The Megyn Kelly Show - Britney Spears, Vaccine Mandates, ＂Central Park Karen,＂ and More Hot Legal Cases, with Arthur Aidala and Mark Eiglarsh

00:00:00.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.980 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.920 Today, our favorite legal eagles, Arthur Aydala and Mark Eiglarsh, are back to deconstruct a bunch of cases in the news that you're going to find really interesting.

00:00:23.400 What the hell just happened to Rudy Giuliani and his law license? And was this a political hit job?

00:00:28.100 Arthur is representing him and has got the inside scoop.

00:00:31.440 Then we'll get into Britney Spears and her emotional testimonial in court last week in California, trying to get this conservatorship taken off from around her neck.

00:00:41.020 The albatross that it has been. We've got her testimonial so you can hear some of it if you haven't already.

00:00:46.600 And now kids, you know, young college age students fighting back against these vaccine mandates we're seeing pop up at these colleges saying they're not constitutional.

00:00:54.840 You can't force these kids to stick a vaccine that still only has temporary emergency use authorization on it into their bodies as a condition of returning to college.

00:01:06.500 That plus a couple of interesting updates in that Central Park Karen, forgive me, the Amy Cooper birdwatcher lawsuit, that case, remember that?

00:01:13.940 And also Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who wouldn't let any white people interview her. Is that legal?

00:01:18.220 The guys are full of opinions today. You're going to be interested in these cases and we'll get to them in one minute.

00:01:22.940 First, this.

00:01:28.800 Hi, guys.

00:01:29.780 Hello. Good morning.

00:01:31.540 How's it going?

00:01:32.420 I've been a little busy with Mayor Giuliani.

00:01:35.580 But you're trying to get his law license reinstated?

00:01:37.880 Horrible what they did to him.

00:01:39.440 It is like it's crazy. I was really surprised to read that.

00:01:43.620 It was you should have seen the two judges who work with me who are the both retired judges.

00:01:47.760 And this is their area of expertise. And they were flabbergasted, you know, two guys who were in their mid 70s.

00:01:55.020 One who's a was a lawyer before he was a judge advocating doing these proceedings.

00:02:00.000 And the other Judge Leventhal just resigned January 1st.

00:02:04.900 He for 12 and a half years, he's the one who ruled on these types of proceedings.

00:02:08.060 And he just he got basically the word is unprecedented.

00:02:11.440 What they did is what is this a political hit?

00:02:13.900 This is a political hit.

00:02:15.120 One. It couldn't be more than 100.

00:02:16.840 Whatever. More than 100 percent.

00:02:18.600 That's what it is. But it's really it's scary for those of us like Mark and I who kind of represent people who aren't very popular.

00:02:26.580 And if they want to then attack the advocate for the unpopular person just to silence them, it's not the way we should be going.

00:02:35.040 Not the direction we talk about this.

00:02:37.020 What happened? Did he has he been disbarred?

00:02:39.780 What happened?

00:02:40.640 So basically a group of lawyers, many of whom are outside of the state of New York, filed an official complaint with the grievance committee at the New York State grievance committee.

00:02:51.240 At the time that Rudy Giuliani was challenging the results of the presidential election, saying that he was telling lies and there are ethical rules that a lawyer can't knowingly be telling a lie, even even during the course of the zealous representation of a client.

00:03:09.580 Yeah. Spin is one thing. A lie is something else.

00:03:12.340 Correct. So the grievance committee took up the complaints and then they took the extraordinary step of asking for not just a hearing from the appellate division, but an immediate suspension.

00:03:28.300 And Mayor Giuliani returned, retained my firm to to respond.

00:03:34.100 And in a 40 page response, not only did we address each and every statement, but said we have either sworn affidavits or eyewitness testimony saying that what the mayor said at the time that he said it, he had a good faith basis to say so.

00:03:50.380 He wasn't just making this up. It wasn't his imagination.

00:03:53.300 Someone told him that dead people voted.

00:03:55.360 And this is why they knew that people who were no longer living voted in the election.

00:03:59.760 And the appellate division, before they saw any evidence, even though we said we're ready, willing and able to present the evidence, they suspended him.

00:04:08.000 And now it'll move over. It'll move towards a hearing and we will present the evidence.

00:04:13.080 But I got to tell you, Megan, and I say this really with sadness in my heart.

00:04:17.460 I think this is such a political hit job that it blinds the judges, it blinds the lady justice who's supposed to be blind, but she's not here.

00:04:28.840 And the the vitriol towards Trump and therefore Trump's lawyer is just it's palpable.

00:04:36.500 I have a question for Arthur. I'm curious and I'm sure the public wants to know, too.

00:04:40.120 What is what is one thing that he said that you have the least amount of evidence to corroborate?

00:04:46.220 I don't know if there's one thing that he said that we have the least.

00:04:51.260 Basically, the evidence is the same on every word that he said, which was either he has sworn written affidavits or he has human beings who are willing to come in and say, yeah, I did see them take a box of ballots and go out the back door with them and come in with another box of ballots.

00:05:09.640 And when those ballots were counted, they were ninety nine percent for Joe Biden.

00:05:13.560 And so someone told that to Rudy Giuliani and Rudy Giuliani said it publicly.

00:05:18.520 And basically, they say, well, he didn't have enough foundation to make those statements.

00:05:23.680 That's a that's weak sauce. That is weak sauce to go after a lawyer.

00:05:28.600 I mean, if his case was weak, it should have been thrown out.

00:05:32.480 Oh, wait, it was. That's the end of the matter.

00:05:36.360 You don't you don't then try to get the the lawyer disbarred or sanctioned unless there's no colorable basis.

00:05:43.540 I mean, there really has to be no good faith basis for the allegation in order for the lawyer to get in trouble.

00:05:49.860 And just having covered it day to day, I know that's not true.

00:05:52.700 I mean, now we could talk about Sidney Powell, but Giuliani didn't say all the stuff that Sidney Powell said.

00:05:57.560 And this is an extraordinary measure. I mean, normally, Megan, what would happen is the court would say, OK, there's enough here to go forward, almost like a grand jury indictment.

00:06:07.560 OK, there's enough there's enough probable cause that we are going to have a hearing to see whether Rudy Giuliani said things that were blatant lies.

00:06:15.280 But before they even got to that point, they ruled that he is a danger currently presently a danger to society and therefore they need to take his law license away.

00:06:27.080 And just to give you an example of when they usually do that, it usually has to do with a lawyer who is currently stealing escrow funds, currently taking other people's money and going to Atlantic City and gambling it away.

00:06:39.120 Correct. That's they say, hey, this guy is currently doing something that's hurting us.

00:06:43.620 They're ruling on statements that Giuliani made in December and January.

00:06:48.200 And quite frankly, once he knew that this was filed as his lawyers, we were like, Mr. Giuliani, you have to you can't address the election thing at all.

00:06:56.360 And he hasn't. And they're not saying that he has. They said since they filed the claims, he hasn't said anything new, but he could.

00:07:02.640 But he has the potential to say something. And therefore, we're suspending his from the practice of law.

00:07:09.080 And it's really upsetting. And here's how we can end. Norman Siegel, who here in New York is as far left as you can imagine.

00:07:17.260 He ran the civil liberties union here. He can't stand Rudy Giuliani on every level.

00:07:22.560 And yet he called us yesterday and said, this is a miscarriage of justice. I want to join your team pro bono to represent Rudy, because this is we're just inhibiting free speech on a level now that is just he said, I just can't sit, sit on the sidelines and watch this happen.

00:07:40.080 Megan, it is a dangerous, slippery slope. Arthur and I go to court every single day.

00:07:43.880 We have four seconds to talk to certain people and we make representations all day long.

00:07:47.800 We can't vouch for the accuracy. You know, I've said many times my client has never had any contact with the criminal justice system ever.

00:07:55.040 And the prosecutor then says, yeah, what about his record dating back to the disco crisis?

00:07:58.640 You know, so and I'm relying upon, you know, people telling me stuff all day long.

00:08:03.700 If that's what happened with Giuliani, then I join Arthur's plight in freeing him.

00:08:10.460 It's like I get that people didn't, you know, especially in New York, did not like Trump and did not like Giuliani as Trump's lawyer.

00:08:17.060 But get over it. Take the W. They won. Move on.

00:08:21.640 I mean, this constant just need to go back and investigate everything that Trump ever did and now expand the web to his attorneys.

00:08:29.780 And what do they want ultimately to disbar the guy, Arthur? Is that the ultimate remedy?

00:08:34.800 That would be the nuclear remedy.

00:08:37.260 I mean, typically something like this, you would be get some form of a suspension six months or a year.

00:08:43.300 But I will tell you, and I know I know he wouldn't mind me saying this.

00:08:47.400 I when I spoke to Mayor Giuliani, he said if they picked up the phone and called me and said, Arthur, we're going to suspend him for one day.

00:08:54.940 As long as he accepts it, we'll we'll suspend him for a day and it'll be over.

00:09:00.600 Rudy said, I won't take it a day.

00:09:02.220 He goes, everything that I said, somebody who I found to be credible at the time told me it was true.

00:09:08.700 I didn't make anything up out of out of thin air.

00:09:11.900 So and what Mark is saying is it's so true.

00:09:15.380 I mean, him and I, this is how we make a living.

00:09:17.980 And sometimes, you know, my client says I didn't do it.

00:09:20.820 And he goes to trial and he's found guilty.

00:09:22.760 Could I then be suspended from the practice of law because I said something that 12 jurors found to be not true?

00:09:31.660 I had a good faith basis to say it.

00:09:33.580 My client said I wasn't there.

00:09:34.900 I didn't do it.

00:09:36.020 So it is a slippery slope.

00:09:38.140 It's scary.

00:09:38.960 It's all.

00:09:39.640 Look, just to be clear, there were five judges.

00:09:42.140 All of them were appointed by Democratic administrations and they all probably just can't stand, you know, they can't stand Trump that starts with him and then it rolls down.

00:09:53.540 I mean, if Rudy was representing, you know, some senators, some obscure senators somewhere, trust me, this would not be happening.

00:10:00.360 But it's because it's Trump and he's still a viable threat.

00:10:04.540 I guess they look at him as they're just they're going scorched earth and Rudy's collateral damage.

00:10:10.520 So what how does it get resolved now?

00:10:13.180 So you've lost in the in the initial injunction phase.

00:10:16.560 What the appellate court does, which is the intermediary court, it's not the lowest court or the highest court.

00:10:21.340 It's the middle court.

00:10:22.000 What they do now is they will assign a retired judge to act as a hearing officer and we will do a mini trial in front of this hearing officer and then the hearing officer will make recommendations to the appellate court, which they are not bound to follow.

00:10:38.880 So technically speaking, the hearing officer can say, Mr.

00:10:42.820 Julian, he came in.

00:10:44.100 He did present human beings who testified, who I found credible.

00:10:48.600 He did show me affidavits that I found credible.

00:10:51.440 And I do believe that he was he was telling what he thought was the truth at the time.

00:10:54.880 And none of these should be substantiated.

00:10:56.660 And the the court still has the ability to say, well, we we smell something wrong here.

00:11:03.760 We're still going to suspend him.

00:11:05.360 And that's not what usually happens.

00:11:07.200 Usually they follow the recommendation of the hearing officer.

00:11:10.640 But at Megan, because of this situation, we're looking at every possible remedy in terms of taking us into the federal court, which maybe would be a little less politically inclined to rule on this.

00:11:22.700 It's a sad day, obviously, for Rudy Giuliani, who had a storied legal career before he got into politics and never had one complaint filed against him in 52 years of practicing law.

00:11:34.920 Never once did anyone complain about his lawyering, but it's just it's a scary day from like Mark and I, where if they're really going to start going after advocates because they have a unpopular client, then, you know, then we're all in big trouble.

00:11:50.540 Well, and that's you know, of course, that's really the nature of criminal defense work.

00:11:54.780 You don't tend to have very popular clients, but you're you're a doorstop against big government, against abuse, against a system.

00:12:04.620 That's rigged in favor of the United States or the state of New York to make sure that they really have their proof.

00:12:10.500 And so criminal defense attorney attorneys are incredibly important.

00:12:14.720 And it's not about whether your client's popular or well-liked or is going to win anybody, you know, most favored nation, you know, contest.

