00:16:58.640And I think there's also, speaking of the movie that you're talking about
00:17:04.880and the amount of money that it's generating, the wellspring of support and the way they've
00:17:13.200characterized him or portrayed him in the movie, they ended it, to your point, prior to the
00:17:19.240allegations. That was not the first cut. By all reports, once they were trying to have a more
00:17:28.000elongated treatment of his life, then the case involving the 90s person who made an accusation
00:17:36.160that was settled for reportedly eight figures had a clause in the settlement that you couldn't
00:17:44.460kind of treat this, if you will. So the estate, I presumably had to make a pivot. And that's why
00:17:51.240they truncated this earlier. It actually may turn out. Yes, the Jordy Chandler case. Yes,
00:17:56.840That's that's what the New York Times is reporting, that originally this biopic, Michael, ended with an attempt to address the abuse allegations and an attempt to take down of some number of the accusers, maybe just Geordi, maybe more.
00:18:14.140No, it was reported to be more. And I've got a pretty good indication that it was more.
00:18:18.660And they and there was a lot of the machinations that have not been reported by The New York Times and that I can tell you actually existed was that they were going to originally try to address Geordie Chandler.
00:18:34.540But there was a monumental problem that was going on behind the scenes when there were other accusers that were there that they had not dealt with. Some of the people who were financing this film had been felt like they had been misled. There was all kinds of back and forth in order to try and remedy this.
00:18:55.000And I think where where the film landed was the solution. We're just not going to go there in that period of time because it's too hard to navigate all of this.
00:19:05.140I mean, frankly, it wound up being the best thing that could happen to them because the movie is making so much money. It allows people to take in just his genius and his incredible talent without really having to wrestle with the other side of Michael Jackson, which is frankly what we'd all like to do.
00:19:24.100No one wanted this to be Michael's ending or a piece of his story.
00:19:28.120So it kind of gives the watcher permission to just think about him in the best light.
00:19:33.820Amazingly, and very coolly, he's played by his nephew, Jafar Jackson, who is Jermaine, Michael's brother's son.
00:19:42.160So it's kind of cool that somebody who's in the family is actually playing Michael Jackson.
00:19:46.440Before we get to the darkness, so I just want to spend a minute on Michael's upbringing, Mark.
00:19:52.120Because he really is, whatever the legacy, you know, whatever the truth is about Michael and children, and it does matter.
00:19:59.760I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but whatever it is, you cannot deny his talent.
00:20:03.480You cannot deny his importance as a cultural figure in the United States, in the world music scene.
00:20:09.580It's just, it is enormous and it's like too big to really understand.
00:20:13.620It's hard to overstate the phenomena that was Michael Jackson in the 80s.
00:20:19.280If you were adult and sentient in the 80s, and he was literally the kind of soundtrack of that decade and longer, and it was, I cross every, there's a picture you've got with the Reagans.
00:20:39.240I mean, he cut across every socioeconomic ethnic, you name the category, he permeated it. It was unbelievable what the kind of phenomena that he was, even going into 2000. I've had my good fortune of representing some of the most-
00:20:58.160diana the princess diana adored him um uh the look at look at the now king he uh he was enthralled
00:21:06.620i mean it was unbelievable the kind of rarefied air that he occupied and the bigger star no matter
00:21:14.560who he met he was the bigger star a world-class talent almost godlike in the way people would
00:21:21.440respond to him just because in this one package this overwhelming amount of talent you know just
00:21:27.320the number of things he could do unlike anybody else, better than everybody else. And we grew up
00:21:34.140with him. I mean, he, he was a child star with the Jackson five. He was the star of the Jackson
00:21:41.780five. There was a story online as I was preparing for today where, um, his mother was saying that
00:21:49.220she went to Joe and said, let Michael sing. And he said, no, Jermaine's the singer. And she said,
00:21:54.820no, no, no, but listen to Michael sing. And he was like, Jermaine is the lead singer.
00:21:58.740And she apparently insisted. And Joe Jackson was an asshole, terrible father, but he listened to1.00
00:22:05.040her in this one case and let Michael sing. And Michael immediately became the lead singer of1.00
00:22:10.500the Jackson five, which they practiced all the time. They were from Gary, Indiana, which is
00:22:16.300a very rough rundown town with all due respect to Gary. It's, I don't know if it's seen better days
00:22:22.840In my lifetime, it's never been good days for Gary.
00:22:26.540And he was determined to see that family rise up out of that.
00:28:01.340was when Child Protective Services was called on him.
00:28:05.260And you see there that he's talking about her in one of the previous things, talking about his own children.
00:28:11.940And I think in retrospect, he was prepared for, later prepared for the criminal case.
00:28:20.640I don't think he was ever prepared in retrospect for that Child Protective Services investigation.
00:28:26.800It was so hurtful, devastating, and shook him to his core.
00:28:32.900I just remember talking to him about it, and he just could not wrap his head around the idea that he would be doing anything untoward towards the kids.
00:28:44.020And we did get it shut down, but by that time it was shut down, the criminal case had kind of heated up, and so there was no rest for the weary, so to speak.
00:28:55.660And it was a very difficult time for him.
00:28:58.820I remember, I think I've mentioned this once before, one of the most terrifying times to have a client was being called one time and finding him on the floor OD'd in the run-up to the trial itself.
00:29:15.640And he had this wonderful housekeeper who was living in the house who had called and was panicked.
00:29:23.120And obviously, you couldn't take him to the hospital immediately.
00:29:29.200By the time the 2000s came around, he had undergone so much.
00:29:36.720And he was, to use the term, self-medicating, having others medicating.
00:29:41.960It was just a spectacularly hard fall from the heights, to your point, that he had been at, you know, 20, 10 years earlier.
00:29:54.100Yeah, I mean, it was everything, right?
00:29:55.820Just from my vantage point out in the press and in the public, it was the multiple accusations now, the 93 accusation, the 2003 accusation of abuse, the endangerment of his own children injected into the conversation as he could lose custody of his kids.
00:30:15.180the multiple plastic surgeries, which, like, that's a whole, his name is almost synonymous
00:30:22.940with, like, the bizarre plastic surgery trend that's kind of taken over since then. But he was
00:30:29.120a pioneer in just doing too much and getting addicted to it and not knowing when to stop.
