Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - WWE Founder Vince McMahon Target of Sex Trafficking Probe: Report

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

WWE Founder Vince McMahon has been under investigation by federal officials since 2022, according to a bombshell report in the Wall Street Journal. The site reports McMahon's cell phone was seized last summer. The news comes one week after a former staffer, Janel Grant, sued McMahon claiming he raped her and trafficked her to other men. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with former federal prosecutor Tim Jansen about the investigation in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show that delves into the biggest stories in crime.HOST:Angenette Levy: twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Let me tell you this. I am no pervert. WWE founder Vince McMahon under investigation by the feds for sex trafficking. Women. investigation by the feds for sex trafficking. The bombshell report comes one week after a former staffer filed a lawsuit claiming McMahon raped and trafficked her. I'm Anjanette Levy, it's Friday, and this is Crime Fix. Vince McMahon has been under investigation for sex trafficking since 2022, according to a story in the Wall Street

Journal. The journal cites people familiar with the investigation who've seen a grand jury subpoena that lists Janelle Grant, who sued McMahon last week, and at least four other women. Those women all entered into settlement agreements with McMahon. Grant's lawsuit claimed McMahon was supposed to pay her $3 million over a number of years, but only made the initial two payments totaling $1 million and then stopped paying. As I told you last Friday, Grant says McMahon had her take part in a threesome when she worked for him and that he defecated on her, but then instructed her to continue having sex with the third person. Grant also claims that McMahon and former WWE Vice President John Laurinaitis

had sex with her, basically raping her in his office, saying things like, no means yes, and take it B-word. I enjoy destroying lives. The Wall Street Journal says the feds seized McMahon's cell phone over the summer and subpoenaed any documents related to any allegation of rape, sex trafficking, sexual assault, commercial sex transaction, harassment or discrimination. Tim Jansen was an assistant U.S. attorney in Tampa and Tallahassee. Tim, what are your first thoughts on when you hear that Vince McMahon is being investigated for sex trafficking? Well, when I looked at the complaint and the allegations, they're disgusting. Then I looked at his age and I was like, how in the world is he committing these allegations at his age? But more problematic is the position he had, how he groomed this person.

She was in grief, lost her parents, and she was downtrodden. And then he gives her these, he coerces her with this job offer. And then he gets to the point where she can't leave. She can't quit. He entices her with gifts, money, and then sells her like a, I mean, it was terrible. Like he owned her and forced her into sexual conduct. That's what's alleged in the complaint. Now I see the federal authorities executed search warrants and a subpoena, which means that a federal judge has found probable cause that crimes, federal crimes have been committed.

So this has been going on though, this investigation since 2022. That's what the Wall Street Journal is reporting. And the search warrant for the phone was executed last summer, along with he was served with a subpoena for documents about any of this stuff regarding settlements with sex involving women, things of that nature. So it's been a while and we know that federal cases can take a while. If there is any there there as far as federal charges go, if they've been investigating this since 2022, when can we find when will we find out whether or not he's going to be charged? Well, as a federal prosecutor, it's easy for an individual victim, right? But they're seeing a pattern of conduct that goes back years. So they're probably tracing his phone, text messages, emails, building up a pattern of conduct to show maybe a RICO organization, a racketeering charge, an ongoing criminal enterprise of committing this commercial

sex trafficking. So that's what may be taking time for them to build that into an indictment. I want to take a minute to tell you all about an exciting new channel we just launched here at Law & Crime. It's Law & Crime Body Cam. This channel is devoted to authentic, raw footage captured directly on police body cams, which means you get to see what happens firsthand instead of hearing about it in court or from a police report. Law and Crime Body Cam puts you right in the middle of the action of high stakes situations like car chases, DUIs, arrests, and all of the other crazy situations that police encounter daily. Check out the description of this video for a link to Bodycam and make sure you subscribe

so you don't miss any new uploads. So this could take much longer depending on how far back they go. And it sounds like they have at least four women, including Janelle Grant, who's suing him civilly. So if there are at least four that they're referring to in grand jury materials, when this gets out in the news, I'm assuming more, if there are more out there, might come forward. Well, it takes time to get records, text messages, takes time to go through these subpoena documents. His lawyers may have asked for an extension of time to get the records. Some of these text messages in this lawsuit, very, very telling about the conduct, about the relationship. Those are all going to be put into an indictment.

And remember, an indictment, you want to make it as tight as you can, but also dirty to defend it up because this person's got such a reputation and so much money that you're going to have to prove to a jury, listen, this is not just some rich guy who's perfect. We want you to see the real Vince McMahon. So they usually try to put everything they can as bad that they can prove in an indictment. I want to play devil's advocate here for a minute. You know, a lot of people would look at the complaint that Janelle Grant signed or in that she filed and say, well, a lot of this to me sounds like it's consensual and that she's upset that she didn't get the rest of the money that he promised the remaining two million dollars. So now she's filing a civil suit. But this sounds like she took part in some of this willingly, but you're saying the text messages suggest to you that there

was trafficking. So, so how do you prove that as a prosecutor that, that this wasn't willing, a willing act? I mean, is it because she is his employee and because there's some type of line that is supposed to be there, a professional relationship? That's a very valid point. This is just allegations made in a civil complaint. And some of the conduct, you're like, why would the girl do this?

Why wouldn't she just leave? How could she? And you have to go back to the relationship. And that's why they have laws against this, to protect people in vulnerable positions. I think we all agree she was in a vulnerable position at the company. She had no superiority. She relied on him for pay, for promotion. Look at all the benefits he gave her.