00:12:24.840 It's about the system.

00:12:26.560 And this is wrong.

00:12:27.340 This what's happening to him is wrong.

00:12:28.600 This this shouldn't be happening.

00:12:30.400 The issue, as Arthur says, is not necessarily whether it's true, but whether he had a good faith basis to say it, because we can't always be accurate.

00:12:39.020 It's about whether we said it in good faith.

00:12:41.320 And if Arthur's saying is true, and I believe Arthur, then he can back it up.

00:12:44.940 He doesn't have to be right about the information.

00:12:47.040 But people told him and he relied upon it.

00:12:49.700 That's what a lawsuit's for.

00:12:51.100 You get discovery.

00:12:52.020 You figure out whether these allegations are true or not.

00:12:53.960 Nobody goes in knowing whether everything they allege.

00:12:56.420 That's why it's called an allegation.

00:12:58.020 And the complaint is true.

00:12:58.840 That's what discovery proves to you one way or another.

00:13:00.720 And that's why cases either fall apart or get made in that process.

00:13:03.800 In his cases, it fell apart for all sorts of different reasons, but doesn't mean it was improper to make the allegations.

00:13:10.120 OK, I have to move on because we have much more important things to talk about, like Britney Spears.

00:13:14.700 Did you guys see the documentary by chance prior to this week's events?

00:13:18.400 Yes, I did.

00:13:19.300 I did not.

00:13:20.760 I read about it.

00:13:21.440 I went on Wikipedia and I read what the doc.

00:13:23.940 I read that she didn't watch it.

00:13:25.120 She only watched little pieces of it.

00:13:26.820 And some of it she found disturbing.

00:13:28.480 Well, her creepy dad was probably like, you're not watching it.

00:13:30.960 That channel's blocked.

00:13:32.340 I mean, the dad is he comes off as the worst character.

00:13:35.160 But so I want to ask you what you think about what happened in court this week.

00:13:38.960 It's been since 2008.

00:13:40.260 We saw her public meltdown.

00:13:41.560 She shaved the head.

00:13:42.380 She went after the paparazzi with the umbrella.

00:13:43.900 She had some drug issues and alcohol issues and she was clearly melting down.

00:13:49.000 So that's when they imposed the conservatorship.

00:13:51.400 When she was in the midst of crisis, it's normally something that they use for elderly, infirm people who are losing their minds.

00:13:58.460 Right. So it's like, don't let Sumner Redstone spend away the trillion dollar family fortune.

00:14:03.940 Let's get a conservatorship going to make sure he's protected.

00:14:07.600 That's normally how we see this used.

00:14:09.160 It's kind of extraordinary to see it imposed against somebody who's going through a mental health crisis.

00:14:13.540 But that's what happened.

00:14:14.820 But 13 years later, it's still in place.

00:14:17.760 And now she's finally been been heard from in all that time.

00:14:22.060 We've never heard a testimonial from her one way or the other on this.

00:14:25.440 And she's against it.

00:14:27.960 And I wonder what you guys thought when you listened.

00:14:30.440 They didn't have a visual.

00:14:31.700 They only had audio of her testimonial the other day.

00:14:34.360 What you thought of where she where she is mentally and whether she has a point that this thing ought to end.

00:14:41.520 Go ahead, Mark.

00:14:42.660 Well, in my defense, I only watched the documentary because five different networks asked me to comment on this thing, which I knew nothing about.

00:14:49.580 So I had to watch it.

00:14:50.900 My wife's watching me.

00:14:52.200 Why are you watching Britney Spears?

00:14:53.620 OK, so first of all, she spoke.

00:14:57.600 Let's just stop there.

00:14:58.640 Do you know that most people who have conservatorships entered against them can't even speak?

00:15:03.420 They can't write.

00:15:04.680 They're stroke victims.

00:15:06.700 They're dementia.

00:15:08.600 They they are in comas.

00:15:10.720 So that's the first thing.

00:15:11.680 She spoke.

00:15:13.280 Secondly, she what she was saying made sense.

00:15:16.340 You can understand it.

00:15:17.360 She had a home run in the court of public opinion.

00:15:19.280 But here's the problem.

00:15:20.860 The problem is, my understanding is, the petition that was filed by her lawyer doesn't ask to end the conservatorship.

00:15:29.600 It merely seeks to replace her father as the person in charge of her finances.

00:15:34.660 Therefore, what she was doing was essentially asking for something that wasn't petitioned for, like when Arthur goes into McDonald's and asks for a filet mignon.

00:15:43.340 It's not on the menu.

00:15:44.720 You're not going to get it, Arthur.

00:15:45.880 Stop it already.

00:15:46.720 Well, unless you get the McRib.

00:15:48.540 The McRib, maybe.

00:15:49.320 But Mark, let me ask you, do you think that that was a compromise move, a strategic compromise move, asking for a different conservator, saying, look, if you don't feel comfortable just eliminating that position altogether, could you at least appoint somebody who's going to give me more than $2,000 a week as my allowance when I have 60 plus million dollars sitting in a bank account?

00:16:14.980 But he didn't.

00:16:15.500 That's not what her pleadings said.

00:16:16.960 Her pleadings didn't say, get rid of the conservatorship and in the alternative, at a minimum, get rid of my dad and create a different system in this conservatorship.

00:16:26.700 I have a theory.

00:16:27.560 You want to know why?

00:16:28.520 Because if it was me and Arthur representing Brittany, we'd say, OK, let's do it.

00:16:33.480 Let's go after the conservatorship.

00:16:35.040 The judge is going to take some additional evaluations.

00:16:37.580 And she would have said, stop, I don't want it, as we heard yesterday in her 24-minute discussion with the judge.

00:16:43.880 She's saying, I want out of this, but I will not be evaluated anymore.

00:16:49.240 Well, wait a second.

00:16:49.740 She said it over and over.

00:16:51.800 Right.

00:16:52.200 And so then the lawyers are going, we're not going to win.

00:16:54.260 This is not going to happen.

00:16:55.700 So we might as well at least pull that out, whose every financial endeavor has failed, who declared bankruptcy, and who has really a conflict of interest in managing her finances.

00:17:05.960 All right.

00:17:06.120 So stand by, because we have a soundbite of her talking about how she didn't know that she could end the conservatorship, but she makes clear in the soundbite she does not want to be evaluated in order to end it.

00:17:16.040 Listen, I want changes and I want changes going forward.

00:17:19.000 I deserve changes.

00:17:20.260 I was told I have to sit down and be evaluated again if I want to end the conservatorship.

00:17:26.320 Ma'am, I didn't know I could petition the conservatorship to end it.

00:17:29.820 I'm sorry for my ignorance, but I honestly didn't know that.

00:17:33.760 But honestly, but I don't think I owe anyone to be evaluated.

00:17:37.260 I've done more than enough.

00:17:38.540 I don't feel like I should even be in room with anyone to offend me by trying to question my capacity of intelligence, whether I need to be in this stupid conservatorship or not.

00:17:49.500 I've done more than enough.

00:17:51.780 Well, I can only speak for New York law where here it's actually called guardianships, but the judge in those cases have tremendous discretion.

00:18:01.820 Whether you plead for something or you ask for something in your papers, they're allowed to make decisions, quote unquote, on the fly.

00:18:09.200 So, you know, my guess is that that may have been what took place here in a little way.

00:18:14.320 Megan, if you ask me if I'm her lawyer, I feel like she just threw me under the bus, maybe rightly so.

00:18:19.580 Definitely. But right. I say I didn't know I could end the conservatorship.

00:18:23.420 I mean, that's that's what I would have gone in there with, you know, the strongest possible position.

00:18:28.920 And then if the judge feels to cover her own butt, has to, you know, maybe doctor it down a little bit and say, OK, well, I'm not going to end it all together, but I will change it from your father to.

00:18:41.440 And they usually hire either a retired judge or like a very veteran person of the bar to to take over.

00:18:49.580 So, you know, if I'm a lawyer, I'm like, you know, I either tell her, Brittany, what are you saying?

00:18:55.420 You don't know. I've told you this 100 times we could end it or I put my head in the sand and say, oops, I guess I forgot to tell her she could end her conservatorship.

00:19:03.720 But it doesn't look good for her attorney.

00:19:05.320 It doesn't seem plausible that the lawyer would not have told her that she could end the conservatorship.

00:19:12.040 It just doesn't seem like any lawyer would be doing his job if he hadn't informed her that that was a possibility and how how they could try.

00:19:20.960 Because if you look at the history, it it back in 2019, she did speak to the courts in a closed door hearing.

00:19:28.900 She said she felt forced by the conservatorship to stay at a mental health facility.

00:19:32.820 She felt it was punishment. She felt she was forced to perform against her will.

00:19:37.400 Her lawyer said she was afraid of her father. He said the conservatorship comes with a lot of fear.

00:19:42.600 She said her father was obsessed with her again. This back in 2019.

00:19:45.240 She said she can't make friends without his approval. She said there was nothing wrong with her.

00:19:50.680 It goes on and on. And still in 2020, the judge, Brenda Penny, declined the request to suspend the dad immediately.

00:20:02.520 She left the door open to consider removing removing him in the future.

00:20:05.820 But she did not kick Jamie out. She did not end the conservatorship.

00:20:10.380 She did at that time appoint Bessemer Trust, a wealth management firm, to serve as co-conservator of the money.

00:20:16.080 She saw enough to realize the dad might not be all that trustworthy on the dough.

00:20:19.500 But Brittany has been speaking to the court to some extent and has made clear she doesn't like this thing.

00:20:26.080 And this judge hasn't been all that persuaded over the past few years.

00:20:30.520 She probably just meant and again, I don't know what she means, but she probably just meant I didn't know that I can have it set aside now because she was probably told by others, well, no, that's not what this is about.

00:20:43.260 So when she thought there was that opportunity in her 24 minute speech, she probably thought about it.

00:20:48.860 But here's the problem. Also, we don't know what we don't know.

00:20:52.260 Now, we saw publicly her meltdown in 2008. So we can then surmise, OK, she probably had some mental health issues.

00:20:58.760 She probably had some maybe alcohol or drug issues. But we don't know what the latest shows.

00:21:03.760 We don't know what's really going on behind closed doors. So that's number one.

00:21:07.700 The second part of that, though, is, OK, so what, though?

00:21:10.840 She's choreographing routines. She's done world tours.

00:21:14.280 She's done albums. Like if if if the criteria was anybody who's had a breakdown or mental health problems shouldn't handle their money, then most of Hollywood would be in her predicament.

00:21:26.300 I know. I I think you just nailed it.

00:21:28.860 Maybe the lead profession as well. We're all losing our minds.

00:21:31.720 No, no. But isn't that right? Because I I listened to her testimonial and I thought to me, she actually did not sound well.

00:21:38.300 I thought this is a person who's been heavily medicated. You can hear her anxiety.

00:21:43.520 You can tell she's not used to sort of advocating on on her own behalf.

00:21:48.140 That that's that's just my layperson's assessment of her.

00:21:50.660 It doesn't mean she can't function as her, you know, on her own as a human being in this world.

00:21:54.160 It was just I didn't think this. She sounded like a well person.

00:21:57.880 But there are a lot of people out there who are not well.

00:22:00.260 And if Britney Spears wants to make and lose several fortunes or marry a guy who's a loser,

00:22:06.200 I have no idea whether the guy she's dating is there seem to be some concerns or get pregnant with a third child.

00:22:11.420 That's up to her. Right. In the normal world, unless she's incapable of functioning, we would say that's up to her.

00:22:18.960 She's an adult. Yeah. And in New York, again, I'm only speaking because that's the law that I know.

00:22:24.580 I mean, the the threshold to get a guardian and that's what we call them, a conservator appointed.

00:22:30.540 It's very hard. It's very hard. It's you know, I mean, you're taking someone's basically their life away.

00:22:35.300 I mean, what makes us human beings the ability to make our own decisions about who to date and who not to date and who to be friends with and who not not to be friends with?

00:22:43.600 To take that away from somebody, the threshold is very high.

00:22:47.520 And as you said in the beginning, I think Mark said in the beginning, it's usually for elderly people who have been diagnosed with some sort of mental disease or defect and they can't handle their own affairs.

