The Megyn Kelly Show - The TRUTH About Michael Jackson as Biopic Sets Records, and Blake Lively's DOOMED Legal Strategy, with Mark Geragos and Matt Murphy

00:00:00.000 Imagine if today was the day your idea changed someone's life.

00:00:03.680 Imagine if you could help someone pay for college,

00:00:06.220 help your community build a new playground,

00:00:08.420 or help a child make it to that dream competition.

00:00:11.560 With GoFundMe, it's all possible.

00:00:13.860 GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform

00:00:16.620 trusted by over 190 million people.

00:00:19.560 Every week, ordinary people meet their goals

00:00:21.760 and do extraordinary things.

00:00:24.040 Your ideas matter.

00:00:25.400 GoFundMe isn't just for emergencies.

00:00:27.480 Want to raise money for your kid's soccer team

00:00:29.300 or raise funds for a small business, a creative project or event?

00:00:33.400 GoFundMe helps you turn ideas into reality.

00:00:36.220 And help adds up.

00:00:37.220 Fundraisers you start for someone else raise up to five times more.

00:00:40.640 So think right now, who could use your help?

00:00:43.160 Change rarely comes from waiting.

00:00:45.360 It comes from someone deciding, today I'll start.

00:00:48.280 Don't wait for someone else to bring change.

00:00:50.340 Today, start your fundraiser in just minutes at GoFundMe.com.

00:00:53.980 That's GoFundMe.com to start your fundraiser.

00:00:56.460 GoFundMe.com.

00:00:57.600 This is a commercial message brought to you by GoFundMe.

00:01:00.800 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:01:12.500 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a great,

00:01:16.780 great program for you today. You will not believe who Katie Porter is blaming for the leak of that

00:01:22.100 infamous video of her berating her staffer. Get him, Katie. She's mad and she's naming names and 0.99

00:01:29.400 we've done a deep dive on it. And we have a Kelly's court with another twist in the Blake

00:01:34.300 Lively Justin Baldoni case, which despite that shock settlement is not over just yet. Wait until

00:01:41.640 you hear what her lawyer just said. First, though, we're going to do something a little

00:01:46.520 different today. Have you heard about or seen this new Michael Jackson movie? It's called

00:01:53.420 Michael, and it has already grossed nearly $600 million worldwide since its release on April 24th.

00:02:02.420 I mean, that's no time at all ago, with a legitimate chance to hit the billion dollar

00:02:09.700 Mark. It's causing a lot of controversy. We'll explain why, but here's the movie's trailer.

00:02:17.680 I love my family, but I just want to do my own thing.

00:02:22.660 Just have all these ideas in my head. Just got to get them out.

00:02:28.000 And do it, Michael. I'm not a little boy anymore.

00:02:35.200 Michael, I knew you were different the moment you were born.

00:02:38.200 You have a very special life, too.

00:02:43.200 I believe music can change the world.

00:02:52.200 Spread love,

00:02:54.200 joy,

00:02:56.200 and peace.

00:02:58.200 That is what I want the world to feel.

00:03:06.200 Magic.

00:03:08.200 wow now the movie ends before michael jackson was accused of sexual abuse of children uh it

00:03:21.920 originally did not end there but it does in the version that you're seeing in the theaters

00:03:27.000 despite the film ignoring the controversy surrounding that you know the allegations

00:03:31.940 of jackson's behavior around children the movie has reopened the debate about the pop stars

00:03:37.540 legacy and the credibility of his accusers. I listened to a full hour on this by the New York

00:03:45.540 Times, The Daily the other day. The reporter who they assigned to go see the film and so on

00:03:52.380 was refusing to actually see it. So convinced he was of Michael Jackson's guilt as a child

00:04:00.900 predator. The Times apparently had to make him see it before he would appear on The Daily to

00:04:06.900 talk about it, which is kind of derelict as a reporter. But that's just one example of

00:04:13.460 the feelings that just the name Michael Jackson still engender for some people.

00:04:19.500 Now, I'm just going to tell you a story. A couple years ago, when I was off, I was in between NBC

00:04:24.640 and this show. I took a deep dive into the allegations against Jackson made in that

00:04:32.300 so-called documentary, Finding Neverland. I had very little time, very little things to do with

00:04:40.180 the time that I had in my hands. So I actually took a deep dive into the Woody Allen allegations

00:04:43.720 and the Michael Jackson allegations at the time. And I have to tell you, I found serious problems

00:04:47.740 with both of them. Now, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm convinced that the Woody Allen

00:04:53.540 things did not happen. I don't think Woody Allen molested his daughter. I think crazy Mia Farrow

00:04:58.280 put that in her daughter's head and that Dylan genuinely believes it because of her crazy mother, 0.99

00:05:03.180 not because of her perverted father. But that's a conversation for another day. 0.99

00:05:06.780 Michael Jackson, I wouldn't go there. However, I do see serious credibility problems with at

00:05:12.720 least the two men who were featured in Finding Neverland. And my problem at the time was that

00:05:17.320 the documentary, again, that's an air quotes, did not disclose any of them. Oprah Winfrey did a

00:05:22.840 terrible job at the end of it, trying to sort of glaze the whole thing without asking any tough 1.00

00:05:28.700 questions of the two accusers. And with all due respect to them, maybe they're telling the truth,

00:05:33.860 but they have massive credibility problems, especially the one, the main guy. And none of

00:05:39.920 it was raised. None of it was raised by the quote filmmaker on the quote documentary. But I haven't

00:05:47.740 done a deep dive on all of the Michael accusers. So I'm not going to go that far. And in fact,

00:05:53.140 I've seen a lot that I find deeply, deeply disturbing. And we're going to talk about it

00:05:59.040 today. And there's a great guest who you know very well. Mark Garagos is here. He is co-host of

00:06:05.140 In the Well, which is a new program we've just launched on our MK True Crime podcast channel.

00:06:10.780 If you just go to any podcast, you know, button and type in In the Well, you can find it. Or just

00:06:17.540 type in MK True Crime. It'll take you there. And you can do the same on YouTube. All right. So go

00:06:22.540 ahead and subscribe and you can listen to Mark along with his partner in crime, Matt Murphy,

00:06:27.580 lifelong prosecutor, Matt, lifelong defense attorney, Mark, duke it out on some of the

00:06:32.700 greatest cases of our time and then some great war stories of their own. Okay. So go to MK True

00:06:37.780 Crime for all of the proper links. Whether you are heading into allergy season or just trying

00:06:43.780 to stay healthy in a crowded world, you need a defense system that actually works. Let me tell

00:06:48.180 you about Beekeepers Naturals. The Propolis Immune Support Throat Spray is your daily dose

00:06:53.920 of proactive protection. It is packed with antioxidants that they say fight stress and

00:06:59.560 defend against germs on the spot. If allergy season has your throat feeling dry or scratchy,

00:07:05.140 this can be your instant soothing relief. And to keep your airways clear, there's Propolis Nasal

00:07:10.420 spray max. This is drug-free and non-toxic. The saline and oregano oil that it has cleanses and

00:07:18.120 invigorates your sinuses, flushing out irritants and more for deep, refreshing breaths. It is safe

00:07:24.740 for daily use, and it can be a game changer for sinus irritation. Today, Beekeepers Naturals is

00:07:30.280 giving you this exclusive offer, an early Memorial Day sale. Go to beekeepersnaturals.com

00:07:36.340 slash Megan. Or you can just enter the code Megan when you check out, but do one of those

00:07:40.920 two things because that will get you 25% off of your order. Bekeepers, B-E-E, keepersnaturals.com

00:07:50.780 slash Megan, or just enter that code M-E-G-Y-N when you check out and it will give you 25%

00:07:56.060 off your order. Why wouldn't you want that? Mark is the perfect person because he represented

00:08:03.160 Michael Jackson when he was officially charged with endangering a child charges that dominated

00:08:12.320 the news and the country's attention for months, Mark. I mean, I remember watching you handling

00:08:19.060 this and you look pretty good, by the way. I have to say you look the same. Your hair is like

00:08:23.920 maybe a little bit grayer, but you look the same. You look very good anyway. But what that case must

00:08:31.040 have caused it to go gray because you did not have the most compliant client in the world.

00:08:36.780 Let's just start there as you look at that picture.

00:08:39.040 You see in that picture, Ben Brofman, between me and Michael. Ben has one of the great lines

00:08:45.880 of all time. And I'll tell some of the stories. I remember Ben and I went to the arraignment there,

00:08:52.660 and that could be right outside of the arraignment. And we were standing after the arraignment

00:08:58.960 next to Michael. And all of a sudden, Michael was on top of the SUV. He had in one fell swoop

00:09:06.460 jumped up on top of the SUV. And Brofman turned to me and he said, if we don't get this guy

00:09:11.780 here, you go. There it is. Oh, sorry, Mark. That's it. We'll play it. And then you finish

00:09:17.640 your thought. There he is. He's up. OK, he's up on top of it. He's going to moonwalk. This is

00:09:24.700 right after he was indicted.

00:09:26.920 Can you imagine this happening today

00:09:28.440 with social media?

00:09:30.500 You see me looking up there

00:09:32.060 with my sunglasses on.

00:09:34.300 Brofman literally saying to me,

00:09:36.160 if we don't get this guy under control,

00:09:37.600 he's going to come to court in his pajamas.

00:09:39.980 And I started laughing hysterically.

00:09:42.460 And sure enough,

00:09:43.760 he did come to court in his pajamas.

00:09:46.080 But let me...

00:09:47.960 He was accused of child molestation

00:09:49.860 and he's having a great time

00:09:51.620 the day of the indictment

00:09:52.920 on top of the van doing the moonwalk.

00:09:54.700 but of course his instincts were not wrong that he knew he was beloved wait where are you mark

00:10:01.260 right in the bottom left right there there's ben standing right next to me we're talking

00:10:05.980 we were get down get down right now i mean ben ben and i are just we were just shaking our heads

00:10:15.880 at the time in real time it was unbelievable and i will tell you let me give you just a little bit

00:10:20.880 history as to how how many cross currents I have and why I can actually talk to you about this.

00:10:29.540 So when Michael was indicted and that was the arraignment right there, the reason we brought

00:10:35.220 Ben Brofman in, I had called Johnny Cochran. Johnny was very sick at the time. And Johnny

00:10:41.400 had brought me in much earlier to represent Michael during the Child Protective Services

00:10:47.560 investigation. What was the year? Yeah, probably end of 2002, beginning of 2003.

00:10:56.860 And so I was handling the child services, protective services. And at the same time,

00:11:02.780 I knew that there was this family that had kind of attached themselves to Michael. And one of the

00:11:09.680 things that was also on the mission was to investigate the family. And as soon as I had

00:11:15.240 done a little bit of investigation, and my PI, who's now passed away, actually discovered

00:11:22.580 this incident that had happened at J.C. Penney's involving the mother. As soon as we saw that,

00:11:28.660 we had to get the family away from Michael, because obviously-

00:11:33.120 Okay, wait, just to jump in, because the same family that was alleging Michael had molested

00:11:37.340 their son had sued J.C. Penney, alleging that a guard had roughed them up. They started to look

00:11:45.000 like a vexatious litigants who, you know, never miss an opportunity to make a dime off of a rich

00:11:51.200 company or client of yours. So you that's that's what you're saying. You discover they've got a

00:11:57.100 history. Correct. And once we discovered that once I got them moved out of Neverland and we had done

00:12:03.620 all of that and then I'm having discussions in real time after the search warrant was executed

00:12:10.040 on Neverland. Mind you, remember, Megan, you may have been there. I don't remember that well. But

00:12:16.360 I was doing a preliminary hearing in Modesto for Scott Peterson. I was wearing a pager. I got a

00:12:23.960 page from the 805 area code, recognized it as the house. And literally, as I'm finalizing the

00:12:32.660 preliminary hearing for Scott, they're executing the search warrant at Neverland. So we knew that

00:12:38.720 this was happening. And I had we there's a whole bunch of stories about what happened right after

00:12:44.200 that and getting taped by the the private plane jet operator who then tried to sell the tape of

00:12:54.020 Michael and I on the jet. You and Michael had been on this private plane and they had the nerve of

00:12:58.400 taping a lawyer with his client and trying to sell it to the highest bidder, which is insane.

00:13:03.000 Beyond insane. The only thing there is a court of appeals justice. I think she's retired now.

00:13:09.740 I ended up suing the private plane operator and getting a twenty two million dollar verdict for

00:13:15.040 for that. And when we went up to the court of appeal, she I don't know if it was joking or not.

00:13:21.140 She said, are you telling me that it would shock Garagas is conscious to conscience to have a camera

00:13:27.080 filming him and to get twenty two million. And so that ended up getting reversed and we had to

00:13:32.040 retry. But the insanity of what was happening then with Michael in Santa Maria and Scott in

00:13:41.800 Modesto and then later San Mateo was truly one of the craziest times. But Michael had support.

00:13:49.820 He had unbelievable support compared to, and I always contrasted it with Scott, who was kind of

00:13:56.220 the infamous bookend to the to that. And what happened was I then quickly realized that Tom

00:14:05.100 Sneddon, who was the then D.A., was coming after Michael, alleging that he had obstructed justice,

00:14:12.800 basically, by moving the family off of Neverland. That's why I brought.

