Law&Crime Sidebar - Legality of Heard's Tell-All Book, Bob Saget's Leaked Death, Deshaun Watson Settles

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Could Amber Heard's recent statements and a possible upcoming tell-all book get her into legal trouble again? Jesse Weber sits down with acclaimed first amendment attorney Floyd Abrams.  The investigation into the death of comedian Bob Saget takes a turn as two deputies now find themselves in hot water. Former FBI agent Bobby Chacon explains. Browns quarterback DeShaun Watson settles almost all of his pending sexual misconduct lawsuits, but what does this mean for the star athlete? Profootballtalk.com founder and former attorney Mike Florio breaks it all down.GUESTS:Floyd Abrams, First Amendment Icon Bobby Chacon, Former FBI Agent Mike Florio, Founder of Profootballtalk.com and author of Playmakers: How the NFL Really Works (And Doesn't)LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Sean BauerGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsSpeaking FreelyLAW&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 Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. There's a binder worth of years of notes dating back to 2011 from the very beginning of my relationship that were taken by my doctor, who I was reporting the abuse to. Amber Hurd once again publicly accusing Johnny Depp of abuse. The question is, could her recent statements and maybe a new tell-all book get her into more legal trouble? We sit down with acclaimed First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams. Plus, the investigation into the death of comedian Bob Sagitt takes a turn as two deputies now find themselves in hot water.

Former FBI agent Bobby Chaconne joins us to explain. And quarterback Deshawn Watson settles almost all of the lawsuits he was facing for alleged sexual misconduct. How did this happen and what is the future for the athlete? Pro football talks. Mike Florio breaks it all down. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law & Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. So as we've discussed, Amber Heard sat down with Savannah Guthrie for an interview on

Dateline that aired last week. This is coming after a jury found Herd liable to Johnny Depp on every one of his claims of defamation against her stemming from a 2018 Washington Post op-ed piece. Depp was awarded $10.35 million in damages, but that is offset by the $2 million that heard won on one of her counterclaims against Depp. Now, in this interview, her doubles down on the fact that she did not lie about being abused by Johnny Depp. She's very adamant about that.

And she made a suggestion that the jury was possibly swayed by his star power and his acting abilities as opposed to, you know, the facts and the law. She claimed that if allowed, she had other evidence that she wanted to present to the jury like therapist notes detailing her abuse. And then she said this. his other prior relationships not one woman has come forward and said he physically hit them you were the only one look what happened to me when i came forward would you basically implying that dep abused other women so is she getting herself into legal trouble could dep sue her again especially now that it's been

reported that she might write a tell all book well joining me now to answer these questions is renowned constitutional attorney and First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams. Good to see you, sir. It's good to be here. All right. So let's get right into the Savannah Guthrie interview. Anything from that interview, do you consider it to be defamatory, particularly her saying, not one other woman has come forward because look what happened to me when I came forward, would you? She's implying that other women were abused by Johnny Depp. Anything in her interview that's defamatory? Well, all of it seems to be defamatory. I mean, every time she says or hints clearly enough that he engaged in misconduct, let alone beating up anybody and including herself, it certainly is defamatory. Is it libelous?

If he were to sue, I think he'd have a very, very good shot because you would start with the jury verdict in the last case, which would be admissible, maybe not for what we call the truth of it, but for the fact that she knew that a jury had already disbelieved her, she knew that a court order had been entered and saying in so many words that the jury had found that essentially she had lied. So she certainly is at risk. Indeed, in my view, Johnny Depp has you know, a few alternatives. Probably the wisest is not to do anything. She's not getting good publicity out of this, and I don't think he's getting bad publicity out of it in light of the jury verdict. But yes, he could bring another lawsuit, and it would start out a lot stronger than the

one he already brought and won. In fact, he could do something, which is pretty rare, but some judges have allowed. He might be able to get an injunction, a court order directing her to shut up with respect to these now determined to be false charges. Now, because that's a prior restraint on speech, it's very hard to get. But there have been liable cases in which just that followed a liable judgment and the person who lost still carrying signs around attacking the person who won the case. So, yeah, he could sue again. Yes, he might even seek an injunction. And in my view, at least at the moment, he's probably still better off doing none of the above. He not only survived, he prospered, I would say, as a result of the last trial. And my reaction, if I were advising him,

is that if this is all there is, he ought to let it go. Now, if she writes a book, she is writing a book, depending what the book says, he might want to go back again. And what he would be seeking then also has a large amount of punitive damages. That is to say, not only did she hurt my reputation, but by this point, surely, she knew that it was false, provably knew, because at least the jury and if the judge upholds it,