00:30:36.340The skin color changes, you know, there's so many eccentricities about him. And some,
00:30:44.300you could kind of easily dismiss as the product of mega fame like ultra fame like elvis like fame
00:30:53.340and of course he would wind up marrying elvis's daughter that's another whole twist right but like
00:30:59.000part of the mystery is was it how much was attributable to incredible fame in this bizarre
00:31:05.200upbringing like that that that might happen to any child who was exploited as much as he was at a
00:31:10.940young age and how much here's lisa marie presley just loving on him on stage oh sorry no no it's0.94
00:31:17.820just a fan i was gonna say i don't think that's lisa marie for a second i thought this woman's
00:31:23.440too tall to be lisa marie um and how much is attributable to but look at those look at those0.94
00:31:29.840fans for for me as a just as an observer i don't remember that kind of reaction except for the
00:31:38.320beatles back in the 60s i that and elvis i'd say yeah look at that i think i feel like elvis elvis
00:31:46.640brought people there too um but yeah no like that is a term starstruck yeah and it's that's exactly
00:31:54.880what these people were like struck by this megawatt star and unlike so many of these stars
00:32:01.880Mark, he delivered, you know, it's not like we, we today build people up with image making and PR
00:32:09.000firms and, you know, sort of the social media blitz. Here's a woman being taken away on a
00:32:14.040stretcher. She's so overwhelmed by him, but he delivered in terms of the performance and the
00:32:19.680skills and the talent and just, you know, the way he moved was not human. It was overwhelming to
00:32:27.200behold and what and what you see was is just that kind of that tearing apart of him and it's the
00:32:38.720analysis i've thought a lot about it over the years and and at what price and the kind of the
00:32:46.560collateral damage around him and most recently with the new accusers and the you know on the
00:32:54.460heels of what we're talking about here which is the movie that is out there that kind of
00:33:00.360drops off right before next up i'm uh i i believe will be a movie that talks about the trial and
00:33:09.920that my guess is be out momentarily as well and when you see there uh by the way that that that
00:33:20.340clip that you showed i don't know a whole lot of men that could do what he did in terms of leaping
00:33:27.760up on top of an suv even at that stage in his life and with the physical ailments that he had
00:33:35.000it's just hard to well that's that's one of the sad things if he if it hadn't been for the drugs
00:33:39.800he probably would have lived a long life because he was obviously extremely fit you know i mean from
00:33:44.620years of aggressive dancing i mean for the love of god keith richards is still alive just based
00:33:49.380on what he did on stage with the Rolling Stones. Can you imagine? We could have had Michael for
00:33:54.020decades, but a man named Dr. Conrad Murray entered his life and bizarrely agreed as a
00:34:04.040board-certified anesthesiologist to administer propofol to him night after night in 2008 or 9
00:34:11.520and killed him. I mean, he died. That is not a safe thing to have happen, and that's how he
00:34:17.260ultimately died. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say it reminds me, I see this all too often,
00:34:22.920but a lot of people trying to basically turn their brains off when they reach these kinds
00:34:27.840of levels. And that was, I think, to some degree, where he was, is just trying to
00:34:37.180literally anesthetize himself to the point where he could sleep, where he could just stop
00:34:43.300having the neurons firing and everything else. I mean, it's an immense tragedy, and it's a first
00:34:51.560cousin to the talent that, I mean, I don't even think, there are not enough words to describe
00:34:58.900just how talented he was, and the kinds of, he, even in the somewhat addled state that he was
00:35:07.940by the time all of this other stuff was swirling around him, he had flashes, flashes of just an
00:35:17.480incredibly brilliant mind. And so I think to some degree, it was a way of just turning off that
00:35:25.480brain activity. I'm sure. I mean, propofol, anybody who's ever had a surgery knows what
00:35:31.820that feels like. You have to count back from 10 and you never make it past eight because of the
00:35:35.880propofol, which knocks you out, and you lose consciousness prior to, you know, them operating
00:35:42.760on you. And he could have anything. He had the money and the resources and the connections
00:35:47.300to get anything. And in the same way that the helicopter pilot should not have flown
00:35:52.840Kobe on that day because the weather was not safe, but he did it, I think, out of fame,
00:35:59.860you know admiration like wanting to please kobe michael jackson had enablers like that in his own
00:36:06.760life and one of them killed him conrad murray killed michael jackson by and he was later uh
00:36:13.160found guilty at a trial right a criminal trial i believe he was put through and of course lost
00:36:17.600his license of as he should have because no anesthesiologist would do this you know in any
00:36:23.220respectable way and so that's what took him but if it hadn't been conrad murray it would have been
00:36:27.640something else. It might have been a different kind of OD. He was slowly but surely killing
00:36:32.380himself. Yeah, we could have a whole other discussion. I'm coming fresh off of the so-called
00:36:36.840ketamine queen and Matthew Perry. And you just wonder at a certain point, I know you want to
00:36:42.940hold people accountable, I guess. I get that. But at a certain point, if you've ever, and I've
00:36:49.760argued this for years with people who are in the throes of addiction or have a loved one, who
00:36:54.380doesn't have one degree of separation to somebody with a mental health or an addictive
00:36:59.140challenge and doesn't understand just how determined and how much they can persevere
00:37:05.300when they want to get whatever it is, is the carrot at the end that is being held out in
00:37:13.220front of them. So it's a very pernicious thing to be under the influence of, pun intended.
00:37:20.780So we've gotten childhood abuse. We've gotten allegations of abuse, child abuse and molestation against him. We've gotten the threat of his own losing his own children, potentially. We've gotten, you know, crazy, avid, obsessive plastic surgery and skin color changes and incredible fame, like just mind numbing, crazy ass fame and attention.
00:38:13.020Black and white, I think, was the song.
00:38:15.240Yes. Thank you. Yeah. What do I put it on? He was or he wasn't. And I got to say, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know enough. But there are some very disturbing allegations. So I'll start with the most recent.
00:38:31.000But you mentioned that there were recent allegations, and indeed there are.
00:38:35.300So this is a family that was supposedly his, quote, second family.
00:38:40.880And they had been defending Michael for all these years, saying no, no, no, no, no, including, I think, four young children who used to spend tons of time at Neverland Ranch, which was made to look like Disney.
00:38:54.080I mean, Michael's room, he always used to say he was like Peter Pan, who never grew up. And his bedroom had a Peter Pan figure in there, a Captain Hook figure hanging from the ceiling. It was all done up to look like a Peter Pan.
00:39:07.640Well, I will tell you at Neverland, the two things that always struck me was there was a two-story video arcade that when you turned on the lights was absolutely incredible.
00:39:18.660And then you've got right there the other area that is adjacent.
00:39:23.740I think, as I remember, it was adjacent to the theater, which I also thought was.
00:39:29.280He's there with Macaulay Culkin in one of the rides, but keep going, Arc.
00:39:32.500So the interesting thing, in full disclosure, the family you're talking about is the Casio family, and I've spent an enormous amount of time with them.
00:39:43.200And I will tell you, if you spend time with them, they are convincing, they are persuasive, you don't have a heart if you doubt their emotional damage.
00:40:01.960sincerity and their authenticity. I saw it firsthand. I've spent an inordinate amount
00:40:08.500of time with them listening to them. I used to say about the Arvizo family, because I used to
00:40:14.260get all the time, the question is, did you believe, did you believe back then in real time?
00:40:20.380And I used to say, well, I will tell you, I don't know about any other accusers, but I know
00:40:26.220in that particular instance that everything that we investigated, everything that we saw,
00:40:33.520led us to believe that it was a shakedown. And I'm not going to be dissuaded from that. I can't
00:40:43.080speak to, and nor should I, ever speak to any of the other accusations. I just know what I know,
00:40:50.120Which is when you look at all of the accusations, when it turns out that the Arvizo family apparently hired the same lawyer that Jordy Chandler had, when you see the kinds of history involving the family, all of those things give you great pause.
00:41:07.720But then sit down and talk with the Casios, and that will give you great pause.
00:41:12.940And I think that somebody who's not there is going to make their own decision.
00:41:20.520It's almost a Rorschach test, I suppose, because we don't have anything along the lines of what sometimes you will have in these cases,
00:41:31.020which is computers filled with child porn or a tape of the molestation or some kind of an eyewitness or some direct, what's called direct evidence,
00:41:42.600even though I often will make the argument circumstantial and direct are equally powerful.
00:41:48.200In a lot of cases, circumstantial is more powerful.
00:41:51.100But it's a very mind-numbing kind of exercise to get into when you have somebody who is so enormously talented, who's been dead for so long, and you're revisiting whether or not there was this unbelievable dark side to him.
00:42:09.880And that's, I think, what has captivated people, but it certainly did not hurt the box office, which doesn't surprise me in the least.
00:42:18.860mm-hmm no it's one of those things like it would be one thing if they were like michael jackson was
00:42:23.900a shoplifter you know he had a winona ryder problem even though he was rich he just felt
00:42:28.700the need to do this thing people would have moved on who really cares but he's been accused of
00:42:34.360literally the worst possible crime you can commit i mean it is arguably worse even than murder i
00:42:40.880will tell you if you're god forbid you're ever sent to prison you would rather be convicted of
00:42:46.060murder than you would have child molestation. You've got a longer shelf life than for somebody
00:42:51.100who's a child molester. They just don't last long in prison because it's considered the worst of the
00:42:56.800worst. Yes, there is some weird honor code, even amongst the worst among us who have been sent
00:43:03.520away for life, that you hurt a child, you're in a special class of evil. And so this guy who we've
00:43:11.020been spent the first 20 40 minutes of the show revering and celebrating and you know no question
00:43:15.880about his talent how much we both admire it may have been the absolute darkest worst most evil
00:43:22.140thing you can be as a human on this earth that's that's the incredible mystery around Michael
00:43:29.000Jackson and it's also why those of us who want to just celebrate his music and his talent
00:43:33.660may very much like this biopic you know may very much like Michael because we don't have to deal
00:43:39.340with it. You know, it ends just as he's about to go on the bad tour. You know, I'm bad. And we don't
00:43:46.540have to even go there. But back to the Casio family. To the Casio family, they will tell you,
00:43:52.960yeah, that's great. You can celebrate all that. We celebrated all that. But you can't believe the
00:43:57.620every morning. And I think of one in one of them in particular, every morning I wake up,
00:44:29.480It's not impossible, but my God, what a massive challenge that's been given to you, but through no fault of your own.
