 2012 that his dad had wanted him to become a doctor, but Frieda pursued a career in hair to get out of studying.
He worked his way up through the London hairstyling scene, working alongside other big names in the business and styling models for Vogue fashion shoots. More than 30 years ago, he opened his first salon in London and went on to open branches in Los Angeles and New York City.
In the 1990s, Frieda launched the Frizz Ease brand with a serum meant to tame frizzy hair. The brand has since grown in global popularity, with a whole line of products — sold in drug stores and salons across the world.
Frieda married Scottish pop singer and actor Lulu in 1976. The couple had one son together and later divorced.
He entered into a relationship with Avery Agnelli — the widow of Fiat heir Giovanni Agnelli — in the early 2000s, and the pair married in 2019. With Agnelli, Frieda shares two children and a stepdaughter.

It was a father-daughter night at the museum.
Matt Damon brought his daughter Isabella Damon as his date to the 2026 CFDA Fashion Awards on Monday.
The 20-year-old — who signed with IMG Models in August, Page Six Style exclusively reported — wore a white crochet gown from Luar’s spring 2027 collection. The floor-length number was trimmed with silky fringe at the cuffs and hem.
Matt, 56, kept things classic in a Ralph Lauren Purple Label double-breasted tuxedo, forgoing a shirt and tie in favor of a black cashmere turtleneck.
The “Odyssey” star was at the American Museum of Natural History on official business, presenting Lauren with the award for American Menswear Designer of the Year.
Luar designer Raul Lopez gave Isabella’s look his approval, commenting “Iconic sis 😍” on her Instagram post from the evening. “You’re a genius 😘,” she replied.
She’s in good company. Beyoncé wore a custom pinstriped Luar dress during Jay-Z’s Yankee Stadium run in July, and Lady Gaga chose a baby-blue gown from the brand for her surprise cameo in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show in February.
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The New York City-based label also has a history of working with famous progeny, casting Solange’s son Daniel “Julez” Smith Jr. in its New York Fashion Week show in February 2024.
Isabella is making a name for herself in the business. In September, she starred in J.Crew’s Barn Jacket campaign.
Her dad, for one, is eager to see where it leads. “I’m really excited to see what she does with her life,” Matt told People on the red carpet.
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