90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, February 2, 2020

No Sympathy For The Devil

Columbia University Found Him Guilty Of Rape. But He’s Got Voice Recordings, And He’s Not Afraid

It wasn’t the balancing act high above Manhattan atop a water tower, nor her demands that she be fucked and fucked right this very second, but the moment she suddenly said, “We’re in my apartment, right?” that made Ben Feibleman glad he hit “record.”

What you are about to read is based on court filings, a 30-minute recording, and an interview. The details matter in this case, so we left nothing out. Be forewarned, what you are about to read is explicit.

Last May, Feibleman filed a $25 million lawsuit against Columbia University in New York federal court for expulsion and gender discrimination under Title IX. A female classmate had accused him of sexual assault. He says she assaulted him, not the other way around. Despite the evidence, the school decided he was guilty. His case is now in the discovery phase. In all court filings, Feibleman’s accuser is called “Jane Doe.” Both sides are waiting for a former President Obama-appointed judge, Valerie Caproni, to rule on Columbia University’s motion to partially dismiss the lawsuit.

Ben Feibleman very glad he hit “record.”

The ruling could come any day.

Now, simple defense is no longer enough for Feibleman. No. He wants to bring it all down.

The night in question was fairly routine.

It was a brisk Tuesday night in October 2016 when students gathered in the World Room on the third floor of Pulitzer Hall. Think high ceilings. Exquisite art. Huge picture windows overlooking the city’s Upper West Side and Harlem. Beer and wine flowed from an open bar. Nobody’s getting hammered yet, mind you. This was a graduate reception at a dignified Ivy. Not exactly ripe for sloppy hookups.

A woman plays a starring role in the space. The stained glass panel in turquoise and mossy green is called “Liberty of the World.” Columbia purchased her in 1955 for $1. Joseph Pulitzer handpicked her in 1908.

Nobody expected behavior like this at Columbia University, least of all Feibleman, a Marine veteran in his first semester at one of the nation’s most prestigious graduate journalism programs — a fertile recruiting ground for outlets like the New York Times, NBC and CNN. Price tag: $56K for a year or $100K for a fancier degree.

The 2017 graduate journalism class was already cozy. By September, students had already begun fucking. Now they were busy mingling. Deep into their writing classes. Frenetic stress buzzed through the room. Feibleman was struggling to keep up with the rigorous demands of his classes. His sub-section of 14 students came with its own chaos and ominous beginning. Their assigned professor, David Klatell, died of pancreatic cancer on their first day of class. Professors roamed the reception while students greased for story ideas and kissed a lot of ass to get business cards from Pulitzer Prize-winning guest speakers. It was a weekly ritual.

The large group shrunk until the few who remained were the types to believe Tuesday night itself was good enough reason to keep the party going.

Feibleman knew her a little from orientation, but they had never hung out. On this night, he seemed to hit the jackpot of hookups. At the reception, the complaint says, they sat on the floor and she asked him to put his head in her lap. She later sneaked kisses when her friends weren’t looking. She poured beer down his throat during a drinking game. Then she asked him to walk with her to the roof, where she climbed atop the water tower and beckoned him. She took off her top while he unclasped her bra. He sucked on her breasts. She called him a “pussy” for being afraid when they climbed the tower in the dark and when he wouldn’t go near the edge like she did.

He watched as she did a perfect backward roll off the side of the water tower. She taunted him about being a Marine who was afraid of heights. She straddled him on top of a ladder, then slapped him hard across the face and bit his lip. He hated the lip biting and told her to stop. None of this made him any less attracted to her, but according to him, he was steadily becoming more cautious.

She talked to him in a hot, vulgar way back at her apartment.

“Don’t you wanna fuck me?” she asked multiple times, on tape, in clear words. In fact, she affirmed her desire to have sex with her classmate no less than 29 times. She wanted him to fuck her and she wanted it, her word, “hard.” He wanted that, too. But something in his gut told him he better protect himself. And not with a condom.

After messing around for approximately 15 minutes — kissing, fingering, grinding, throat pressing (or “choking” as Columbia’s filing asserts) — she reiterated her desire for rough sex and he pumped the brakes. He thought of the squeaky bed, paper-thin walls and her roommate. When she refused to take no for an answer he pressed record.

In total, he claims she bit him three times, yanked his pants down, and grabbed his buttocks in an attempt to “force her mouth on his penis.”

Feibleman had already sensed that things might go sideways.

Some things made him nervous. When he first tried to leave, she started to cry. He couldn’t leave a woman in tears. He wanted to leave on positive terms. He liked her. He liked his classmates. He didn’t want to be known as the class scum.

Conversation took the form of a nightmarish loop. She demanded rough sex. He said no. She asked why not. He told her she’s too drunk, but later said he didn’t believe it. She had stopped drinking hours earlier, he recalls. He was just trying to employ what he describes in court filings as the “nuclear option,” which he believed would make the conversation stop. Again, he tried to leave. Again, she demanded that he stay.