00:44:35.820And so the Cassio family has now come forward.
00:44:38.480They've been longtime defenders of Michael, but now they are alleging in a lawsuit that he did sexually abuse them as children over many years, many years.
00:44:47.900They'd long described themselves as his second family.
00:44:50.180I'm reading here from a New York Times piece, appearing publicly, including on Oprah Winfrey's show in 2010, to deny allegations against him and defend his reputation.
00:44:57.360And this is very helpful for Michael because when he was being accused, either posthumously or during the course of his lifetime, to have children like Macaulay Culkin was one of them who had spent a ton of time with him during those tender ages.
00:45:09.820By the way, pedophilia is defined in the DSM-5 as sexual attraction to prepubescent children.
00:45:17.600It specifically says those prior to age 13, and that was reportedly Michael's thing.
00:45:24.340Some said between 7 and maybe 14 at the oldest was what he liked.
00:45:30.300But to have them come out and say, never me, never me, would be very helpful from the Casio kids to Macaulay Culkin, and there were some others.
00:45:36.360And they now say that they were groomed, that they were conditioned to protect him, calling themselves his soldiers, and saying that they publicly denied the abuse for years because of fear, manipulation, and emotional dependence.
00:45:48.580They recently appeared on 60 Minutes Australia, and here's a bit of that.
00:45:54.800For Aldo, the family's youngest, at times the fear was overwhelming.
00:46:01.440Did you find his appearance scary as a kid?
00:47:24.140I mean, I will say just one caveat, a little less so because they filed a lawsuit.
00:47:31.660Like if the people who if people would just come forward and say this happened without then filing the lawsuit, I think it would be a lot more powerful.
00:47:39.300But they they did say in the context of seeking money, which must be noted.
00:53:55.140It's Mark Garagos and Matt Murphy, Mark, a lifelong criminal defense attorney and also civil attorney and Matt Murphy, lifetime prosecutor.
00:54:02.360So the two of them in California have gone round and round with each other in the well of the courtroom and out of it.
00:54:08.680And now they bring that expertise to all of you.
00:54:12.140All right. Keeping on taking a look at the two men featured in this leaving Neverland, quote unquote, documentary. Wade Robson was they both met Michael when they were children. Wade was this Michael Jackson lookalike from Australia who got folded into Michael's orbit.
00:54:34.320I think he won a contest and met him and might have appeared in like a music video with him and went on to become a well-known choreographer, stayed close with the Michael Jackson estate with Michael himself, said very, very nice things about Michael his whole life, actually testified under oath that Michael never laid a hand on him, both in the 1993 accusations, that one didn't go to trial, but did testify or told the sheriff nothing, absolutely nothing with me.
00:55:03.020And then in 2003, in your case, Mark, was again a witness for Jackson under oath.
00:55:26.520And then him guiding me to do the same thing with him.0.99
00:55:33.300So moving my hands to touch his penis, which, you know, was erect.0.98
00:55:45.220And I remember him putting my hands on his head when he was down there.0.97
00:55:53.500i'll never forget the the um the feeling of his hair
00:56:01.880i was rough almost like a um like a brillo pad like this roughness and he's down there and0.99
00:56:10.100you know with his his mouth on on my you know seven-year-old penis0.98
00:56:19.800okay mark so i have to say when i watched the the movie i was horrified and i found him very0.98
00:56:26.900credible and then i started to research him and let's just say less so so he sued the jackson
00:56:36.980estate reportedly after he found out that he was not going to get this job with cirque de soleil
00:56:43.960and their production of michael jackson uh like they cirque de soleil had licensed some michael
00:56:48.720Jackson songs and they were sort of rehabilitating the MJ name. And he thought he was going to get
00:56:54.120a role with them and didn't and reportedly had some sour grapes over it. And then lo and behold
00:56:59.320said, I was a victim too and filed a lawsuit against the estate. And in the deposition
00:57:04.440testimony he had to give in the context of the civil case was asked, did you ever write anything
00:57:10.180about these allegations that you're making now? And he claimed under oath, he testified, no,
00:57:15.820Never. But it turned out he had written a whole book alleging that he'd been molested. The defense team demanded the copies of it. My information was he did have to produce what he had, and that took a motion and a judge ordering it, and he tried to wiggle out of doing it.
00:57:39.540And then they actually got some of the metadata from the drafts from the publishing companies.
00:57:46.460They went, the defense team, to publishing companies saying, did you get pitched a book about Michael Jackson by Wade Robson?
00:57:53.460And they got their hands on other versions of the book.
00:57:57.200And his story differed version to version.
00:58:01.660And then there was testimony of him earlier that made clear he didn't remember the details.
00:58:09.540But by the time he got around to this documentary, again, in quotes, his memory was crystal clear for all of the abuse allegations, all of which left me with a lot of questions.
00:58:20.720With all due respect to this man, because I don't know whether this happened and I don't want to attack somebody who may have been molested.
00:58:25.620But I just have to be honest, did not find the story credible at all when it was said and done.
00:58:31.140Well, the experience I've had with Leaving Neverland is, famously, they have a clip of me coming out and saying, I'm going to land on you like a ton of bricks or something along those lines.
00:58:46.560The implication being is that I was coming out and attacking the...
00:58:58.460A news clip of Mark Garagos, who initially represented Michael in 2003 in the criminal case, is manipulated to appear as if he's threatening an accuser after Michael's arrest.
00:59:09.940We will land on you like a ton of bricks.
00:59:16.240If you do anything to besmirch this man's reputation, anything to intrude on his privacy in any way that's actionable, we will unleash a legal torrent like you've never seen.
00:59:29.740In fact, he was talking about a completely different legal case in which he and Michael were secretly videotaped on board a charter aircraft.
00:59:37.240aircraft disclosed that those two video cameras which also apparently had audio on them were
00:59:43.720surreptitiously placed in there were recording attorney-client conversations so just to make
00:59:51.080clear mark that was there was a rebuttal to leaving neverland called lies of leaving neverland it's
00:59:55.880on youtube now and that was one of the lies they were pointing out that they perceived in the
01:00:00.020documentary as regards you keep going correct and that was one of it was so offensive to me
01:00:06.260when Leaving Neverland came out because what I had described there in the press conference in real
01:00:12.020time and what I was so angry about was they had filmed my conversations with him, attorney-client,
01:00:19.320which are sacrosanct, and they were marketing it. In fact, Greta Van Susteren was the one who called
01:00:25.240me the next day saying, this guy, this lawyer has got the tape and he's shopping it for a million
01:00:31.060bucks. And I called the lawyer and said, have you lost your mind? And he said, he said, well,
01:00:35.800this is my client's lottery ticket. I went into court immediately, got a court order before I
01:00:42.740could execute the court order to go get it. The FBI was there. They seized it from the lawyer.
01:00:48.240And this guy was indicted who had done the the surreptitious taping. So it was a wild situation
01:01:26.280Yeah. So they did that. If they played fast and loose like that with you, what did they do with these other two men who are featured in it?
01:01:34.460And I just think I don't know whether those those facts are fatal to Wade Robson's claim, which has been resurrected because California passed one of those laws like New York did, where claims that were out of time and were sort of dead claims could be resurrected for a brief period of time if they related to sexual abuse.
01:01:53.060and Wade and James Safechuck took advantage of that and got their claims against the MJ estate
01:01:58.900resurrected. They go on to this day as a result. But I do know that as a journalist or a storyteller
01:02:06.820doing a documentary, you must include the credibility problems in your documentary
01:02:12.540and let the audience decide. And this guy did not do that on either one of these men,
01:02:19.100which is a failing it is a fatal flaw in the presentation by the way if you're in a jury
01:02:24.960trial and this happened say that this kind of manipulation happened you would get a jury
01:02:30.780instruction that says a witness who is willfully false in a material part of the of his testimony
01:02:38.480he or she can be and should be disbelieved in others i was thinking this morning it's funny
01:02:45.380Megan, that before I did this, I was watching the closing argument in Harvey Weinstein's third
01:02:52.300trial here in New York in the Manhattan court. Mark Agnifolo was giving it. I ran into,
01:02:58.140speaking of podcasts, Arthur Idala, who tried it the second time, and he sends his regards.
