BS BULLETIN:

• Moonies Bar & Nightclub is directly challenging a key allegation in the civil lawsuit surrounding the explosive Cornell rape case.
• The bar says the then-20-year-old accuser was clearly marked as underage and was never served alcohol by its bartenders.
• Then comes the eyebrow-raiser: Moonies says she later worked for the company and never told them she had been served alcohol there.

One of the businesses swept into the massive lawsuit surrounding the alleged gang rape of a Cornell University student is now pushing back — and its version of events adds another complication to a case already overflowing with them.

Moonies Bar & Nightclub in Ithaca says it did not serve the woman identified as Jane Doe alcohol when she attended a private Tri Delta sorority event there on Oct. 19, 2024.

Doe was 20 at the time.

Her lawsuit says a Moonies bouncer put an “X” on each of her hands identifying her as underage, but alleges she was nevertheless served and consumed at least one alcoholic drink inside.

Moonies says that is simply false. “No alcohol was served to anyone who had mark on their hands,” the bar told Fox News.

According to Moonies, approximately 185 people attended the private event. Roughly 35 were underage and had their hands marked, while guests who were at least 21 received wristbands.

Bartenders, Moonies says, served only people wearing those wristbands.

The company went further in a formal answer filed Sunday in New York Supreme Court, denying that it unlawfully provided alcohol to Doe or anyone else who was underage or visibly intoxicated.

It wants the claims against it dismissed.

But here’s the detail that makes this more than the standard “defendant denies lawsuit” story. Moonies told Fox News that Doe later worked for the company from February to March 2025 — months after the night at the center of her allegations.

The bar says Doe discussed the October incident during that period but never claimed Moonies had gotten her intoxicated or that one of its bartenders had served her alcohol.

That does not resolve what happened later that night, nor does it prove that Doe wasn’t served at Moonies. It does, however, create another factual dispute that lawyers are almost certainly going to spend plenty of time examining.

And there are already quite a few.

Doe’s lawsuit says she had been drinking vodka at her Tri Delta sorority house before going to Moonies and later another Ithaca bar. She alleges she arrived at the Chi Phi fraternity house visibly intoxicated after consuming roughly 10 standard drinks over approximately three hours.

She alleges that what followed included ketamine, marijuana, high-proof alcohol and ultimately sexual assaults involving multiple fraternity members.

Seven former Chi Phi brothers are accused of sexual assault and rape in her lawsuit. They have denied wrongdoing, with some saying sexual activity was consensual and others denying participation.

No criminal charges have been filed against the seven men.

But the case has exploded far beyond a civil lawsuit.

Thousands demonstrated at Cornell this week, faculty senators are pursuing a no-confidence resolution against the university administration, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed the state attorney general’s office as special prosecutor. Attorney General Letitia James is now overseeing what her office describes as an “active criminal investigation.”

That investigation follows revelations about what prosecutors did — and apparently did not — receive during the original case.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has said the six-page sworn statement originally provided to his office by Cornell University Police did not allege that Doe had been drugged against her will or gang-raped and instead characterized her participation in drugs and sexual activity as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”

But a much longer transcript of Doe’s police interviews later obtained by CBS contained statements in which she explicitly said she had been raped.

Van Houten says his office never received that transcript.

So now investigators have allegations from Doe, denials from the men she accused, questions about what Cornell police gave prosecutors — and a bar saying another piece of the story attributed to it simply didn’t happen.

DBS WIRE SOURCES:

• Fox News — Bar named in Cornell rape lawsuit disputes accuser’s account, says she was never served alcohol while underage
• CBS News — Jane Doe’s account of what happened at Cornell frat, from text messages and investigators’ transcripts
• Associated Press — Students turn on Cornell’s president over school’s handling of gang rape allegations
• ABC News — Timeline of alleged Cornell University fraternity house rape investigation
• TMZ — Cornell University rape lawsuit bar denies serving Jane Doe alcohol