00:22:59.040 But we live in such a CYA atmosphere that I'm sure this judge is concerned.

00:23:04.760 Well, if I just let her roam and something happens to her, I'm going to be on the cover of all the newspapers.

00:23:11.840 Judge who let Britney Spears out and, you know, she got into a car accident because she was drinking and driving and blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:23:17.840 And then their their law license goes up in smoke.

00:23:20.960 So I'm going to be on the cover of all the newspapers.

00:23:23.040 So you don't know what she's going to do. Right.

00:23:25.440 I mean, and it is on the judge.

00:23:27.600 But isn't it ironic that we have her father in place to ensure she doesn't lose her money, you know, like her father did?

00:23:37.020 Yeah.

00:23:37.200 He filed for bankruptcy.

00:23:38.680 He filed for bankruptcy right before she hit it.

00:23:41.020 Yeah.

00:23:41.640 Yeah.

00:23:41.820 And the dad, the dad has been earning a mint off of her in 2014.

00:23:47.300 He was granted one point five percent of the gross revenues from her piece of me residency in Vegas.

00:23:54.860 He got one point five percent of the gross revenue in 2011.

00:23:58.840 He got two point nine five percent commission for her femme fatale tour.

00:24:03.680 He was getting sixteen thousand dollars a month to manage her life.

00:24:08.560 Meantime, she was getting two thousand dollars a week in an allowance while she was earning one hundred and thirty eight million dollars across two hundred and fifty shows.

00:24:17.800 He this guy is like a barnacle.

00:24:20.620 He sees his daughter as the boat that's going to take him to the promised land.

00:24:24.760 And he, to me, seems like a financial barnacle.

00:24:27.220 Yeah. And so it's no wonder why she was forced to perform with one hundred and four temperature.

00:24:35.360 Right. She's a machine for all of them.

00:24:37.720 Right. Yeah.

00:24:38.320 Conflict of interest with all these folks.

00:24:40.680 Well, but OK, but back to the point you made first when you made your two points, Mark, we don't know.

00:24:45.200 We don't know that the thing that bothered me about her testimonial was we didn't hear the other side.

00:24:50.620 And this judge, especially when I found out that Brittany has been pushing to end this thing and objecting to it for many years.

00:24:58.240 The judge has heard this before.

00:24:59.720 The judge has had reason to question, you know, whether this should stay in place for many years now.

00:25:04.560 And she's allowed it to.

00:25:06.220 There has to be a good reason for it.

00:25:08.500 What we don't know.

00:25:09.760 We don't know what kind of mental state Brittany's actually in.

00:25:12.220 We don't know whether she's attempted suicide over and over, whether she tried to hurt others.

00:25:16.040 I'm just making this up just to be clear.

00:25:18.160 We just don't know.

00:25:19.380 And the other side, the dad's side, said almost nothing in response, just something to the effect of through his lawyer.

00:25:26.180 Sorry to see his daughter suffering so much.

00:25:28.560 So we're not sure why the judge has kept this in place for so long.

00:25:32.160 But at the very least, Megan, at the very least, the relief would be to just get the dad out of the picture.

00:25:37.500 Just to say, fine, we're not going to have the dad.

00:25:40.200 You have a therapist.

00:25:41.160 We're going to have the therapist do it or whomever.

00:25:44.400 Some responsible individual.

00:25:46.520 But the dad has to go.

00:25:47.520 I mean, the dad is saying, I'm sorry to see my daughter suffer.

00:25:50.260 Clearly, he's at the center of her suffering.

00:25:54.020 And in the light most favorable to the dad, even if he's doing everything right, if she's suffering from such a mental defect that she sees him as the evil guy, whether that's true or not, then just let's move the cause of her pain.

00:26:09.400 All right, let's move the cause of her pain.

00:26:11.320 Clearly, the guy's made tens of millions of dollars.

00:26:13.980 He's not.

00:26:14.420 No one's crying for him.

00:26:16.340 And, you know, before I like to look at the history, Megan, and before Britney Spears became Britney Spears, he was there's plenty of testimony evidence that he was a disconnected guy who kind of came in and came out.

00:26:28.380 He made that statement like, oh, I think my daughter is going to make it big and you're going to buy me a boat.

00:26:32.460 I mean, that's that's what you think about the barnacle, the barnacle needed a boat.

00:26:38.400 Hold on.

00:26:39.200 I want to defend him just because I feel like it would be really interesting.

00:26:42.480 Ready?

00:26:43.140 And OK, so if the petition is to get him out, the only relevant issue then is, did he represent her best interest?

00:26:53.400 Right.

00:26:53.860 So I pull out the charts if I'm representing him.

00:26:55.880 I say, see this arrow?

00:26:57.100 This is what she made.

00:26:58.180 This represents how much he made.

00:26:59.480 Look how much he's made.

00:27:01.180 I've turned this into a fortune.

00:27:03.960 Also, there's no evidence that I mismanaged anything that I didn't look out for her best interest.

00:27:09.740 And that's really the sole issue here.

00:27:11.520 So, Jamie, why are you only giving your daughter two thousand dollars a week to as her allowance?

00:27:16.660 Because give me an answer to that.

00:27:18.280 So now we get into the stuff that you guys don't know.

00:27:20.500 And I don't know what either.

00:27:21.340 But my guess is that there's a history of her being subjected to undue influence, her overspending, a drug addiction.

00:27:30.140 Listen, she was prescribed lithium for a reason.

00:27:33.220 Right.

00:27:33.920 So something led up to that.

00:27:36.000 Let me jump in on that, because as I say there, it turns out there is a long history of her trying to get out of this conservatorship.

00:27:42.320 I mean, people are like, oh, she didn't want it.

00:27:44.360 Now we know she hasn't wanted it for a long time.

00:27:46.840 In 2014, it was the earliest recorded opposition from her.

00:27:50.800 She questioned her father's fitness to manage her life.

00:27:53.100 She sought to remove his conservatorship, citing his drinking problem.

00:27:57.000 Her lawyer said she was upset that her concerns were not taken seriously.

00:28:01.220 Her lawyer raised her urgent desire to terminate the conservatorship.

00:28:05.360 Jamie's lawyer responded, saying he had been taking alcohol tests.

00:28:09.180 He had never failed.

00:28:10.580 And the judge said she would consider ending it if Brittany established a healthy relationship with a therapist and returned one year's worth of clean drug tests.

00:28:18.780 So clearly in 14, the judge is seeing evidence that Brittany may be on drugs and is not seeking any enough mental health or any mental health services.

00:28:27.820 Then flash forward two more years, 2016.

00:28:30.280 The court again takes a look at this.

00:28:33.780 Brittany was interviewed by a probate investigator working for the judge, said she was very angry about the way her life was being run, described security around her at all the times, complained numerous about the numerous drug tests she has to undergo weekly, said her credit card is being held by her security team or her assistant.

00:28:47.380 Her father restricts everything from whom she dates to the color of her kitchen cabinets.

00:28:51.100 She articulated that she feels the conservatorship has become oppressive and a controlling tool against her.

00:28:56.900 She wanted it terminated as soon as possible.

00:28:59.040 What did the court do?

00:29:00.720 Said the conservatorship stays based on Brittany's complex finances, quote, susceptibility to undue influence.

00:29:09.240 Isn't that what you just said, Mark?

00:29:10.660 And intermittent drug issues.

00:29:12.860 So she did also at that time the judge call for a pathway to independence and eventual end of this thing.

00:29:18.480 But all of this tells me Brittany doesn't like this and the judge sees something that says it needs to stay in place anyway.

00:29:26.400 And that's been the status quo for years.

00:29:28.140 But Megan, as Mark said earlier, earlier, you could look and I don't want to start naming names, but they're in the newspapers every day who's struggling with drug addiction, who's struggling with alcoholism, who's the overspending and buying a twenty one million dollar apartment.

00:29:42.640 I mean, so many of the Hollywood folks fall into that category and we're going to start ripping everyone's rights away because they're going to spend too much money or do their own drugs.

00:29:51.580 It's still America.

00:29:53.240 And if you want to make a hundred million dollars and just blow it, you're allowed to do that.

00:29:59.080 I mean, you're allowed to.

00:30:00.280 And if you get the drugs legally, you're allowed to take the drugs.

00:30:03.700 What about Hunter Biden?

00:30:04.940 Why does Hunter Biden need a conservatorship?

00:30:07.220 What's he doing out there free?

00:30:08.600 There's a whole list of people.

00:30:09.740 Look at the look.

00:30:10.740 Ben Affleck, right, who's in the news right now.

00:30:12.660 He's back with J-Lo.

00:30:13.800 He's been in and out of rehab countless times.

00:30:16.860 He's a hot mess.

00:30:17.900 Right.

00:30:18.280 Right.

00:30:18.560 I don't see anyone stepping in saying we're going to take away his right to choose the color of his kitchen cabinets.

00:30:23.220 So, as I said, in the world that I practice law in, it's really a very high threshold to take someone's opinion and choices, life choices away.

00:30:36.680 But as Mark said, I don't know, maybe the judge has some reports or multiple reports from these doctors or these people who are coming in and interviewing her for four days on end.

00:30:47.020 Let me ask you, she's going to kill herself if we let her go.

00:30:50.500 Exactly.

00:30:50.900 If they have something like that, it matters.

00:30:52.400 Let me ask you a simple question, which will help answer, will they free Britney?

00:30:57.020 Okay.

00:30:57.660 Do either of you believe, and I say this rhetorically because I know the answer, do either of you believe that this judge will terminate this 13-year conservatorship without her being evaluated?

00:31:10.180 Zero chance.

00:31:11.440 Zero chance.

00:31:12.000 And I have to be honest, I found it kind of suspicious that Britney kept insisting that be the condition.

00:31:17.860 Right.

00:31:18.280 Well, then there you go.

00:31:19.280 If she's not going to see anybody, and I understand her paranoia every time she's ever seen someone, I'm guessing it didn't go her way, either because she really does have some issues and or, you know, it's sinister.

00:31:32.900 The machine that benefits from her financially wants to somehow ensure that she doesn't do well on those psych tests.

00:31:40.160 Oh, so that's true.

00:31:41.280 The lawyer, her lawyer is making a mint off of her.

00:31:44.540 I think just the recent, the most recent bill, I'm trying to get my facts straight, but it was like 200 plus thousand, or the most recent bill was like 153,000.

00:31:54.320 He was like, well, I reduced it from 154,000.

00:31:56.460 He took off a grand, but he's made millions off of her, millions of dollars over the past few years or, you know, since he's been involved as her, as her appointed lawyer.

00:32:06.060 She didn't select him.

00:32:07.000 That was another thing she said.

00:32:07.880 Can I select my own lawyer, please?

00:32:09.480 And she's paying for the lawyer on the other side.

00:32:12.120 She's paying for the conservatorship's lawyer.

00:32:13.720 She's paying for everybody in the courtroom, basically.

00:32:15.700 She's paying for all of her security guards.

00:32:17.100 She's paying for the chefs who make her the meals, for the therapists who give her the lithium, for the people who parade her off in front of the paparazzi, who she does not wish to see her crying after her therapy sessions.

00:32:27.540 This poor girl's been so exploited.

00:32:29.640 It just feels unseemly.

00:32:31.420 And that's why she's saying that she doesn't want to be evaluated again.

00:32:34.960 Mark mentioned earlier all of her success during this 13 years, her records, her tours.

00:32:40.540 She had a regular act at Vegas, which, like, knocked it out of the park.

00:32:47.240 Like, she's saying, what are you talking about?

00:32:49.440 I can't handle myself.

00:32:50.380 Look at what I've accomplished compared to the entire planet Earth.

00:32:53.800 Look at the things that I've been able to achieve.

00:32:56.480 And you're telling me I can't pick the color of my kitchen cabinets and pick who I want to go out with?

00:33:01.300 I'm not being evaluated.

00:33:02.920 She can't have a child.

00:33:05.480 She's basically been rendered unable to have a child against her will.

00:33:09.800 Well, this was one of the most, if not the most disturbing part of her testimonial is her talking about the IUD inside of her.

00:33:15.940 Listen, I want to have the real deal.

00:33:17.880 I want to be able to get married and have a baby.

00:33:20.380 I was told right now in the conservatorship, I'm not able to get married or have a baby.