01:03:05.880And I was thinking as I sat there about this, the accuser in this third trial,
01:03:12.440And such damaged goods, no matter what you say, given the testimony, given the medical records, the accuser clearly has mental health issues that are off the charts.
01:03:25.900So the argument becomes, when you're analyzing it, did the abuse cause this or are the mental health, chicken or egg, is it the mental health that is causing the person to make the accusation?
01:03:40.520And those kinds of determinations should be left up to jurors in the courtroom and viewers in documentary. To your point, why ignore things that could be credibility issues? Let people decide based on a fulsome record as opposed to a skewed argument or kind of a rhetorical device.
01:04:05.040Yes, absolutely. There was in that lies of leaving Neverland, they pointed out this thing I just mentioned about how Wade's deposition reveals that he had to ask his mom to remember details about the alleged abuse.
01:04:24.500And that was at an earlier point in time than when he's with Leaving Neverland, remembering them all.
01:04:33.020He's got great details. He's a good storyteller. He can really take you there if you watch the documentary again in quotes.
01:04:38.560Boy, he really adds a lot of color, none of which he remembered years earlier when he was under oath and asked to tell this story.
01:04:46.340So it's there are a lot of questions. James Safechuck, he made equally disturbing allegations in the piece Leaving Neverland.
01:04:55.820The knock against him is that he was reportedly facing a serious lawsuit that hit right before he sat down for that documentary and was facing some financial some serious financial threats.
01:05:10.020and that would have incentivized his filing a civil suit as he did and participating with this
01:05:17.000quote documentary and again that may not move you at all but it should be disclosed by a filmmaker
01:05:21.620in any event here's James Safechuck in part again with a viewer warning on the disturbing nature of
01:05:26.620what he's going to say in Sod 8. At the train station there's a room upstairs
01:05:58.540so we would do stuff and then in the end when he wanted to ejaculate he would he would finish0.99
01:06:08.600himself you'd be in the hotel room and he would pretend like somebody was coming in and you had
01:06:16.920to get dressed as fast as possible without making noise so not getting caught was a big
01:06:25.000like just kind of fundamental it was very much a secret and he would tell me that
01:06:36.160if anybody found out his life would be over and my life would be over
01:06:41.340so he did say there that he remembers the abuse in michael jackson's train station he had like a
01:06:49.220you know like i was just gonna say you know you mentioned matt murphy and my podcast partner matt
01:06:54.940handle. In fact, Matt and I faced off on a number of sex crime prosecutions. And Matt,
01:07:02.700I'm going to channel him and say that he would say that some of those things have the kind of
01:07:09.260insignia or indicia of what he has seen repeatedly and what I've seen coming at clients who were
01:07:17.760accused as well. So it's a very tough situation. I don't think there are any easy answers. And
01:07:25.920the look-back statutes, which you referenced, which are these statutes that revive
01:07:33.640statutes of limitations that have already expired, they actually started in the criminal context.
01:07:43.120And there was a case, Stodner, where they said you can't prosecute somebody criminally when you're going to take away their liberty after the statute has expired.
01:07:52.140But they left open the issue on these civil cases.
01:07:55.540And some of these civil cases and these look back statutes present real problems, from my standpoint, when you're trying to relitigate these later on, years later, when somebody didn't have notice.
01:09:20.720It's just allowing this to be brought decades after the fact just sets the poor defendants up for a certain disappointment.
01:09:28.860It's precisely why you have a statute of limitations.
01:09:33.020I mean, there is a reason why there is a statute of limitations with carved out exceptions traditionally for hundreds of years for things like murder.
01:09:42.960Obviously, there should be, and you can think of every public policy reason why there shouldn't be a statute of limitations for murder.
01:09:51.100And fast forward now to cold case DNA, things of that nature, and it makes perfect sense.
01:09:56.580But for other things where it is traditionally a he said, she said, and when you're in what I like to call money court, which is what civil court is, you're over there fighting over other people's money.
01:10:11.520There ought to be some bright line at a certain point where it doesn't change.
01:10:15.960I think back to when, sitting here in New York, the Adult Survivors Act was about to expire, and the number of clients I had on the eve of that expiration who were handling cases, trying to settle cases, just because they didn't want to have to undergo the torrential downpour of the media lynching, so to speak, which also people tend to forget is a real problem.
01:10:44.980You can win the case. Eventually, you can get thrown out eventually. But it does. How do you get your reputation back to quote the original Ray Donovan?
01:10:54.300Well, that's like this J.P. Morgan sexual assault allegation that's being made by this guy who tried to go under John Doe, who was also a J.P. Morgan against this poor woman who I don't think did anything.
01:11:08.600I don't believe him. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I don't believe one word of what this guy is alleging. But it's the same thing where, you know, he's completely smearing her day after day after day. And it comes out that JP Morgan offered him a million dollars to settle this thing, which they said was reportedly two years of his salary. So it's for them, it's a rounding error, Mark. It's JP Morgan. They've got more money than the US government.
01:11:34.560By the way, that must mean they think she did it. I'm like, no, that does not mean they think she did it at all.
01:11:42.460I could count a series of employees that I have extricated from large corporations, friends mostly, in the last two years where I have gotten them that kind of money as a severance when they are either laid off or they're perp walked out of the place.
01:12:07.840So for those who think the 1 million signifies guilt or an acknowledgement of guilt, no, it's when you have a high earner and you want to separate. I'm old enough to remember when nuisance value was 15 grand and now nuisance value is a million and a half. So that's just the reality of it, especially in corporate America.
01:12:31.460exactly like you point out the higher earnings of the person threatening you the more it's going0.99
01:12:38.640to cost to make them go away quietly even if you think their claim is total bullshit which jp0.77
01:12:44.660morgan says this is because they say among other things he produced none of his records his phone0.96
01:12:50.220all the things that he claimed support him he wouldn't produce they say where she did they say
01:12:55.340she handed over the phone take it look at everything talk to everyone i never laid a hand on this guy
01:13:00.720but I'm having my reputation ruined nonetheless.
01:13:05.760We're going to bring him in in a minute.
01:13:07.440But I do want to play these two soundbites on,
01:13:10.620and I have to point out the one thing on Save Chuck though.
01:13:13.640He mentioned that he was allegedly abused
01:13:15.460in this like Disney-esque train station
01:13:18.620that Michael had built on Neverland, his property,
01:13:21.580which is made to look like, you know, Peter Pan's world.
01:13:23.820It is very, I'll tell you, it is very Disney-esque.
01:13:27.500I definitely want to talk to you about it.
01:13:28.900But what happened after the documentary, in quotes, dropped was Jackson biographer Mike
01:13:34.940Smallcomb revealed that that train station was not built until 1994.
01:13:40.920And in the documentary, James Safechuck claims he was abused from 1988 till 1992 and therefore
01:13:48.160could never have been molested in a room at the Neverland train station.
01:13:53.440This guy, Smallcomb, tweeted out Santa Barbara County construction permits showing approval for the building did not happen until September 1993.
01:14:04.460So that would seem to be a pretty glaring error.
01:14:07.560That's one of those in response to that.0.98
01:20:03.220And if I'm not mistaken, then if that's televised, I can't even imagine what that's going to be like.
01:20:10.640I mean, that will be. And I, frankly, for a case like this, that's where this belongs in a courtroom to try and settle it in with admissible evidence as opposed to speculation or this, that things floating out in the ether.
01:20:30.800I think that that's one of the great things about being in a courtroom is that you can actually get the evidence.
01:20:37.360I was thinking yesterday, completely off topic about that.
01:20:41.080But this Rebecca Grossman and the pitcher and that civil trial that's being tried in Los Angeles right now, that's being televised, where she was convicted of the murder of the two little Iskander boys.