the court system has found it to be false. So that's what I was going to ask you. If she writes this book, what does she have to be careful about what she can say and not say about her experience, both in the trial and after? I think she has to be most careful

about repeating what is. been held to be a libel, and I would think her publisher would want to be and likely will be careful about how she describes that. I mean, if I were advising the publisher, I would say, look, you have to make a serious decision here. You know, maybe Johnny isn't going to sue, and maybe this will just pass on the night, but you are risking you, the publisher, not just she, is risking a serious, threatening, potentially crippling libel suit. Here's the thing that I find kind of ironic. If she goes forward with a book, let's say it does very, very well. Couldn't whatever she profits off of that, couldn't that go back to Johnny Depp as part of the

judgment? It could. Yes, it could. But what would a savvy advisor say to Johnny? It might be. It really might be. Enough already. You won. You won big time. Everybody believes you, so to speak, everybody. Why do you want another trial? You're going to give her another shot at persuading another jury? he's human. If he's upset enough at this, sure. If she repeats, let alone expands on what she has said before. Remember, she'll have no defense now that all I was doing was speaking generally of women in that op-ed piece in the Washington Post. I mean, this book, if it's going to be anything, is likely to have the sort of charges she made when she testified, which went well beyond certainly in its specificity. what the Washington Post piece said. So she's walking on ice that can break very easily. I think he'll have the harder decision to make and is going to need to be sort of cooled off first

or maybe just wait and see how is the book received. I mean, it might well be received with people saying there she goes again. I'd say I think he'd probably have a lot of lawyers looking at every word in that book. And I think a lot of lawyers watching and listening to everything that she has to say in all of these interviews.

Abrams, constitutional lawyer, First Amendment expert. Great analysis, as always. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. New details are coming out regarding the investigation into the death of Bob Sagitt. The comedian was found unresponsive in his Florida hotel room on January 9th, 2020. A medical examiner determined that he had bumped his head in an accidental fall, although his family filed to keep investigator records in the case private, which a judge agreed to do. But now we are learning that, Two Orange County Florida deputies, Emiliano, Silva, and Stephen Reed revealed Sagitt's death to other people before first telling his family. So while it's been confirmed that they have received disciplinary action, we don't know what that is. Join me right now is former FBI agent and attorney Bobby Chacon. Bobby, it's good to see you. Thanks, Jesse. Good be here. So Silva allegedly told his brother about what happened to Sagitt while the scene was still active. Forty-five minutes from when Sagitt's body was discovered by authorities, Silver's brother then wrote

on Twitter, RIP Bob Sagget, which alerted the media. What do you make of that? Yeah, you know, there's this phenomena that we now have in the world of social media where everybody rushes to be the first one to announce the death of a celebrity or some spectacular event that has happened. And I just, it amazes me that people get caught up in that. And like you said, in this situation, it's neither officer actually went to social media, but they told someone else who then went and social media and social media. And so I think it's, oh, you know, obviously there's a policy against this. And the reason is that once you let the cat out of the bag, you can't control where that cat runs.

And so, you know, in the FBI, obviously, we all had top secret security clearances. And so we always approached everything from the mindset of everything has to be kept. I wouldn't even tell my wife at home about some of the stuff that I was working on because I was prohibited from doing that. And so it's always the best policy to keep information in any investigation, you know, close to the vest. And in this kind of situation where you have, you know, the death, it's always the next of kin, always gets notified first. Even the media a lot of times will withhold the name, even if they have it, until, you know, until next of kin is notified. So it's just, it's just this phenomenon that I see on, as particularly on Twitter, where people rush to be the first one to tell everyone

about this horrific news. And I think that these two deputies, I don't even think, I think one was even off duty, so I don't even know how he found out. But they told other people and then other people spread the news. I think one of them, even hashtag TMZ on their thing. So, I mean, it gets out of hand really quick. We had a case here in California years ago where crime scene photos of a horrific car accident where a young girl was killed were leaked out. And these things, just nothing good can come of this.

There's a procedure to follow. Each sheriff department, each police department, each agency has their own public information of people that are responsible for putting information out to the public, and that's their job. And it should be left to them. And these deputies should know better.

you know, they've been disciplined now. I think I read some type of suspension, a short-term suspension. I think that... Yeah, I mean, I was going to ask you that. What do you think disciplinary action could be here? Well, I certainly don't think they should lose their jobs. I mean, this is as horrific as it is. I mean, it needs to be put into context.

