Law&Crime Sidebar - Women Speak Out About Actor Armie Hammer’s ‘Cannibal’ Fantasies

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

A new documentary details allegations that actor Armie Hammer subjected women to S&M and bondage and sent a text claiming he was a cannibal. Hammer has denied allegations in the past that he engaged in anything but consensual sex with women. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy and entertainment lawyer Jonathan Handel discuss what's behind the new documentary, whether the claims will lead to more police investigation, Hammer's status and more.GUESTS:Jonathan Handel, Entertainment Lawyer: https://twitter.com/jhandelLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking 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.

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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. I mean, he said, I'm 100% a cannibal. I'm freaking out. It was all he wanted ever talk about. A new documentary is being released that details claim of sexual sadism and other bondage fantasies involving actor Army Hammer, this after he was already investigated by the LAPD for sexual assault allegations. So is it all true and what's behind it? I'm Ann Jeanette Levy, and welcome to this latest edition of Law and Crime Sidebar Podcast. Army Hammer has basically been out of Hollywood for some time now after these

allegations of S&M and things like that came to light from women he had been involved with. And so there's this new documentary coming out on Discovery Plus where some of these women who said they were sexual partners with Army Hammer detail their experiences with him. They have audio recordings that came from him. And they detail what they went through with him. And also a family member of Army Hammers is taking part in this. So joining us to talk about this today is Jonathan Handel. He's an entertainment attorney out in Los Angeles.

Jonathan, welcome back to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, Internet. Jonathan, when you first saw this trailer, and it's a trailer for this documentary that's going to be on Discovery Plus, what came to mind? Well, I think it's important to acknowledge several things. First of all, we are at the intersection of several third rails here. One of them is the distinction between the Court of Public Opinion and the Court of Law.

And it's important to acknowledge that Hammer has not been charged with a crime. let alone been convicted of a crime. We don't know what the LADA is going to do, if anything, with the results of an earlier investigation. That's extremely important. Secondly, we are at a very difficult place when we talk about S&M, particularly heterosexual S&M involving women as the submissive partners. That is difficult because on the one hand, it seems very, to many people, those kinds of fantasies, those kinds of conduct seem very exploitative and are perceived by many people as being part and parcel of a long history of non-consensual violence against women in sexual contexts, of marital rape, of men forcing women or pressing women to accept their

definition of what sexual conduct should be, all those kinds of things. But the flip side is that consensual S&M, whether it's a woman is a submissive partner, the dominant partner, whether it's gay, whether it's lesbian, is legal and is not only a fantasy for a large number of people, but also conduct in a large number of people actually engage in and get pleasure from. Now, you know, we're not here to sit in judgment about, you know, well, are they diluted? should they be, you know, allowing themselves to be treated as, as, you know, in one way or another. What we are seeing here is a very visceral reaction to allegations that Hammer was, A, had these fantasies. And if the text messages that we've been supplied that we've seen and some of the voice recordings are accurate,

it sounds like he does have fantasies of being, you know, sexually dominant, with women. And B, the allegations are that at least some of this was non-consensual. He denies those allegations. He, his representative, his lawyer, Andrew Brettler, has stated to you and to the press generally, right, as of last year, that all of Hammer's relationships with these women who describe themselves as victims were, in fact, consensual. It's a very explosive mixture. Yeah, and let's talk about that for a minute because there is a woman in this documentary. She is not the woman who the allegations made against Army Hammer were made by this woman,

F.E. Angelova. And LAPD investigated those claims. And back in 2021, as you mentioned, it was March of 2021, actually. I reached out to Andrew Brettler, who was representing Army Hammer at the time. And I said, you know, what's going on? this. What's your statement on this? Do you have a response? Would you do an interview? And he sent me a statement that he had sent to other media saying basically, here's, you know, Instagram chat from Effie Angelova in which she said something like, quote, I'm not saying he raped me. I did not say anywhere. It was not consensual. They also provided us with text messages purportedly from Effie Angelova to Army Hammer in which she was using some pretty vulgar language.