01:20:54.420And we're finding out stuff in the civil trial that we never knew about in the criminal trial.
01:20:59.240I have a sneaking suspicion, I know the lawyers involved and they're all really top flight, that we will find out a lot that we didn't know and that has been reported once we get into trial next year.
01:21:13.340Mm-hmm. I mean, in very few of these cases where you have a sexually molested child or a sexually abused woman, do you have somebody whose testimonial is totally pristine and they have absolutely no credibility issues?
01:21:29.640I mean, they're humans, you know, like most humans have some credibility problems.
01:21:35.400If you really dug deep or, you know, if you've been victimized by somebody who's extremely
01:21:40.440wealthy and famous, you probably would file a civil lawsuit, like F them, you know?
01:21:46.260So it's like, it's very hard to find just like the perfect little, you know, sweet Pollyanna
01:21:52.720who has absolutely no dirt on her to come forward and say this happened to me.
01:21:58.900You know, I want to keep that in mind as we go over these testimonials.
01:22:02.320And to that point, there are cases where some of the most heartbreaking cases in the criminal justice system are young children testifying against the family member.
01:22:14.160And then you say to yourself, why would they lie?
01:22:17.200If it's against the backdrop of a custody fight or something like that, and then it turns out that one of the mom or dad is programming the child, and upon cross-examination, you find that out.
01:22:31.700I mean, these are the kinds of struggles that you deal with in trials, and I would never want to be a juror in those kinds of cases, but they happen every day across the country.
01:22:43.200um i do want to say this about this woman adrian mcmanus the maid um so she was a prosecution
01:22:52.740witness in 2003 by the way matt murphy just joined us hi welcome to the party matt
01:22:57.440lifelong prosecutor now doing some defense work some criminal defense work but only for cops
01:23:02.320because that's how i was just gonna say yeah you gotta you gotta pass the first responder
01:23:07.300law enforcement lit this fest with Matt
01:23:32.820Well, I want to know, Matt, to Megan's
01:23:35.840point have you ever had a pristine uh uh complainant as a witness when you were prosecuting a case
01:23:42.520oh there's always it's always messy and what you were just saying mark um it's giving me flashbacks
01:23:48.320those custody disputes megan just so you know i used to have a sexual assault detective named
01:23:53.540don howell at huntington beach police department and if you can believe this one mark he was in
01:23:57.600there for about 25 years i'm sure you've you encountered him at one point or another multiple
01:24:01.840He used to send me the custody dispute stuff with a yellow stick on it with R&R, which stood for read and reject, because it's so common that those are false allegations, and it really undermines the integrity of real victims.
01:24:17.620Okay, I wanted to just offer one thought on the maid, because we kind of left that testimonial hanging out there.
01:24:23.640But the truth is that she was accused earlier of having stolen on the job while she was working for Jackson during the trial.
01:24:34.300Also, on a separate point, she identified one of the boys who she allegedly saw Michael Jackson kissing.
01:24:40.980And she said she saw him touching their bottoms or their crotches.
01:24:44.480And she identified one of them as Macaulay Culkin.
01:24:47.240He, too, has denied ever being molested in any way, shape or form by Michael Jackson.
01:24:52.780So, you know, she she's also got with her some questions about her testimonial and her credibility and certainly her honesty if she was accused of stealing.
01:25:01.460So all these witnesses have something.
01:25:03.240But here's there's a reason I brought in Matt now, because the worst soundbite.
01:25:09.140I mean, it's to me, it's worse than anything we heard from Wade, from James Safechuck, from The Maid.
01:25:18.320And Mark Garagos mentioned it at the beginning of our discussion as the thing from the Martin Bashir sit down that would change the trajectory of Michael's life, would get the authorities interested in him.
01:26:35.080Yes, and I will tell you at the time that that was one of the reasons that the calculation was made
01:26:40.820to do that two-part 60 Minutes interview, because that was, to my mind at least, was
01:26:48.620an insurmountable or close to insurmountable thing to get over. By the way, why is it always,
01:26:55.840in my cases, that it's ABC who does the interview that ends up I have to deal with later? I don't
01:27:01.600know what it is, whether it's Martin Bashir or Diane Sawyer, but it always seems to be ABC.
01:27:06.500I'll tell you why. I know the answer. I know the answer because ABC does a lot of crime to its credit. I mean, I think all three of us are very into crime. And ABC does way more of that than CBS or NBC, even which has Dateline. But ABC, that's kind of one of their main beats. So I think that's why.
01:27:23.840Thank you. I was this many years old before I understood that. Thank you.
01:27:28.840Because it always seems like I'm fighting ABC to get the outtakes from the interview that the client did before I met the client.
01:27:38.820I think that's why. Matt, I've got to ask you, because in the course of your lifelong career as a prosecutor, you did a lot of sex crimes.
01:27:48.600We've talked about that. And I'm sure you've got a thought. You're a Californian as well on the Michael Jackson situation. I mean, there's been now we talked about him being accused in 1993 for an eight figure settlement. That plaintiff went away.
01:28:02.600Then there was an actual criminal trial by another accuser in 2003. He was found not guilty in that case by a jury. That was the one in which he moonwalked on the van the day of his indictment.
01:28:14.860Now we have at least these two other accusers coming forward in leaving Neverland, Wade and James, who we just went through.
01:28:21.820Now we have this family of four kids who we discussed with Mark, who had been like his second family, the Cassios, saying it happened to all four of them, even though they've all all of these people had been denying that it had ever happened and had been great witnesses for Michael, not wanting to admit what they say is the truth.
01:28:41.940So as a prosecutor, how does all this grab you?
01:28:45.960Well, as a prosecutor, you always want as many statements to the defendant as possible.
01:28:50.780And you know what this the Michael Jackson thing, I think we were all shocked back in those days when we saw that interview.
01:28:56.780And and much, much credit to Martin Beshears because he asked him the tough questions.
01:29:01.980And he kind of he kind of asked exactly what we were all thinking in the middle of that.
01:29:09.920My boss, he's like a mentor of mine, Lou Rosenblum, when I left the DA's office and he'd been in private practice for six or seven years, he hit me with a real gem that I know Mark is going to appreciate here.
01:29:21.160He said, always remember and never forget the way these people think doesn't stop simply because they've gotten into trouble and now you've decided to represent them.
01:29:30.880You know, it's and you see these interviews by people whose currency has been the media like Michael Jackson or like Prince Andrew.
01:29:38.220I'm sure you saw that. The Guthrie interview. That was the biggest. It was he's still suffering the consequences of that absolute meltdown, kind of like we saw with the Michael Jackson clip we just we just watched.
01:29:52.560It doesn't take much to shift the public perception or another another case that's out there right now that I was talking to Harvey Levin about yesterday, Mark.
01:30:01.600And that's this David case. As soon as Nathan Hockman came out and said, we've got child pornography on the phone, everybody ran for the exit. So there's it doesn't take much, especially in cases like this.
01:30:14.180You know, as a prosecutor, you always want them talking and you want to talking for as long as possible, because if they say something like that, you've got a real weapon in your arsenal when it comes to prosecuting them.
01:30:25.620Mm hmm. I'm thinking about Alex Murdoch, who insisted on taking the stand at his family annihilation trial in South Carolina. It was a disaster for him. He thought he could outwit the prosecutors just like they all do. And none can. You know, it's like it's like my old pal from Jones Day used to say he had a great story of being across from the CEO of a company who was suing a Jones Day client.
01:30:53.360So he was with that CEO who was suing his client and the CEO's lawyer.
01:34:33.940But if we can't have them, it's got to be Katie.
01:34:36.200She's the one who needs to do it because we deserve that.
01:34:38.560Okay, but anyway, what we teased was the Blake Lively settlement.0.99
01:34:42.920And her lawyers are already making a bunch of noise and also trying to spin the pre-existing
01:34:51.560understanding that they were going to recover some attorney's fees because he sued her.
01:34:59.920He countersued her for defamation. And that claim was thrown out. And there's a California statute that protects alleged victims of sexual harassment from getting sued for defamation, because this is something that a lot of defendants will do, saying if you do that and the person who was claiming to have been sexually harassed has any sort of good faith basis for saying she was sexually harassed and your defamation lawsuit against her then gets thrown out as it was here.