00:33:26.160 I have a ID inside of myself right now, so I don't get pregnant.

00:33:31.220 I wanted to take the ID out so I could start trying to have another baby.

00:33:36.280 But this so-called team won't let me go to the doctor.

00:33:39.800 To take it out because they don't want me to have children, any more children.

00:33:44.340 An ID.

00:33:45.520 An ID.

00:33:46.360 It's a driver's license.

00:33:47.680 It's a father's driver's license.

00:33:49.520 That's horrible.

00:33:50.380 Call them to the police.

00:33:51.600 This is horrible.

00:33:53.580 But sad that she doesn't even know those initials.

00:33:55.800 And Manga, look, I agree with you that she definitely doesn't sound cool, calm, and collected.

00:34:02.460 I mean, I think anyone would agree with that.

00:34:04.580 I will just credit to some degree, as Mark and I know when our clients have to speak before a court, as much as she's an entertainer, she's in a very foreign place.

00:34:14.980 I mean, I'll never forget when I had to put Lawrence Taylor on the stand and he was on for two days.

00:34:19.380 The first day, he was horrible, horrible.

00:34:22.160 And I was like, Lawrence, what happened?

00:34:23.480 He goes, I was so nervous.

00:34:24.460 How could you be nervous?

00:34:25.300 You won two Super Bowls.

00:34:26.760 He goes, hey, man, I know what was going on on the field.

00:34:30.020 In there, you're screaming objection.

00:34:31.760 The other people is doing this.

00:34:33.140 He goes, I don't know what was going on.

00:34:35.060 Now, after he calmed down, the next day, he was maybe the best witness I ever had on the stand.

00:34:39.260 But we take for granted those of us who kind of live in the courtroom that our nerves are at a certain level.

00:34:46.020 Here, not only is she a nervous wreck, to her, this is her whole life.

00:34:50.100 I mean, she's 39.

00:34:51.560 And I mean, she does want to have a child.

00:34:53.460 She's kind of in prime time if she's going to make that happen, to have it done now.

00:34:57.020 So there's a lot of stress and pressure and anxiety on her in a foreign atmosphere.

00:35:01.900 And she was so personal with her revelations from the IUD to just how unhappy she is.

00:35:08.360 And you could feel it.

00:35:09.300 She did a very good job of conveying how awful this is on her.

00:35:13.360 We have just a little bit of that color where she talks about how she was lying all these years when she said publicly she was OK.

00:35:19.380 Listen.

00:35:19.860 I've lied and told the whole world I'm OK and I'm happy.

00:35:23.080 It's a lie.

00:35:24.180 I thought I just maybe I said that enough.

00:35:26.160 Maybe I might become happy because I've been in denial.

00:35:29.040 I've been in shock.

00:35:30.100 I am traumatized.

00:35:32.200 You know, fake it till you make it.

00:35:34.280 But now I'm telling you the truth, OK?

00:35:35.880 I'm not happy.

00:35:37.000 I can't sleep.

00:35:38.020 I'm so angry.

00:35:39.020 It's insane.

00:35:39.800 And I'm depressed.

00:35:40.940 I cry every day.

00:35:41.940 And the reason I'm telling you this is because I don't think how the state of California can have all this written in the court documents from the time I showed up and do absolutely nothing.

00:35:50.100 She kind of rambles there at the end.

00:35:51.360 But you get that you get the point, Mark.

00:35:52.700 So so what does this judge do now?

00:35:54.620 Because the public attention to this is also now a factor.

00:35:58.400 Well, first, the judge should not be susceptible to what the public does.

00:36:04.000 I don't like that.

00:36:04.980 Although now the judge feels more comfortable ruling in her favor if she wanted to.

00:36:08.880 But secondly, the judge has to make Brittany feel that these tests are for her benefit.

00:36:17.940 And we just need to do a couple more reports and, you know, and then maybe you'll get what you want.

00:36:26.940 The dad's gone.

00:36:27.640 The dad's got to go all together.

00:36:29.360 And it's good that Bessemer's there for the money.

00:36:31.580 But the dad should no longer have control over the day-to-day.

00:36:34.160 I don't know.

00:36:34.960 Wait, wait.

00:36:35.260 Hold on.

00:36:35.920 Back to my.

00:36:37.120 Yes.

00:36:37.620 Personally, I want him gone.

00:36:39.180 But what single thing have you heard that he did that mismanaged the money that didn't work for her?

00:36:47.000 Forget about the money, though.

00:36:47.940 She's miserable.

00:36:48.860 She's miserable.

00:36:49.500 She hates him.

00:36:50.220 And that's what the judge is supposed to be there for.

00:36:53.500 The judge is supposed to be Brittany's advocate.

00:36:55.520 The judge is supposed to be a fair and impartial judge.

00:36:59.300 This is supposed to be a judge who's helping the person who's the subject of the conservatorship.

00:37:04.120 Wait a second.

00:37:04.760 I don't particularly love my accountant, but my accountant does a good job.

00:37:08.140 In other words.

00:37:08.740 He doesn't tell you you can't buy that, Mark.

00:37:11.460 Or you can't have a child.

00:37:13.100 How about that?

00:37:13.840 Hold on.

00:37:14.440 That's not his role.

00:37:15.540 He's not saying that.

00:37:16.400 He just handles the finances.

00:37:17.740 There's a separate person handling her personal matters.

00:37:20.340 He used to handle the personal matters.

00:37:21.600 Stand by.

00:37:21.940 Now, let's hear from the witness herself.

00:37:24.360 This is the first soundbite about her father.

00:37:26.680 Listen.

00:37:27.100 Over the two-week holiday, a lady came into my home for four hours a day, sat me down,

00:37:31.140 and did a psych test on me.

00:37:32.720 It took forever.

00:37:34.180 I was told I had to then, after I got a phone call from my dad saying, after I did the psych

00:37:44.720 test with this lady, basically saying I had failed the test or whatever, I'm sorry, Brittany.

00:37:51.320 You have to listen to your doctors.

00:37:52.800 They are planning to send you to a small home in Beverly Hills to do a small rehab program

00:37:56.840 that we're going to make up for you.

00:37:58.500 You're going to pay $60,000 a month for this.

00:38:01.720 I cried on the phone for an hour, and he loved every minute of it.

00:38:05.500 The control he had over someone as powerful as me, as he loved the control to hurt his

00:38:10.260 own daughter 100,000 percent, he loved it.

00:38:14.260 I packed my bags and went to that place.

00:38:16.540 I worked seven days a week, no days off, which in California, the only similar thing to this

00:38:20.380 is called sex trafficking.

00:38:21.580 She hates him.

00:38:22.980 I mean, he loved it.

00:38:25.100 These two, they should not be forced to be together in this way.

00:38:28.280 Are we talking as human beings?

00:38:30.100 The answer is yes.

00:38:30.940 Anyone with a pulse who's not a sociopath would agree with you.

00:38:34.320 But I'm thinking as a lawyer, and in front of the judge, I'm sure there's precedent.

00:38:39.380 I don't practice in this arena, but I'm sure there's precedent.

00:38:42.160 And does the person like the person handling the finances is probably not at the top of the

00:38:48.460 list or on the list at all for criteria as to whether that person should be removed.

00:38:53.020 But whether they can work together, that's not relevant.

00:38:55.760 Whether the person whose life is being controlled can't stand to see the other person.

00:39:00.740 Of course, it's relevant.

00:39:01.980 I think it's very relevant.

00:39:02.760 It's broken beyond repair.

00:39:05.020 I'm not disagreeing with you.

00:39:07.020 I don't disagree with you.

00:39:10.120 Go ahead, Arthur.

00:39:11.580 I'm going to give you a last prediction on this, and then I want to move on.

00:39:14.040 I mean, usually, again, in the forum where we do practice, because one of the judges

00:39:18.440 who works for me was in the guardianship part, there is a cadre of lawyers who are appointed

00:39:24.200 the guardians over the person.

00:39:26.960 So they're the conservators or whatever.

00:39:29.000 They're the ones who are overseeing people.

00:39:31.020 And if an individual comes in and says, I can't stand this person or I'm not getting

00:39:36.200 along, and there's some credible evidence that shows that, they're just the judges

00:39:40.480 because they're going to swap them out and say, OK, you don't like Mr. So-and-so.

00:39:43.460 Let's try Ms. So-and-so.

00:39:45.100 And I think that's the obvious solution here, at the very, very least, to give Brittany some

00:39:51.220 relief is just to say, look, we're going to take your dad out of your life.

00:39:55.400 Mr. Samir is going to control your money.

00:39:57.280 And this lawyer or this retired judge is going to look over your other affairs and make sure

00:40:01.820 you just stay on the straight and narrow.

00:40:03.600 I'd like to see that happen, too, just so we're clear, even though I play devil's advocate.

00:40:07.400 Yeah, we need changes.

00:40:08.780 I don't know whether the whole thing should end.

00:40:11.000 I really don't.

00:40:11.580 I want to hear more about her her mental state and why it was denied so many times.

00:40:16.500 I trust the judge to take all that stuff under advisement.

00:40:19.740 But the dad's got to go.

00:40:21.740 Up next, we're going to talk about Amy Cooper.

00:40:24.000 She was derisively referred to as Central Park Karen.

00:40:26.840 She's the one who had her dog in Central Park, and she threatened to call the police on a black

00:40:30.560 man there who was birdwatching.

00:40:32.500 He videotaped it.

00:40:33.480 All hell broke loose in her life.

00:40:35.280 She's now filed a lawsuit, and we'll tell you why.

00:40:37.880 Don't go away.

00:40:41.580 Can we just talk about so-called Central Park, Karen?

00:40:45.060 This is Amy Cooper.

00:40:47.100 And Amy Cooper was the one who got caught in Central Park in May of 2020, threatening to

00:40:54.520 call the police on an African-American, saying, I'm going to tell them an African-American

00:40:57.760 man is attacking me, is threatening my dog and attacking me.

00:41:00.820 Her name is Amy Cooper.

00:41:01.920 And the man she was going to call the cops on, the birdwatcher, his name was Christian

00:41:05.180 Cooper.

00:41:05.960 No relation.

00:41:06.680 He was black.

00:41:07.180 She was white.

00:41:08.340 She was an insurance portfolio manager.

00:41:10.620 And it happened in May 25th, 2020.

00:41:12.700 OK, so this went viral.

00:41:14.900 Over 45 million people have seen the YouTube video of her freaking out.

00:41:19.000 And he videotaped her.

00:41:20.200 And she was known as a Karen because everybody thought that she was racist because she mentioned

00:41:25.740 his race when she said I'm going to call the cops and say an African-American man is

00:41:31.080 threatening me and threatening my dog.

00:41:32.720 OK, so long story short, she she gets publicly embarrassed.

00:41:38.660 The guy forgives her, basically.

00:41:41.020 And but she gets fired.

00:41:43.160 And I think we have a little soundbite of her, Amy and Christian back to back.

00:41:47.400 Listen, sir, I'm asking you to stop.

00:41:49.380 Please don't come close to me.

00:41:50.960 Sir, I'm asking you to stop recording me.

00:41:52.560 Please don't come close to me.

00:41:53.720 Please take your phone off.

00:41:54.520 Please don't come close to me.

00:41:55.580 And I'm taking a picture of calling the cops.

00:41:56.940 Please, please call the cops.

00:41:58.940 Please call the cops.

00:42:00.360 I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life.

00:42:03.180 Please tell them whatever you like.

00:42:05.680 I'm sorry, I'm going to ramble.

00:42:07.320 And there is a man, African-American, he has a vice department.

00:42:10.000 He is recording me and threatening me and my dog.

00:42:13.100 I'm sorry, I can't hear you either.

00:42:15.140 I'm being threatened by a man in the ramble.

00:42:17.460 Please send the cops immediately.

00:42:19.240 OK, so she looked ridiculous.

00:42:21.080 And my own take on it is the moment where she lost the whole thing was when she said

00:42:25.880 it's even if she had just called the police and said there's an African-American man threatening

00:42:28.980 me.

00:42:29.540 OK, I could live with that.

00:42:30.600 You describe if you think you're being threatened or attacked, you describe the person.

00:42:34.220 But when she told him she was going to tell the cops an African-American man is threatening

00:42:39.340 me, that's when she lost America.