and asking for sex. And Andrew Brutler said these were authentic texts. And he said that all of the sexual interactions that Army Hammer has ever had were consensual, rather. And he said at the time as well, it was never Mr. Hammer's intention to embarrass or expose Ms. Angelova's fetishes or kinky sexual desires, but she has now escalated this matter to another level by hiring a civil lawyer to host a public press conference. With the truth on his side, Mr. Hammer welcomes the opportunity to set the record straight. So that was Andrew Brettler to me back in March of 2021. Fast forward to December of 2021, the LAPD handed over its investigation to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. At the time, TMZ reported that a law enforcement source told them charges were unlikely and that

the case was not very strong. I've reached out to the LA County DA's office to ask them, have you in fact, have you indeed said you're not going to charge Army Hammer in this case? So far, no response. With that said, we've got this documentary coming out now on Discovery Plus. Basically, with all of these, you know, women and a family member of Army Hammers, all these terrible things, you know, that they endured at his hands. But he's saying, at least back in March of 2021, it was all consensual. So what do you do with that? Well, it's very tough. And, And to add one detail, before the interview, you read me a little bit of the texts that are allegedly from Effie to Army. And they weren't simply, I mean, vulgar is one way of characterizing them.

But what you read me was not only sexually explicit, but she was requesting some in those texts, if they are texts from her. she was requesting S&M behavior. She was requesting that she'd be a, you know, an S&M submissive to Army. So, you know, if that is accurate, then if that, you know, behavior, you know, actually happened and there was no revocation of consent beforehand, no, or during it, you know, hey, Army, this is going too far, you know, we have a safe word red or, you know, whatever, stop, you know, then it's consensual adult behavior if, you know, if what we're hearing is accurate. It is important to say, as, you know, as you said, you know, we've got a promotion here for a

documentary that's coming out in about three weeks on Discovery Plus, and, you know, you wouldn't expect the documentary promotion to be, we have a documentary and we're going to show you how ambiguous everything is. You know, it's just, it's very hard to run a promotion of that sort and to do a show of that sort. It's also important, remember, you know, documentaries come in different flavors. Some of them are balanced journalistically. Others are not. And there isn't a, you know, some are more advocacy in one direction or another,

sometimes in directions that we, you know, that we feel are right. Other times in directions that people may feel are, you know, our tendentious or not correct. So it's important to remember that when we're talking about a documentary, we're not talking necessarily about journalism per se and about a balanced and fair approach. And so, you know, is Army Hammer getting an unwarranted slap in the face because of this? It's very hard to know. And we may never know with all the potentially disputed material that's out there. Whether all of these encounters were consensual or not, and we can't say because you and I, we weren't there. But just the allegations of this becoming public have obviously,

destroyed his career. I mean, he, the last I saw, he was in the Cayman Islands, working some job. So it makes you wonder. Selling time shares in the Cayman Islands. Yes, selling time shares in the Cayman Islands. So he goes from being an actor to allegations coming out of him saying, I'm 100% a cannibal and things of that nature. He's, he's done. Like, there's no, I don't think there's any way back for him. Well, there probably isn't. And it's, you know, again, we have to remember for, for, for, For many people, the things that Army Hammer is purported to have, the fantasies that he's purported to have expressed, and some of which pretty clearly did express, it seems, in the audio, assuming, again, that that is him, are absolutely a nightmare.

But for some people, they are, you know, an absolute dream and fantasy. And it's hard for people, you know, that aren't into S&M to see that and to give that space. And certainly when those feelings are, you know, the feelings about that are combined with the sort of media attention this has gotten. It is very hard to see how in the certainly not in the near and medium term Army Hammer comes back. That's, it's very difficult to see that. Yeah, very much so. And I want to say that, you know, in the past, he has called the allegations BS, but he said, you know, the whole word. And obviously, Andrew Brettler has said this was all consensual.