01:35:29.320you are going to be able to recover your lawyer's fees against that defendant who filed the
01:35:35.240counterclaim for defamation. So she did get his defamation claim thrown out. She is entitled to
01:35:41.520some measure of fees. We knew that a year ago when that happened. And now that she's willingly
01:35:49.280settled all the rest of her claims, whatever existed of them, because most of her case got
01:35:55.200thrown out too. She's willingly walked away from all of them. And she's trying to spin the remainder
01:36:01.940of those fees as her big victory. She's won. You see, she's won. Meanwhile, we all knew you were
01:36:08.380getting some measure of fees. Here's her lawyer on a podcast just the other day. Hold on a second.
01:36:15.220What's the name of this show? The Town. And it was on May 8th on A Little Spin. Okay, let's listen
01:36:23.620to, is it, well, you guys play it. You've been looking at it. I don't know what you wanted to,
01:36:28.06019A. So let me tell you why our client is happy, ecstatic with this settlement. The reason that0.92
01:36:35.200our client is happy with this settlement is because it gives her the power and the opportunity
01:36:41.420to pursue what we believe is her most potent and powerful claim in a way that is efficient,
01:36:47.920in a way that is final, in a way that the defendants have no appeal rights over,
01:36:51.800and in a way that cuts off most of the noise that would be surrounding this case and lets us get
01:36:58.540straight to the core issue of how the defendants retaliated against her, specifically the retaliatory
01:37:05.400lawsuit that they filed that called her a liar, that branded her a liar. And it's not one of
01:37:10.020these statutes where there's discretion for awarding the damages once the conditions are met.
01:37:14.080We believe the conditions have essentially already been met. And what's important about that, Matt,
01:37:18.260is that they filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit
01:37:22.520against our client, against Ryan Reynolds,
01:37:37.300that they had all along for attorney's fees
01:37:39.860on the thrown out defamation cross claim?
01:37:42.680That's, what a revisionist history, Garrett.
01:37:45.440Well, first of all, this is what's called anti-slap.
01:37:50.740And there is this peculiar section, 47.1, whatever it is, that says if you prevail, you can get your attorney's fees if somebody comes after you.
01:38:04.220As you pointed out, Judge Lyman has had this on his docket, so to speak, since last year, number one.
01:38:12.080Number two, Blake Lively's claims were just gutted like a rainbow trout.
01:38:19.860No, no, you see, you don't know what you're talking about, Mark.
01:38:22.340This, in fact, was her most potent and powerful claim all along for the attorney's fees expended defending his defamation claim.
01:38:32.420And by the way, I think if somebody were to check PACER, which is the federal electronic
01:38:39.060docket, I believe that that gentleman who was interviewed just there by the, I think
01:38:46.340that was by the Puck outlet, I think he filed a request or one of his brethren filed a request
01:38:53.580to augment the briefing of what has been pending since last September.
01:38:58.940asked for, I believe, a five-page brief to supplement their arguments. That was
01:39:05.620summarily denied in record time for federal court, number one. Number two, remember Judge
01:39:13.460Lyman, I've said this before, I don't know him, but I knew his father, and his father, Arthur
01:39:20.460Lyman, was a lion of the bar in First Amendment. I mean, he was one of the go-to lawyers. He
01:39:28.920I don't know that the son falls too far from the father, but his father would have been appalled by the idea of this Section 47, that somehow if you cross-complain that you are eliminated from the ability to petition in court to vindicate your rights, because that's basically what it is, stripping you of your rights.
01:39:53.140I just don't think, number one, that there's going to be anything of great note, number one.
01:39:59.220Number two, remember, all of this is, speaking of noise, there are probably 10 insurance companies behind all of this fighting for who's got to pay, reservation or rights, subrogation, indemnification.
01:40:13.240This is never going to come out of their pockets.
01:40:15.180It's always going to come out of the insurance company pockets.
01:40:17.720mm-hmm so this is what i mean i'm gonna have to look it up in black's law dictionary matt but
01:40:23.920i believe this is what we call lies um what this lawyer is saying this has been their their purest
01:40:30.800and most potent claim all along most potent and most powerful those are lies take the next 22
01:40:38.780seconds and weigh in and then we'll come back right after this break well the funny thing for
01:40:41.560me is watching mark's face as we're both listening to that clip uh because i can see it and it's
01:40:46.420I'm like, we're both literally laughing out loud. Albert Einstein had a great had an great quote
01:40:52.120that applies to the practice of law. He said, if you can't explain something simply, you don't
01:40:56.160understand it well enough. And I could add or it's just pure spin. And that's what we're watching.
01:41:01.240It's just you are so desperately trying to claim some sort of W. I have more from this guy on this
01:41:05.140podcast. Yeah, I mean, wait, stand by quick, quick, quick break back with these two guys on the
01:41:09.620opposite side. Don't go away. You might already own a firearm, but what if you could start with
01:41:14.940less lethal methods to avoid the financial and mental repercussions of pulling the trigger.
01:41:20.980This is where Burna comes in. That's B-Y-R-N-A. Burna's less lethal launchers are equipped with
01:41:27.440tear gas and kinetic ammunition and designed to incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes.
01:41:34.680And Burna is excited to introduce the all-new Compact Launcher. It's a sleek, slim device,
01:45:49.800And what you've seen since Blake stood up and brought this lawsuit is evidence coming out in our case that has led to information being used now in other litigations.
01:46:00.860The Nicholas case, the Amanda Ghost case, this underground smear machine has been exposed and people are now on notice that if they see, you know, if you see a MattBelanySucks.net website pop up, you're going to maybe have an idea of who might have put that website up.
01:46:17.440really we should be grateful to blake is what he's saying matt no one's going to get smeared
01:46:23.240anymore on the internet because of her you know it's mark and i actually had this conversation
01:46:28.500before megan and it's it's counterintuitive to me that when you're talking about defamation
01:46:33.160because we learned in law school that in a defamation case truth is always an absolute
01:46:36.980defense right so in this retaliation claim one of the things i had a hard time wrapping my head
01:46:42.740around is that truth would not operate as as a defense and if you look at the interviews with
01:46:48.800blake lively and in that that norwegian journalist her last name is uh claus i think um she just
01:46:57.200it's spelled cajursti but i've just learned it's pronounced shursti shasti shasti right and she's
01:47:04.020here's this i know she's doing her job it's some press junket for a woody allen film from like
01:47:08.4402016 and she's just asking basic questions and her blake lively and parker posey they
01:47:15.120transform into the mean girls that we all saw in eighth grade that we all every single person is
01:47:21.640triggered who went to public school by it's like we we see that you know what i mean and and the
01:47:27.880idea that that got released and somehow they can point the finger back and blame jason baldoni or
01:47:33.320anybody else for that. I mean, she's, she's got to live with that. And I'm not over Parker Posey
01:47:38.860either. She was also kind of a freaking, no, really mean. She looked terrible. She, she was1.00
01:47:44.800equally nasty. Yeah. So you heard it there, Mark, that, that basically there's not going to be any1.00
01:47:51.440more harassment on the internet because of Blake Lively. This is a fantasy. Harassment on the
01:47:57.620internet was a thing before this trial, this case, and it will be a thing after this case.0.86
01:48:03.160We're allowed to dislike her. We're allowed to write terrible things about her. And when it's
01:48:08.860phrased in terms of our opinion, you can't make up facts about somebody that are false.0.95
01:48:13.100But if we think she's a terrible, spoiled, mean girl bully, we're free to say that. And we do0.89
01:48:18.360think that. And we think that based on the interview with Shesty, among many other clips
01:48:23.420and behaviors by Blake Lively and for this guy to be pretending that she was really just an
01:48:28.880avenger for others meanwhile you and I both know it was her thin her tissue paper thin skin that0.99
01:48:36.300led her to bring this law scope because she was like there's no way anyone could possibly just
01:48:40.900hate me organically Justin had to have made it happen can you imagine and just do this thought
01:48:46.200experiment. Can you imagine how disappointed my good friend Brian Friedman was to not be able to
01:48:54.360try this case against this guy? I mean, people talk about cross-examining Blake and whatever,
01:49:01.500but for people who do this for a living, when you get an opponent or an adversary that is this
01:49:08.020tone deaf, you have to say to yourself, and I've had this so many times where guys have told me,
01:49:14.840I've never lost a case and blah, blah, blah, usually some U.S. attorney.
