The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Postgame Show: The Vince McMahon Lawsuit

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

CONTENT WARNING: This segment contains mentions of sexual assault and sexual violence. If you or a loved one has experienced sexual assault, you are not alone. Call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. Dan speaks with Abraham Josephine Riesman, the author of "Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America," about the awful details in the new lawsuit brought against Vince McMahon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network. I think I can say without equivocation that Abraham Josephine Reisman is the authority on Vince McMahon. She has written a New York Times bestselling book, Ringmaster, Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. It's the definitive biography of the WWE co-founder, who at the moment has been winning money, winning at life, immune from all consequences, gets to make all of the money and have all of the power

and very few consequences and now there is what I believe is a truly shocking lawsuit and not everything in all lawsuits is true but this person has a history Vince McMahon does of truly dreadful awful awful behavior. And yet still, I was totally shocked by some of what it is that I was reading. So Josie, thank you for joining us. Were you, were you shocked by these lawsuit details? You know, it's hard to find the right words

for any of this. And I think I would say I was shocked but not surprised if that makes any sense. The details in this lawsuit, which the media hasn't even fully reported because a lot of these things you can't say in polite company, the lawsuit contains some things that are so hard to imagine, especially, you know, speaking as a woman, it's really hard to face all of that. And it was very shocking for me. I mean, we can talk about some of those details if you think-

Well, let me start here. Let me give a trigger warning here because these allegations by a former WWE employee named Janelle Grant. If you do not want to listen to things that are going to make your day terribly unpleasant, and again, we don't know all of what's true here because a spokesman for McMahon has released a statement, quote, the lawsuit is replete with lies, obscene made up instances that never occurred, and a vindictive distortion of the truth. But with that trigger warning in place, Josie, you're a really good authority on this and you're a journalist.

You're trying to be fact-based. What do you believe is true here? What do I believe is true? Well, I... One thing that really, I think, hammers home that this may be rooted in deep truth is there are receipts in the form of screenshots of text messages from Vince McMahon allegedly from Vince McMahon in the lawsuit.

And you know, I'm the content of those text messages is very shocking, but it also reads like the way I, from the best I can do, understand Vince McMahon to think. And I don't know exactly what's true from this lawsuit. I haven't done independent reporting on it. But from what I read, there's so much detail and so many specific dates and so many screenshots of text messages that it's hard for me to believe it's all complete fabrication by any means. So there are sex trafficking allegations. I don't know what you found most shocking. There's plenty here. Yeah, I can get into some of that if you're all right. Well, I'm okay with it, but I will tell the audience again. Okay. A trigger warning here

because the allegations are disturbing and we will put wording on the podcast description that also alerts people that there are triggers here. So go ahead with that as permission, please. This is a lawsuit filed. This is a lawsuit. So these are allegations. Yes. These are allegations. But in brief, and there's a lot in there, and I won't give you everything, but in brief, there's a woman named Janelle Grant who met Vince McMahon in March of 2019, allegedly. They were living in the same apartment building. And apparently Grant had been taking care of her ailing parents who died and left her dealing

with unemployment and the effects of her parents' bankruptcy. So she had started telling people in the building that she needed work. And the resident manager of the building knew that Vince McMahon lived there and that Vince McMahon might have work for her. So got the two of them in touch. Vince dangled the possibility of, this is all legend, I keep having to say that I suppose, but dangled the possibility of work in exchange for sex. And it began as a sexual relationship that was coerced and then became something even darker. She got the job after these incidents

where they would meet and he'd be in his underwear or spent hours sharing intimate details of his personal life allegedly, but she gets a job in 2019, in June of 2019 as an administrator coordinator and then gets moved to talent relations under John Laurinitis. And during this time, the sexual relationship continues and me calling it a sexual relationship feels like I'm giving it too much credit. According to these allegations, Vince McMahon was repeatedly raping this woman

and trafficking her to other people to be raped. Again, that's the allegation. There's allegations in there that Vince forced her to have a so-called threesome with another person. And during that time, he, this is probably the most shocking thing in terms of sheer out there-ness, but apparently he defecated on her back while the threesome was happening. And she had to complete the sexual encounter while still covered in those feces. And it's hard to say, it's hard to even think about, but that's the allegation that's in there. And there's some text messages that they list or include from after that. There were times

there's an incident allegedly where John Laurinitis, the head of talent relations at the time and Vince in John Laurinitis's office took turns raping Ms. Grant. There was a time in August of 2020, according to this lawsuit when Vince injured Grant with sex toys like while performing sex acts, acts toys, like while performing sex acts, she was hurt, she was damaged and told him about it and he sort of offered a light apology instead he gets carried away sometimes. And to bring somebody else into it, there's someone who is not named in the lawsuit specifically, but is apparently both a WWE star and a UFC star ultimate fighting championship and

the Wall Street Journal in their report. Brock Lesnar, right? Brock Lesnar, right. They, they, in the Wall Street Journal in their reporting, this is alleged as well. They said that it was Brock Lesnar and that he was, that Vince forced Ms. Grant to send sexually explicit pictures of herself to Lesnar and even was supposed to have sex with him. And some of that even some of that coercion with Brock Lesnar allegedly even happened after Vince had fired her on the grounds that according to this lawsuit, his wife Linda

McMahon had found out about the relationship. And so Vince had no other option but to fire her and coerce her into signing an NDA. And that's part of what this lawsuit is about, is trying to break that NDA. And yeah, it's shocking stuff. There's more details in there, but that's the general color of those allegations. All right. I have a number of questions off of that. So does this dehumanization and degradation of women fall in line with your reporting? Because I know you talked in your book to a former referee. Does it fall in line with your reporting about, in your biography of him? Yes, I would say yes.