00:42:41.040 I mean, that that seemed like a threat based on race and cops and all the rest of it.

00:42:45.740 However, I think it's really interesting that now she's going after her employer for firing

00:42:51.420 her, saying that they had no right to.

00:42:53.080 And did you guys know prior to getting ready for this segment about Jerome Lockett?

00:43:00.300 No.

00:43:00.960 First of all, I have a question for you, Megan.

00:43:03.120 Why?

00:43:03.560 Why do we call them Karens?

00:43:05.500 I genuinely don't know.

00:43:06.760 Like, where did this name come from?

00:43:08.280 Was there an original Karen?

00:43:09.300 I mean, I really don't know.

00:43:12.100 It's like it's a little ridiculous.

00:43:14.460 And the only thing I was going to tell you when I thought about this is if it was me who

00:43:18.560 was bothering her, would she call 911 and say, there's a bald man here who's coming

00:43:24.460 after me?

00:43:24.960 In other words, she's describing me.

00:43:26.720 Would she have described me as a bald man?

00:43:28.520 Is a bald man threatening me in the ramble?

00:43:30.660 I don't know.

00:43:31.260 But the second time she gives the description, she does it or she makes the complaint.

00:43:34.960 She doesn't say African-American.

00:43:36.300 The man, hurry up, send the police right away.

00:43:39.180 But this whole thing, in my opinion, got so blown out of proportion in the middle of

00:43:43.200 a pandemic that I, you know, I just I thought it was ridiculous.

00:43:47.800 And here's what was more ridiculous.

00:43:49.480 The Manhattan DA's office was looking to prosecute her.

00:43:52.700 And he, in fact, wouldn't wouldn't really follow up on it for making a false statement.

00:43:58.720 If they prosecuted everyone who made a false statement, boy, oh boy, would the court system

00:44:03.080 be overcrowded.

00:44:03.980 You guys seem to be letting her off the hook a little bit much.

00:44:06.660 In fact, Megan, I was surprised when you said if she had just said African-American, Megan,

00:44:10.320 in that context, it was racist.

00:44:12.480 It wasn't because when I said when calling the police on him, if she said there's a man,

00:44:16.980 he's African-American, he's here in the bramble and he's threatening me, then I can understand

00:44:21.040 that I was saying it to him as like a threat.

00:44:24.980 I'm going to tell the police basically that a black guy is threatening me that that's not

00:44:30.220 OK.

00:44:30.520 That had a different implication.

00:44:32.480 That's a given.

00:44:33.400 That second part, I think Arthur's being real kind to this woman.

00:44:37.080 I think that she she deserves everything that she's getting.

00:44:40.620 And worse, instead of just saying, boy, I'm I'm really grateful that they're not going

00:44:44.100 after me criminally because the African-American, as she calls him, didn't want to prosecute

00:44:50.820 her.

00:44:50.960 So she got a gift.

00:44:52.380 My people call what she did by suing, you know, her employer, chutzpah to go after the

00:44:58.920 employer now and claim that they erroneously made her out to be a racist.

00:45:02.960 No, those those are things you did, honey.

00:45:05.540 You did that.

00:45:06.840 No, let me let me say this.

00:45:09.160 I'm upset.

00:45:09.760 I'm upset, Megan.

00:45:10.560 The NYPD charged her in July with filing a false police report.

00:45:17.200 They dropped the charges after Christian Cooper declined to cooperate with the prosecutors

00:45:21.140 and after Amy Cooper completed therapy that included instruction on not using racial bias.

00:45:26.680 But I have to say, I think she could have won that case.

00:45:29.640 There was it wasn't a false police report.

00:45:31.800 If you go back and look at what he admits, he said he was threatening her.

00:45:36.500 He I'm not saying what she you know, that she didn't have race playing in this for her,

00:45:40.720 but what he said to her was a threat.

00:45:44.020 I mean, he said very clearly that he was going to get her dog and she wasn't going to like it.

00:45:48.940 Megan, there's also the fact that many people don't know he took dog treats that he carried

00:45:53.840 with him.

00:45:54.580 Yes.

00:45:55.520 And he he was he was luring her dog over to him.

00:45:59.420 I mean, that's a little weird.

00:46:00.920 Who walks around with dog treats in their pocket who doesn't have a dog?

00:46:04.520 Just in case he was mad, he was mad.

00:46:07.960 She didn't have her dog on a leash and he was doing his bird watching and dogs are annoying.

00:46:12.200 Well, too bad.

00:46:12.780 Welcome to Central Park in New York.

00:46:14.140 Go move to the suburbs if you don't want to deal with people in the park on the basis

00:46:17.460 like we have in CP.

00:46:18.760 So she he told her to leash up her dog.

00:46:21.140 She said no.

00:46:22.060 He called the dog over with a treat and said, quote, and this is undisputed.

00:46:26.080 Look, if you're going to do what you want, I'm going to do what I want, but you're not

00:46:31.020 going to like it.

00:46:31.600 OK, as he's offering her dog a treat and she doesn't know what's in that treat.

00:46:37.860 And he's saying, come here, puppy.

00:46:40.260 This is according to him.

00:46:41.480 This is his testimonial.

00:46:43.360 He says he then was like, come here, puppy.

00:46:45.840 And she said he won't come to you.

00:46:47.060 And he said, we'll see about that.

00:46:49.040 This is his testimonial.

00:46:50.040 I pull out the dog treats.

00:46:50.980 I carry for just such intransigence.

00:46:54.180 I didn't even get a chance to toss any treats to the pooch before Karen scrambled to grab

00:46:57.700 the dog.

00:46:58.440 Her.

00:46:58.820 Don't you touch my dog.

00:47:00.380 That's when I started videotaping with my iPhone and when her inner Karen fully emerged

00:47:04.420 and took a dark turn.

00:47:05.460 All right.

00:47:05.580 That's his account of this whole thing.

00:47:07.360 I don't think there's any question he wasn't behaving nicely and he shouldn't have threatened

00:47:11.760 the dog.

00:47:12.220 And I think she would have defeated this had they actually had she chosen to fight it in

00:47:16.300 court.

00:47:16.560 But what's happened now is she's suing her employer, Franklin Templeton, claiming they

00:47:22.700 portrayed her in a false light as a racist, that they telegraphed to the world that they

00:47:28.140 had performed a legitimate investigation into her when they hadn't.

00:47:30.940 And they fired her.

00:47:32.560 They fired her without even interviewing her or anyone else.

00:47:36.660 And her her evidence.

00:47:39.500 This is what brings me to this guy, Jerome Lockett.

00:47:42.020 I mean, I saw the Karen tape, Central Park Karen.

00:47:44.800 Her name is Amy Cooper.

00:47:45.400 I never heard about this guy, Jerome Lockett.

00:47:49.540 The next day after this story broke, black man, dog owner, New York City came out and

00:47:56.640 her lawsuit recounts this came out and said he had a Christian Cooper incident prior to

00:48:04.260 this.

00:48:04.940 He said Christian Cooper came up to him, Jerome Lockett.

00:48:08.960 These are two black men yelling at him.

00:48:12.080 You need to leash your dog.

00:48:13.160 They can't be off leash in here.

00:48:14.280 Then Jerome Lockett refused to engage with Christian Cooper, turned his back to walk away.

00:48:19.660 And Jerome says Christian Cooper then escalated his aggression and attempted to lure Jerome

00:48:24.120 Lockett's dog away from Jerome.

00:48:27.220 Christian Cooper said, if you're going to do what you want, then I'm going to do what I

00:48:31.280 want.

00:48:31.660 But you're not going to like it.

00:48:32.960 This is like this is his M.O.

00:48:35.000 Christian Cooper had to be physically separated from Jerome Lockett's dog by Jerome Lockett,

00:48:40.380 she alleges in her statement.

00:48:42.020 And if you go back and look, Jerome Lockett's statement the day after the Amy Cooper incident

00:48:46.840 was.

00:48:48.240 Stay with me.

00:48:49.640 As a black man, I am not scared of another person because of their race or ethnicity.

00:48:54.160 But this man is threatening with his body language and screaming.

00:48:57.320 I don't know Amy Cooper at all.

00:48:58.900 I've said hello to her because that's what dog owners do to other dog owners in the park.

00:49:01.860 But when I saw that video, I thought I cannot imagine if he approached her the same way how

00:49:07.920 she may have genuinely been afraid for her life.

00:49:10.820 She may not be like me, willing to physically defend herself or her dog.

00:49:14.240 I understand the optics of this video are not great, but people need to understand this

00:49:19.260 man is a dick and probably did threaten her.

00:49:22.800 And he goes on from there saying she had no idea if he'd be pulling out a knife, a gun,

00:49:29.460 a treat that's laced with rat poison.

00:49:32.760 You know, he said, I know two other dog owners that have had similar situations with this guy,

00:49:38.040 but they don't feel comfortable coming forward because they're white and they think they're

00:49:41.460 going to be called Karen or something.

00:49:43.960 He says, I obviously don't have that fear.

00:49:45.320 I'm a liberal man.

00:49:46.200 I voted for Barack, for Bernie, for Bernie again.

00:49:48.500 I'll be voting for Biden in the next election.

00:49:50.280 I'm not a right wing nut job trying to push an agenda.

00:49:52.780 I just think it's unfair and uncool how the world is pushing their own agenda with this

00:49:56.020 story.

00:49:57.140 I like it's unbelievable.

00:49:59.520 I never heard about this guy.

00:50:01.280 Well, you know, that area is it's now known for birdwatching.

00:50:06.040 But since we're always honest on this program, Megan, if the September 13, 2012 edition of

00:50:13.220 the New York Times, the ramble in Central Park, which is where this took place, has long been

00:50:18.300 known as a place where people prowl for anonymous sexual encounters.

00:50:22.940 What?

00:50:23.520 Yeah, that's Megan.

00:50:24.840 I grew up in the city.

00:50:25.740 That's you knew as a kid you didn't go to the ramble.

00:50:29.020 It was not where you went.

00:50:30.520 That's what it was known for.

00:50:31.520 And I walk my dogs there.

00:50:33.220 Oh, my God.

00:50:33.640 I have not been praying for a sexual interlude.

00:50:36.840 Well, before I before I go, I just double checked it.

00:50:39.620 I said, OK, let's see who who agrees with me.

00:50:41.700 And as I said, it's the September 13, 2012, New York Times article talking about the ramble

00:50:47.360 has long been known as a place where people prowl for anonymous sexual encounters.

00:50:52.120 Now, I do know people also go birdwatching there.

00:50:56.060 The whole thing about the multiple encounters, having dog food or dog treats in your pocket.

00:51:02.060 It's just the whole thing is just very, very odd.

00:51:06.040 And I do give him credit for not pursuing this with the authorities, but he may have his

00:51:10.380 own reasons why.

00:51:12.440 But talk about unequal justice.

00:51:15.460 They are not letting them.

00:51:17.260 They're not prosecuting the looters who wrecked Manhattan.

00:51:21.580 They're letting them go.

00:51:22.800 And they were going to go after this woman.

00:51:24.620 I mean, that's really unequal justice on any way you look at it.

00:51:28.980 You know, it's one thing if she called the police and dropped some big racial bomb.

00:51:33.700 There's an N word guy who's here.

00:51:35.860 She didn't say a black guy who's here.

00:51:37.480 She said the most politically correct term, African-American.

00:51:40.600 She said it once.

00:51:41.660 She didn't say it the second time when she said someone's threatening me.

00:51:45.080 She said it's a man, you know, whatever.

00:51:48.060 A slap on the wrist, maybe.

00:51:49.460 But to prosecute her criminally and then she loses her job.

00:51:53.100 I mean, she's probably going to lose a lawsuit unless they just want to settle.

00:51:57.780 And they'll just they may just give her some money just to make this quietly go away.

00:52:01.680 They better not give her a dime.

00:52:03.300 You guys are being so damn soft on her.

00:52:05.380 First, let me just say, I don't know.

00:52:07.740 Christian Cooper may be a dick, as Jerome Lockett says.

00:52:11.200 That is that's not my word.

00:52:12.920 That's his word.

00:52:13.760 Let's put that to the side.

00:52:15.640 So what?