01:49:19.820But big firm lawyers suffer from the same thing because they're in that same axis of evil, so to speak.
01:49:25.760There is a tone-deaf removal from reality that they just don't understand.
01:49:33.140The person who interviewed him in this, you should read the kind of tongue-in-cheek,
01:49:38.760or maybe it was their website yesterday article about how bad this interview was.
01:49:45.760And it just, to Matt's point, and to what my father used to say,
01:49:51.180is clients get the lawyers they deserve.
01:50:08.240Is that? I'm looking at my SOT list here. Yeah, let's listen to SOT-19C.
01:50:12.680The lesson from this case, isn't it that you have to think really, really hard before you
01:50:20.000initiate a case like this? If you are a major celebrity and you have brand businesses and a
01:50:26.160film career and you want that to be what people know about you, not the back and forth bombs being
01:50:34.560dropped. I think you got to wait and see what we accomplish in our 47 one before you write the
01:50:39.360final chapter of that book. But what I would say, Matt, is I don't think it's an option to sit back
01:50:43.800and let people assassinate your character and reputation with untraceable digital smear
01:50:49.520campaigns. I think when you discover that somebody has done that to you, that bringing that to light
01:50:54.760and holding those people accountable is important. And I think that what Miss Lively's lawsuit has
01:51:01.480shown is that there actually is a way to do that. You can shine a light on it.
01:51:05.840This Matt Murphy, this is so wrong on so many levels. Okay. Can I just tell you,
01:51:10.040I I've told the audience this before, but back in 2016, 17, when Trump and I were going round
01:51:15.380and round for nine months, he was coming for me. Um, and then I left Fox and I went to NBC
01:51:20.080David Pecker who owned and ran the national inquirer was out to get me. I mean, I can't
01:51:26.460even count the number of hit pieces that he dropped. I was literally on the cover of the
01:51:31.640national inquirer with the headline world's most hated mom. Okay. On the cover with my picture.
01:51:40.660Now, did I try to get to the box? It's David Pecker. He's friends with Trump. This, these
01:51:46.260are lies. He's telling him not the most hated. There are a lot of more hated people. What about
01:51:49.840Casey Anthony? She killed her toddler. She's definitely more hated than I am. Like, no,1.00
01:51:54.060no, I didn't. Because as I once told my own children, as we walked by a different headline
01:52:00.900that was negative about me at a kiosk on a cover of a magazine, when they said, why don't you fight
01:52:06.460back against that mom? As I told them at the time, because the people who want to believe these lies
01:52:13.140always will. And the people who don't require no correction. He's just wrong. He's wrong in his PR
01:52:20.160strategy and he's wrong about what this whole thing did to Blake Lively. She is not in a better
01:52:25.940place now than she was prior to this. No, she, everybody looked at the videos and saw for
01:52:30.800themselves, right? There's another video where she did an interview where she said, I can't feel
01:52:35.560fulfilled unless I have authorship over the project. I don't want to just be an actor who
01:52:41.360shows up and stands on a spot. It's a, it's a clip that's, that is also made the rounds. Now
01:52:46.500everybody has seen it and it makes her look absolutely terrible so maybe these are bad
01:52:51.360moments but these are all things that she went out and did and said herself another thing Megan
01:52:55.700and and I think this will this is something Mark and I were talking about the other day
01:52:59.340and I don't know it's an allegation that's out there but to get text messages between Jason
01:53:06.340Baldoni and his publicist there's a there's a an allegation that they set up a sham lawsuit they
01:53:12.640being um blake lively's team where they sued this publicist to get the phone to release these text
01:53:20.480messages to the la times i don't know if it's true but if it is that is some really shady stuff
01:53:26.300that i think the new york state bar should look into if it's true and so to to do all that and
01:53:32.420come out and talk about spin machines um you know that's pretty rich look you know because the thing
01:53:38.860is mark at no point was what are the heavy allegations by blake ben excuse me they made0.97
01:53:46.680up lies about me and use this pr firm to push them it's that they just made her look bad that
01:53:53.560they had a campaign to get her by using her actual videos and her promo interviews to promote the0.98
01:54:03.200film and to spread them with the new york post or the daily mail in a way that she thought
01:54:08.800was unflattering. But I did not see in her complaint, they made up a lie that I
01:54:16.660fired a pregnant girl. They made up a lie that I was, you know, uniformly abusive to the staff.
01:54:23.180That's that wasn't the nature of her campaign campaign. It was that you intentionally spread
01:54:27.800mean things about me. They may have been mean, but they were true. You want to know the cynic
01:54:34.040in me who as a practical matter will tell you what I think is happening here. When Blake Lively's
01:54:43.460case was gutted by Judge Lyman, he issued an order. If you read that order, he was unflinching
01:54:51.460in his criticism of her lawyers to the point where it explains why if what is being reported
01:55:01.760is true. As soon as they saw that order, as soon as her case was gutted, she had a monstrous legal0.96
01:55:09.800malpractice action against her lawyers. How do her lawyers solve that problem? They immediately0.99
01:55:16.240beg Baldoni's team to go into private mediation. You might say, well, how is that going to solve
01:55:23.000anything? There's a Supreme Court case in California that says, and mind you, they mediated
01:55:28.720this in California with a California-based, California-Hawaii-based mediator, is my
01:55:35.400understanding. The California Supreme Court case says if you go through private mediation,
01:55:41.860you can't sue your lawyer for legal malpractice. So what this was, was a very sophisticated
01:55:49.160legal strategy to insulate the big firm from getting sued for the tens of millions of dollars
01:55:57.040for what could have been argued was the, if you read Judge Lyman's order, missteps by her lawyers.
01:56:06.420That's just the cynic in me explaining why all this happened. Then what happens? Brian goes out
01:56:13.700and declares victory, and these guys now have to concoct, no, but what about 47.1 in our lawyer's
01:56:20.420fees, which everybody knows the insurance company is going to pick up for anyway. So talk about just
01:56:26.240being a cynic here, what has happened here is really kind of one of the downsides, if you will,
01:56:34.980to when you have too much money. It's a kind of a take on the old Richard Pryor joke
01:56:42.440that having a big firm represent you in a civil case is God's way of telling you you make too
01:56:48.520much money. So because one of the things I mean, the main thrust of her case was the sexual
01:56:56.360harassment claim. And it was based on a contract between the parties that never existed. That's
01:57:05.680what came out in the course of discovery. She never had a signature by the Wayfarer defendants.
01:57:11.860That's Justin's production company. And they tried to scramble on Team Blake's attorneys to say, well, there was this one that they signed. And so it was this version. But the court was like, many other versions came after that. They may have signed this one, but there wasn't a meeting of the minds yet. There were like nine versions of this contract. And you're asking me to enforce it. Which version do I enforce?
01:57:38.560Do I enforce the ninth version that they left after, that they kind of, whatever, everybody moved on after that?
01:57:43.700Or is it the one version that might have had a signature, but it wasn't countersigned?
01:57:47.720Like, I'm not, I can't divine agreement.
01:57:51.480It has to be shown to me on a piece of paper with two signatures, which any first-year law student knows.
01:57:58.280So how do we get to the point in this case where these, you know, storied lawyers didn't understand that their main claim is not supported by any document?
01:58:25.240They say, oh, she's got some $400, $400 million in damages, whatever.
01:58:29.960They briefed attorney's fees, and she wants them trebled, meaning tripled, which is potentially a possibility under the anti-slap statute that they're getting the fees under.
01:59:22.320And another thing that Mark and I were talking about the other day is when you get into these cases with celebrities, and again, Mark has dealt this way more than I have, but I've had a few.
01:59:32.100It is amazing to me how we get this image of how glamorous they are and all the money and all the power and the red carpet.
01:59:39.840And then you get into, you look beyond the curtain and you see text messages and you see a lot of petty, really small human beings.
