A former undergraduate student at Cornell University faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to making a series of violent threats against Jewish students on campus.
Patrick Dai, 21, a former junior at Cornell originally from Pittsford, N.Y., pleaded guilty in a Syracuse federal court Wednesday to one count of posting threats to kill or injure another person using interstate communications.
As part of his guilty plea, Dai admitted that on Oct. 28 and 29, 2023, he posted several violent antisemitic messages on the Cornell section of an online discussion forum, including posts that said “gonna bomb jewish house,” and ““gonna shoot up 104 west,” referring to a Cornell dining hall that predominantly caters to Kosher diets.
According to federal prosecutors, in other posts Dai threatened to “bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews,” “stab” and “slit the throat” of any Jewish man he saw on campus, “the genocidal fascist zionist regime will be destroyed” and “rape and kill all the jew women before they brith more Jewish hitlers [sic].”
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a Wednesday press release that Dai “is being held accountable for vile, abhorrent, antisemitic threats of violence levied against members of the Cornell University Jewish community.”
“In the elevated threat environment that we have seen since Oct. 7th, we have been vigilant and stand ready to hold perpetrators of hate crimes accountable. Antisemitic threats of violence are unacceptable in our society, and we will not tolerate this conduct,” Clarke said. “Particularly at institutions of higher learning, people should feel safe to pursue educational opportunities. “
Dai’s lawyer, Lisa Peebles, told the judge during the Wednesday afternoon plea hearing that he posted the messages in a misguided attempt to reveal the Oct. 7 atrocities brought on Israel by Hamas, per the New York Post.
Peebles told the New York Post in a phone call after the hearing that “[Dai] did it knowingly, but his motivation was not meant to scare Jewish people.”
“It was more try to to do the opposite of that which was to garner sympathy for them and make people think twice about supporting Hamas,” Dai’s lawyer said, adding that her client was depressed and struggled with undiagnosed autism.
“He was going through a very difficult time,” Peebles told the Post. “He was depressed, he struggled with autism, he had not been diagnosed yet, and he had a breakdown and came up with this idea to do these posts.”
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In the days following his posts, Peebles said, Dai realized his plan had backfired and posted an apology and said nobody should advocate for violence.
“It was a bad decision and he knows it and feels remorse and regrets it and feels terrible for his mother and putting shame on his family and he clearly learned a valuable lesson from this,” Peebles added.
Dai is scheduled for a sentencing hearing on Aug. 12, where he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and a supervised release of up to three years.
According to Dai’s attorney, federal prosecutors plan to get the guideline sentence for Dai increased to between 15 to 21 months, on the grounds Dai committed the acts as a hate crime.
Maybe he should have hooked up with Robert Card. They could have commensurated togeather.