00:52:16.780 The issue was when she said what she said about an African man assaulting me,

00:52:23.280 whether you believed at any point that that wasn't racially motivated.

00:52:28.120 If you're being reasonable, that's what you felt.

00:52:30.860 And as a result, the company had every reason to fire her for her suing them.

00:52:35.900 That is baseless.

00:52:37.240 And I hope that they they make her pay for the lawyers that they're going to have to use to defend them.

00:52:41.960 I agree that the loss is going nowhere.

00:52:44.380 I mean, unless she had some, you know, contract in place, they could fire her because they didn't like her hair color.

00:52:50.200 You know, I don't know what I'm not sure that there was anything other than an employment at will relationship.

00:52:56.360 But they had no obligation to stand by her, given the tape.

00:52:59.620 And I don't know that they created an impression.

00:53:02.440 They did some big investigation.

00:53:03.600 They just they didn't think it reflected well in the company.

00:53:06.440 But I do feel this woman paid a very, very high price for that incident, especially now that we know this guy's backstory.

00:53:12.200 And I do think he behaved threateningly.

00:53:13.680 But she's probably unemployable.

00:53:15.280 That's why the lawsuit is here.

00:53:16.380 She's got nowhere else to go, Mark.

00:53:17.820 I mean, you you put this woman hands in her name.

00:53:20.260 I mean, luckily, she's got a little bit of a common name.

00:53:22.320 But if they dig a little deeper, who's hiring her?

00:53:25.200 She can't literally she couldn't get a job at Home Depot.

00:53:27.940 Arthur, we call those things consequences.

00:53:31.360 That's a heavy penalty for one.

00:53:33.480 Consequences of what?

00:53:34.900 Of what?

00:53:35.460 Because she said the term African-American.

00:53:37.540 So she should be unemployable for the rest of her life.

00:53:40.060 It's a lot worse than that.

00:53:41.480 What she did was very, very abhorrent, in my opinion.

00:53:46.300 Think about what she did.

00:53:47.400 Think about you live in marshmallow land.

00:53:49.640 That's a part of me watching people break the windows of Cartier and Tiffany on Fifth Avenue.

00:53:54.580 Because they were upset about what happened to George Floyd.

00:53:57.720 That was abhorrent.

00:53:58.880 Hold on one second.

00:53:59.840 Hold on.

00:54:00.200 Hold on.

00:54:00.500 From the NBA store.

00:54:01.840 That was abhorrent.

00:54:02.840 Hold on.

00:54:03.040 Those are people who should be who should be prosecuted.

00:54:05.880 Sorry, I got to go feed my unicorn.

00:54:07.840 Hold on one second.

00:54:12.560 Up next, we're going to talk about these vaccine mandates at a growing number of schools.

00:54:19.440 Does it matter whether it's college versus K through 12?

00:54:22.360 Does it matter whether it's public or private?

00:54:23.920 Can they force you to do this to your kid?

00:54:27.280 The guys take that on along with Mayor Lightfoot in Chicago, requiring anybody who has light skin to sit out the opportunity to interview with her.

00:54:38.500 We'll get into whether that's legal in a minute.

00:54:40.480 Before we get to that, though, I want to bring you a feature we have here on the MK Show called Asked and Answered, where we attack some of our listener mail.

00:54:47.800 Steve Krakauer is our EP.

00:54:49.540 Who do we have today, Steve?

00:54:50.540 Hey, Megan.

00:54:51.620 Yeah, this one is from Sonia Patel, and it comes to us from questions at devilmaycaremedia.com, where we get all sorts of listener questions and we read them on a weekly basis on the show to get your answer.

00:55:03.300 Sonia is a big fan of the show, and she says she's always so impressed by the amount of research and prep that goes into an episode.

00:55:08.460 She wants to know what's your normal process for getting prepared, who helps you, and she also gives shout outs to Abby and Canadian Debbie.

00:55:16.200 Oh, that's nice.

00:55:17.520 Sonia, thank you.

00:55:18.660 Well, I mean, the answer to your question is multifold, but I would say chief, you know, above all, it's Canadian Debbie who gets me ready.

00:55:26.360 And she has always done this for me, and she is a gem, which I will let go of with my cold, dead hands.

00:55:33.280 This is why she's worked with me now since my early, early days at Fox when I launched America's Newsroom in 2007 with Hemmer.

00:55:40.580 We were together.

00:55:41.540 I've taken her with me every place I've ever gone, and thankfully she's come.

00:55:44.840 And she's just so important because she gets me editorially.

00:55:48.160 She knows what stories I'm going to be interested in, and she knows what angles on the stories I like.

00:55:53.340 So she gives me these very thick, dense research packets.

00:55:56.780 She works her ass off.

00:55:58.280 She's a mother of young children.

00:55:59.840 You know, as I say, she works in damn Canada.

00:56:02.700 She works very hard, but she finds the time to put together these very dense research packets for me because she knows I like them and I'll read them.

00:56:09.160 And then I'm off to the races, right?

00:56:10.980 I read every word.

00:56:12.220 I bother her.

00:56:13.120 She tracks down more information.

00:56:14.840 She gives me stats.

00:56:15.780 She'll clarify factual issues, but she gives me a ton of links, too.

00:56:19.900 So like when we do Gadsat, she'll send me a bunch of links to YouTube videos of Gads or interviews of Gads that she thinks I might want to watch.

00:56:27.580 And she's got a team of interns who she works with, too, who will help her.

00:56:31.800 They do some of that legwork.

00:56:32.960 And then when she puts it all together, she'll run it by Steve, too, our executive producer, and he'll sort of say, this is great.

00:56:38.180 These are the angles I think might be interesting.

00:56:40.360 I'll add some of those to my list.

00:56:42.060 And then I just sort of go on the Internet, sort of enjoy the pleasures of being in this line of work where you have time to prepare.

00:56:49.920 You know, you have time to get to know somebody and start watching their TED Talks or downloading their books, you know, and giving them a read.

00:56:56.400 I always do the digital if I can.

00:56:58.920 It's just easier.

00:56:59.700 You can just read it wherever you are or the audio read to you.

00:57:02.380 That's always nice.

00:57:03.240 And I just try to stuff my brain with as much information about the person I'm going to interview as I can, because I figure that's my job to separate the wheat from the chaff for you guys so you can get the good stuff.

00:57:13.140 You only get the wheat to have an interesting and enticing exchange.

00:57:17.200 Right.

00:57:17.440 Like, that's my job.

00:57:18.520 That's my job is to try to find interesting angles on people and highlight them.

00:57:22.080 And that's, I think, what creates a connection with an audience.

00:57:24.580 Right.

00:57:24.740 If my if if the way I do it aligns with your taste, then we have a connection.

00:57:29.520 Then you like me.

00:57:30.820 You like the show.

00:57:31.880 I will hold on to you.

00:57:33.520 I will hopefully continue to be pleasing to you because I can apply those methods to all the interviews.

00:57:37.980 Right.

00:57:38.140 That's how we stay connected.

00:57:39.520 We used to joke about, you know, the Kelly file, you know, you work harder to deliver a shorter product, a tighter product.

00:57:46.160 And the harder we work, the better the product gets for you.

00:57:48.480 It may sound super simple by the time it comes out of my mouth, but that's because of all the hours of work that went into making it super simple.

00:57:54.720 So you don't have to work too hard to understand it.

00:57:57.060 And that's kind of what we're still doing anyway.

00:57:59.320 So it's a team effort, long effort, long way of saying it's a team effort to get the editorial to you in a way that works.

00:58:03.900 But the truth is credit where it's due.

00:58:06.740 Debbie Murphy is my secret weapon.

00:58:09.280 Cold, dead hands.

00:58:11.660 Canadian Debbie, do you want to weigh in on this at all?

00:58:13.380 Do you have any thoughts on this?

00:58:15.020 Well, I feel like, you know, we should just go on a little bit more.

00:58:17.340 So this is a Canadian Debbie episode.

00:58:21.080 So pleasure to get you prepped.

00:58:22.900 And it's like going to college every day, learning every one.

00:58:25.300 And I start with, I know nothing about this person, even if it's someone you've interviewed before.

00:58:29.800 And it just go back to the beginning, like, who is this person?

00:58:32.420 And we're getting ready for Marcus Luttrell next week.

00:58:34.980 And, you know, his book came out in 2007.

00:58:37.060 But I'm like, I'm going to breeze through the book and get some good quotes out of it.

00:58:40.500 Because there's always just like that one moment, right?

00:58:43.600 You're always just looking for that one moment.

00:58:45.280 It's so different than any other interview.

00:58:48.240 So I think that's what we try to do.

00:58:51.320 Well, you're so you're so genius at finding it.

00:58:53.500 And not not everybody, not every producer knows how to do that.

00:58:56.220 That's why one of the reasons why you're so talented and you're so valuable and you work

00:59:00.100 for me, even though you're in damn Canada, you could you could move to China and still

00:59:04.840 work with you, China.

00:59:08.160 Anyway, it is it is a team effort, but it does take really talented people.

00:59:11.360 And I do think that's just as a lesson in life.

00:59:13.600 That's one of the reasons why it's important to keep people with you who know you and whose

00:59:18.820 skills have been developed over time with you.

00:59:21.220 Like, it's just you get into a rhythm where it's almost like being great, what I imagine

00:59:25.060 it's like to be a great basketball player.

00:59:26.640 You know, you do the behind the back pass.

00:59:28.560 You don't even have to look at each other.

00:59:30.120 That's where we are.

00:59:31.060 So hopefully you guys feel the the results of this team.

00:59:34.740 I haven't been together for a long time in one way, shape or form.

00:59:38.140 Just knowing what what resonates, what how to make it sing.

00:59:42.360 Right.

00:59:43.080 Anyway, Sonia, thank you.

00:59:44.240 Canadian Debbie, thank you as always.

00:59:46.520 And now after this ad back to the guys.

00:59:51.220 I do think these vaccine mandate lawsuits are interesting.

00:59:57.980 Now, there's one government coming out against Indiana University, and this is not going to

01:00:02.080 be the only one.

01:00:03.220 Eight students have filed a lawsuit challenging Indiana University over its its requirement

01:00:07.900 that students be vaccinated before returning to campus.

01:00:10.660 They're claiming it's an equal protection clause violation, and they also say it violates

01:00:14.540 the state's anti-vaccine passport law that the state is that's one of those states that

01:00:17.980 said you can't mandate, you know, travel be conditioned on somebody having been vaccinated.

01:00:24.160 And the lawsuit alleges that even those who are granted exemptions from the vaccine are

01:00:29.900 going to be subjected to extra requirements like they have mitigation testing twice a week.

01:00:35.320 They have a mandatory quarantine if they're even exposed to somebody who tests positive

01:00:38.620 and mandatory face masks in all public spaces.

01:00:42.240 And the university is standing by the mandate saying, too bad.

01:00:45.880 You have no right to go to this university.

01:00:47.460 But if you want to come here, you have to get the vaccination.

01:00:50.540 And they say the Supreme Court's long upheld mandatory vaccination.

01:00:54.600 So you can pound sand students who don't like it.

01:00:57.520 What do you guys think?

01:00:58.180 I think the FDA role plays a big piece of this puzzle because these vaccines have not been

01:01:05.660 sanctioned, I don't know what the right word is, by the FDA.

01:01:12.620 I mean, look, we live in New York City where our kids can't go to school unless they have

01:01:18.180 the measles, the mumps, polio.

01:01:20.340 Now it's chickenpox as well.

01:01:21.940 But here, I believe when it's an emergency use and not FDA approved, I believe that you

01:01:30.240 cannot say you have to do it for an entity that you have a right to go to.

01:01:37.500 So in other words, a public school, I don't believe the New York City public schools are

01:01:42.500 saying you have to be vaccinated because they can't say you have to be vaccinated until the

01:01:47.960 vaccine has FDA approval.

01:01:49.440 And then I believe they can say the way you can't start school without polio, real FDA

01:01:54.200 approval without the emergency use.

01:01:57.080 Correct.

01:01:57.440 I think the lawsuit's going to go nowhere.

01:01:59.920 I'm going to cite Jacobson versus Massachusetts going back to 1905, which I believe is still

01:02:05.920 good law.

