Cornell student admits to making antisemitic threats after autism diagnosis, did it to ‘garner sympathy’ for Jewish people: lawyer
NY Post
The “suicidal” Cornell University engineering student who was arrested for threatening to kill Jews on campus pleaded guilty Wednesday after his recent autism diagnosis, his lawyer told The Post.
Patrick Dai, 21, copped to one charge in Syracuse federal court Wednesday afternoon where his lawyer, Lisa Peebles, told a judge her client posted the awful things online in a misguided attempt to reveal the atrocities of Hamas.
“He did it knowingly, but his motivation was really not meant to scare Jewish people,” Peebles told The Post by phone after the plea hearing.
“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.”
Peebles claimed things reached a boiling point for Dai — a former junior at the Ivy League school — after he heard comments by a Cornell professor saying he found the Hamas attack “exhilarating.“
That came around the time of a Gaza hospital bombing Hamas falsely tried to pin on Israel.