00:14:17.200 And just just so I'm clear, Mark, about who we're talking about, because the boy that he was accused

00:14:22.600 of molesting in the trial in 2003 was named Gavin Arvizo, but that was technically the second

00:14:30.240 accusation. The first was by a child named Jordy Chandler 10 years earlier in 1993. So when you're

00:14:38.460 referring to the family, are you talking about Gavin's family that was at Neverland? Because

00:14:43.080 that's the family with J.C. Penney. So you had marked them a little earlier as being too close

00:14:46.920 to Michael with a questionable history, like let's get them away from each other, but too late

00:14:52.920 because this child who was a cancer patient would ultimately accuse Michael and you would have to go

00:14:58.600 defend him in criminal court. It's a great point. It's a great point you bring up because remember

00:15:03.480 in the nineties, there was a criminal grand jury that Howard Weitzman was handling Michael's case

00:15:10.880 along with Johnny, in the Los Angeles County Court. And they ended up settling in the 90s

00:15:18.480 with a young man then who was making the accusation. And then, lo and behold, 10 years,

00:15:24.980 20 years later, you're having this accusation. And there was a fear in the camp that, oh, here we go

00:15:32.540 again. Ironically, they were right. It was 10 years. Actually, both families, I think at one

00:15:40.520 point had the same lawyer or law firm, which is ironic because now you've got, at least in the

00:15:47.880 Diddy case, you have the kind of same lawyers involved in a lot of accusers there. But what

00:15:54.660 ended up happening was I realized I was going to be a witness. I brought in Ben Brofman and I did.

00:16:00.820 I ended up testifying not once, but twice in Michael Jackson's trial. So not only did I kind

00:16:07.460 of shepherd him through the child protective services i was also a witness for the defense

00:16:12.240 and the judge had me wave on the record attorney client and work product in order to testify and so

00:16:20.800 that happened he was famously acquitted um i thought uh tom uh who handled the trial mesero

00:16:28.960 did a workman-like job in that under extremely difficult circumstances and the but that acquittal

00:16:37.280 because I had always wondered how he would ever get through that trial.

00:16:40.600 It's my opinion that that trial really took it out of him.

00:16:44.220 I mean, he was fragile when I first started with him,

00:16:47.980 but by the time the trial ended, and I wouldn't have,

00:16:51.160 if we had prediction markets, I wouldn't have bet on his stamina for that trial.

00:16:56.000 I think the trial really did him in.

00:16:58.640 And I think there's also, speaking of the movie that you're talking about

00:17:04.880 and the amount of money that it's generating, the wellspring of support and the way they've

00:17:13.200 characterized him or portrayed him in the movie, they ended it, to your point, prior to the

00:17:19.240 allegations. That was not the first cut. By all reports, once they were trying to have a more

00:17:28.000 elongated treatment of his life, then the case involving the 90s person who made an accusation

00:17:36.160 that was settled for reportedly eight figures had a clause in the settlement that you couldn't

00:17:44.460 kind of treat this, if you will. So the estate, I presumably had to make a pivot. And that's why

00:17:51.240 they truncated this earlier. It actually may turn out. Yes, the Jordy Chandler case. Yes,

00:17:56.840 That'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.

00:18:13.380 I don't know. I haven't.

00:18:14.140 No, it was reported to be more. And I've got a pretty good indication that it was more.

00:18:18.660 And 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.

00:18:34.540 But 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.

00:18:55.000 And 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.

00:19:05.140 I 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.

00:19:24.100 No one wanted this to be Michael's ending or a piece of his story.

00:19:28.120 So it kind of gives the watcher permission to just think about him in the best light.

00:19:33.820 Amazingly, and very coolly, he's played by his nephew, Jafar Jackson, who is Jermaine, Michael's brother's son.

00:19:42.160 So it's kind of cool that somebody who's in the family is actually playing Michael Jackson.

00:19:46.440 Before we get to the darkness, so I just want to spend a minute on Michael's upbringing, Mark.

00:19:52.120 Because he really is, whatever the legacy, you know, whatever the truth is about Michael and children, and it does matter.

00:19:59.760 I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but whatever it is, you cannot deny his talent.

00:20:03.480 You cannot deny his importance as a cultural figure in the United States, in the world music scene.

00:20:09.580 It's just, it is enormous and it's like too big to really understand.

00:20:13.620 It's hard to overstate the phenomena that was Michael Jackson in the 80s.

00:20:19.280 If 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.

00:20:39.240 I 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-

00:20:58.160 diana the princess diana adored him um uh the look at look at the now king he uh he was enthralled

00:21:06.620 i mean it was unbelievable the kind of rarefied air that he occupied and the bigger star no matter

00:21:14.560 who he met he was the bigger star a world-class talent almost godlike in the way people would

00:21:21.440 respond to him just because in this one package this overwhelming amount of talent you know just

00:21:27.320 the number of things he could do unlike anybody else, better than everybody else. And we grew up

00:21:34.140 with him. I mean, he, he was a child star with the Jackson five. He was the star of the Jackson

00:21:41.780 five. There was a story online as I was preparing for today where, um, his mother was saying that

00:21:49.220 she went to Joe and said, let Michael sing. And he said, no, Jermaine's the singer. And she said,

00:21:54.820 no, no, no, but listen to Michael sing. And he was like, Jermaine is the lead singer.

00:21:58.740 And she apparently insisted. And Joe Jackson was an asshole, terrible father, but he listened to 1.00

00:22:05.040 her in this one case and let Michael sing. And Michael immediately became the lead singer of 1.00

00:22:10.500 the Jackson five, which they practiced all the time. They were from Gary, Indiana, which is

00:22:16.300 a very rough rundown town with all due respect to Gary. It's, I don't know if it's seen better days

00:22:22.840 In my lifetime, it's never been good days for Gary.

00:22:26.540 And he was determined to see that family rise up out of that.

00:22:30.000 And boy, did they ever.

00:22:31.260 So the kids become huge stars, but not without awful sacrifices.

00:22:37.740 And Michael, when he became an adult, gave some key interviews on what it was like growing

00:22:42.720 up in that household and what it was like to have this guy as your dad.

00:22:46.960 And of course, Michael was like a large child when he was a grown man and sounded it, had

00:22:52.460 the voice of a young child, had the demeanor of a young child. So for those who have, you know,

00:22:58.020 our younger audience may not have seen any of these clips. They may be sort of shocked by how

00:23:01.020 he looks and sounds. But here he is in a famous interview with Martin Bashir, talking about the

00:23:07.740 abuse warning. This stuff is disturbing. Sot 2. He was tough. How often would he beat you?

00:23:16.760 Too much. Would he only use a belt?

00:23:22.460 Why do you do this to me?

00:23:29.860 No more than a belt.

00:23:33.240 What else would he use to hit you with?

00:23:37.040 Iron quartz.

00:23:40.740 Whatever's around.

00:23:43.760 Throw you up against the wall as hard as you could.

00:23:48.860 See, it's one thing to...

00:23:50.580 But you were only a child.

00:23:51.820 i know you were a baby i know it's one thing to discipline you were producing successful records

00:23:58.220 i know he would lose his temper i just remember hearing my mother scream joe you're gonna kill 0.76

00:24:06.140 him you're gonna kill him stop it i'm scared so scared that we i would regurgitate 0.99

00:24:14.300 you would vomit 0.98

00:24:15.020 mm-hmm when would you vomit or what would produce that sort of reaction in you his presence just

00:24:24.440 seeing them and sometime I'd faint and my bodyguards would have to hold me up when he was beating you

00:24:38.240 did you hate him yeah strong hate that's why to this day i don't lay a finger on my children

00:24:47.840 i don't want them to ever feel that way about me

00:24:50.960 ever and he didn't allow us to call him daddy and i wanted to call him daddy so bad

00:24:58.880 he said i'm not daddy i'm joseph to you

00:25:02.140 you know it's just one more mark um before you go to the next you went on remember yeah this was

00:25:09.880 what triggered to my mind in retrospect i didn't know it at the time obviously but

00:25:16.740 this martin beshear interview is what triggered i think uh in a lot of ways the dominoes that led

00:25:23.520 to his downfall and death because that interview was so used against him or weaponized against him

00:25:32.460 that it ended up fueling the fire that was the DA. It ended up being kind of the wind at the back of

00:25:39.620 the prosecution. And he never recovered from it. It was just that. I'll play that soundbite too.

00:25:47.100 But before I get to that, before I get to that piece of it, just want to stay on the abuse,

00:25:50.980 because of course, if Michael Jackson was a child molester, the odds are overwhelming that he was

00:25:57.160 molested too when he was a child. And, you know, everybody wants to know how does one become like

00:26:02.700 this because we want to prevent the creation of more. And he never accused his father of sexual

00:26:10.300 abuse, but I did find an extraordinary clip. This is from a recording made for the book,

00:26:18.020 the michael jackson tapes and it's michael's voice over old pictures of the family and you

00:26:24.100 heard him there saying his dad used to hit him with an ironing cord he means and he explains

00:26:28.140 here the cord of an iron like the literally the the plug that plugs into an iron and here he goes

00:26:34.400 further with it in it it was some disturbing additional details and sought three he was

00:26:40.260 The way he would beat you was, you know, was hard, you know.

00:26:47.260 Sometimes he'd take, um, he'd make a strip nude first, he'd oil you down, your whole ritual, he'd oil you down.

00:26:57.260 So when the flip of the, um, of the ironing cord hit you, it would just, you know, and it was just like me dying. 0.74

00:27:07.260 You need your foot all over your face, your back, everywhere. 0.96

00:27:10.240 And I always hear my mother, but no, you're going to kill him. 1.00

00:27:12.540 You're going to kill him. 0.99

00:27:13.660 I would say I would just give up. 1.00

00:27:15.020 I feel there's nothing I can do.

00:27:18.700 And I hated him for it.

00:27:21.640 Wow. 0.88

00:27:23.040 And I have to say, a father making his son get naked and covering him in oil

00:27:29.640 takes me to a different place.

00:27:32.340 And it is very plausible to me that Michael Jackson might not have been ready to admit

00:27:36.140 or ever prepared to admit what else happened.

00:27:40.000 But it's just very strange to hear of a father

00:27:42.200 making his child get nude and oil him up before a beating.

00:27:46.620 Either way, Mark, you can make the argument

00:27:48.260 that that behavior plus physical abuse,

00:27:51.420 that behavior plus sexual abuse

00:27:53.120 could have created something very dark inside Michael.

00:27:56.800 Well, I mentioned earlier,

00:27:59.360 the first time I was brought in

00:28:01.340 was when Child Protective Services was called on him.

00:28:05.260 And you see there that he's talking about her in one of the previous things, talking about his own children.

00:28:11.940 And I think in retrospect, he was prepared for, later prepared for the criminal case.

00:28:20.640 I don't think he was ever prepared in retrospect for that Child Protective Services investigation.

00:28:26.800 It was so hurtful, devastating, and shook him to his core.

00:28:32.900 I 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.

00:28:44.020 And 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.

00:28:55.660 And it was a very difficult time for him.

00:28:58.820 I 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.

00:29:15.640 And he had this wonderful housekeeper who was living in the house who had called and was panicked.

00:29:23.120 And obviously, you couldn't take him to the hospital immediately.

00:29:27.440 He had to have a doctor there.

00:29:29.200 By the time the 2000s came around, he had undergone so much.

00:29:36.720 And he was, to use the term, self-medicating, having others medicating.

00:29:41.960 It was just a spectacularly hard fall from the heights, to your point, that he had been at, you know, 20, 10 years earlier.

00:29:54.100 Yeah, I mean, it was everything, right?

00:29:55.820 Just 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.

00:30:15.180 the multiple plastic surgeries, which, like, that's a whole, his name is almost synonymous

00:30:22.940 with, like, the bizarre plastic surgery trend that's kind of taken over since then. But he was

00:30:29.120 a pioneer in just doing too much and getting addicted to it and not knowing when to stop.