I think that there should be certainly a suspension, a harsh penalty, retraining. Both of them expressed regret, I think, during the internal investigation. They had no intention of doing, of the information getting out as it did. But people have to know. Everybody has to understand that once you let things out, other people can do whatever they want with it. And so I think that, I think suspensions are justified and retraining is justified in this case. I mean, I don't know, you know, civilly whether there's a toward action for infliction of emotional distress on the family. Sometimes that, you know, you have to have to have intent for some of that.

You know, certainly that certainly a suspension is justified. Or negligence. Or negligence, infliction of emotional distress. Sure. Yeah. And that could meet the standard. I mean, it gets worse because Reid allegedly told two people, I think it was his neighbors, about what happened to Bob Sagget, and then message them or told them, quote,

Better Keep Your Tickets might have been his last show. And then Silva, who I said his brother then tweeted RIP Bob Sagitt, he made his brother delete the tweet. And then it was reportedly up for about 18 minutes, so the damage was already done. But Corporal Brian Meadows said at first that he thought that hotel stuff might have told. Bob Sagitt's family. There was a sergeant, Lance Colford, allegedly then told Meadows that the family was probably told, but then they weren't told. So it seems to me either one of two things, either a dereliction of duty, right, incompetence, or they were trying to cover themselves up because they realized they made a mistake. What do you see it as? You know, in a weird situation where

you're hoping it's incompetence, right? I mean, we don't have hoped that our law enforcement officials are incompetent, but in this type of case, the alternative is that they knew they had done wrong and recovering up. So when I first heard that, I did think it was incompetence. I thought, like, where's the leadership in this situation when a leader of, you know, when a sergeant or lieutenant gets on scene, they have to take control of it. They have to talk to the hotel staff. What did you do? Who have you notified? Who have we notified? What's the proper procedure? Tell the hotel staff not to make any phone calls and follow the proper procedure that's been set out. And so a lack of leadership early on on scene can result in what we've seen. So I think that,

you know, I personally thought it was a little bit. of incompetence of not grabbing control of this scene, telling the hotel staff, what have you done so far? Okay, just stop everything. We're going to take over. We're going to make notification and stuff like that. Because those procedures are in place. It just seems like nobody had the leadership in this situation to kind of grab it and follow those procedures. Yeah, it's just disturbing to see, given everybody was dealing with the shock of this. And for a family to not be alerted first, but the people around the officers, it's just, it's really a thing to see. Attorney, retired FBI agent, Bobby Chaconne, thank you so much for coming out.

I appreciate it. Always good to see you, Jesse. Thanks. Over now to a major development in the Deshawn Watson sexual misconduct case, the Cleveland Browns quarterback settled with all but four of the 24 female accusers. The terms and amounts of the settlement are confidential. Watson allegedly engaged in inappropriate behavior during massage sessions, such as exposing himself, coercing sex, and touching others with his genitals. Now, he was never arrested or even indicted for these alleged acts, but now that he settled, the question is, what is this mean? Well, I'm joined right now by Mike Florio, the founder of Pro Football Talk.com, and the author of Playmakers, How the NFL Really Works and Doesn't. Mike,

good to see you. Good to be with you. Thanks for having me. So were you surprised that he settled because it was always from his camp that these women were liars? Well, it was not only that. but just last week Deshawn Watson met with reporters for the first time since March 25 and he was asked about the possibility of settling last year when he was going to be traded to the dolphins and the dolphins wanted all cases to be settled and he said hey I just want to clear my name creating the very strong impression he intended to fight these all the way through to a verdict so he could clear his name the reality was it's too late to clear his name

too much damage had been done to his name but the fact remained that the smart move was always settled the cases from before the first case was even filed they had not opportunity, they blew it. And they upset Tony Busby, the attorney for all of the 24 women along the way, causing him to be motivated to go find others who could sue. He did. They did. There was a chance to settle in April of 2021. That fell apart over the issue of confidentiality. Watson's camp actually wanted no confidentiality. They wanted to be able to say to everyone, look at how little we paid to resolve these cases. That fell apart, fell apart in October, because Watson didn't want to settle only 18 of the 22. He wanted to settle all. Now, smart move. Settle what you can. Now focus on the

final four. And I won't be shocked if those four end up getting settled as well. But I was shocked that 18 were settled today because that didn't, or 20, excuse me, that didn't mesh with what Watson's own words had been less than a week ago. Well, what do you imagine the settlement terms are? Well, the first plaintiff, Ashley Solis, before she filed suit, Tony Busby, and this is based on reporting that's been done and pieced together over the past 16 months. He wanted $100,000 as an opener. And anybody who knows anything about the legal system knows, that's not the bottom line. That's the opener. If you open it 100, you're probably going to settle between 50 or 75. Then, I don't know what the numbers were in April last year, but they were low enough that

