Mark Garagos is back from vacation. He talks about his trip to Las Vegas, cave diving in the Malay Archipelago, and his thoughts on the Carmelo Anthony Anthony case. He also talks about a new project he's involved in with the Florida Office of Elected State's Attorneys Association.
00:05:16.300I know that Texas always tries to say they've got the greatest criminal defense lawyers.
00:05:21.720I know Dan Codgill always says that, but no less than John Quinn has remarked, you know, of Quinn Emanuel, who just stepped down as the chair.
00:05:33.880He and I years ago, we decided amongst ourselves, our committee of two, that the most hotly contested legal market in the country is Los Angeles.
00:05:44.320So that's both John and I have said that.
00:05:47.680i think to be i think to get good you need a good supply of weird right if you're really if
00:05:55.980you're in criminal stuff the weirder the cases and the and the more of them you do uh i think
00:06:02.060gives you the best possible pace to sort of grow whatever talents you've got and god knows florida
00:06:07.360has plenty of that but i don't know they always hear about florida man i i would i would stat
00:08:28.320in in europe they don't even know what that is so i was really surprised and of course we didn't
00:08:34.180even realize that we were subpoenaed because they didn't tell us so a lot of people were
00:08:40.180subpoenaed without even knowing about it so it's the craziest uh story and um yeah so i think0.94
00:08:48.520definitely it's up on the top three dumbest things that she did i'll tell you one dumb thing that i0.97
00:08:56.400think happened today. I don't know if we have, you know, in the federal courts, you've probably0.96
00:09:00.540seen it, Shoste, they have PACER, which is the fancy legal term for the docket sheet. And so
00:09:07.480there's an entry today where Blake Lively's lawyers have come in and as they always do,
00:09:12.520they always overshoot what they should ask for. They cannot, they are almost constitutionally
00:09:18.160incapable of reading the room. And they asked for more, and the judge ended up now basically
00:09:26.640bench slapping them and telling them, now you're limited to 10 pages, single space,
00:09:32.340and I don't want to hear any more from you. Where they didn't have a limitation to begin with,
00:09:38.300they went overboard once again today, and Judge Lyman gave them what Judge Lyman does best is,
00:09:44.340You obviously don't know how to play in the sandbox. I'm going to teach you. It's just astonishing to me the lack of legal acumen in this case.
00:09:55.800For any of our audience that isn't familiar with it, you did a very now famous interview with Parker Posey and Blake Lively from 2016 regarding a movie called Cafe Society that was made by Woody Allen.
00:10:10.740And you had the temerity as an entertainment journalist to ask the question, what was it like to wear the costumes?
00:10:17.160something completely and it was set in the 1930s and it was apparently outrageously offensive and
00:10:24.240the two of them just began talking to each other it's it's bizarre I've watched that interview
00:10:29.780multiple times and one of the questions I had for you kind of beyond the Blake Lively Justin
00:10:35.540Baldoni saga is just for for anybody who's watching this you're professional you've got these two
00:10:41.280really famous movie stars. Um, I know you've interviewed over, I think 450 people. I watched
00:10:47.140a bunch of those two shots. You just let, you know, I loved your interview with Henry Winkler
00:10:51.040and even Jennifer Aniston. Um, I kind of went down the rabbit hole on this, but, um, but what
00:10:57.640is that like? We've all been in a situation where, um, we're kind of getting, um, almost bullied.
00:12:59.680Is this her kind of sense of humor? But then after that, when I asked about the costumes, at first I was like, are they joking now? Oh, like, is this really happening? You know, I think there was so many emotions going through my head at the time. It's been a while. I mean, it's 2016, as you said, so it's 10 years ago now.
00:13:22.000But I do remember the feeling just sitting there at first being really like, I don't know, I just felt like I lost all my confidence.
00:13:32.140And then I started feeling a bit angry, annoyed.
00:13:35.540And then I was like, should I just leave?
00:13:48.440I was doing this interview for Norwegian television and German television.
00:13:52.000But they cut it off short because I feel like they just thought, OK, this is not the best interview, so maybe we'll just throw these journalists out of the room.
00:14:02.220So when I left, I just, I don't know, I just felt really disrespected, you know.
00:14:10.140And then you start going in yourself thinking like, what did I do?
00:14:14.300What did I do to provoke that kind of behavior?
00:14:37.840It's because from any objective viewpoint, it was, I can't remember an interview that was less respectful than that.
00:14:44.520And I don't know if that's because you're, you're European and you weren't from, you know, uh, variety or, um, TMZ or, or something that they immediately recognized, but you've had, I mean, you've had over a hundred million hits on your YouTube channel.
00:14:59.640You, you are kind of a gateway to, um, I guess it's secondary, but the Norwegian people in Norway, everybody speaks English, right?