So this, this docu-series, documentary, I should say, House of Hammer, his aunt, apparently, Casey Hammer is also in this talking about the family and alleged abuse in the family. So do you see anything coming of this? Because we saw that the LAPD already investigated one claim. Now you've got this documentary coming out with other women saying things and claiming that he tied them up and this, that and the other. Does the LAPD look into this? Do you think? think after the documentary airs? Well, that depends on what's on the documentary, really. I mean, what we've seen from the trailer, there is a lot of, there's a certain amount of guilt by association. The family stuff, I mean, you know, Casey, I understand, alleges that she was sexually molested by her father when she was a girl when she was a child,

which does not in any way reflect on her nephew. You know, it's a terrible thing. if true, obviously, that, you know, for anyone to be molested by, you know, by anyone, let alone by a parent. But what does that have to do with Army, to be perfectly honest? And creating a, you know, sort of a succession narrative here that, I mean, there was reference in one of the press reports that Army's great, great grandfather, who was the father of Armand Tamer, Armand Tamer being the oil baron who made the money for the family, but that the oil baron's father was apparently charged with, I think, charged with murder for an abortion that didn't,

that ended in the death of the woman or something of that. And you're like, you know, are the sins of the of the great-great-grandparents visited on the celebrity great-great-grandson? So I don't know. You know, if there are some, if there are specific allegations in the documentary that are new and that are potentially criminal, then I would expect that the counsel would bring that to the authorities, whether the LAPD or the district attorney and trying to make a charging decision. If there aren't specific actionable items, you know,

the police and DAs are wary of being brought into a, whether it's a consensual situation, or whether it's just like, look, this guy is the heir to a family, it's, you know, had some criminal or cruddy people in it, you know, malfeasant people and that's not, you know, a crime. And I guess, you know, in talking and thinking about the sexual stuff, it is worth mentioning that, you know, not only is Army Hammer, obviously a man, a cisgender man, which, you know,

evokes a power differential with respect to women, but he is also a very wealthy man and a good-looking or, you know, a good-looking guy, which is a form of sexual currency that also evokes power. So it's all of these things make any, you know, rational analysis of this ultimately very difficult because people, it's very hard to untangle all these elements and then say, how do you feel about it and how should other people feel about it? And what if, you know, some people want some of this consensually? Is it true consent? Is it false consent? It's a false consciousness. You know, it gets very hard. Well, it'll be interesting to see what comes after the documentary airs, what's in it, and whether it leads to anything else.

And if Army Hammer, I mean, takes any action because of it, because even if all of this is consensual, which he maintains it is, I don't know, does he have a claim here that people are just using this salacious S&M stuff to produce entertainment? That's very hard because that would be a very hard claim for him to make if there, if the allegations, are not in the documentary are true. And we don't know what the documentary is going to allege or how close it will come to making allegations. But, you know, truth is protected by the, you know, by the First Amendment. And Hammer is a public figure. And public figures have diminished ability to finish because of the First Amendment to, you know, to push back against something that, you know, if someone, if someone who's not a public figure, you know, suddenly becomes the, you know, the subject of found footage on, you know, on YouTube.

You know, you secretly do a documentary on your S&M neighbor who's not in any way or shape or form famous. There's an invasion of privacy issue that can be very strong. If there are any sex tapes, we saw that that Gawker was crushed by Hulk Hogan because they did publish truth, but the truth they published was actual sex tapes. that were taken, I believe, without its knowledge, certainly not with any consent that they would be publicly distributed. And that was a fairly rare example where the media lost and lost big. The outlet ended up being financially crushed by it.

But we are assuming that there are not going to be actual sexual tapes in this documentary. No one has claimed that there are. And so that leaves it on probably on firmer ground as far as the first. Amendment goes unless there is actual, you know, falsity to it. Sure. You know, my only thought was, and of course, you know, if you're a public figure, you have to prove things like actual malice and stuff like that. And obviously, you know, it sounds like the allegations of the S&M are true, whether or not it was consensual is the question. So it's something. It's something that I think a lot of people will watch.

So Jonathan Handel, thanks as always, for coming on to talk with us about these entertainment-related issues. We appreciate it as always. Thank you. Glad to be here. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. It is produced by Sam Goldberg and Michael Dininger. Alyssa Fisher handles our bookings. Bobby Zoki is our YouTube manager. And Kiera Bronson handles our social media. You can find Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcast. And of course, you can watch it on our YouTube channel, the Law and Crime Network YouTube channel. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. And we will see you. you next time.

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