00:30:36.340 The skin color changes, you know, there's so many eccentricities about him. And some,

00:30:44.300 you could kind of easily dismiss as the product of mega fame like ultra fame like elvis like fame

00:30:53.340 and of course he would wind up marrying elvis's daughter that's another whole twist right but like

00:30:59.000 part of the mystery is was it how much was attributable to incredible fame in this bizarre

00:31:05.200 upbringing like that that that might happen to any child who was exploited as much as he was at a

00:31:10.940 young age and how much here's lisa marie presley just loving on him on stage oh sorry no no it's 0.94

00:31:17.820 just a fan i was gonna say i don't think that's lisa marie for a second i thought this woman's

00:31:23.440 too tall to be lisa marie um and how much is attributable to but look at those look at those 0.94

00:31:29.840 fans for for me as a just as an observer i don't remember that kind of reaction except for the

00:31:38.320 beatles back in the 60s i that and elvis i'd say yeah look at that i think i feel like elvis elvis

00:31:46.640 brought people there too um but yeah no like that is a term starstruck yeah and it's that's exactly

00:31:54.880 what these people were like struck by this megawatt star and unlike so many of these stars

00:32:01.880 Mark, he delivered, you know, it's not like we, we today build people up with image making and PR

00:32:09.000 firms and, you know, sort of the social media blitz. Here's a woman being taken away on a

00:32:14.040 stretcher. She's so overwhelmed by him, but he delivered in terms of the performance and the

00:32:19.680 skills and the talent and just, you know, the way he moved was not human. It was overwhelming to

00:32:27.200 behold and what and what you see was is just that kind of that tearing apart of him and it's the

00:32:38.720 analysis i've thought a lot about it over the years and and at what price and the kind of the

00:32:46.560 collateral damage around him and most recently with the new accusers and the you know on the

00:32:54.460 heels of what we're talking about here which is the movie that is out there that kind of

00:33:00.360 drops off right before next up i'm uh i i believe will be a movie that talks about the trial and

00:33:09.920 that my guess is be out momentarily as well and when you see there uh by the way that that that

00:33:20.340 clip that you showed i don't know a whole lot of men that could do what he did in terms of leaping

00:33:27.760 up on top of an suv even at that stage in his life and with the physical ailments that he had

00:33:35.000 it's just hard to well that's that's one of the sad things if he if it hadn't been for the drugs

00:33:39.800 he probably would have lived a long life because he was obviously extremely fit you know i mean from

00:33:44.620 years of aggressive dancing i mean for the love of god keith richards is still alive just based

00:33:49.380 on what he did on stage with the Rolling Stones. Can you imagine? We could have had Michael for

00:33:54.020 decades, but a man named Dr. Conrad Murray entered his life and bizarrely agreed as a

00:34:04.040 board-certified anesthesiologist to administer propofol to him night after night in 2008 or 9

00:34:11.520 and killed him. I mean, he died. That is not a safe thing to have happen, and that's how he

00:34:17.260 ultimately died. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say it reminds me, I see this all too often,

00:34:22.920 but a lot of people trying to basically turn their brains off when they reach these kinds

00:34:27.840 of levels. And that was, I think, to some degree, where he was, is just trying to

00:34:37.180 literally anesthetize himself to the point where he could sleep, where he could just stop

00:34:43.300 having the neurons firing and everything else. I mean, it's an immense tragedy, and it's a first

00:34:51.560 cousin to the talent that, I mean, I don't even think, there are not enough words to describe

00:34:58.900 just how talented he was, and the kinds of, he, even in the somewhat addled state that he was

00:35:07.940 by the time all of this other stuff was swirling around him, he had flashes, flashes of just an

00:35:17.480 incredibly brilliant mind. And so I think to some degree, it was a way of just turning off that

00:35:25.480 brain activity. I'm sure. I mean, propofol, anybody who's ever had a surgery knows what

00:35:31.820 that feels like. You have to count back from 10 and you never make it past eight because of the

00:35:35.880 propofol, which knocks you out, and you lose consciousness prior to, you know, them operating

00:35:42.760 on you. And he could have anything. He had the money and the resources and the connections

00:35:47.300 to get anything. And in the same way that the helicopter pilot should not have flown

00:35:52.840 Kobe on that day because the weather was not safe, but he did it, I think, out of fame,

00:35:59.860 you know admiration like wanting to please kobe michael jackson had enablers like that in his own

00:36:06.760 life and one of them killed him conrad murray killed michael jackson by and he was later uh

00:36:13.160 found guilty at a trial right a criminal trial i believe he was put through and of course lost

00:36:17.600 his license of as he should have because no anesthesiologist would do this you know in any

00:36:23.220 respectable way and so that's what took him but if it hadn't been conrad murray it would have been

00:36:27.640 something else. It might have been a different kind of OD. He was slowly but surely killing

00:36:32.380 himself. Yeah, we could have a whole other discussion. I'm coming fresh off of the so-called

00:36:36.840 ketamine queen and Matthew Perry. And you just wonder at a certain point, I know you want to

00:36:42.940 hold people accountable, I guess. I get that. But at a certain point, if you've ever, and I've

00:36:49.760 argued this for years with people who are in the throes of addiction or have a loved one, who

00:36:54.380 doesn't have one degree of separation to somebody with a mental health or an addictive

00:36:59.140 challenge and doesn't understand just how determined and how much they can persevere

00:37:05.300 when they want to get whatever it is, is the carrot at the end that is being held out in

00:37:13.220 front of them. So it's a very pernicious thing to be under the influence of, pun intended.

00:37:20.780 So 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.

00:37:45.240 and then a bizarre death.

00:37:48.740 So that's kind of the arc of the Michael story.

00:37:50.960 But in there, there really has been the question of,

00:37:54.660 is he or isn't he on the molestation?

00:37:57.740 It's everyone wants to know, you know, is he or isn't he?

00:38:02.040 We want to know.

00:38:03.420 I would like to know, you know, if I'm at the roulette table

00:38:08.560 and I can put it all on black or white,

00:38:10.580 I guess it's black or red.

00:38:11.740 Black or red, yes.

00:38:12.660 What do I?

00:38:13.020 Black and white, I think, was the song.

00:38:15.240 Yes. 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.

00:38:31.000 But you mentioned that there were recent allegations, and indeed there are.

00:38:35.300 So this is a family that was supposedly his, quote, second family.

00:38:40.880 And 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.

00:38:54.080 I 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.

00:39:07.640 Well, 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.

00:39:18.660 And then you've got right there the other area that is adjacent.

00:39:23.740 I think, as I remember, it was adjacent to the theater, which I also thought was.

00:39:28.320 The amusement park.

00:39:29.280 He's there with Macaulay Culkin in one of the rides, but keep going, Arc.

00:39:32.500 So 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.

00:39:43.200 And 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.

00:40:01.420 Sincerity.

00:40:01.960 sincerity and their authenticity. I saw it firsthand. I've spent an inordinate amount

00:40:08.500 of time with them listening to them. I used to say about the Arvizo family, because I used to

00:40:14.260 get all the time, the question is, did you believe, did you believe back then in real time?

00:40:20.380 And I used to say, well, I will tell you, I don't know about any other accusers, but I know

00:40:26.220 in that particular instance that everything that we investigated, everything that we saw,

00:40:33.520 led us to believe that it was a shakedown. And I'm not going to be dissuaded from that. I can't

00:40:43.080 speak to, and nor should I, ever speak to any of the other accusations. I just know what I know,

00:40:50.120 Which 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.

00:41:07.720 But then sit down and talk with the Casios, and that will give you great pause.

00:41:12.940 And I think that somebody who's not there is going to make their own decision.

00:41:20.520 It'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,

00:41:31.020 which 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,

00:41:42.600 even though I often will make the argument circumstantial and direct are equally powerful.

00:41:48.200 In a lot of cases, circumstantial is more powerful.

00:41:51.100 But 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.

00:42:09.880 And 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.

00:42:18.860 mm-hmm no it's one of those things like it would be one thing if they were like michael jackson was

00:42:23.900 a shoplifter you know he had a winona ryder problem even though he was rich he just felt

00:42:28.700 the need to do this thing people would have moved on who really cares but he's been accused of

00:42:34.360 literally the worst possible crime you can commit i mean it is arguably worse even than murder i

00:42:40.880 will tell you if you're god forbid you're ever sent to prison you would rather be convicted of

00:42:46.060 murder than you would have child molestation. You've got a longer shelf life than for somebody

00:42:51.100 who's a child molester. They just don't last long in prison because it's considered the worst of the

00:42:56.800 worst. Yes, there is some weird honor code, even amongst the worst among us who have been sent

00:43:03.520 away for life, that you hurt a child, you're in a special class of evil. And so this guy who we've

00:43:11.020 been spent the first 20 40 minutes of the show revering and celebrating and you know no question

00:43:15.880 about his talent how much we both admire it may have been the absolute darkest worst most evil

00:43:22.140 thing you can be as a human on this earth that's that's the incredible mystery around Michael

00:43:29.000 Jackson and it's also why those of us who want to just celebrate his music and his talent

00:43:33.660 may very much like this biopic you know may very much like Michael because we don't have to deal

00:43:39.340 with 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

00:43:46.540 have to even go there. But back to the Casio family. To the Casio family, they will tell you,

00:43:52.960 yeah, that's great. You can celebrate all that. We celebrated all that. But you can't believe the

00:43:57.620 every morning. And I think of one in one of them in particular, every morning I wake up,

00:44:03.280 I have to deal with this.

00:44:04.700 My life has been ruined.

00:44:06.060 And it's emotionally, it is impactful in ways that it's hard to just to give voice to.

00:44:13.720 Oh, I mean, of course.

00:44:15.660 If you've been the victim of child molestation, I mean, it's just a total game changer.

00:44:22.500 Without heavy, heavy doses of therapy, your life is going to be really tough to get back

00:44:28.020 on track.

00:44:28.520 Some people have done it.

00:44:29.480 It's not impossible, but my God, what a massive challenge that's been given to you, but through no fault of your own.

00:44:35.820 And so the Cassio family has now come forward.

00:44:38.480 They'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.

00:44:47.900 They'd long described themselves as his second family.

00:44:50.180 I'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.

00:44:57.360 And 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.

00:45:09.820 By the way, pedophilia is defined in the DSM-5 as sexual attraction to prepubescent children.

00:45:17.600 It specifically says those prior to age 13, and that was reportedly Michael's thing.

00:45:24.340 Some said between 7 and maybe 14 at the oldest was what he liked.

00:45:30.300 But 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.

00:45:36.360 And 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.

00:45:48.580 They recently appeared on 60 Minutes Australia, and here's a bit of that.

00:45:54.800 For Aldo, the family's youngest, at times the fear was overwhelming.

00:46:01.440 Did you find his appearance scary as a kid?

00:46:04.960 Yeah.

00:46:07.480 Yeah, especially when you're in bed with him at night

00:46:11.780 and he turns into the zombie and,

00:46:16.240 you don't love me, you don't love me.

00:46:18.340 You know, his eyes were like this.

00:46:20.220 Learning there were other victims meant

00:46:22.240 this was no longer just his secret to keep.

00:46:26.660 And I was like, oh, my God, he did this to other kids.

00:46:30.900 That was enough for my courage to just blossom.

00:46:34.360 I was like, no, no, no, no, this isn't made up.

00:46:37.680 This is real.

00:46:40.400 Aldo decided to tell his family of the abuse he'd endured,

00:46:44.920 unaware he would also be opening the lid

00:46:47.200 on the suffering of each and every one of his siblings.

00:46:51.360 I called everyone to meet at my mom and dad's home

00:46:55.240 and I said, I just want you guys to know

00:46:58.420 that everything that they're saying is true

00:47:01.860 because it happened to me too.

00:47:04.360 Aldo's courageous admission led to all his siblings finally sharing what they say Jackson had done to them.

00:47:11.480 It was the hardest thing for me to do was to admit it.

00:47:14.520 Oh, yeah.

00:47:15.080 I can't describe the feeling, the range of emotions that I was feeling at the time and coming out.

00:47:22.440 I mean, it's pretty powerful stuff.

00:47:24.140 I mean, I will say just one caveat, a little less so because they filed a lawsuit.

00:47:31.660 Like 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.

00:47:39.300 But they they did say in the context of seeking money, which must be noted.

00:47:42.920 Go ahead.

00:47:43.160 Well, they there we do have a civil justice system and I there are clear abuses in the civil justice system.

00:47:51.760 I can think of cases.

00:47:53.900 I'm sitting here in New York and in the Southern District. 0.96

00:47:57.180 there's been all kinds of sanctioning of lawyers who bring cases that are patently ridiculous and

00:48:04.660 so there is that but in this case i think that was the last thing that any of the casios wanted

00:48:13.480 and i talked to them and without betraying attorney client i will tell you that they

00:48:18.800 tried mightily i tried mightily to to get them what they needed and and it's it's just a tough

00:48:26.080 tough situation you know imagine what they're in they're in a situation where they didn't know

00:48:33.760 the extent of what the others then subsequently told them number one one of the reasons that i

00:48:41.740 thought was most compelling is i remember going to pick up michael at one point uh for a court

00:48:48.160 appearance and they told me about that and they told me where they were hidden and it was a

00:48:53.720 location that nobody knew about, meaning a hotel nobody knew that I was picking him up in.

00:48:59.800 And they told me where I was and that I was being hidden from Michael at the time. And it was kind

00:49:04.760 of a stunning story to be told, given in retrospect, I too had been clearly a defender

00:49:13.520 of his, a witness not once but twice during his trial as well. So I'm as perplexed and torn as

00:49:20.960 you are from the outside and having been on the inside as to these cross currents. And it's a,

00:49:28.180 it's a kind of a conundrum that I don't know where ultimately at the end I fall. So personally.

00:49:37.420 And he's not here. He's not here to defend himself. And that was the problem too,

00:49:43.220 with finding Neverland. You heard them reference, you know, watching the claims and

00:49:48.940 them, the one son then coming out and saying, it happened to me too. And he found the two

00:49:55.740 accusers' stories in Finding Neverland, a quote, documentary, to be credible based on his own

00:50:01.700 experience. Now, of course, I did not. Save Chuck possibly more than Robson, Wade Robson.