01:02:07.200 And the case upheld the power of the states and other governmental entities to enforce compulsory

01:02:13.960 vaccines in the interest of public health.

01:02:17.180 But but the precedent does not include cases where the vaccines were only authorized for

01:02:26.160 emergency use on a temporary basis, that all those other vaccines had the bigger long term

01:02:31.720 approval as far as I understand.

01:02:34.980 And so there is something different about this because all this happened so fast and all the

01:02:40.100 side effects that are coming out now, like the inflamed hearts for young men under the age

01:02:44.600 of 30, all that starting just breaking now.

01:02:47.320 So and just this week, we I just went through this because it looks like our boys school.

01:02:51.980 I think they're going to mandate vaccines for all age eligible kids.

01:02:56.540 And the WHO literally just came out and said, we don't recommend the kid, the vaccine for kids

01:03:01.540 under the age of 18.

01:03:02.680 The WHO.

01:03:03.280 How about this?

01:03:04.840 Someone I forget who and you probably know, Megan, just got banned from Twitter because

01:03:09.100 they retweeted that, that that WHO bans, uh, ban is not recommending the vaccine for children.

01:03:16.620 And obviously the Twitter people want everyone to be vaccine for whatever, want everyone to

01:03:20.860 be immunized for whatever reason.

01:03:22.200 So yes.

01:03:23.220 And my own son, the, the doctor is like, look, he's, and he's been his pediatrician since

01:03:28.840 he's born.

01:03:29.320 He goes, look, he's right in the heart of puberty.

01:03:31.380 I just, he's not going to die if he gets this.

01:03:34.520 I don't want him to get it.

01:03:35.540 And he's not going to get it.

01:03:37.120 That's right.

01:03:37.760 Same.

01:03:38.360 I don't want my kids to get this.

01:03:40.800 And I don't want my school telling me I have no choice as their mother.

01:03:46.060 And Doug has no choice as their father.

01:03:48.620 It's, it's absurd.

01:03:49.720 And, and at our school, and I'm sure it sounds like at Indiana or other places, it's like,

01:03:53.860 if you can, if you say no, it's going to be, Oh, no problem.

01:03:57.200 You don't have to, but you have to have double masks and you can't go to any activities.

01:04:00.780 You can sit at your desk and do math and social studies, but anything beyond that, you can't

01:04:04.860 partake in.

01:04:05.720 So they try to force it on you for what, for what that there was an, uh, an op-ed in the

01:04:11.020 wall street journal recently, but by a doctor of psychiatry, a professor of psychiatry, uh,

01:04:16.580 and a doctor, I think at the university of California, California, Irvine, and then a

01:04:20.300 law professor, Notre Dame saying these mandate, these mandates, they're unethical because this

01:04:25.800 is an experimental vaccine and it hasn't been fully approved.

01:04:30.100 And for those who are under 30, the risks of serious morbid morbidity and mortality are

01:04:34.880 close to zero.

01:04:35.860 And what we're really doing here, what we're really doing is we're using young people.

01:04:41.820 We're forcing the vaccine on healthy young adults who are at minimal risk, um, in order

01:04:47.520 to increase the numbers on herd immunity and for the benefit of the elderly, right?

01:04:52.400 Like we're saying the young people have no risk, but the old people do.

01:04:54.960 So we're just going to vaccinate it.

01:04:55.960 That that's not ethical medically.

01:04:57.680 That's not the way medicine is supposed to work.

01:04:59.380 Go ahead, Mark.

01:05:00.460 I'm not going to disagree on this one.

01:05:02.020 I don't want my kids to be forced to do anything the government says.

01:05:05.980 So, um, I support your arguments.

01:05:09.600 And the part that's, that that's upsetting is what you said is how they kind of bullying

01:05:14.360 you.

01:05:14.900 So if you are the kid who's not vaccinated and there won't be one, but the other five

01:05:19.100 kids who aren't vaccinated, yes, they want you to wear the double mask.

01:05:22.920 Yes.

01:05:23.320 And you have to get tested every 15 minutes.

01:05:25.740 And yes, you can't participate in the outdoor sports and less blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:05:29.540 And what does that do for a kid's psyche?

01:05:32.120 Like, look, my, this isn't even his parents who made this decision, Megan.

01:05:36.140 This was his pediatrician who said, I don't want him to get it.

01:05:40.100 Oh, I'm going to tell the doctor.

01:05:41.560 Well, no, I'm the lawyer.

01:05:42.620 I'm going to tell you what's best for my kid.

01:05:44.500 No, right.

01:05:44.960 The doctor said some suit in the administration of the high school said he should.

01:05:50.560 Well, he, does he have a medical degree?

01:05:52.940 Yeah, exactly.

01:05:54.380 What do you guys think the outcome would be?

01:05:56.100 What do you think the court's going to do?

01:05:57.380 I'm noting that noting the precedent that generally sides in favor of governmental entities

01:06:02.840 to, to protect the public.

01:06:05.960 Do you think that they'll carve out an exception because it's not FDA approved and thus it's

01:06:13.880 not lawful to do?

01:06:15.540 I think it's going to come down to the judge's politics.

01:06:18.140 I think if this went to the Supreme court, it would go our way, mine and Arthur's Arthur's

01:06:23.740 and yours marks, I think, I don't think, I can't, I can see Clarence Thomas upholding

01:06:28.620 a mandate that really, that forced this on parents who don't want it when it's only

01:06:32.940 experimental.

01:06:33.260 Or Megan, or would they, would they say, Hey, it's a private institution.

01:06:36.780 They're, you know, they're allowed to enforce whatever, like they're allowed to enforce a

01:06:40.960 dress code if they like.

01:06:42.260 So maybe this is, they're allowed to do this.

01:06:44.320 They're a private institution.

01:06:45.060 A public institution can't do it.

01:06:47.940 A taxpayer sponsored institution can't do it, but a public, a private institution can

01:06:52.160 do whatever they want.

01:06:53.700 That's exactly right.

01:06:54.580 That will be important.

01:06:55.440 Private employers versus public employers and private schools versus public schools.

01:06:59.960 You're better off basically.

01:07:01.240 If you want to challenge these mandates, if you're at a public institution versus a private,

01:07:05.580 because if you're at a private, you're basically just supposed to jump up and down and say,

01:07:08.140 Hey, I pay you a lot of money.

01:07:09.040 You shouldn't do this to me.

01:07:09.880 Um, but you know, even that doesn't, doesn't work.

01:07:14.180 If you're in a blue state, like we are, you know, it's like, you just gotta, you gotta

01:07:17.300 suck it up.

01:07:18.020 Okay.

01:07:18.280 So we don't feel so good about the vaccine mandate lawsuits, but anything could happen

01:07:22.480 because this whole thing's in its infancy.

01:07:24.460 And, you know, even we'll see over the summer, how the reports come out of these side effects

01:07:30.100 because they've only just started giving it to children and now they're testing it on

01:07:34.100 babies, babies through age 12, who the hell's giving their kid over for that?

01:07:39.120 Who is doing that?

01:07:40.440 Right.

01:07:40.920 Great.

01:07:41.140 You want it to be mandated for my kid?

01:07:42.400 Good.

01:07:42.640 Your kid can go first.

01:07:43.820 Okay.

01:07:44.320 Let's see how it works out for your kid.

01:07:45.540 I wonder if, if it's ethical for there to be a financial aspect to it.

01:07:50.160 Like in other words, we're giving out $5,000 to whoever wants to have their kids, you know,

01:07:55.540 be the Guinea pigs for this vaccine.

01:07:57.500 I mean, I don't know if ethically they're allowed to do that or not, but I agree with you.

01:08:01.100 Who the heck would give their kid over to do that?

01:08:04.680 I can beat the heck out of me, man.

01:08:06.320 Yeah.

01:08:06.540 Let's see.

01:08:07.020 Let's see if there are any fertility problems.

01:08:09.420 Try it out of my kid.

01:08:10.840 I mean, and like, and of course we all know, we just saw a little thing.

01:08:14.340 Our school releases this, um, testimonial by a doctor at Yale and he was like, oh, the

01:08:18.260 reports of, you know, fertility problems have not been supported.

01:08:21.980 You know, there's no, there's no reason to believe that.

01:08:24.880 What, what child did you check for fertility problems caused by this experimental vaccine?

01:08:31.360 How are you able to say when COVID is only a year and a half old that the vaccine, which

01:08:37.800 we've had for far less time, poses absolutely no risk to fertility?

01:08:41.960 You don't know that.

01:08:43.420 Well, you can't possibly know that.

01:08:45.180 Um, and there is some reporting now about, you know, possible concerns.

01:08:49.040 I'm not going to get into that here cause I haven't done my homework on it yet, but my

01:08:52.240 point is we don't know.

01:08:53.460 So go ahead and figure it out on somebody else, not minors.

01:08:57.360 Right.

01:08:57.960 I mean, I feel the same way.

01:08:58.900 I want to be a grandfather one day.

01:09:00.380 Right.

01:09:01.020 I don't.

01:09:01.340 And it's like, God, can you imagine looking at your kid and try and explain that they lost

01:09:05.540 their ability to God forbid to something as profound as have children because you really

01:09:11.220 wanted them to participate in gym class and sports like, no.

01:09:14.940 And everyone needs to use their own judgment.

01:09:16.820 Like my sister has a son who's 17, but you know, he's juvenile diabetes and they've, they've

01:09:23.020 it's clear that if you have diabetes as severely as he does and you get the Corona virus, you

01:09:28.940 get COVID-19, it's not a good thing.

01:09:32.140 It's very, very bad.

01:09:33.140 It's not like a typical kid getting it.

01:09:35.220 So my sister made the option of getting him vaccinated as soon as possible.

01:09:38.540 But her daughter, who's just a few years younger, who's healthy as an ox at 14 years old, you

01:09:43.820 know, they're, they're not giving her the vaccine, but that's what you call individual

01:09:47.700 decisions based on reality and based on what makes sense.

01:09:52.480 But they're individual decisions, not mandated decisions.

01:09:55.920 I've got to call the, one of the most prestigious high schools in poly, one of the most prestigious

01:10:01.360 high schools in Brooklyn, they're mandating the kids come back vaccinated.

01:10:05.320 And all the parents are calling me.

01:10:06.920 Is this legal?

01:10:07.560 Is this legal?

01:10:08.200 Is this legal?

01:10:09.280 They said, I, I think they, it's a private school.

01:10:12.120 You're paying them $50,000 plus to go there.

01:10:15.040 If they, they have a rule that you have to wear a college shirt and you can't wear jeans and

01:10:20.100 you can't wear sneakers.

01:10:21.160 So the way they're able to enforce those rules, I think they can enforce the rule that

01:10:25.120 listen, kids who come in here, the school starts at this time, ends this, this time you're

01:10:30.020 paying for them.

01:10:30.700 If you want to go to PS one 85, you don't have to worry about these things.

01:10:34.520 There is no dress code.

01:10:35.840 There is no vaccination code except for what the FDA has already approved.

01:10:40.620 At least not yet.

01:10:43.180 Don't leave me now.

01:10:44.100 We got more coming up in 60 seconds.

01:10:45.740 Okay, let's do Lori Lightfoot quickly.

01:10:50.260 She's the mayor of Chicago.

01:10:52.020 This is the woman who decided not to grant interviews to any white people to celebrate

01:10:57.020 her second year in office.

01:10:58.180 Meanwhile, it's like, get over yourself.

01:10:59.560 Who wants to talk to you about that?

01:11:00.860 No one cares.

01:11:01.560 Chicago is a hot mess.

01:11:03.580 Thanks to you and your policies.

01:11:05.580 The number, the death rate there, the number of African-Americans are getting shot on a daily

01:11:09.320 basis.

01:11:09.780 Let's keep our eye on the ball, right?

01:11:11.200 Like that's what I'd like to talk to you about.

01:11:12.600 Not your not your two year inaugural anniversary, as she assumed everybody wanted to discuss.

01:11:18.160 Anyway, so the local reporters out there, to their credit, complain saying, what are you

01:11:23.060 doing?

01:11:23.660 What are you talking about?

01:11:24.320 You're going to you're going to base our ability to interview you on our skin color.

01:11:30.400 More than twelve hundred people have been shot in the city this year.

01:11:33.760 Okay.