00:15:07.620I, or it's very common at least. And I don't know if they just kind of small time to you because
00:15:13.300they didn't, they didn't recognize you right away, perhaps, or I, I don't know how to interpret it,
00:15:18.580but it was, she did roll her eyes. Another thing I noticed and, and tell me if I'm totally wrong
00:15:22.700here, but it seemed like, so your, your face was your, the expression was professional,
00:15:28.200but you can tell, and you can also tell as time went on, you can almost, almost read all that,
00:15:33.460but you were very well composed. But I noticed your fingers, you appeared to be, it was like a
00:15:39.900poker tell. You were almost digging your thumbs into your fingers. And I do stuff like that,
00:15:45.200you know, in front of juries when I'm like, I'm either trying not to laugh at something or I'm
00:15:50.720getting really angry and I'm trying not to show it. Am I right on that? Is that something you do
00:15:55.180all the time? Yes, absolutely. That's a very observant thing actually. I do always do that
00:16:03.040when i do interviews i do it to remember questions it's like a thing that i do and all also if i if
00:16:09.640i start to lose like my focus i will do it as well so it's a thing that i know i consciously do
00:16:16.180but i noticed that and someone there was like a body language expert that did a video about it
00:16:21.920and he was talking a lot about how i was doing this so yeah so i did i did do that um well tell
00:16:30.580a little bit why what were they going to have you testify to if you know i don't exactly know but
00:16:39.260my what i think i did speak a little bit to brian friedman about this but um i think it's you know
00:16:46.900because i had all the analytics to my video so i could go into youtube and actually see what
00:16:53.620happened to it when it went viral and if anyone was pushing my video i would see that they were
00:17:00.380like the the traffic wasn't organic you know there would be spikes there would be something
00:17:06.740telling that this video didn't go viral by itself or i could also see if someone paid ads on it and
00:17:13.340i think that's the only way you can really push a video unless you're running an underground
00:17:18.380untraceable smear campaign but i so i could testify to what happened to my video and as i told brian
00:17:26.360Freeman at the time, you know, I received so many DMs from people, like hundreds a day for a long
00:17:33.840time after I published that video. People saying, you know, I'm so glad that you show this. I'm so
00:17:38.560glad that we know now who Blake Lively really is. And I can relate to the situation. I've been
00:17:45.140bullied and I felt exactly like I could see that you felt. So, you know, all these things, those
00:17:50.080we those things wouldn't happen unless that video went viral you know organically unless they think
00:17:56.940they're bots the ones that wrote me emails and dms but her theories and here's one of the experts
00:18:04.400i remember said that the reason how they could show that it actually was not organic was that
00:18:10.760there were so many likes on the top comment on the video he did like this long report on how
00:18:16.580a video can go viral because someone likes a top comment. It's so dumb. It's like people0.99
00:18:24.360like a top comment sometimes because they don't want to write their own comment, because sometimes
00:18:29.680there's a lot of comments on a video and they think, you know, it's going to disappear anyway.
00:18:33.220I'm just going to agree with this person who says that she was a bully and a mean girl in this
00:18:37.460interview. And when you talk about a conversation with Brian Freeman, that's long after you
00:18:41.480shared it publicly um right this was way before the lawsuit oh of course right yeah um years
00:18:49.180before i guess years before when you posted it no so i posted no so i posted it in 2024
00:18:56.600after i'd seen the movie so it was filmed in 2016 yeah but i never published it on youtube until
00:19:04.6002024 so you were back we're like that so it was kind of the perfect storm in a sense but i didn't
00:19:12.760know about all the stuff that they that had been going on on the sets i had no idea about any of
00:19:18.500that i was like okay we were still in hollywood but i was like we were kind of planning to move
00:19:23.860to europe so i was like i don't care i'm gonna post this video this interview i had with blake
00:19:28.240lily because i watched the movie and i was like that just reminded me of you know watching her
00:19:34.240again i'm like oh i have this interview with her at home should i just publish that interview
00:19:39.500on the timeline the so the interview is 2016 yeah well before the movie had ever been made
00:19:47.480yeah you don't publish it at the in real time 2016 17 all the way to 2023 or 2024
00:19:56.500for movie comes out at or did you see a trailer or do you see the movie i watched yeah so i was
00:20:04.960at a press screening for the movie so i did watch the movie but it was before the premiere so they
00:20:10.540had a pre-press screening for it and that's when i watched the movie and that's when i was like oh
00:20:14.740should i just publish that interview i have in my drawer this old interview so you saw the press
00:20:21.580screening and before the movie came out you posted it yeah i think it was around the premiere or but
00:20:30.320just before the premiere uh i think i posted it on august 10th maybe the premiere was on august 6th
00:20:37.680but the movie hadn't been come out like to the public yet yeah i'm not exactly i couldn't say
00:20:43.820exactly the timeline there but i did post it around the time of the premiere and then that's
00:20:50.640well before the filing of the lawsuit itself yeah as you know i was mentioned
00:20:56.720yeah i was mentioned in that year so that people are watching this people are watching it would
00:21:03.160know it's from a lawyer's standpoint you unearth something unearthed they went onto the internet
00:21:09.800but there is something that was filmed a good 10 years before because obviously it was 2016
00:21:17.200it just so happens you see the movie which is also the trigger for you to post it which you
00:21:23.720had not posted before what a great artifact to have yeah and also and you know thank you for
00:21:31.960doing that because it really seemed like it injected truth into what was going on in that
00:21:37.160case um we we saw a different side of things i think just as a general public that that nobody
00:21:43.300knew about. Um, no, I think that was just, I would love to hear your input on this. A lot of times
00:21:50.760when we cross examine a witness, we will go back to, and there's kind of various rules,
00:21:58.440depending on if you're federal and state court, how far back you can go on somebody's prior acts
00:22:03.220and you can't just character assassinate them, but you have to find an act that took place prior
00:22:29.500Or if there was an 1108 or 1109 mark for bitchiness,1.00
00:22:34.740I wonder where that would fall on.0.99
00:22:37.480Because it was growing around evidence code sections and using your interview as the the kind of predicate act to get its admissibility.