00:50:09.120 And we'll talk about those two next. We have to take a quick break, but we've got to talk about

00:50:14.000 Finding Neverland, which I think did more harm to these current allegations by this family

00:50:22.120 than good, because Wade Robson in particular has got a lot of issues with his story and was clearly

00:50:30.960 caught lying under oath in his civil suit against the Jackson estate, which it's just devastating

00:50:38.680 to the whole story and safe Chuck less so, but also had some money issues before he filed his

00:50:44.880 lawsuit, which the documentary didn't disclose. Um, and also didn't come forward until after

00:50:52.220 Michael died. So it's okay. So that's sort of a pattern. We're going to pick up that piece of it

00:50:57.340 right after this quick break. Don't go away. Mark stays with us. Let's talk about an uncomfortable

00:51:02.820 reality. What happens financially to our loved ones once we're no longer here? We put off thinking

00:51:09.640 about it for obvious reasons, but the best thing we can do for our family is to just take a few

00:51:13.800 minutes and deal with this problem to ensure that they're not left with a financial burden

00:51:17.980 of mortgage, tuition, medical bills, and so on. Okay. Taking steps to financially protect your

00:51:23.760 family is actually easier nowadays than ever. And that is where ethos comes in. Ethos makes

00:51:29.980 getting life insurance fast and easy. And 100% online, you don't have to deal with real humans.

00:51:34.760 You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and even get same day coverage. There's no medical

00:51:40.260 exam even. All you need to do is just answer a few simple health questions and you can get up to

00:51:45.140 3 million bucks in coverage. You will get the lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers

00:51:50.860 with some policies as low as $30 a month. It's no wonder why Ethos has 4.8 out of 5 stars on

00:51:57.800 Trustpilot with over 4,000 reviews. So take 10 minutes to get covered today. Just get it out of

00:52:04.660 the way with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash mk. That's

00:52:10.920 ethos.com slash mk. Applications times may vary as may rates. Imagine if today was the day your

00:52:20.180 idea changed someone's life. Imagine if you could help someone pay for college, help your community

00:52:25.400 rebuild a new playground, or help a child make it to that dream competition. With GoFundMe,

00:52:30.680 it's all possible. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by

00:52:35.580 over 190 million people. Every week, ordinary people meet their goals and do extraordinary

00:52:41.180 things. Your ideas matter. GoFundMe isn't just for emergencies. Want to raise money for your

00:52:46.700 kid's soccer team or raise funds for a small business, a creative project or event? GoFundMe

00:52:52.120 helps you turn ideas into reality. And help adds up. Fundraisers you start for someone else raise

00:52:57.460 up to five times more. So think right now, who could use your help? Change rarely comes from

00:53:02.820 waiting. It comes from someone deciding, today I'll start. Don't wait for someone else to bring

00:53:07.960 change. Today, start your fundraiser in just minutes at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com

00:53:13.560 to start your fundraiser. GoFundMe.com. This is a commercial message brought to you by GoFundMe.

00:53:22.120 Mark Garagos is back with me now.

00:53:24.400 He is a very well-known, successful attorney,

00:53:28.100 and he's also the host of In the Well.

00:53:31.160 That is our new MK True Crime show.

00:53:34.240 It's on our MK True Crime channel.

00:53:36.400 If you go to your little podcast button

00:53:37.980 and you just type in MK True Crime and subscribe,

00:53:40.980 you will get In the Well,

00:53:42.580 or you can go to mktruecrime.com,

00:53:46.060 and it'll show you how to subscribe directly to the show

00:53:48.400 via YouTube, et cetera.

00:53:49.700 But get it because it's on fire after just two episodes.

00:53:53.040 They kicked it off with quite a bang.

00:53:55.140 It's Mark Garagos and Matt Murphy, Mark, a lifelong criminal defense attorney and also civil attorney and Matt Murphy, lifetime prosecutor.

00:54:02.360 So the two of them in California have gone round and round with each other in the well of the courtroom and out of it.

00:54:08.680 And now they bring that expertise to all of you.

00:54:11.060 So we're very lucky to have him.

00:54:12.140 All 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.

00:54:34.320 I 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.

00:55:03.020 And then in 2003, in your case, Mark, was again a witness for Jackson under oath.

00:55:08.100 Nothing, nothing, nothing.

00:55:09.520 Then comes this documentary, again, in quotes, leaving Neverland.

00:55:13.300 And he has a very different story.

00:55:15.480 Here is part of it.

00:55:16.620 This is, viewer warning, disturbing.

00:55:18.940 And I must say, for the record, we took out the most disturbing parts just because it's very dark, but you can imagine it. 0.61

00:55:26.080 Sot Seven. 0.56

00:55:26.520 And then him guiding me to do the same thing with him. 0.99

00:55:33.300 So moving my hands to touch his penis, which, you know, was erect. 0.98

00:55:45.220 And I remember him putting my hands on his head when he was down there. 0.97

00:55:53.500 i'll never forget the the um the feeling of his hair

00:56:01.880 i was rough almost like a um like a brillo pad like this roughness and he's down there and 0.99

00:56:10.100 you know with his his mouth on on my you know seven-year-old penis 0.98

00:56:19.800 okay mark so i have to say when i watched the the movie i was horrified and i found him very 0.98

00:56:26.900 credible and then i started to research him and let's just say less so so he sued the jackson

00:56:36.980 estate reportedly after he found out that he was not going to get this job with cirque de soleil

00:56:43.960 and their production of michael jackson uh like they cirque de soleil had licensed some michael

00:56:48.720 Jackson songs and they were sort of rehabilitating the MJ name. And he thought he was going to get

00:56:54.120 a role with them and didn't and reportedly had some sour grapes over it. And then lo and behold

00:56:59.320 said, I was a victim too and filed a lawsuit against the estate. And in the deposition

00:57:04.440 testimony he had to give in the context of the civil case was asked, did you ever write anything

00:57:10.180 about these allegations that you're making now? And he claimed under oath, he testified, no,

00:57:15.820 Never. 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.

00:57:39.540 And then they actually got some of the metadata from the drafts from the publishing companies.

00:57:46.460 They went, the defense team, to publishing companies saying, did you get pitched a book about Michael Jackson by Wade Robson?

00:57:52.300 And they did.

00:57:53.460 And they got their hands on other versions of the book.

00:57:57.200 And his story differed version to version.

00:58:01.660 And then there was testimony of him earlier that made clear he didn't remember the details.

00:58:09.540 But 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.

00:58:20.720 With 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.

00:58:25.620 But I just have to be honest, did not find the story credible at all when it was said and done.

00:58:30.760 Your thoughts?

00:58:31.140 Well, 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.

00:58:46.560 The implication being is that I was coming out and attacking the...

00:58:52.820 Oh, we have this, Mark.

00:58:53.580 Hold on, I'll show the soundbite.

00:58:55.080 This is from the documentary, Leaving Neverland.

00:58:57.480 It's you, Sat and I.

00:58:58.460 A 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.

00:59:09.940 We will land on you like a ton of bricks.

00:59:13.940 We will land on you like a hammer.

00:59:16.240 If 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.

00:59:29.740 In fact, he was talking about a completely different legal case in which he and Michael were secretly videotaped on board a charter aircraft.

00:59:37.240 aircraft disclosed that those two video cameras which also apparently had audio on them were

00:59:43.720 surreptitiously placed in there were recording attorney-client conversations so just to make

00:59:51.080 clear mark that was there was a rebuttal to leaving neverland called lies of leaving neverland it's

00:59:55.880 on youtube now and that was one of the lies they were pointing out that they perceived in the

01:00:00.020 documentary as regards you keep going correct and that was one of it was so offensive to me

01:00:06.260 when Leaving Neverland came out because what I had described there in the press conference in real

01:00:12.020 time and what I was so angry about was they had filmed my conversations with him, attorney-client,

01:00:19.320 which are sacrosanct, and they were marketing it. In fact, Greta Van Susteren was the one who called

01:00:25.240 me the next day saying, this guy, this lawyer has got the tape and he's shopping it for a million

01:00:31.060 bucks. And I called the lawyer and said, have you lost your mind? And he said, he said, well,

01:00:35.800 this is my client's lottery ticket. I went into court immediately, got a court order before I

01:00:42.740 could execute the court order to go get it. The FBI was there. They seized it from the lawyer.

01:00:48.240 And this guy was indicted who had done the the surreptitious taping. So it was a wild situation

01:00:56.300 to then take that and manipulate it.

01:00:59.040 One of the reasons

01:00:59.680 sometimes these documentaries

01:01:01.360 drive me crazy

01:01:02.860 because it's great to tell a story

01:01:05.980 and documentaries can be

01:01:07.520 some of the most effective

01:01:08.720 storytelling there is.

01:01:10.640 But you shouldn't really

01:01:12.140 manipulate the facts

01:01:13.920 to the point that you just

01:01:16.060 literally tell a story

01:01:18.040 that is not true.

01:01:19.160 And that's why I was so...

01:01:20.380 No, then it's a docudrama

01:01:22.300 and not a documentary.

01:01:25.460 And that's...

01:01:26.280 Yeah. 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?

01:01:34.460 And 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.

01:01:53.060 and Wade and James Safechuck took advantage of that and got their claims against the MJ estate

01:01:58.900 resurrected. They go on to this day as a result. But I do know that as a journalist or a storyteller

01:02:06.820 doing a documentary, you must include the credibility problems in your documentary

01:02:12.540 and let the audience decide. And this guy did not do that on either one of these men,

01:02:19.100 which is a failing it is a fatal flaw in the presentation by the way if you're in a jury

01:02:24.960 trial and this happened say that this kind of manipulation happened you would get a jury

01:02:30.780 instruction that says a witness who is willfully false in a material part of the of his testimony

01:02:38.480 he or she can be and should be disbelieved in others i was thinking this morning it's funny

01:02:45.380 Megan, that before I did this, I was watching the closing argument in Harvey Weinstein's third

01:02:52.300 trial here in New York in the Manhattan court. Mark Agnifolo was giving it. I ran into,

01:02:58.140 speaking of podcasts, Arthur Idala, who tried it the second time, and he sends his regards.

01:03:05.880 And I was thinking as I sat there about this, the accuser in this third trial,

01:03:12.440 And 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.

01:03:25.900 So 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?

01:03:40.520 And 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.

01:04:05.040 Yes, 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.

01:04:24.500 And that was at an earlier point in time than when he's with Leaving Neverland, remembering them all.

01:04:33.020 He's got great details. He's a good storyteller. He can really take you there if you watch the documentary again in quotes.

01:04:38.560 Boy, 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.

01:04:46.340 So it's there are a lot of questions. James Safechuck, he made equally disturbing allegations in the piece Leaving Neverland.

01:04:55.820 The 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.

01:05:10.020 and that would have incentivized his filing a civil suit as he did and participating with this

01:05:17.000 quote documentary and again that may not move you at all but it should be disclosed by a filmmaker

01:05:21.620 in any event here's James Safechuck in part again with a viewer warning on the disturbing nature of

01:05:26.620 what he's going to say in Sod 8. At the train station there's a room upstairs

01:05:32.520 and we would have sex up there too

01:05:36.660 what happened every day 0.96

01:05:40.280 it sounds sick but it's kind of like when you're first

01:05:46.180 dating somebody right and you do a lot of it

01:05:48.840 so it was very much like that he liked 0.99

01:05:53.900 um if i rubbed his nipples 0.99

01:05:58.540 so we would do stuff and then in the end when he wanted to ejaculate he would he would finish 0.99

01:06:08.600 himself you'd be in the hotel room and he would pretend like somebody was coming in and you had

01:06:16.920 to get dressed as fast as possible without making noise so not getting caught was a big

01:06:25.000 like just kind of fundamental it was very much a secret and he would tell me that

01:06:36.160 if anybody found out his life would be over and my life would be over

01:06:41.340 so he did say there that he remembers the abuse in michael jackson's train station he had like a

01:06:49.220 you know like i was just gonna say you know you mentioned matt murphy and my podcast partner matt

01:06:54.940 handle. In fact, Matt and I faced off on a number of sex crime prosecutions. And Matt,

01:07:02.700 I'm going to channel him and say that he would say that some of those things have the kind of

01:07:09.260 insignia or indicia of what he has seen repeatedly and what I've seen coming at clients who were

01:07:17.760 accused as well. So it's a very tough situation. I don't think there are any easy answers. And

01:07:25.920 the look-back statutes, which you referenced, which are these statutes that revive

01:07:33.640 statutes of limitations that have already expired, they actually started in the criminal context.

01:07:43.120 And 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.

01:07:52.140 But they left open the issue on these civil cases.

01:07:55.540 And 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.

01:08:08.900 Yes, like the defendant is dead.

01:08:11.180 Yeah.

01:08:11.360 and now you've got the estate and you've got uh and you you don't see it happening against somebody

01:08:18.200 who's a to quote my other podcast and and close friend adam carolla you never see people coming

01:08:24.480 after the empty bags so there is that as well so it really is a conundrum it's it reminds me of the

01:08:32.400 christine blasey ford situation against brett kavanaugh where it's like how is the guy supposed

01:08:38.220 to defend himself 30 years later on, you know, what he did or did not do on a particular day.

01:08:46.200 Now, in that case, we're dealing with a would-be Supreme Court justice. So it just so happened he

01:08:53.180 did have detailed day planners, even from his time as a teenager, which was extraordinary and

01:09:01.060 to his great luck. But I mean, Trump didn't when E. Jean Carroll tried to come after him and claim

01:09:07.480 He raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.

01:09:09.820 If she had brought that claim that year or within, you know, two years or five years, he could have defended it. 0.72

01:09:16.240 He could have easily looked up on his computer.

01:09:18.200 No, this is what I was doing that day.

01:09:19.460 That didn't happen.