01:11:34.740 And that's more than twice of what it was this time last year.

01:11:37.840 Let's have some answers for that.

01:11:39.520 Not what my melanin looks like.

01:11:42.080 Okay, Mayor Lightfoot.

01:11:44.400 So now, to their credit, some have filed a lawsuit.

01:11:48.980 Daily Caller News Foundation, filed by Thomas Katsunachi, the Daily Caller News Foundation

01:11:54.540 and Judicial Watch in the federal court, Northern District of Illinois.

01:11:58.880 And they are saying that this guy, Thomas, was denied an interview by her.

01:12:03.200 He's a Daily Caller reporter.

01:12:04.400 He's a white male.

01:12:05.400 And they're saying this was this is a violation of the Constitution.

01:12:08.240 His First Amendment rights is a member of the press and his 14th Amendment rights, which

01:12:13.020 include equal protection.

01:12:14.660 That she, a state official, used race as the basis to deny him a professional opportunity

01:12:21.900 and that that's not allowed.

01:12:23.120 The same way you couldn't have some white mayor say, I'm not giving any interviews to black

01:12:29.800 people.

01:12:30.460 Would anybody challenge that that would be inappropriate and unlawful?

01:12:34.720 Can she do this because she's a black woman to white reporters, Mark?

01:12:38.400 Uh, I'm not defending her at all.

01:12:41.260 In fact, be careful what you wish for.

01:12:43.220 If this goes through the legal system and the decision is in her favor, then what stops

01:12:48.940 a white politician from doing it against someone of color?

01:12:52.980 Exactly.

01:12:53.580 Well, what would stop them would be, you know, the public outrage.

01:12:56.760 But, you know, Megan, just the way we tied in a minute ago about private institutions

01:13:01.940 having their own rules, there is a limit.

01:13:04.120 So a private school, high school can't say, OK, we're not letting in white kids or we're

01:13:08.920 not letting in black kids.

01:13:09.980 They're allowed to say you have to wear a college shirt or you have to be fully immunized

01:13:13.560 by FDA.

01:13:14.800 But you can't.

01:13:15.440 There is a line.

01:13:16.760 I believe it's called strict scrutiny that the Supreme Court would look at here and say,

01:13:20.880 you can't say I'm not interviewing with you because of the color of your skin.

01:13:24.340 Race is one of the protected classes.

01:13:27.620 And I do think that he has a very viable suit here.

01:13:32.720 And look, her point was, while she was a candidate for mayor and as the mayor, the whole press

01:13:39.660 corps is so predominantly white in a very mixed culture city that, you know, she was trying

01:13:47.060 to make the point that let's try to get some more people of color into the into the press

01:13:52.160 corps.

01:13:52.940 You know, they got much bigger problems in Chicago.

01:13:56.280 I know.

01:13:56.800 I'm sorry.

01:13:57.540 But boo effing who that is not her job to work on the diversity of the newsrooms.

01:14:04.420 That is the newsrooms job.

01:14:06.140 It's not up to the politicians to say, I'm not getting the right mix in the in the interview

01:14:11.240 pool.

01:14:11.900 I you need to send me different people.

01:14:14.320 Bullshit.

01:14:14.860 That's up for the news media to decide.

01:14:17.660 They may indeed need to do better.

01:14:19.140 She can she can say it in a microphone.

01:14:21.160 She can't start making discriminatory actions and decisions based on her preferences.

01:14:26.500 I agree with you on the manner in which she chose to bring attention to this issue.

01:14:32.080 But isn't there an issue?

01:14:34.960 And doesn't desperate times calls for desperate measures?

01:14:38.100 I'm not saying that illegal measures.

01:14:40.040 I don't know what you're saying.

01:14:41.060 They have to be legal.

01:14:42.040 Stop it.

01:14:42.660 Stop it.

01:14:42.980 Let me finish.

01:14:43.580 I'm not OK with it.

01:14:44.640 I'm not OK with it legally.

01:14:45.880 But I understand her frustration if assuming this problem is legitimate.

01:14:51.460 Assuming.

01:14:51.920 Right.

01:14:52.160 I don't know.

01:14:52.760 I look at the rooms.

01:14:54.220 I'm not another.

01:14:55.340 Well, I'll give you one.

01:14:56.460 According to the 2018 Pew Research analysis, 77 percent of newsroom employees are white.

01:15:03.480 About six in 10 are men.

01:15:06.340 So they tend to be white men.

01:15:08.160 So, yeah, of course, more diversity.

01:15:10.540 Sure, that would be great.

01:15:11.260 But it's not up to the politicians and the people we cover to solve that problem.

01:15:16.480 Who is she to determine the makeup of the newsroom?

01:15:20.180 She said, and I quote, we must be intentional about doing better.

01:15:23.440 I believe that when I was running for office.

01:15:24.920 I stand on that now.

01:15:25.900 It's time for newsrooms to do better and build teams that reflect the makeup of our city.

01:15:29.960 OK, fine.

01:15:30.560 You said you had your piece, but now you don't get to be discriminatory to solve an issue

01:15:35.600 you think that of discrimination.

01:15:37.640 And to their credit, the Chicago Tribune had a reporter who's Latino, who was among those

01:15:42.820 who'd been granted an interview and the newspaper and this guy, Gregory Pratt, the guy canceled

01:15:47.400 it when she refused to lift her lift her ban on other reporters saying, you don't get

01:15:52.340 to do that.

01:15:53.620 I'm not defending what she did, but I disagree with you.

01:15:57.000 On one point, I think that if she believes that there's a significant problem in the

01:16:03.860 newsroom, it's not being represented by people of color, then she's a politician.

01:16:08.280 I don't necessarily like what she did here, but I don't mind her speaking out about it.

01:16:11.820 In fact, I would encourage her to.

01:16:13.180 You know, Megan, from a purely legal point of view, talking about brick scrutiny and Supreme

01:16:19.020 Court Review, you know, I believe there's a new national network called the Black News

01:16:24.300 Channel, and I would love to see their charter to see how they tiptoed around, you know, what

01:16:31.100 their hiring practices are going to be, because you can't you can't just say with the Black

01:16:36.480 which is fine.

01:16:37.360 This is great.

01:16:37.960 I mean, there was an Italian news channel and whatever.

01:16:40.300 That's fine, except you can't say, OK, but we're only hiring Italians or only hiring African

01:16:45.260 American people.

01:16:46.380 So, you know, this is it's a delicate situation, but I agree, Mark.

01:16:51.900 I understand she's trying to make a statement, but she can make a statement by making a statement

01:16:55.520 and saying, look, you know, here's my second anniversary and I'm here and God bless all

01:17:00.260 you white people.

01:17:00.840 But I wish there were more people who look like me in the news in the news division.

01:17:04.820 I, you know, I know you threw out all those statistics, Megan, but I would love to see how

01:17:10.460 many people of color applied and were rejected as opposed to they just didn't apply.

01:17:16.680 In other words, it's not the industry that they're being pulled into right now.

01:17:20.400 The way there aren't a lot of like fat, bald Italian guys playing NBA basketball.

01:17:25.320 It just may not be where they're where they're looking to work right now.

01:17:29.420 I would be surprised if you I would be surprised if you saw a lot of African-American people being

01:17:34.700 rejected from newsrooms versus the fact that they're just not applying.

01:17:39.040 So that's why they're not there.

01:17:40.580 It's just not what's in there.

01:17:43.300 What's what's the cool thing to be right now?

01:17:46.140 Well, listen to this.

01:17:47.460 So I'll tell you, you're 100 percent right.

01:17:49.620 But of course, you're not allowed to have that opinion in today's day and age.

01:17:51.820 You're supposed to if there aren't enough women in science, it's because science is

01:17:54.460 is sexist.

01:17:55.260 You can't just say, well, maybe women made a different choice.

01:17:57.440 Maybe then if there aren't enough women CEOs, it's always about sexism.

01:18:00.740 It couldn't could just be.

01:18:01.860 You know what?

01:18:02.300 We made different lifestyle choices that are actually kind of smart and we like them.

01:18:06.500 Here is Tulsi Gabbard, who went after Lightfoot for this.

01:18:11.020 And I quote, Mayor Lightfoot's blatant anti-white racism is abhorrent.

01:18:15.540 I call upon President Biden, Kamala Harris and other leaders of our country of all races

01:18:18.820 to join me in calling for Mayor Lightfoot's resignation.

01:18:22.140 Our leaders must condemn all racism, including anti-white racism.

01:18:26.320 And that, you know, it does bear repeating anti-white racism is not lawful.

01:18:32.300 Like the discriminant, the anti-discrimination laws that protect black people from being

01:18:36.340 discriminated against, Hispanic people and so on also apply to white people.

01:18:39.860 If you get discriminated against, depending on the setting and the facts of your case,

01:18:44.100 but if it's because you have white skin, you're protected.

01:18:47.020 Like she's not.

01:18:48.260 This is not allowed just because whites still have a numerical majority in the country.

01:18:54.280 Yeah.

01:18:54.400 We learned when we were like seven.

01:18:55.860 Two wrongs don't make a right.

01:18:57.000 I'm sure she knows that, but she's frustrated, you know, single tear.

01:19:01.660 I don't care about her frustration.

01:19:03.120 I don't.

01:19:03.520 You uphold the law or you don't.

01:19:05.080 You believe in the Constitution or you don't.

01:19:07.020 And by the way, when she announced this, according to the Chicago Sun-Times that weekend,

01:19:12.960 Chicago had been hit with its most violent weekend of the year.

01:19:15.500 A two year old girl, a 13 year old boy, two Chicago PD officers, all among the 48 people

01:19:22.060 who were shot, OK, and at least six of them were killed the Tuesday after 14 people were

01:19:28.000 shot in Chicago, leaving two dead in the midst of this.

01:19:31.080 She's she's focused on the diversity of the newsrooms.

01:19:34.060 This woman is a disgrace.

01:19:35.120 She's been terrible.

01:19:35.960 I can't believe she's let this beautiful city become such a hellhole.

01:19:39.820 We talked about this the other day.

01:19:40.840 She's focused right now on what to rename Lakeshore Drive.

01:19:43.960 She wants it to have a more diverse.

01:19:45.680 My God, twelve hundred people have died.

01:19:49.240 Yes, it's it's it's it's sad.

01:19:51.220 And real quick, when I when Bill de Blasio first became the mayor of the city of New York,

01:19:55.520 like his first weeks, I confronted him.

01:19:58.360 I said, Bill, there's been 20 years of Republican rule in the city of New York.

01:20:02.680 And your biggest issue out of the gate is whether we're going to have horses in Central Park

01:20:07.280 giving people tours around here.

01:20:09.320 Is that that the biggest issue facing the city?

01:20:12.280 And it's the same thing here.

01:20:13.720 I mean, except back then the city was in great shape.

01:20:16.300 So there was no other issues for him to tackle.

01:20:18.240 But here, my goodness, again, Megan, I really would scratch my head if there is any statistic

01:20:24.820 that shows an overwhelming members of the people of color are applying to newsrooms and

01:20:30.380 they're getting rejected.

01:20:31.600 I bet you the statistics will bear out just the opposite, just the opposite that they're

01:20:36.360 going.

01:20:36.580 They're coming in in droves.

01:20:38.800 Yeah, I'm sure back in the day it was it was a problem.

01:20:41.680 But in today's day and age, I have my doubts as well.

01:20:44.500 You guys, it's always a pleasure.

01:20:46.260 Thank you for the scoop on Giuliani, Arthur.

01:20:48.940 And thank you.

01:20:49.800 I'll let you return to your unicorns in your marshmallow world.

01:20:52.560 Mark, it's been a pleasure.

01:20:57.960 All right.

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01:21:25.000 He really is the Charles Krauthammer of our time now.

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01:21:29.560 When you hear him talk, you just, just shut up.

01:21:31.640 That's my job on our next episode on Wednesday.

01:21:33.680 Just, just shut up.

01:21:34.700 I love those interviews.

01:21:35.700 They're so easy for me.

01:21:37.040 Um, they don't require that much intense prep because he knows everything.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - June 28, 2021

Britney Spears, Vaccine Mandates, ＂Central Park Karen,＂ and More Hot Legal Cases, with Arthur Aidala and Mark Eiglarsh ｜ Ep. 121

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