Of course, he's having an affair, doing it outside of his marriage. But he's giving gifts, $15,000 to department stores. That leads you to believe that there was an improper relationship that was not being paid on the books and that he was trying to hide it. Now, a civil suit like this can hurt a federal prosecution. It really does. You go back to a lot of these cases with athletes, like the Kobe Bryant case. She made an allegation against Kobe in the hotel room and then a civil suit. And then the case was they dropped it. They didn't go forward. When the victim looks like she's trying to get money, she's subject to cross-examination, any good defense lawyer will show she's by greed. And then you have these, what you would have to say, some of them are consensual, or at least they voluntarily participated. It can be really hard to prove a case.

And that's what the government may be going through, is was this consensual and she wants money, or was this reallyensual and she wants money or was this really a rape and uh sex commercial sex trafficking well the wall street journal is saying there are four other women apparently in the grand jury subpoena and the documents so four other women at least are involved in this right So what that was in the federal system, they could bring that in as what's called 404B evidence, similar evidence, bad acts to show a conduct,

a pattern of conduct by Vince McMahon to show that he was a commercial sex trafficker. If they don't bring the actual charges, I don't think, I don't know the statute of limitations on that and when those occurred, but they could certainly bring it as 404B and that would be admissible. Judge could rule it under a 403 relevancy, prejudicial and determine it's valid, shows this pattern of conduct is consistent with what is being alleged by Ms. Grant. And that's hard evidence. I think when a lot of people hear sex trafficking,

they think, you know, a pimp or, you know, some guy with girls, you know, who are addicted to drugs and he's, you know, he's running girls, he's running women and he's doing horrible things. This is a guy who would tell you, Vince McMahon, that he's an entertainer. You know, it is not my cup of tea. I've gone through all the videos on YouTube. And he says some pretty gross stuff in the ring when he's doing his shtick and his thing on WWE.

You know, this is a guy that runs a billion dollar organization, or at least did and created it. So how hard is that when you take possibly something like this to federal court? You know, he's, I don't know what he would say if he's even charged. He's saying he's innocent and he didn't do any do anything wrong. He didn't do you know, didn't commit any crimes and he'll be exonerated. Well, I hope he says that because if he said something otherwise, they'd be using that against him. Most defendants, when they go to court after they're indicted or investigated, deny the allegations 100 percent.

There's a lot of specifics in here, a lot of specific dates and times. And you wonder how the girl could recall these dates and times, right? It cuts both ways. Was she building up this to sue him later on? Or was it because it was so traumatizing to her, she remembered what happened to her, like had to go to the doctor or something. But there's great details in here. He was flying in a partner from Colorado to engage in the sex acts, laryngitis. He's a defendant in here, John laryngitis. And he engaged in threesomes and stuff that she didn't want to do. And he's flying in for the purposes of commercial sex. That would give you jurisdiction also, federal jurisdiction. And then the payments were done by wires, right? They submitted, they wired the money to her account, which gives the federal government jurisdiction. We normally think of sex

trafficking as if someone underage, or we think of bringing someone from outside the country and taking their passport and making them work off their sex, their their fees to get here to get their passport back. That's what we look at human trafficking and that's the normal sense but there are adults put in positions where they can be victims also and I believe this complaint is alleging that and laws were passed in 2002, I believe, to protect people from being sexually trafficked, even adults. Laurinaitis' attorney told the Wall Street Journal that he too is a victim of Vince McMahon. Your thoughts on that? He says he's a victim. That's interesting.

His lawyer told the Wall Street Journal that. Oh, that he was forced to engage in sexual activity. He didn't say that. He just said that he's a victim as well. That's an interesting defense. It does not sound like they have a joint defense agreement, his lawyer and the lawyer for Vince. Do you see them? Well, do you see Vince McMahon getting charged, Tim? Do you think that that's where this is going? Because it sounds like somebody with the feds more than likely talked and leaked to the Wall Street Journal, which is amazing because the feds usually don't do stuff like that, or somebody with knowledge of it who was interviewed by the feds.

Do you see Vince McMahon getting charged eventually? You know, that's a possibility. Witnesses, when they go before the grand jury are told not to talk about it, you can't stop them. It's hard to prove it. There are leaks. Vince McMahon's a very popular international figure. I can't tell you whether he's going to be charged,

but you tell me that four witnesses went before the grand jury, four victims. They've got search warrants executed. They're getting subpoenaed documents. There clearly is an interest by the Department of Justice or the U.S. attorneys. I take it in Connecticut. So they're going to make that decision. I would say, you know, in the system,

in the federal system, you have you're a witness, you're a subject, or you're a target. A lot of people don't know if you haven't been in a system, you don't know what those mean. Witness means you're a witness. Subject means they don't know yet what you are. Target means they have enough to indict you right now and they're by law by the attorney general manual obligated to tell you if you are a target okay so i don't know if vince got a letter saying i'm a target or a subject you're probably not a witness but certainly a subject but if he got a letter saying he's a target which would be important to know then he meets the definition they have enough to charge him.

If they got search warrants and warrants for his phone, they have probable cause. A judge found probable cause, which means they don't need much more than a U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut. And I imagine the assistant U.S. attorney general would have to approve an indictment against a figure like Vince McMahon. Well, Tim Jansen, thanks so much for coming on to talk with us. As always, we appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you. And that's it for Crime Fix on this Friday, February 2nd, 2024. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. We will see you back here on Monday. Until then, have a great weekend. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby Zoki.

Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Bynes. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabey is our audio editor.