01:09:20.720 It's just allowing this to be brought decades after the fact just sets the poor defendants up for a certain disappointment.

01:09:28.860 It's precisely why you have a statute of limitations.

01:09:33.020 I 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.

01:09:42.960 Obviously, there should be, and you can think of every public policy reason why there shouldn't be a statute of limitations for murder.

01:09:51.100 And fast forward now to cold case DNA, things of that nature, and it makes perfect sense.

01:09:56.580 But 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.

01:10:11.520 There ought to be some bright line at a certain point where it doesn't change.

01:10:15.960 I 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.

01:10:44.980 You 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?

01:10:54.300 Well, 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.

01:11:08.600 I 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.

01:11:34.560 By 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.

01:11:42.460 I 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.

01:12:07.840 So 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.

01:12:31.460 exactly like you point out the higher earnings of the person threatening you the more it's going 0.99

01:12:38.640 to cost to make them go away quietly even if you think their claim is total bullshit which jp 0.77

01:12:44.660 morgan says this is because they say among other things he produced none of his records his phone 0.96

01:12:50.220 all the things that he claimed support him he wouldn't produce they say where she did they say

01:12:55.340 she handed over the phone take it look at everything talk to everyone i never laid a hand on this guy

01:13:00.720 but I'm having my reputation ruined nonetheless.

01:13:03.220 All right, back to Michael.

01:13:04.420 And Matt Murphy's here, by the way.

01:13:05.760 We're going to bring him in in a minute.

01:13:07.440 But I do want to play these two soundbites on,

01:13:10.620 and I have to point out the one thing on Save Chuck though.

01:13:13.640 He mentioned that he was allegedly abused

01:13:15.460 in this like Disney-esque train station

01:13:18.620 that Michael had built on Neverland, his property,

01:13:21.580 which is made to look like, you know, Peter Pan's world.

01:13:23.820 It is very, I'll tell you, it is very Disney-esque.

01:13:27.500 I definitely want to talk to you about it.

01:13:28.900 But what happened after the documentary, in quotes, dropped was Jackson biographer Mike

01:13:34.940 Smallcomb revealed that that train station was not built until 1994.

01:13:40.920 And in the documentary, James Safechuck claims he was abused from 1988 till 1992 and therefore

01:13:48.160 could never have been molested in a room at the Neverland train station.

01:13:53.440 This guy, Smallcomb, tweeted out Santa Barbara County construction permits showing approval for the building did not happen until September 1993.

01:14:04.460 So that would seem to be a pretty glaring error.

01:14:07.560 That's one of those in response to that. 0.98

01:14:10.440 That's a no shit moment. 0.97

01:14:12.640 If you're the defense lawyer and you find that fact, you can only imagine what you're saying to your associates at the time. 0.94

01:14:20.400 yeah it's not ideal oh we have a clip of the director's response do we uh okay so so once

01:14:28.400 again this from lies of neverland the rebuttal they address this let's watch it he says that

01:14:33.620 one of the locations where michael jackson was abusing him on a daily basis was the neverland

01:14:38.140 train station and he vividly describes the interior of the train station now this version

01:14:44.660 of the story that he tells in the TV show places that abuse in the train station in 1988-89. The

01:14:52.080 train station did not even open until 1994. And as you correctly say, in his sworn declarations,

01:14:58.820 in his ongoing litigation with the estate, he says that Michael Jackson stopped molesting him

01:15:05.240 when he was around 14 years old in 1992 because he got too old for him. And the whole narrative

01:15:11.100 of this film is that michael jackson molests boys and then when the boys hit puberty and get too old

01:15:18.740 he then ditches them and moves on to a younger boy that's the whole narrative that they're selling

01:15:23.520 with this documentary but when it's revealed that this location where safe chuck is describing his

01:15:30.740 abuse is it did not exist when he was the age he said he was dan reed the director of the documentary

01:15:36.820 goes on to twitter and says well there's no dispute about when the train station was built

01:15:42.720 but what's in dispute is the dates of the abuse right so james safe chuck was abused

01:15:47.760 after the after the train station was built well firstly he's now accusing his own star witness of

01:15:55.240 perjury because james safe chuck has signed not one but two sworn declarations in which he states

01:16:01.740 that Michael Jackson never abused him after 1992. So in order to defend his documentary,

01:16:07.360 he's throwing its star witness under the bus. Very persuasive. And Mark, on top of that,

01:16:13.400 even if you extend the period of abuse to 1994, post when the train station went up,

01:16:20.480 now James Safechuck is pushing 17. And during that time, Michael was living in New York

01:16:28.300 for most of the year that he wasn't sitting at Neverland with James Safechuck, according to

01:16:34.180 those who knew him. So it does raise questions about whether these two complainants in finding

01:16:40.060 Neverland or leaving Neverland, who had previously testified repeatedly that Michael never touched

01:16:44.440 them, but after he died and they fell on hard times, then came forward and said he did how

01:16:49.660 much credibility we can give them. And Wade Robson was another one who was reportedly found

01:16:54.580 to have been looking up news articles

01:16:58.740 about what had happened to other boys.

01:17:01.460 Now that could be the behavior of a victim too,

01:17:03.860 just trying to-

01:17:04.480 Wait, you get back to that chicken.

01:17:06.240 Or it could be somebody, yeah.

01:17:08.520 Or it could be somebody who was looking for details

01:17:11.920 he didn't have because it didn't happen to him.

01:17:14.980 So all of this, okay.

01:17:15.900 But that leads me to where I wanted to go with you,

01:17:17.640 which is you mentioned a moment ago,

01:17:20.200 the nice maid you knew at Neverland.

01:17:24.320 And was that Adrienne McManus?

01:17:28.840 It was a different nice maid. 0.89

01:17:30.780 Okay, because speaking of 60 Minutes Australia,

01:17:33.120 he's shaking his head no, it wasn't her.

01:17:34.580 Speaking of 60 Minutes Australia,

01:17:36.180 which I think we all need to start watching, 0.99

01:17:37.980 a former Jackson maid named Adrienne McManus 0.52

01:17:43.100 gave some damning testimony about Michael 0.96

01:17:47.680 and what she eventually started to clean up

01:17:50.500 in Michael's bedroom.

01:17:53.540 She said after three months, they said, now you can start working.

01:17:57.020 You can start cleaning Michael's bedroom.

01:17:58.780 At first, they just gave her the rules of like, don't look at Michael.

01:18:01.820 Don't talk to Michael.

01:18:02.880 You know, you're not friends with Michael. 1.00

01:18:04.200 You're the maid here. 0.97

01:18:05.220 And then she did get to know him a little.

01:18:07.820 And she said he was very nice to her.

01:18:09.240 And then she started cleaning his bedroom and didn't go well.

01:18:15.140 This is an allegation.

01:18:16.940 And here is part of it.

01:18:18.740 And underwear is also in his bed.

01:18:20.980 I did find underwears that were men's briefs in the walk-in closet.

01:18:30.480 And they were, and I don't like to say this, they were like crunchy, hard, with yellow stains all over them.

01:18:39.400 I didn't know who they belonged to because the little boys started wearing Michael's briefs.

01:18:45.840 There was a lot of Vaseline at Neverland.

01:18:48.500 Sometimes it was found in the golf carts.

01:18:50.980 When Mr. Jackson would take off with the boys.

01:18:55.500 Vaseline?

01:18:56.080 Yeah, Vaseline.

01:18:57.240 And there was a lot of Vaseline in Michael's bedroom.

01:19:00.640 It was actually all over the ranch.

01:19:02.840 Is there possibly an innocent explanation for that?

01:19:06.320 I don't think so.

01:19:09.320 Okay, now I will say on the Vaseline,

01:19:12.420 like the guy was the king of plastic surgery,

01:19:14.680 so who the hell knows what he needed the Vaseline for?

01:19:17.180 You know what I mean?

01:19:17.680 Like, maybe that makes you go from black to white or or soothes the journey somehow or the scars he must have had all over him.

01:19:25.800 I don't remember Vaseline in the golf cart.

01:19:28.220 Right. I don't know.

01:19:30.240 Vaseline, you know, I'm I'm still PTSD from baby oil last year with Diddy.

01:19:35.280 And so I'm always I I think there's a I take all of that with a certain grain of salt.

01:19:41.760 But, you know, the interesting thing is here that I believe the case is set for trial next year in the Beverly Hills Courthouse in 2027.

01:19:54.840 So we're going to have Wade Robson and James.

01:19:57.820 Yeah, I think that's set for trial.

01:20:00.760 Twenty twenty seven Beverly Hills Courthouse.

01:20:03.220 And if I'm not mistaken, then if that's televised, I can't even imagine what that's going to be like.

01:20:10.640 I 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.

01:20:30.800 I think that that's one of the great things about being in a courtroom is that you can actually get the evidence.

01:20:37.360 I was thinking yesterday, completely off topic about that.

01:20:41.080 But 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.

01:20:54.420 And we're finding out stuff in the civil trial that we never knew about in the criminal trial.

01:20:59.240 I 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.

01:21:13.340 Mm-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?

01:21:29.640 I mean, they're humans, you know, like most humans have some credibility problems.

01:21:35.400 If you really dug deep or, you know, if you've been victimized by somebody who's extremely

01:21:40.440 wealthy and famous, you probably would file a civil lawsuit, like F them, you know?

01:21:46.260 So it's like, it's very hard to find just like the perfect little, you know, sweet Pollyanna

01:21:52.720 who has absolutely no dirt on her to come forward and say this happened to me.

01:21:58.900 You know, I want to keep that in mind as we go over these testimonials.

01:22:02.320 And 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.

01:22:14.160 And then you say to yourself, why would they lie?

01:22:17.200 If 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.

01:22:31.700 I 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.

01:22:43.200 um i do want to say this about this woman adrian mcmanus the maid um so she was a prosecution

01:22:52.740 witness in 2003 by the way matt murphy just joined us hi welcome to the party matt

01:22:57.440 lifelong prosecutor now doing some defense work some criminal defense work but only for cops

01:23:02.320 because that's how i was just gonna say yeah you gotta you gotta pass the first responder

01:23:07.300 law enforcement lit this fest with Matt

01:23:09.460 before he'll defend you.

01:23:11.780 That's what we love about him,

01:23:13.560 Mark. Can I just say, after watching the

01:23:15.180 little clips of Mark, he's much

01:23:17.360 more handsome now with the gray hair.

01:23:19.020 I'm just going to go out there and say it. He looks good.

01:23:21.760 Thanks, Mark. I would say you don't have an

01:23:23.240 additional line on your face, which is

01:23:25.280 saying something for a Californian in particular. 0.95

01:23:27.460 It makes him even more friggin' persuasive, 0.96

01:23:29.860 which is maddening to me 0.95

01:23:31.300 in so many different ways.

01:23:32.820 Well, I want to know, Matt, to Megan's

01:23:35.840 point have you ever had a pristine uh uh complainant as a witness when you were prosecuting a case

01:23:42.520 oh there's always it's always messy and what you were just saying mark um it's giving me flashbacks

01:23:48.320 those custody disputes megan just so you know i used to have a sexual assault detective named

01:23:53.540 don howell at huntington beach police department and if you can believe this one mark he was in

01:23:57.600 there for about 25 years i'm sure you've you encountered him at one point or another multiple

01:24:01.840 He 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.

01:24:17.620 Okay, I wanted to just offer one thought on the maid, because we kind of left that testimonial hanging out there.

01:24:23.640 But the truth is that she was accused earlier of having stolen on the job while she was working for Jackson during the trial.

01:24:34.300 Also, on a separate point, she identified one of the boys who she allegedly saw Michael Jackson kissing.

01:24:40.980 And she said she saw him touching their bottoms or their crotches.

01:24:44.480 And she identified one of them as Macaulay Culkin.

01:24:47.240 He, too, has denied ever being molested in any way, shape or form by Michael Jackson.

01:24:52.780 So, 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.

01:25:01.460 So all these witnesses have something.

01:25:03.240 But here's there's a reason I brought in Matt now, because the worst soundbite.

01:25:09.140 I mean, it's to me, it's worse than anything we heard from Wade, from James Safechuck, from The Maid.

01:25:16.660 It's from Michael himself.

01:25:18.320 And 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.

01:25:31.420 He would get charged.

01:25:32.640 There was a possibility of losing custody of his children, the drugs, the ultimately early untimely death. 0.72

01:25:39.560 And it was this crazy ass exchange I'm going to show here in SOT4. 0.97

01:25:44.800 can you understand why people would worry about that because they're ignorant but is it really 0.98

01:25:52.180 appropriate for a 44 year old man to share a bedroom with a child who is not related to him

01:25:59.700 at all that's a beautiful thing that's that's not a worrying thing why should they be worrying

01:26:04.580 who's the criminal who's who's jack the ripper in the room did you ever sleep in the bed with them

01:26:08.980 no but i have slept in the bed with many children i sleep in the bed with all of them

01:26:13.460 When Macaulay Culkin were little, Kieran Culkin would sleep on this side.

01:26:17.660 Macaulay Culkin's on this side.

01:26:19.380 His sister's in there.

01:26:20.420 We're all just jamming the bed.

01:26:22.240 Is that right, Michael?

01:26:23.500 It's very right.

01:26:25.040 It's very loving.

01:26:26.080 That's what the world needs now.