Deshaun Watson and Rusty Harden, his lawyer, wanted to be able to basically spike the football. It's a horrible pun in this context, but they wanted to be able to say, look at how little we paid. Last October, it was $100,000 per plaintiff. Now, I'd be surprised, very surprised, if it was still $100,000 per plaintiff based upon the events of the past four weeks, starting with the HBO Real Sports feature that was the first negative turn against Deshawn Watts. And then a lawsuit gets filed. The New York Times article that links him to 66 women on social media who provided private

massages in a 17-month period. then another lawsuit, some unfortunate comments by his lawyer trying to normalize happy endings at the conclusion of massages. It was all pointing in a very negative path for Deshawn Watson. So I think that that number was higher than 100,000. Who knows what the final number is? And here's the other reality. Usually it's one plaintiff. You have to worry about blabbing. And when I practice law, I always, I would lose sleep worrying. Is my plaintiff going to run his or her mouth about what they got? Please, God, don't let that happen. We have to put the time. toothpaste back, and the tube pay the money back. When you have 20, somebody's going to blab

because they're going to think, all I have to say is I didn't say anything. Talk to the other 19. I didn't say anything. And in that crowd, you acquire anonymity. I want to ask you, I was going to say the million dollar question, but since we don't know the actual dollar amount here, I'll just leave it as a blank. But what do you think, I mean, this is a big question that we keep getting, is do you think that this settlement or what we saw today is going to have any effect on a potential suspension of Deshawn Watson? I think the one big practical reality of today's settlement is it will take some steam out of any talk that may have been resurrected in the league office about putting Deshawn Watson on paid leave. And I know that there are people in the

league office who believe he should not play at all until all of these cases are resolved. In late March, the commissioner, Roger Goodell, seemed to take that off the table and say, if I do anything at this point, it's just going to be suspend without pay under the personal conduct policy. So as the events of the past four weeks had unfolded, it just started to feel like maybe this is the only way to do this. 24 lawsuits filed, two more that supposedly were going to be filed. Who knows how many more on top of that. Maybe paid leave is the way to go. I think today's events will take paid leave away.

And I don't think it changes whatever the league was going to do under the personal conduct policy. Because it's not just did he commit some form of sexual assault. There are some broad catch-all provisions in the personal conduct policy about behavior that puts the NFL and its teams and employees and an unseemly light. That's not the exact quote, but it's broad enough to say, if you're doing something that makes us all look bad and arranging these private massages with the apparent goal of having them become sexual encounters and doing it over and over and over again, that makes us all look bad. So we're going to impose punishment on you and seek that you get some sort of treatment, intervention. so you don't repeat these behaviors in the future. So I don't think it changes. Whatever the league was going to do before today, if they have an idea in mind,

I don't think today's events change that one way or the other. And real quick, what about his fan base? What do you think this is how this is going to affect it? Well, it's unfortunate that it had gotten to the point where fans felt compelled to take a side and to be involved. And I've seen it. And I feel bad for Brown's fans. I said, look, I said from the moment this all start.

it should be settled, and I've been saying it continuously ever since. But when he was traded to the Browns, I said, now is the time to settle these cases. Don't make your fans, your new fans in Cleveland, carry this burden around. They got enough to deal with being fans of the Cleveland Browns. Now they got to worry about their quarterback with at the time 22 lawsuits, possible suspension, distraction. Where do we fall on this? Do we support him? Do we shun him? Do we keep our mouth shut in the problem, there's a certain segment of the fan base, is supporting him blindly and loudly. And it becomes like every other red state, blue state issue that we deal with in our current existence, where you are defending your position, you're defending your guy, works in all. So there are a lot of

very aggressively loud Browns fans who, who I think are just glad it's over or hoping it will be over, but they've accepted this notion that they have to defend Deshawn Watson at all costs because he's our quarterback. Mike Florio, founder of Pro Football Talk.com, the author of Playmakers, how the NFL really works and doesn't. Great analysis. Thanks so much for coming on. All right. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. Sidebar is produced by Sam Goldberg and Sean Bauer, YouTube manager Robert Zoki and Alyssa Fisher as booking producer. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time.

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