The way I would describe it is these allegations sound like a lot of past allegations against Ms. McMahon turned up to 11. You know, it's in the same vein, but it's so escalated and so much more, again, I'll say, out there for lack of a better term, that one gets shocked. But that's why I said I wasn't surprised when I first saw the allegations. Because yes, I did speak with Rita Chatterton, the first female referee in the World Wrestling

Federation, who Vince allegedly raped in 1986. And she actually ended up under a new statute in, or new law rather in New York, ended up suing Vince recently and they settled. But yeah, there's many other allegations. There's allegations that he assaulted a tanning salon employee in Boca Raton. There allegations I couldn't even report because the people at the last minute backed out because they're afraid of Vince McMahon. You know, and the allegations tend to fall into certain patterns that this seems to match. It's unchecked power, correct? It's, it's something, it's the exertion of

unchecked power at every turn. And also, there have been no consequences that are real. Have there been? Have there been? It's, it's astounding, much like his very dear friend Donald Trump. Vince McMahon has this uncanny ability. I really, as a journalist journalist can't fully account for it. On each individual time he's wriggled out of allegations or even criminal charges from the federal government, whenever that happens, you can come up with some specific reason why it happened in that instance. But the law of probability really just tells you this shouldn't happen as often as it does, and yet it has. Now, part of that is he's very cunning. Now part of that is he's very cunning

but part of it is he's very shameless and part of it is he's just very successful. Once you reach a certain level of success in the United States of America, you can get very far by being utterly shameless and not apologizing for anything. We've learned that in the past decade and Vince learned that before a lot of other people did. Can you explain to me, because you mentioned that Janelle Grant signed an NDA for those who don't know, it's she signed away the ability to disclose some of the things that are now disclosed in this lawsuit. What does it mean that she signed an NDA and is now doing this? Does it mean that there

might not again be consequences? Because what she's doing, she's contractually not allowed to do. I am not a lawyer. I will tell you, I'm sure there are intricacies here. They wouldn't have brought the suit forward if they didn't think there was a way out. From my understanding, laws have changed in recent years. I'm not saying this is necessarily the exact logic for this. But you're not a lawyer a lawyer I will preface all of this but this is not necessarily your area of expertise but it's one of the questions that I have sure sure sure yes it's your she's opening herself up to risk absolutely because the document was signed now part of

what she says is the document was not fulfilled on Vince's end and he didn't fill out all or didn't finish the payments on this settlement or rather this NDA that she had signed. So perhaps the logic is if he didn't fulfill his end of the bargain, then it's a void document anyway. But it's, I think it's in play. I think it's a risk she opens herself up to. But at the same time, these details are so bad. I don't know the right word for them. They're terrifying. And I think there's a chance that it's happened before she can get out of this NDA and there

could be consequences. But I don't know. I don't know. This gets out of a lot of things. Okay. So I guess what I was going to ask you is, can the WWE keep looking the other way? Is this another one of those instances that's not gonna come with consequences when it's stacked on top of a mountain of incidents that have not come with consequences? Well, WWE, the question now is, if it were still Vince in charge of WWE, absolutely there would be no consequences. I have no doubt in my mind. I mean, terrible things have happened, like you wouldn't believe and kind of have inoculated fans and workers

in the WWEosphere. And they don't, this stuff doesn't bother them enough to give up on the product. But you have to remember, WWE is no longer owned by Vince McMahon, it's owned by Endeavor. It's now an emerged entity, TKO Holdings, with UFC. Vince does not have the ultimate power anymore. So I don't think- But that's so people should know, Josie, correct me if I'm wrong about this business transaction.

The reason that is at least so is because Vince McMahon had to wriggle around things like this that we all knew were coming. Like the reason he's not, he wants to be in charge of WWE. He cannot be because of things like this that all of us knew that were coming that are now protected by corporate entities. I know, here's the thing, if we were playing by the rules in America right now, in general, I would say, wow, WWE and TKO and Endeavor, they have no choice but to drop Vince McMahon. But what you have to remember is we're in this era now where a lot of very rich, powerful people are no longer living in reality, or at least the same reality as people like you and me. There's this real anti-truth and pro-revenge and anti-woman trend in the way business gets

done at the highest levels. So that's both in terms of like, are they gonna jettison Vince? I don't know. I feel like he can get away with a lot. And will the fans reject Vince? I don't know. They like the product. It's so, it's so frustrating to see that the rules don't necessarily apply, but that's the reality we're living in, you know. The best books, Stu Gotts and the best documentaries take their subject and tell you about the societal things happening around them that sort of shine light on both the subject and the culture around them. This book, Ringmaster, Vince McMahon, and the unmaking of America really show you how a man gets so powerful and so rich

that he feels like he can allegedly just shit on a woman's head and sex trafficker because there are no consequences to being that rich and powerful. And the book illustrated that before the lawsuit did. Just not quite, and forgive me, Josie, because the reporting was excellent and journalistically sound in

the book, but I couldn't even see this coming, even understanding the appraisal that you tried to provide objective and factually about how terrible a human being this person is. Well, I appreciate your kind words about the writing. It was a hard book to write because you really have to stare into the abyss when you hear a lot of these allegations. So it's very gratifying to hear that you enjoyed it thank you. Enjoyed it is not the word I would use but I thought... No, no, that's not... as soon as I said that I thought maybe that's not the right word.

Josie... No, it was fair but I thought it was illuminating and very well reported and that's how I can arrive at the same place where you are where I'm somehow shocked and can't be surprised because if you've read this book, it kind of tells you, well, this is what Josie was able to find out. This is just the stuff that could be proven and verified and vetted by lawyers so that you could put it out there.

NDAs hide a lot and very few people are willing to challenge a bully that has that much money and when they're under lock and key of an NDA. So I appreciate your work and I appreciate you helping us out with this story, a complicated one.