01:59:49.960Like they're they are, you know, the reality oftentimes is is is almost so disappointing because they're not as smart as the characters they play.
02:00:01.340And they get in these petty ego fueled feuds. And when you've got all the money in the world behind you, you wind up in situations like this.
02:00:08.200I think somebody finally pulled her aside and said, you are you have lost this battle.
02:00:12.800You're you're destroying your career. Read the comments section of some of these things.
02:00:16.920you look terrible and it's so bad you're dragging your husband into it that's my guess
02:00:20.900and that that yeah i'm sure the word ecstatic because of our attorney's fees is so laughably0.98
02:00:26.380just ridiculous but um but look this is this is one of those look i approach everything megan in
02:00:32.660my experience from a position of victims and i've represented women since i've been in private0.88
02:00:37.580practice who were legitimate real victims of sexual harassment from people that were in positions of
02:00:43.800power. I know you've had that experience. That's a real thing. And it's kind of like Amber Heard
02:00:49.040and the Johnny Depp stuff. It's like we should believe victims until we shouldn't. And when it
02:00:55.160comes to this sort of thing, when you march out there and say, I'm going to do this on behalf of
02:00:59.660all people who have been subjected to sexual harassment, you undermine them. You undermine
02:01:05.960the real victims when, in my opinion, you do stuff like this. And Mark had a great point the other
02:01:11.360day. Blake Lively, when the judge gutted the cases because she was an independent contractor
02:01:16.840and not an employee, that was the technical reason she could have taken an off ramp right
02:01:21.380then and there and said, I'm going to now rally so that independent contractors also have protections1.00
02:01:27.580under the law for sexual harassment. And she didn't do that. And she could have done that.0.94
02:01:31.780And Mark said, it was a great point. If they'd enacted a federal law, they would have called it
02:01:36.280the Blake Lively Act. And she could have been a hero. Right. She didn't take it. She didn't do it.
02:01:41.360because in my opinion, she was driven by ego and trying to settle a score. And that's what this0.99
02:01:47.880whole thing is about. And like Brian has been saying all along, Mark Garagos, he knew. It's
02:01:55.060one thing to say in a complaint to the California Human Rights Office, one thing. But when you're
02:02:01.060on the stand under oath, being cross-examined by Brian, it's quite another to try to back up those
02:02:08.080claims about they walked in on me in my dressing room when I was breastfeeding my baby against my
02:02:13.420will and then confronted with a text message saying, come on in, come on in. I'm breastfeeding
02:02:18.100my baby, but it's fine. By the way, I don't know going to get ripped apart. I don't know if I and
02:02:24.140I I'm sure you've told it before, but I will tell it again for you. Brian became your lawyer because
02:02:30.660he started off as opposing counsel against you. And that's some of the best kind of
02:02:39.800lawyering you can do is when your opponent says, no, no, no, I'm hiring this guy so I never have
02:02:45.840to deal with him again. And Gary goes, I started off like, I can't stand this prick. He is such0.98
02:02:52.320an asshole. I cannot stand him. I hated him. When he was taking, wait, no, when we were taking the1.00
02:02:59.900deposition of his client. He was like interfering in a way, you know, you don't like objections at
02:03:05.040a deposition. Right. I was like, oh, I can't stand him. And I like the way he talked to my lawyer.
02:03:09.660And so finally we get to the point where he's deposing me. And I was like, I was ready. Of
02:03:14.040course, I'd been a litigator for 10 years at Jones Day. This is not my first rodeo. I was totally
02:03:18.940ready for him. And I fell in love with him. He's so charming. He's so smart. He's raising good
02:03:25.260points. We're having a great back and forth. I had no stakes. And like, I, whatever, it was very
02:03:29.500clear where this whole thing was going to go. Brian inherited it. He didn't actually
02:03:33.420take this case. It was kind of given to him. But we bonded over these eight hours in a way where
02:03:39.300I was like, I think I made a friend for life. That case went away. And then when I got in trouble
02:03:45.140with NBC, it's a long story that I will tell someday in full, but an agent connected me with
02:03:51.820Brian and the agent fled, but Brian stayed with me. And he was like, just so you know,
02:04:00.260I don't give an F, Lee said the word, what anybody thinks of me. I've got you. And it was like,
02:04:07.080that was it. We were off to the races and he hammered them. He got me everything I deserved.
02:04:11.760And that was really the beginning, like another beginning for Brian, who was already very well
02:04:15.920respected, but of this like niche practice he's really created where like any big talent in a
02:04:24.220serious fight with somebody who's generally a bully on the other side calls Brian, you know,
02:04:31.080like Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon hired him from CNN. Gabrielle Union hired him when NBC started
02:04:40.260messing with her um justin baldoni uh there's a long list now but like he's the go-to if you want
02:04:47.560to if you're an individual getting bullied by some massive entity on the other side and that's
02:04:53.620really what blake lively has been she and her dragons with ryan and taylor and justin had no
02:04:59.780power in comparison to them you go to brian and he is a master of the dark arts in a great way
02:05:06.060And by the way, that's also one of the reasons I love Matt Murphy and I love Brian both, because when you're opposing somebody who's truly talented, like Matt was as a prosecutor, Brian was because we first were at odds with one another.
02:05:22.240those are the that's the long long lost friendships i mean with matt i often say
02:05:28.780one of one of the clients i'll never forget with him and he and what endeared me to him is i at one
02:05:35.700point got so frustrated at him for wanting state prison on my client that i lashed out and said
02:05:41.320you would prosecute romeo for stalking juliet if you had your way and and that he laughed and
02:05:48.860finally gave me what i wanted because he could see how frustrated i was laughing now i had the
02:05:53.140same i had the same experience with brian i was just the he was bedeviling me on something and
02:05:59.060finally uh finally we resolved it and the they're two of my closest friends in the world
02:06:04.800no it's funny isn't it it's like it's like those it's like those fights on the playground when
02:06:09.420you're in fourth grade like it like two boys fighting on the playground they're gonna be
02:06:13.340best friends by the end of the day you know and that's right you really do it really is a function
02:06:18.220of that and i was thinking the exact same thing mark i wasn't going to say it but yeah you really
02:06:22.580do you get to learn in an adversarial process especially when you're in a good hard fight you
02:06:27.540get to learn your opponent in a lot of ways better than their own colleagues do because you see them
02:06:32.960under pressure you're creating the pressure you see how they respond and you really can develop a
02:06:38.300true healthy respect for somebody like that and that's why um you know number one megan that's
02:06:44.320why you you brought in brian friedman and number two why i would hire mark caracos if i was in
02:06:49.600trouble tomorrow in an instant um to defend me because totally yeah same and now they work
02:06:55.660together so it'd be super easy or you um i i i don't know i feel like this is i believe you when
02:07:03.200you say this is how boys like resolve things on the playground girls instead of doing that will
02:07:07.060just say nothing and then stick needles in your back knives in your back for years quietly and
02:07:12.440your life will slowly be destroyed you won't know why so it's like so it's a different kind
02:07:16.260of playground i'd put the girls revenge up against the boys and i'd much rather just have a playground
02:07:21.440fight where we're having punched in the face having raised a ball-busting uh lawyer myself1.00
02:07:27.200i have i was shocked in when she was in fourth grade at what those girls did do it one another
02:07:32.820it was it was it was like nothing i'd ever experienced up until then yes it's it's like a1.00
02:07:40.480rite of passage sadly for a lot of women but boy oh boy you you get tougher that's for damn sure
02:07:46.140all right before we go i want to put a period at the end of the mj discussion because the real
02:07:52.100question is what what now is going to be his legacy because this is a fight for legacy and
02:07:59.400for money in the new york times the daily podcast mark they pointed out that there was testimony
02:08:30.720Now we have this movie with hundreds of millions already and on track to potentially make a billion dollars and the filmmakers, which is really the estate, saying we have another one that we can release quickly in the hopper, which may or may not cover all the stuff we've been discussing.
02:08:49.040There are some legal impediments to them doing it, given like deals that have been signed.
02:08:52.540But it's a fight for them to continue earning and to restore his legacy.
02:08:58.220The family says they don't believe any of these allegations and they want the legacy restored.