00:22:50.740So, yeah, I would allow it. I mean, the reason why it fought so hard to keep me out, you know, Blake's team, like they did not want me there, obviously.
00:23:01.180So, yeah, I guess there's a there's a reason for that.
00:23:04.660So let me tack real quick. In researching sort of about you and your background, I discovered that true crime is a huge deal in Norway.0.67
00:23:18.240They have a thing called Nordic Noir, which I'd never heard of before.
00:23:23.660And there's an Easter crime weekend that a lot of people do where they go and they read murder mysteries.
00:23:30.520And it turns out, Mark, I didn't know this, but there's this incredibly rich, like, murder mystery history in the country of Norway.
00:24:22.640It's kind of I feel like people got addicted to this as the same way as we get addicted to these true crime stories, because there's so much going on all the time.
00:24:32.880There's so many aspects to it. There's so many layers, so many people got involved, so many industry got involved.
00:24:40.260So I think it has a lot of the same. I don't know what you guys think, but same kind of aspects to it as as true crime.
00:24:49.580well there's definitely a voyeuristic element to it i think right hollywood gossip um and uh some
00:24:57.140of the things and often when it intersects uh as you know which is mark's world uh defending
00:25:03.360famous celebrities who cross the line into getting charged criminally but we would i would love to
00:25:09.220have you back we would love to have you back um sometime not even to talk about uh play clively
00:25:14.180but to talk about uh some true crime stuff if you're if you're down that would be i think that'd
00:25:19.600be really fun for us absolutely can i ask you something also before i go i have to have a very
00:25:25.040very specific question that i'm wondering if you could answer because do you have time for that
00:25:30.240sure of course because yeah okay so i i've been so confused now with this case because um
00:25:38.040brian friedman came out the other day when he released the whole settlement and he said you
00:25:43.460The reason why I feel like he released the whole settlement was so that he could say there is no way that they could take these damages somewhere else or go to California or try to get these damages somewhere else because whatever Lyman decides or rules on, they can't appeal any of that.
00:26:05.080And then Gottlieb went to the media and said that, you know, we are going to try to get our damages through other vehicles.
00:26:19.840Gottlieb's going to take the position that I'm in Brian's pocket.
00:26:23.140But let me just tell you, every single thing that that legal team has said so far has turned out to be false.
00:26:31.820I mean, just false legally. And then and they've been wrong tactically and strategically. It's unbelievable. At some point, somebody is going to write a long form article about the amount of money that Blake and Ryan have spent on this dry hole that they have been digging of for two, three years or whatever.
00:27:01.820whatever it is, it's astonishing. And everybody keeps telling me, I don't have any way to
00:27:08.900prove it, but that settlement agreement and the reason it was rushed into private mediation
00:27:16.800is there is a California Supreme Court case that says you can't sue your lawyers for legal
00:27:25.060malpractice if you resolve the case in private mediation. And because you can't, there's a bar
00:27:32.940to bringing in whatever happened in the mediation, therefore you can't prove your case. That's
00:27:37.780exactly why this case got settled, because after Judge Lyman granted the motion that gutted Blake
00:27:44.860Lively's case, if you read that opinion, it is savage in the way he dissects the lawyer in the
00:27:52.860case but and specifically blake's lawyering that's why brian brian uh my guess is why he released it
00:27:59.420that is very just just to add to what mark just said um you know interviewing celebrities and
00:28:05.620being inside the hollywood world you you know you know better probably than mark and i do
00:28:10.480how much ego will often drive decision making and if you've got um the worst nightmare for any lawyer
00:28:16.460is um you know and i don't know the behind the scenes on their on their team or not but the
00:28:22.260worst nightmare is when you've got a client with unlimited resources who won't listen to you.