01:26:27.920 More love.

01:26:30.660 Mark.

01:26:31.460 I will tell you at the time.

01:26:33.400 Every sane person recoiled.

01:26:35.080 Yes, and I will tell you at the time that that was one of the reasons that the calculation was made

01:26:40.820 to do that two-part 60 Minutes interview, because that was, to my mind at least, was

01:26:48.620 an insurmountable or close to insurmountable thing to get over. By the way, why is it always,

01:26:55.840 in my cases, that it's ABC who does the interview that ends up I have to deal with later? I don't

01:27:01.600 know what it is, whether it's Martin Bashir or Diane Sawyer, but it always seems to be ABC.

01:27:06.500 I'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.

01:27:23.840 Thank you. I was this many years old before I understood that. Thank you.

01:27:28.840 Because it always seems like I'm fighting ABC to get the outtakes from the interview that the client did before I met the client.

01:27:38.820 I 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.

01:27:48.600 We'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.

01:28:02.600 Then 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.

01:28:14.860 Now we have at least these two other accusers coming forward in leaving Neverland, Wade and James, who we just went through.

01:28:21.820 Now 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.

01:28:41.940 So as a prosecutor, how does all this grab you?

01:28:45.960 Well, as a prosecutor, you always want as many statements to the defendant as possible.

01:28:50.780 And you know what this the Michael Jackson thing, I think we were all shocked back in those days when we saw that interview.

01:28:56.780 And and much, much credit to Martin Beshears because he asked him the tough questions.

01:29:01.980 And he kind of he kind of asked exactly what we were all thinking in the middle of that.

01:29:06.360 Like, is that really appropriate?

01:29:07.860 And we saw the answer.

01:29:09.920 My 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.

01:29:21.160 He 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.

01:29:30.880 You know, it's and you see these interviews by people whose currency has been the media like Michael Jackson or like Prince Andrew.

01:29:38.220 I'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.

01:29:52.560 It 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.

01:30:01.600 And 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.

01:30:14.180 You 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.

01:30:25.620 Mm 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.

01:30:53.360 So he was with that CEO who was suing his client and the CEO's lawyer.

01:30:58.500 And it was like the eve of trial.

01:30:59.960 Are we going to settle this or aren't we?

01:31:01.660 And he looked at that CEO and who was refusing to settle.

01:31:05.140 And my friend knew the guy ought to settle and said to him, look, is it possible that

01:31:11.420 when I get you on the stand, you will have a very, very good day and I will have a very,

01:31:16.360 very bad day?

01:31:18.260 No, it's not possible.

01:31:19.540 it's that it's not possible like you're not going to outwit me and sure enough that guy settled as

01:31:28.140 they all should it's like if you have a really talented civil attorney crossing you or if you

01:31:33.680 have a lifelong prosecutor who knows his stuff you're going down you're not going to outsmart

01:31:38.720 the mat there's probably nobody in the world right now megan more than the guy that's sitting

01:31:43.580 sitting there with us right now mark ergos who's probably had that hard conversation again and

01:31:48.720 again and as he said sir he can't talk about it because it's all probably clients we all know or

01:31:53.680 heard of and he can't reveal any attorney client and i know he's just jumping out of his skin right

01:31:57.720 now because he's got so many examples of that that he can't share but yeah that's uh scott peterson

01:32:03.560 oh my god i knew she was gonna go there well my father who was my hero mentor used to say

01:32:10.460 it's a rare case for the defense that gets better after the prosecution rests and boy isn't that

01:32:18.620 the truth. I remember one case in particular, it will remain nameless, where I had tried,

01:32:24.760 I thought, the best murder case I had ever tried as a defense lawyer. And then my client insisted

01:32:30.540 that he was going to take the stand. And I actually took him into chambers. And I said,

01:32:35.380 I will quit before I put this guy on the stand. I know it's his absolute right, but I can't let him

01:32:43.540 on. And sure enough, he took the stand and he did well for the first day. And I refused to take him

01:32:51.040 on direct. I had one of my associates do it. I just said, I'm not going to be a party to this

01:32:55.840 massacre. But by day two, the prosecutor had so dismantled him that and afterwards, the jurors,

01:33:04.920 speaking of Dateline, who were interviewed by Dateline, the foreperson said, we were never

01:33:09.380 going to convict him until he took the stand and that's your worst nightmare okay so i want to

01:33:16.600 shift gears though in the time that we have because i teased at the top of the show two

01:33:20.520 things i teased katie porter and who she's saying release that tape which we don't have time for

01:33:25.320 that was actually we're gonna have to do that tomorrow but i will play i promise mark halpern's

01:33:30.720 here tomorrow and we are going to play it and we're going to take a deep dive into it because

01:33:33.380 we've actually looked into her claims why does mark halpern get all the fun of katie porter

01:33:37.620 Has there ever been a worse as a lifelong Democrat in California?

01:33:42.940 How did we get to the point where Katie Porter is our best and brightest?

01:33:48.420 I don't even understand that.

01:33:50.320 It makes zero sense to me. 1.00

01:33:52.380 The woman has absolutely no redeeming qualities as a political candidate. 1.00

01:33:58.740 You wouldn't hire her to run your 7-Eleven and we're going to hire her to run the fourth 1.00

01:34:03.580 largest economy in the country. 1.00

01:34:05.140 what is this blaspheme against the clearly most qualified candidate don't she deserves this and 1.00

01:34:12.940 so do i that's the important thing mark the people of america deserve to see this woman ascend

01:34:18.920 and be if we have to have a democrat we can't have have you know uh not you can't have confidence

01:34:25.100 god god forbid you've got confidence god forbid somebody runs who actually has run something

01:34:31.020 Steve Hilton would be great.

01:34:33.000 Chad Bianco would be great. 0.86

01:34:33.940 But if we can't have them, it's got to be Katie.

01:34:36.200 She's the one who needs to do it because we deserve that.

01:34:38.560 Okay, but anyway, what we teased was the Blake Lively settlement. 0.99

01:34:42.920 And her lawyers are already making a bunch of noise and also trying to spin the pre-existing

01:34:51.560 understanding that they were going to recover some attorney's fees because he sued her.

01:34:59.920 He 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.

01:35:29.320 you are going to be able to recover your lawyer's fees against that defendant who filed the

01:35:35.240 counterclaim for defamation. So she did get his defamation claim thrown out. She is entitled to

01:35:41.520 some measure of fees. We knew that a year ago when that happened. And now that she's willingly

01:35:49.280 settled all the rest of her claims, whatever existed of them, because most of her case got

01:35:55.200 thrown out too. She's willingly walked away from all of them. And she's trying to spin the remainder

01:36:01.940 of those fees as her big victory. She's won. You see, she's won. Meanwhile, we all knew you were

01:36:08.380 getting some measure of fees. Here's her lawyer on a podcast just the other day. Hold on a second.

01:36:15.220 What's the name of this show? The Town. And it was on May 8th on A Little Spin. Okay, let's listen

01:36:23.620 to, is it, well, you guys play it. You've been looking at it. I don't know what you wanted to,

01:36:28.060 19A. So let me tell you why our client is happy, ecstatic with this settlement. The reason that 0.92

01:36:35.200 our client is happy with this settlement is because it gives her the power and the opportunity

01:36:41.420 to pursue what we believe is her most potent and powerful claim in a way that is efficient,

01:36:47.920 in a way that is final, in a way that the defendants have no appeal rights over,

01:36:51.800 and in a way that cuts off most of the noise that would be surrounding this case and lets us get

01:36:58.540 straight to the core issue of how the defendants retaliated against her, specifically the retaliatory

01:37:05.400 lawsuit that they filed that called her a liar, that branded her a liar. And it's not one of

01:37:10.020 these statutes where there's discretion for awarding the damages once the conditions are met.

01:37:14.080 We believe the conditions have essentially already been met. And what's important about that, Matt,

01:37:18.260 is that they filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit

01:37:22.520 against our client, against Ryan Reynolds,

01:37:24.940 against Leslie Sloan.

01:37:26.480 They claimed that all of this was a lie.

01:37:28.680 It was all made up

01:37:29.500 and they were gonna prove it in court.

01:37:30.820 They lost that.

01:37:32.680 Well, oh my God.

01:37:34.120 Wait, can I just-

01:37:34.900 To say that this was the best claim

01:37:37.300 that they had all along for attorney's fees

01:37:39.860 on the thrown out defamation cross claim?

01:37:42.680 That's, what a revisionist history, Garrett.

01:37:45.440 Well, first of all, this is what's called anti-slap.

01:37:50.740 And 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.

01:38:02.060 There's one problem with that.

01:38:04.220 As you pointed out, Judge Lyman has had this on his docket, so to speak, since last year, number one.

01:38:12.080 Number two, Blake Lively's claims were just gutted like a rainbow trout.

01:38:19.860 No, no, you see, you don't know what you're talking about, Mark.

01:38:22.340 This, in fact, was her most potent and powerful claim all along for the attorney's fees expended defending his defamation claim.

01:38:32.420 And by the way, I think if somebody were to check PACER, which is the federal electronic

01:38:39.060 docket, I believe that that gentleman who was interviewed just there by the, I think

01:38:46.340 that was by the Puck outlet, I think he filed a request or one of his brethren filed a request

01:38:53.580 to augment the briefing of what has been pending since last September.

01:38:58.940 asked for, I believe, a five-page brief to supplement their arguments. That was

01:39:05.620 summarily denied in record time for federal court, number one. Number two, remember Judge

01:39:13.460 Lyman, I've said this before, I don't know him, but I knew his father, and his father, Arthur

01:39:20.460 Lyman, was a lion of the bar in First Amendment. I mean, he was one of the go-to lawyers. He

01:39:28.920 I 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.

01:39:53.140 I just don't think, number one, that there's going to be anything of great note, number one.

01:39:59.220 Number 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.

01:40:13.240 This is never going to come out of their pockets.

01:40:15.180 It's always going to come out of the insurance company pockets.

01:40:17.720 mm-hmm so this is what i mean i'm gonna have to look it up in black's law dictionary matt but

01:40:23.920 i believe this is what we call lies um what this lawyer is saying this has been their their purest

01:40:30.800 and most potent claim all along most potent and most powerful those are lies take the next 22

01:40:38.780 seconds and weigh in and then we'll come back right after this break well the funny thing for

01:40:41.560 me is watching mark's face as we're both listening to that clip uh because i can see it and it's

01:40:46.420 I'm like, we're both literally laughing out loud. Albert Einstein had a great had an great quote

01:40:52.120 that applies to the practice of law. He said, if you can't explain something simply, you don't

01:40:56.160 understand it well enough. And I could add or it's just pure spin. And that's what we're watching.

01:41:01.240 It's just you are so desperately trying to claim some sort of W. I have more from this guy on this

01:41:05.140 podcast. Yeah, I mean, wait, stand by quick, quick, quick break back with these two guys on the

01:41:09.620 opposite side. Don't go away. You might already own a firearm, but what if you could start with

01:41:14.940 less lethal methods to avoid the financial and mental repercussions of pulling the trigger.

01:41:20.980 This is where Burna comes in. That's B-Y-R-N-A. Burna's less lethal launchers are equipped with

01:41:27.440 tear gas and kinetic ammunition and designed to incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes.

01:41:34.680 And Burna is excited to introduce the all-new Compact Launcher. It's a sleek, slim device,

01:41:40.880 and it hits like a sledgehammer.

01:41:43.640 The same size as a smartphone, 0.92

01:41:45.400 allowing women to conceal carry everywhere

01:41:47.700 comfortably and with confidence.

01:41:49.840 It fires at 400 feet per second.

01:41:52.580 That's a lot of power to stop aggressors in their tracks

01:41:54.920 before they get anywhere near you.

01:41:56.680 Their pistols are American-made

01:41:58.380 and hand-assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana,

01:42:00.460 with over 80% of the components in the compact launcher

01:42:03.420 being sourced in the USA.

01:42:05.080 I mean, Berna's amazing even without that,

01:42:07.280 but it's very nice to know that's true.

01:42:09.560 Burna is legal in all 50 states.

01:42:11.420 It requires no background checks

01:42:12.600 and it can be shipped directly to your door.

01:42:14.760 And Burna is trusted by hundreds of police departments too.

01:42:17.860 So this is a great device,

01:42:18.920 even if you are a firearm owner.

01:42:21.040 And if you're not,

01:42:22.480 this is something that you might be comfortable with, right?

01:42:24.880 Like a lot of women I know are worried 1.00

01:42:26.840 if they get a gun, it's gonna be used on them 1.00

01:42:28.900 and it's lights out.

01:42:29.800 Well, if this gets used on you, it's not lights out.

01:42:33.480 It's an uncomfortable thing that may stop you

01:42:35.360 or incapacitate you for a while, but it's not lights out.

01:42:37.720 and it will make you feel better.

01:42:39.820 God forbid you get that scary sound

01:42:42.440 happening in the middle of the night

01:42:43.780 and someone is there who shouldn't be.

01:42:46.340 All right, so try before you buy, if you want,

01:42:49.040 by visiting Burna.com

01:42:50.420 and you can find a Burna dealer partner near you. 0.78

01:42:53.040 That's B-Y-R-N-A dot com. 0.98

01:42:56.660 We've all been there, 1.00

01:42:57.820 stuck in a rigid multi-year security contract

01:43:00.680 with cancellation fees so high

01:43:02.440 they feel like a ransom note.