“In the morning you’re going to thank me for not taking advantage of you,” Feibleman says on the recording. She didn’t agree. “Or I’m gonna apologize,” she replied.

After many of her pleas and more of his denials, she seemed to snap back into consciousness: “Oh, shit. Fuck…shit.”

And this: “Jesus Christ. Okay. Wait. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No, wait. No. What’s going on?”

He asked if she’s okay.

After her confusion seemed to ease, she returned to her refrain: “I think you wanna fuck me.”

From the recording:

Him: I do want to fuck you now.

Her: So do it, muster the courage.

Him: You know how bad I wanna hold you down and fuck you hard?

Her: I want that.

Eventually, she asked him to “snuggle” her.

He agreed to snuggle her.

For the entirety of the 30-minute recording, she forbade him from leaving.

On tape, he can be heard cooing at her cat and tucking her into bed. He can also be heard declining her relentless demands for sex. He seemed to soothe her by telling her what he wanted to do to her at a later date. Some of his fantasies involved “tying her down and fucking her like a piece of meat…you’ve never been made into a little whore. Bent over and fucked. You ever been fucked like that?” Her response: “No I haven’t. Show me. Show me” His reply: “I’m not gonna show you tonight.”

At no point did she appreciate him saying no.

After a lot of begging and pleading, she asked, “Why not?”

He replied, “Because I’m going home to get sleep. And you’re going to bed to get sober.”

She continued trying to coax him: “I don’t get why you won’t do it now. I want to. Please. Please. Ben, I want you.”

She seemed upset by his refusals, at times questioning her own attractiveness.

“Here, Ben,” she said on the recording. “You don’t want to fuck me and that disappoints me.”

And this: “You think that I’m gross.”

To that, he replied, “I don’t think you’re gross at all. I think you’re gorgeous.”

Just after 2 a.m., Feibleman finally left.

It wasn’t even a day later when she accused him of sexual assault under the university’s Title IX statute. She didn’t seek medical attention or call the police.

“Ben tried to have sex with me,” she told her roommate after he left. She also told her boyfriend, who allegedly questioned how drunk she was. She called him an “asshole” and hung up. That morning she informed the school that Feibleman had sexually assaulted her.

Columbia University allegedly investigated the matter for six months. In June 2017, a panel of three administrators held a Kangaroo-style hearing in which they never used any evidence he provided or asked “Jane Doe” a single question about his side of the story. Neither of the two investigators on the case even showed up. In the end, the school withheld his degree, effectively ending his career in journalism.

At one point, they warned him not to utter a word about a medical report he obtained that addressed her level of capacity based on 700 photographs and the 30-minute recording. According to his legal complaint, a witness “Jane Doe” called to support her in Columbia’s case against him later called Feibleman and told him that she sometimes mixed pills and alcohol to get over a boyfriend. If he mentioned the report, Columbia authorities said they’d throw him out of the hearing and proceed without him.

Feibleman had seven minutes to speak in which he said, “Please please ask me about it,” referring to his allegations against her. School administrators declined. He had no voice — literally.

Afflicted with laryngitis that day, he sat there silently with his lawyer, who also wasn’t allowed to speak. In less than 24 hours, the panel declared him “responsible” for sexual assault “as the result of consensual non-intercourse sexual contact” he had with her prior to her demands for intercourse.

On the other hand, the school treated his allegations of sexual assault like a joke. Citing “insufficient evidence” and the notion that even if it happened, he would’ve liked it, the school declared that “Jane Doe” was “not responsible” for any alleged assaults on him. Columbia University let him graduate in May, but retroactively expelled him in June and ditched the diploma he’d spent the past year-and-half (and the rest of his GI Bill) earning.

Discovery is sticky. Neither side can agree on what should be handed over to the other camp.

Columbia University is demanding Feibleman’s military records. He served in the Marines for six years and left with an honorable discharge. His legal team is arguing against providing them. “They have not stopped asking for it even though it’s irrelevant to the claims of the lawsuit,” his lawyer Kimberly Lau tells me. “This shouldn’t be a fishing expedition.”

Feibleman’s legal team includes Warshaw Burstein’s Lau and James Figliozzi. Both lawyers have expertise in Title IX matters.

Lau says, meanwhile, that Columbia University is being less than forthright, fighting tooth and nail to hold on to relevant documents.

“Things that they’ve been giving are piecemeal and it’s not without repeated requests,” she said. “We’re going to need court intervention.”

In all previous Title IX cases, Columbia University has sided with the woman.

This time they’ve got a fighter.

“I think it’s very challenging to be sort of waiting for your life to be put back together,” Lau says of Feibleman’s state of mind. “Even with a decision on the motion, for better or worse, the case would still...

You Have Found Yourself Within A Palindrome... There Is No Escape!

This Week Is Palindrome Week: Every Date Written Backwards Is The Same As It Is Written Forwards...

Tulsi Gabbard Blocked By CNN From Town Hall Events Despite Greater Support Than Invited Candidates

As the DNC deals with a report that there is an effort by some members to work to block Sanders at the national convention, presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii) is also facing a concerted effort by the Democratic establishment to cut her off from voters. In a particularly chilling ratcheting up of the anti-Gabbard rhetoric in October, CNN analyst Bakari Sellers called her a Russian puppet — an accusation the mirrors the allegation by Hillary Clinton that she is an actual Russian asset. The Hill has an article on the controversy that notes that CNN invites other candidates with less support in polls and has refused to respond to queries on why she is being locked out. This follows the shockingly biased questions targeting Bernie Sanders by CNN reporter Abby Phillips.

Gabbard, a veteran, is a long-standing and leading anti-war activist. That stance has earned her the ire of many in the Democratic establishment as she has attacked figures like Hillary Clinton for her hawkish record in supporting wars in Iraq and Libya.

The Hill article notes that she is polling ahead of other invitees. That leaves the appearance of a raw bias against Gabbard by CNN, which invited candidates like Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick who does not even appear on most national polling. Also invited are Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer who are polling below Gabbard. In New Hampshire, Gabbard is beating Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) with 8 percent in polling.

The most outrageous moment however came from CNN analyst Sellers who declared on the air that “There is no question, there is no question that Tulsi Gabbard, of all the 12, is a puppet for the Russian government.” Sellers is a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

Like the Clinton attack, it is a return to the Red Scare attacks of the McCarthy period — painting anti-war candidates as fellow travelers with the Russians. Gabbard has sued Clinton over the statements, though such lawsuits are dubious in light of the higher standard applied to public officials and public figures under New York Times v. Sullivan.

CNN seems unwilling to fully address the obvious bias against Gabbard and Sanders or to explain why she should be barred in favor of...

California Crime Bill Would Allow Adults To Be Tried as Children

The late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously termed the individual states “laboratories of democracy.”

In this way, California’s kind of like if you let Bunsen and Beaker from “The Muppet Show” loose to do as they pleased in the nation’s most populous state.

Instead of Beaker bearing the brunt of the ill-conceived experiments, however, the 39 million residents are the ones who end up feeling the pain when it all blows up in their face.

Plastic straw bans? Guess where they started?

A law designed to turn independent contractors into full-time employees that ended in massive job losses for those in the gig economy? They’ve got that, too.

Oh, and then there are those restrictive building policies that have led to expensive housing and massive rates of homelessness.

Paper straws, unemployment and tent cities are all pretty bad.

The damage SB 889 may end up wreaking upon California could be just as awful.

The legislation is the brainchild of state Sen. Nancy Skinner, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
I
She’s from Berkeley, so I’ll give you 0.5 guesses as to what party she belongs to. The particulars of the bill, introduced Jan. 24, can be summed up with a wait-you’re-kidding-she-didn’t-actually-propose-that-did-she headline:

SB 889 means criminal suspects under the age of 20 could be charged as juveniles.

“Under SB 889, prosecutors who wished to charge anyone aged 16 through 19 as an adult would need to file a motion in juvenile court,” the Mercury News reported.

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China Caught Spying: Engineer at US Defense Contractor Charged for Taking Missile Defense Secrets to China

A Chinese-American former engineer at a major U.S. defense contractor has been indicted on charges of violating federal export control laws after he took his work laptop containing classified missile technology, without authorization, to China.

Wei Sun, a 48-year-old Chinese-born American citizen, had worked as an electrical engineer for a decade at Raytheon Missile Systems, a subsidiary of Raytheon, the fourth-largest U.S. defense contractor, according to court documents. The Arizona-based company produces missile and missile-defense systems for the U.S. military.

During his employment, Sun held a secret-level security clearance and had access to sensitive advanced missile-defense technology.

In December 2018, Sun told a Raytheon official that he planned on taking his work laptop on an overseas trip, court records said. The engineer was told however that doing so would be a violation of company policy and of federal export control law because his laptop contained sensitive information on a missile-defense project that he had been working on.

Sun did so anyway, prosecutors allege. He also logged onto the Raytheon internal network while overseas and, using his work email, sent an email to the company in January 2019 saying he was resigning in order to study and work overseas.

After returning to the United States a week later, he admitted to taking the laptop overseas, the documents said. While he initially told Raytheon security officials he had only visited Singapore and the Philippines during his trip, he later admitted to taking the laptop to China.

Sun was arrested by the FBI the next day, according to Quartz, which first reported the case.

As assessment of Sun’s laptop by a Raytheon lawyer confirmed that it contained defense data subject to export restrictions under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the complaint said. Under those regulations, a person must apply for a license from the U.S. State Department to export any export-controlled data from the United States.

Sun’s laptop had sensitive data relating to two missile programs: advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) used on U.S. fighter jets and Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV), a now-canceled Pentagon project that aimed to replace the interceptor which shoots down...