00:28:29.620And I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that some of these decisions were made
00:28:34.080against the advice of counsel. I don't know. I don't think anybody ever will. But yeah,
00:28:39.480you understand the engine probably better than we do when it comes to ego and Hollywood and
00:28:45.840reputation and how somebody thinks they're looking in the general public. You can sort of see that
00:28:51.000going off the rails, uh, against sound legal advice. Um, that's my best, that's my best thought
00:28:57.680on it. But do you think they're going to go somewhere else to get these damages? Can they do
00:29:02.200that? Not if, not if their insurance carrier has anything to say about it because they're going to
00:29:07.520get slapped with a, uh, with an action. But, and also trying to judge shop with, uh, federal judges
00:29:14.080tends to go very poorly for whoever does that. Um, and they will back each other up typically. So,
00:29:20.100So there's an old saying in U.S. legal circles, nothing is more powerful or what is it?
00:29:28.660Federal judges are second only to God himself when it comes to power.
00:29:34.260So this is a federal case and that wouldn't sit well with any federal jurist, I don't think.
00:29:39.520Thank you, Shasti. Where does the audience find you?
00:29:42.980Well, if they want to come and visit me in Mallorca, they can do that.
00:30:16.560hey matt so let me tell you something i know normally we do a story and i think i was teasing
00:30:29.940you off the air that i said if you're going to give me another story that involved me having
00:30:33.880to compliment nate hockman i was gonna get pissed out by you and so we swore we wouldn't but then
00:30:39.900I, it occurred to me, give him his due. Did you see today, maybe yesterday, where he is going to
00:30:47.880ask the judge in LA Superior Court to call a halt to the $4 billion settlement with the county on
00:30:58.580the sexual abuse claims? Did you see this? Because- I did not see that. It's one of the,
00:31:04.040one of the things I've been missing while I've been gone, I guess. It's fascinating. There was
00:31:08.060a $4 billion settlement against the county of LA, where they, and when I say settlement,
00:31:15.200there was not a, it wasn't the most robust discovery in the world, but anyway, there
00:31:20.780was some, there's been some LA Times articles, LA Mag articles, there's been kind of brouhaha
00:31:27.520around it, and he just announced that he's going to go in and ask for the judge to put
00:31:34.500a halt to it because his analysis, this is wild to me, shows at least 81% may be fraud.
00:31:43.760Think about that. Out of $4 billion, that if you just do the numbers, over $3 billion of that
00:31:51.340is fraud. And basically, the county of LA was about to basically bankrupt themselves. And
00:31:59.180somebody stepped in and said, time out, I'm going to take a different look at this.
00:32:04.500Well, we grew up here, right, Mark? It's like being LA Angelenos. It just seems like by the day, I'm losing faith with some of the decisions that we're seeing at the local level. And that's a perfect one. Like, yeah, let's vote to bankrupt ourselves.
00:32:20.120You know, like the the roads are are potholed. You know, we still get homeless people everywhere. I don't get it. You know, like, yeah, let's sign off on that.
00:32:30.000I just it took me four years to get a settlement out of the Orange County Board of Supervisors on a legitimate sexual harassment case.
00:32:36.800We just finalized all that about a month ago.
00:32:41.180And the idea that they're just pulling out the checkbook without any due diligence on 75% of the claims.
00:32:49.280I mean, you know, this isn't a partisan politics.
00:32:54.340And when you think about the fact that the state enacted a law that allowed look back.
00:33:02.840Now, mind you, you've spent your whole career doing work for victims. I do both defense and plaintiff's work. But the state passed this law that basically put a gun to the municipality's head and say, OK, we're not only going to we're not only going to put the gun to your head by doing a look back law to revive the statutes of limitation.
00:33:25.900But now we're going to pull the trigger and just make it so that anybody can make a claim.
00:33:30.540And now it looks like four out of five are fraudulent, if you believe the analysis.
00:33:38.180Yeah, and it's just, it's like the LAPD hasn't met their recruiting quotas.
00:33:43.580It's the lowest number of soaring officers since 1995.
00:33:46.780There's so many problems in this city.
00:33:49.240The literacy rates, the testing scores of LA Unified are just spiraling even worse every year and they bust out the checkbook for something like that. It's like municipal suicide and it makes no sense.
00:34:05.320And, and the people that are applying for that, I mean, it's just, you know, and again, this is, this is like just a public safety slash common sense thing. Like a billion, a billion dollars is so much money on the municipal level. It's insane. Like the difference, you ever heard that old thing that the difference between a million and a billion, a million seconds is 13 days. A billion seconds is like 33 years.