01:43:03.960 It's frustrating, right?

01:43:05.380 Security should not feel like a trap.

01:43:06.940 But let me tell you about SimpliSafe. They completely changed the game by offering 24-7

01:43:13.160 professional monitoring that's actually affordable with no long-term contracts.

01:43:18.500 SimpliSafe can give genuine peace of mind. With SimpliSafe, you can arm your system

01:43:23.400 right from your phone. The setup is a total breeze too. You can have your whole system

01:43:28.420 customized exactly to your home's layout, up and running in about 30 minutes. From indoor

01:43:33.360 and outdoor cameras to sensors that detect fires and floods. It's comprehensive protection backed

01:43:38.580 by agents ready to dispatch help. You will get 50% off a new system when you sign up for

01:43:43.580 professional monitoring and your first month is free by visiting simply safe. That's simply

01:43:49.420 S I M P L I.com. Okay. Simply safe.com simply safe.com slash Megan. That's half off

01:43:56.380 at simply safe.com slash Megan. There's no safe like simply safe.

01:44:00.320 Hey, everyone. It's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news.

01:44:07.160 I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM.

01:44:10.300 It's called the Megan Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth,

01:44:13.380 unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies.

01:44:16.440 Along with the Megan Kelly Show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin,

01:44:19.800 Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more.

01:44:25.420 It's bold, no BS news only on the Megyn Kelly channel, Sirius XM 111 and on the Sirius XM app.

01:44:55.420 crime offerings. Well, worth your time. Matt, let me stick with you on just the continuing

01:45:00.940 with the absurdity. I've got some more from this lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, on the town.

01:45:05.100 But the notion in there that she's ecstatic with the settlement because of her ability to pursue

01:45:13.100 this most potent and powerful claim for attorney's fees, not damages, attorney's fees.

01:45:21.660 So what are you hoping to get here?

01:45:23.680 Give me a best case scenario dollar amount that you could collect and from who?

01:45:28.700 So I want to step back from that because this lawsuit has never been principally about money

01:45:35.340 for our client.

01:45:36.160 It has been about accountability.

01:45:37.340 It has been about shining a light on this underground smear machine that retaliated

01:45:44.040 against her for raising claims of sexual harassment and retaliation and has harmed so many other

01:45:49.340 people.

01:45:49.800 And 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.

01:46:00.860 The 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.

01:46:17.440 really we should be grateful to blake is what he's saying matt no one's going to get smeared

01:46:23.240 anymore on the internet because of her you know it's mark and i actually had this conversation

01:46:28.500 before megan and it's it's counterintuitive to me that when you're talking about defamation

01:46:33.160 because we learned in law school that in a defamation case truth is always an absolute

01:46:36.980 defense right so in this retaliation claim one of the things i had a hard time wrapping my head

01:46:42.740 around is that truth would not operate as as a defense and if you look at the interviews with

01:46:48.800 blake lively and in that that norwegian journalist her last name is uh claus i think um she just

01:46:57.200 it's spelled cajursti but i've just learned it's pronounced shursti shasti shasti right and she's

01:47:04.020 here's this i know she's doing her job it's some press junket for a woody allen film from like

01:47:08.440 2016 and she's just asking basic questions and her blake lively and parker posey they

01:47:15.120 transform into the mean girls that we all saw in eighth grade that we all every single person is

01:47:21.640 triggered who went to public school by it's like we we see that you know what i mean and and the

01:47:27.880 idea that that got released and somehow they can point the finger back and blame jason baldoni or

01:47:33.320 anybody else for that. I mean, she's, she's got to live with that. And I'm not over Parker Posey

01:47:38.860 either. She was also kind of a freaking, no, really mean. She looked terrible. She, she was 1.00

01:47:44.800 equally nasty. Yeah. So you heard it there, Mark, that, that basically there's not going to be any 1.00

01:47:51.440 more harassment on the internet because of Blake Lively. This is a fantasy. Harassment on the

01:47:57.620 internet was a thing before this trial, this case, and it will be a thing after this case. 0.86

01:48:03.160 We're allowed to dislike her. We're allowed to write terrible things about her. And when it's

01:48:08.860 phrased in terms of our opinion, you can't make up facts about somebody that are false. 0.95

01:48:13.100 But if we think she's a terrible, spoiled, mean girl bully, we're free to say that. And we do 0.89

01:48:18.360 think that. And we think that based on the interview with Shesty, among many other clips

01:48:23.420 and behaviors by Blake Lively and for this guy to be pretending that she was really just an

01:48:28.880 avenger for others meanwhile you and I both know it was her thin her tissue paper thin skin that 0.99

01:48:36.300 led her to bring this law scope because she was like there's no way anyone could possibly just

01:48:40.900 hate me organically Justin had to have made it happen can you imagine and just do this thought

01:48:46.200 experiment. Can you imagine how disappointed my good friend Brian Friedman was to not be able to

01:48:54.360 try this case against this guy? I mean, people talk about cross-examining Blake and whatever,

01:49:01.500 but for people who do this for a living, when you get an opponent or an adversary that is this

01:49:08.020 tone deaf, you have to say to yourself, and I've had this so many times where guys have told me,

01:49:14.840 I've never lost a case and blah, blah, blah, usually some U.S. attorney.

01:49:19.820 But big firm lawyers suffer from the same thing because they're in that same axis of evil, so to speak.

01:49:25.760 There is a tone-deaf removal from reality that they just don't understand.

01:49:33.140 The person who interviewed him in this, you should read the kind of tongue-in-cheek,

01:49:38.760 or maybe it was their website yesterday article about how bad this interview was.

01:49:45.760 And it just, to Matt's point, and to what my father used to say,

01:49:51.180 is clients get the lawyers they deserve.

01:49:53.840 And boy, that holds true here.

01:49:57.760 Yeah, and Justin Baldoni did too.

01:50:00.000 There's one more.

01:50:01.940 The questioning was about whether he had the right strategy, right?

01:50:07.620 Is that the one?

01:50:08.240 Is that? I'm looking at my SOT list here. Yeah, let's listen to SOT-19C.

01:50:12.680 The lesson from this case, isn't it that you have to think really, really hard before you

01:50:20.000 initiate a case like this? If you are a major celebrity and you have brand businesses and a

01:50:26.160 film career and you want that to be what people know about you, not the back and forth bombs being

01:50:34.560 dropped. I think you got to wait and see what we accomplish in our 47 one before you write the

01:50:39.360 final chapter of that book. But what I would say, Matt, is I don't think it's an option to sit back

01:50:43.800 and let people assassinate your character and reputation with untraceable digital smear

01:50:49.520 campaigns. I think when you discover that somebody has done that to you, that bringing that to light

01:50:54.760 and holding those people accountable is important. And I think that what Miss Lively's lawsuit has

01:51:01.480 shown is that there actually is a way to do that. You can shine a light on it.

01:51:05.840 This Matt Murphy, this is so wrong on so many levels. Okay. Can I just tell you,

01:51:10.040 I I've told the audience this before, but back in 2016, 17, when Trump and I were going round

01:51:15.380 and round for nine months, he was coming for me. Um, and then I left Fox and I went to NBC

01:51:20.080 David Pecker who owned and ran the national inquirer was out to get me. I mean, I can't

01:51:26.460 even count the number of hit pieces that he dropped. I was literally on the cover of the

01:51:31.640 national inquirer with the headline world's most hated mom. Okay. On the cover with my picture.

01:51:40.660 Now, did I try to get to the box? It's David Pecker. He's friends with Trump. This, these

01:51:46.260 are lies. He's telling him not the most hated. There are a lot of more hated people. What about

01:51:49.840 Casey Anthony? She killed her toddler. She's definitely more hated than I am. Like, no, 1.00

01:51:54.060 no, I didn't. Because as I once told my own children, as we walked by a different headline

01:52:00.900 that was negative about me at a kiosk on a cover of a magazine, when they said, why don't you fight

01:52:06.460 back against that mom? As I told them at the time, because the people who want to believe these lies

01:52:13.140 always will. And the people who don't require no correction. He's just wrong. He's wrong in his PR

01:52:20.160 strategy and he's wrong about what this whole thing did to Blake Lively. She is not in a better

01:52:25.940 place now than she was prior to this. No, she, everybody looked at the videos and saw for

01:52:30.800 themselves, right? There's another video where she did an interview where she said, I can't feel

01:52:35.560 fulfilled unless I have authorship over the project. I don't want to just be an actor who

01:52:41.360 shows up and stands on a spot. It's a, it's a clip that's, that is also made the rounds. Now

01:52:46.500 everybody has seen it and it makes her look absolutely terrible so maybe these are bad

01:52:51.360 moments but these are all things that she went out and did and said herself another thing Megan

01:52:55.700 and and I think this will this is something Mark and I were talking about the other day

01:52:59.340 and I don't know it's an allegation that's out there but to get text messages between Jason

01:53:06.340 Baldoni and his publicist there's a there's a an allegation that they set up a sham lawsuit they

01:53:12.640 being um blake lively's team where they sued this publicist to get the phone to release these text

01:53:20.480 messages to the la times i don't know if it's true but if it is that is some really shady stuff

01:53:26.300 that i think the new york state bar should look into if it's true and so to to do all that and

01:53:32.420 come out and talk about spin machines um you know that's pretty rich look you know because the thing

01:53:38.860 is mark at no point was what are the heavy allegations by blake ben excuse me they made 0.97

01:53:46.680 up lies about me and use this pr firm to push them it's that they just made her look bad that

01:53:53.560 they had a campaign to get her by using her actual videos and her promo interviews to promote the 0.98

01:54:03.200 film and to spread them with the new york post or the daily mail in a way that she thought

01:54:08.800 was unflattering. But I did not see in her complaint, they made up a lie that I

01:54:16.660 fired a pregnant girl. They made up a lie that I was, you know, uniformly abusive to the staff.

01:54:23.180 That's that wasn't the nature of her campaign campaign. It was that you intentionally spread

01:54:27.800 mean things about me. They may have been mean, but they were true. You want to know the cynic

01:54:34.040 in me who as a practical matter will tell you what I think is happening here. When Blake Lively's

01:54:43.460 case was gutted by Judge Lyman, he issued an order. If you read that order, he was unflinching

01:54:51.460 in his criticism of her lawyers to the point where it explains why if what is being reported

01:55:01.760 is true. As soon as they saw that order, as soon as her case was gutted, she had a monstrous legal 0.96

01:55:09.800 malpractice action against her lawyers. How do her lawyers solve that problem? They immediately 0.99

01:55:16.240 beg Baldoni's team to go into private mediation. You might say, well, how is that going to solve

01:55:23.000 anything? There's a Supreme Court case in California that says, and mind you, they mediated

01:55:28.720 this in California with a California-based, California-Hawaii-based mediator, is my

01:55:35.400 understanding. The California Supreme Court case says if you go through private mediation,

01:55:41.860 you can't sue your lawyer for legal malpractice. So what this was, was a very sophisticated

01:55:49.160 legal strategy to insulate the big firm from getting sued for the tens of millions of dollars

01:55:57.040 for what could have been argued was the, if you read Judge Lyman's order, missteps by her lawyers.

01:56:06.420 That's just the cynic in me explaining why all this happened. Then what happens? Brian goes out

01:56:13.700 and declares victory, and these guys now have to concoct, no, but what about 47.1 in our lawyer's

01:56:20.420 fees, which everybody knows the insurance company is going to pick up for anyway. So talk about just

01:56:26.240 being a cynic here, what has happened here is really kind of one of the downsides, if you will,

01:56:34.980 to when you have too much money. It's a kind of a take on the old Richard Pryor joke

01:56:42.440 that having a big firm represent you in a civil case is God's way of telling you you make too

01:56:48.520 much money. So because one of the things I mean, the main thrust of her case was the sexual

01:56:56.360 harassment claim. And it was based on a contract between the parties that never existed. That's

01:57:05.680 what came out in the course of discovery. She never had a signature by the Wayfarer defendants.

01:57:11.860 That'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?

01:57:38.560 Do I enforce the ninth version that they left after, that they kind of, whatever, everybody moved on after that?

01:57:43.700 Or is it the one version that might have had a signature, but it wasn't countersigned?

01:57:47.720 Like, I'm not, I can't divine agreement.

01:57:51.480 It has to be shown to me on a piece of paper with two signatures, which any first-year law student knows.

01:57:58.280 So 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?

01:58:08.460 That's a very interesting theory.

01:58:10.660 All right.

01:58:10.920 So now, so she will get her attorney's fees.

01:58:14.040 What do you make of the fact, though, that the judge is that they wanted to brief it again?

01:58:19.180 They went back in, Matt, and said, give us another chance.

01:58:22.560 They already briefed it.

01:58:23.660 They briefed it.

01:58:24.380 They submitted it. 0.96

01:58:25.240 They say, oh, she's got some $400, $400 million in damages, whatever.

01:58:29.960 They 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.

01:58:41.540 And the judge just came out.

01:58:43.020 We just saw the order because originally he hadn't actually issued the order.

01:58:46.240 Now we've got it saying the court does not require additional briefing at this time.

01:58:50.140 So order Louis J. Lyman, May 11th, 2026.

01:58:53.220 So he's not into it.

01:58:54.380 He doesn't want to hear anything more from them.

01:58:55.680 He's probably got his mind made up.

01:58:57.220 Do you think he's going to give them some huge award with and then triple it?

01:59:01.640 No, in a word, no, I don't see that happening at all.

01:59:06.180 I think Mark's exactly right.

01:59:07.540 The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

01:59:08.980 And his his dad was a First Amendment, you know, pillar.

01:59:14.120 And this judge is over it.

01:59:16.260 Megan, he's figured this out.

01:59:17.760 I think he's sorted out the egos.

01:59:19.440 He's read everything.

01:59:21.060 He knows what this is.

01:59:22.320 And 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.

01:59:32.100 It 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.

01:59:39.840 And 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.

01:59:49.960 Like 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.

02:00:01.340 And 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.

02:00:08.200 I think somebody finally pulled her aside and said, you are you have lost this battle.

02:00:12.800 You're you're destroying your career. Read the comments section of some of these things.

02:00:16.920 you look terrible and it's so bad you're dragging your husband into it that's my guess

02:00:20.900 and that that yeah i'm sure the word ecstatic because of our attorney's fees is so laughably 0.98

02:00:26.380 just ridiculous but um but look this is this is one of those look i approach everything megan in

02:00:32.660 my experience from a position of victims and i've represented women since i've been in private 0.88

02:00:37.580 practice who were legitimate real victims of sexual harassment from people that were in positions of

02:00:43.800 power. I know you've had that experience. That's a real thing. And it's kind of like Amber Heard

02:00:49.040 and the Johnny Depp stuff. It's like we should believe victims until we shouldn't. And when it

02:00:55.160 comes to this sort of thing, when you march out there and say, I'm going to do this on behalf of

02:00:59.660 all people who have been subjected to sexual harassment, you undermine them. You undermine

02:01:05.960 the real victims when, in my opinion, you do stuff like this. And Mark had a great point the other

02:01:11.360 day. Blake Lively, when the judge gutted the cases because she was an independent contractor

02:01:16.840 and not an employee, that was the technical reason she could have taken an off ramp right

02:01:21.380 then and there and said, I'm going to now rally so that independent contractors also have protections 1.00

02:01:27.580 under the law for sexual harassment. And she didn't do that. And she could have done that. 0.94

02:01:31.780 And Mark said, it was a great point. If they'd enacted a federal law, they would have called it

02:01:36.280 the Blake Lively Act. And she could have been a hero. Right. She didn't take it. She didn't do it.

02:01:41.360 because in my opinion, she was driven by ego and trying to settle a score. And that's what this 0.99

02:01:47.880 whole thing is about. And like Brian has been saying all along, Mark Garagos, he knew. It's

02:01:55.060 one thing to say in a complaint to the California Human Rights Office, one thing. But when you're

02:02:01.060 on the stand under oath, being cross-examined by Brian, it's quite another to try to back up those

02:02:08.080 claims about they walked in on me in my dressing room when I was breastfeeding my baby against my

02:02:13.420 will and then confronted with a text message saying, come on in, come on in. I'm breastfeeding

02:02:18.100 my baby, but it's fine. By the way, I don't know going to get ripped apart. I don't know if I and

02:02:24.140 I I'm sure you've told it before, but I will tell it again for you. Brian became your lawyer because

02:02:30.660 he started off as opposing counsel against you. And that's some of the best kind of

02:02:39.800 lawyering you can do is when your opponent says, no, no, no, I'm hiring this guy so I never have

02:02:45.840 to deal with him again. And Gary goes, I started off like, I can't stand this prick. He is such 0.98

02:02:52.320 an asshole. I cannot stand him. I hated him. When he was taking, wait, no, when we were taking the 1.00

02:02:59.900 deposition of his client. He was like interfering in a way, you know, you don't like objections at

02:03:05.040 a deposition. Right. I was like, oh, I can't stand him. And I like the way he talked to my lawyer.

02:03:09.660 And so finally we get to the point where he's deposing me. And I was like, I was ready. Of

02:03:14.040 course, I'd been a litigator for 10 years at Jones Day. This is not my first rodeo. I was totally

02:03:18.940 ready for him. And I fell in love with him. He's so charming. He's so smart. He's raising good

02:03:25.260 points. We're having a great back and forth. I had no stakes. And like, I, whatever, it was very

02:03:29.500 clear where this whole thing was going to go. Brian inherited it. He didn't actually

02:03:33.420 take this case. It was kind of given to him. But we bonded over these eight hours in a way where

02:03:39.300 I was like, I think I made a friend for life. That case went away. And then when I got in trouble

02:03:45.140 with NBC, it's a long story that I will tell someday in full, but an agent connected me with

02:03:51.820 Brian and the agent fled, but Brian stayed with me. And he was like, just so you know,

02:04:00.260 I don't give an F, Lee said the word, what anybody thinks of me. I've got you. And it was like,

02:04:07.080 that was it. We were off to the races and he hammered them. He got me everything I deserved.

02:04:11.760 And that was really the beginning, like another beginning for Brian, who was already very well

02:04:15.920 respected, but of this like niche practice he's really created where like any big talent in a

02:04:24.220 serious fight with somebody who's generally a bully on the other side calls Brian, you know,

02:04:31.080 like Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon hired him from CNN. Gabrielle Union hired him when NBC started

02:04:40.260 messing with her um justin baldoni uh there's a long list now but like he's the go-to if you want

02:04:47.560 to if you're an individual getting bullied by some massive entity on the other side and that's

02:04:53.620 really what blake lively has been she and her dragons with ryan and taylor and justin had no

02:04:59.780 power in comparison to them you go to brian and he is a master of the dark arts in a great way

02:05:06.060 And 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.

02:05:22.240 those are the that's the long long lost friendships i mean with matt i often say

02:05:28.780 one of one of the clients i'll never forget with him and he and what endeared me to him is i at one

02:05:35.700 point got so frustrated at him for wanting state prison on my client that i lashed out and said

02:05:41.320 you would prosecute romeo for stalking juliet if you had your way and and that he laughed and

02:05:48.860 finally gave me what i wanted because he could see how frustrated i was laughing now i had the

02:05:53.140 same i had the same experience with brian i was just the he was bedeviling me on something and

02:05:59.060 finally uh finally we resolved it and the they're two of my closest friends in the world

02:06:04.800 no it's funny isn't it it's like it's like those it's like those fights on the playground when

02:06:09.420 you're in fourth grade like it like two boys fighting on the playground they're gonna be

02:06:13.340 best friends by the end of the day you know and that's right you really do it really is a function

02:06:18.220 of that and i was thinking the exact same thing mark i wasn't going to say it but yeah you really

02:06:22.580 do you get to learn in an adversarial process especially when you're in a good hard fight you

02:06:27.540 get to learn your opponent in a lot of ways better than their own colleagues do because you see them

02:06:32.960 under pressure you're creating the pressure you see how they respond and you really can develop a

02:06:38.300 true healthy respect for somebody like that and that's why um you know number one megan that's

02:06:44.320 why you you brought in brian friedman and number two why i would hire mark caracos if i was in

02:06:49.600 trouble tomorrow in an instant um to defend me because totally yeah same and now they work

02:06:55.660 together so it'd be super easy or you um i i i don't know i feel like this is i believe you when

02:07:03.200 you say this is how boys like resolve things on the playground girls instead of doing that will

02:07:07.060 just say nothing and then stick needles in your back knives in your back for years quietly and

02:07:12.440 your life will slowly be destroyed you won't know why so it's like so it's a different kind

02:07:16.260 of playground i'd put the girls revenge up against the boys and i'd much rather just have a playground

02:07:21.440 fight where we're having punched in the face having raised a ball-busting uh lawyer myself 1.00

02:07:27.200 i have i was shocked in when she was in fourth grade at what those girls did do it one another

02:07:32.820 it was it was it was like nothing i'd ever experienced up until then yes it's it's like a 1.00

02:07:40.480 rite of passage sadly for a lot of women but boy oh boy you you get tougher that's for damn sure

02:07:46.140 all right before we go i want to put a period at the end of the mj discussion because the real

02:07:52.100 question is what what now is going to be his legacy because this is a fight for legacy and

02:07:59.400 for money in the new york times the daily podcast mark they pointed out that there was testimony

02:08:04.020 that on the day Michael died,

02:08:06.560 his brand was worth like $24.

02:08:09.980 He had not a lot of money left in the coffers.

02:08:13.660 The estate was very worried

02:08:15.020 that it wasn't gonna be able to generate any dough

02:08:17.140 because it was so smeared with these allegations.

02:08:20.800 But now we've had the MJ musical,

02:08:23.520 which has defied expectations

02:08:25.080 and become a smash hit for five years

02:08:27.240 with nearly sold out venues.

02:08:29.160 We've had the Cirque du Soleil.

02:08:30.720 Now 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.

02:08:49.040 There are some legal impediments to them doing it, given like deals that have been signed.

02:08:52.540 But it's a fight for them to continue earning and to restore his legacy.

02:08:58.220 The family says they don't believe any of these allegations and they want the legacy restored.

02:09:03.480 Can that be done?

02:09:04.980 And will the public allow it?

02:09:08.200 Well, if you want my non-legal answer, my non-legal answer is based on my experience.

02:09:15.460 Yes, the public will allow it.

02:09:17.440 And the fact that it has exceeded everybody's expectations in terms of the box office on this thing tells you all you need to know.

02:09:26.800 No, I mean, even though there will be other, as I mentioned before, there will be other documentaries out.

02:09:33.880 There will be other productions out because money spawns money.

02:09:37.640 And that is going to triumph in the end, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on who's looking at it.

02:09:45.840 What do you think, Matt?

02:09:47.780 Yeah, I think Mark's right.

02:09:48.760 And remember, you know, these songs are so iconic that when you hear one, it brings us back to a point in our life.

02:09:56.360 like hey that was from 10th grade or you know we remember these parties and i they're so personal

02:10:01.200 to everybody because he was so huge i mean he's the largest pop star in the world and look i've

02:10:05.800 dedicated my life to fighting um my professional life anyway to fighting child molesters basically

02:10:11.180 um and those who would sexually prey on others and i think that um you know in the world of

02:10:17.740 cancellation he's dead um so i think that i don't know um and this might be controversial it's just

02:10:24.140 me but i think we all need to allow ourselves to enjoy the music other people are making that money

02:10:28.880 now um and it's also a fascinating iconic you know um fall from grace and people can't can't

02:10:36.900 stay away from that so i think both aspects of that story are going to go i think it's going

02:10:39.960 to continue to make money and people are still going to talk about the implications of sexual

02:10:43.920 assault and taking advantage of little kids and you know whether it's true or not true i think

02:10:49.120 it's going to continue to be a part of our cultural landscape for a long time.

02:10:55.440 Yeah. I mean, dying is the ultimate cancellation. He certainly was canceled.

02:11:01.160 I feel like one aspect of it that wasn't discussed that really is a critical piece of the story

02:11:06.740 is the parents who allowed their seven-year-old children to spend the night at a grown-up's house

02:11:16.080 who, you know, wasn't a parent and in his bed, like they knew, they knew that this was happening

02:11:23.300 and they allowed it. And the children who are now grown say, it's tough, especially when you don't

02:11:29.040 have a lot of money as a kid and the world's greatest pop star pays attention to you and

02:11:35.660 wants to be your friend and had a decent narrative of, I'm just a big kid myself. It's not that I'm

02:11:42.400 a molester. It's that I never got to grow up. And it was very persuasive because he did have a very

02:11:49.260 abusive father. He had a childhood where he worked all the time. He was obviously stunted in some

02:11:54.420 ways. He was childlike even as a grownup. So it's kind of like, okay, I can see it. Neverland looks

02:12:00.040 like an amusement park. His room looks like a Peter Pan book. He is kind of a big, you could

02:12:05.860 go with it if you wanted to delude yourself into thinking there's no risks here. Most normal people

02:12:11.500 never would. But I'm just saying this is what the parents convinced themselves of. And this is just

02:12:16.360 not a good idea. Nope. No normal man wants a child in his bed. They just don't. That's one

02:12:23.800 thing if you have a kid and he's sick and he comes in the middle of the night. I'm not talking about

02:12:26.800 that. I'm talking about strange man who's not related to your child who wants him to sleep in

02:12:31.720 his bed. It's a hard no. So maybe that is potentially helpful to anybody out there listening.

02:12:38.700 Guys, looking forward to many more episodes of In the Well.

02:12:42.280 Everybody go and subscribe at mktruecrime.com.

02:12:45.320 Thanks for being here.

02:12:46.440 Thank you, Megan.

02:12:47.180 Thanks, Megan.

02:12:47.960 Bye, Matt.

02:12:48.980 All right.

02:12:49.560 And we'll see all of you tomorrow with Mark Halperin and our deep dive on Katie Porter

02:12:54.880 and how she has been victimized, my friend.

02:12:58.540 She's the victim.

02:12:59.880 That's what you need to know.

02:13:01.220 And more on that tomorrow. 0.99

02:13:03.360 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

02:13:05.100 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

02:13:08.360 We'll be right back.

The Megyn Kelly Show - May 12, 2026

The TRUTH About Michael Jackson as Biopic Sets Records, and Blake Lively's DOOMED Legal Strategy, with Mark Geragos and Matt Murphy

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript