The Megyn Kelly Show - Should Trump Judge Recuse Himself, and Disturbing Ruby Franke Details, with Arthur Aidala and Mark Eiglarsh | Ep. 755
Episode Date: April 2, 2024Megyn Kelly begins the show with a reaction to the new Scottish law criminalizing anti-trans speech and claiming it is a "hate crime," the worldwide marginalization of biological women, whether this c...ould happen in the United States, and more. Then attorneys Arthur Aidala and Mark Eiglarsh join to discuss the gag order against former President Donald Trump in the New York trial, the judge's daughter's political work against Trump, whether or not her background as a political operative should cause the judge to recuse himself from the trial, Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and other witnesses speaking publicly against Trump but Trump being barred from responding, the public’s right to hear Trump talk, whether there is a double standard on gag orders in America, Aidala arguing in favor of Harvey Weinstein getting a new trial, the key element of Weinstein not testifying in the New York trial, the disturbing details of popular YouTuber Ruby Franke's child abuse, how she was finally held accountable for her actions, who else may have been responsible, the raid of Diddy’s house and what they may have been searching for, when Diddy might get arrested, and more. Aidala- https://am970theanswer.com/radioshow/the-arthur-aidala-power-hourEiglarsh- https://www.eiglarshlaw.com/ Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Kelly's court is now in session.
We've got a packed show full of analysis on all the big legal stories making headlines.
The judge overseeing Donald Trump's upcoming criminal trial in New York about those Stormy Daniels hush payments.
Expanding the gag order placed on the former president.
Mr. Trump can no longer attack the judge's politically active adult daughter, whose clients include some of Trump's loudest opponents.
Fair?
Plus, we'll dive deep into the investigation into P. Diddy and what
we're learning. And we will take a look at the evidence just released by prosecutors in the Ruby
Frankie case. She's the YouTube star now in prison for abusing her children. This one is so disturbing
and what they just released is truly shocking. Does the sentence fit the crime? But we begin today with the question of whether J.K. Rowling
may be going to jail, her possible offense speaking the truth about gender ideology.
The famous author lives in Glasgow, Scotland, where a new law just went into effect on Monday,
criminalizing the act of, quote, stirring up hatred by speaking or behaving in a way that,
quote, a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting.
Insulting? Yes, it is now criminal to insult someone in Scotland, at least if it might, quote, stir up hatred. Free speech is officially dead
in Scotland. Scotland, which is literally known for the physical and mental toughness of its
people. A country famous for its never ending gray and gloomy weather. In one area years ago,
they only got 36 minutes of sunshine in a month. OK, seriously, the Scots are badass. This is the place where
clans survived amidst harsh conditions and hostile enemies for centuries. They became infamous for
fighting on amidst savage and merciless hostilities, but that was then. Now, if their
little feelings get hurt, someone's getting arrested and could possibly go to jail for up to
seven years. What are we doing? The Scottish government says the law will protect against,
quote, hate and prejudice without stifling expression, reports the BBC, which quotes the,
quote, victims and community safety minister over there, Siobhan Brown, as downplaying fears over the legislation.
You see, Ms. Brown said,
I think there's been a lot of misinformation about this
before pointing out that this law passed unanimously.
And speaking of misinformation, Ms. Brown,
this abomination actually passed 82 to 32.
So far, too many yes votes for me, but 32 no's makes it non-unanimous, my friend.
While Great Britain, which includes Scotland, already criminalizes stirring up hatred based on race, color, nationality, or ethnicity,
the Scottish law adds transgender identity along with sexual orientation,
religion, disability, and age to the list. Women notably get nothing, no protections.
So moms worried about autogynephiles, those who get sexually aroused from cross-dressing,
which experts say constitutes over 82% of men claiming they are, quote,
trans women. So you're talking about the vast majority who get off by putting on women's
clothes. Those guys who decide to change in their little daughter's locker rooms,
these moms' daughters' locker rooms, and get erections in their miniskirts. Well,
those moms can't say a word about that without potentially facing criminal threat. So you can't insult those
men. Keep your mouths shut. So their status as women earns them zero special rights, despite the
fact that 91% of victims of rape and sexual assault are female. Nearly 99% of perpetrators are male. But if these males
say they're female, you see, you need to STFU and accept that, quote, fact, or you're the one
who could be headed to prison in Scotland. This is madness. But wait, supporters of the law remind us a defense to criminal charges under this
law is that one's speech or actions that they were reasonable. Thank God for that. So people
arrested for spewing these vile insults. And by that, we mean saying fake women are really men.
They needn't worry. You see,
after the embarrassment of a public arrest, potentially for saying something in your living
room and not even in a public forum and the expense of hiring an attorney, maybe a few
nights in jail before the lucky ones bond out, you can go through the joys of a criminal trial,
taking off work, being publicly dragged as a criminal, and letting a
jury of strangers decide whether your speech was reasonable in their view. What are you complaining
about? You see, they care very much in Scotland about hurting the feelings of trans people.
Anyone else's humiliation, they don't give a damn. Even misgendering someone, which means accurately
gendering them, can land you in jail. At Minister, I mentioned Ms. Brown. She was specifically asked
about this misgendering. And she said, well, it would be up to the police to determine whether
calling a he a she makes you a criminal. Doesn't matter if you don't believe
in the transgender cult or not. You will say she for a six foot six, 280 pound man who wants to
play in your daughter's field hockey team. Don't be so insensitive. This is what J.K. Rowling is
railing about correctly today as a as a resident of Scotland.
She says she's not there right now, but if she gets arrested upon return, she says, bring it on.
And thank God she's got the money and power she does to fight this.
However, in Scotland, they're missing something called the U.S. Constitution that protects free speech and the expression of one's
opinion, and not to mention fact in this particular case. These are not women. These are men pretending
to be women. And J.K. Rowling is not afraid to say that, so she may very well soon be behind bars.
Finally, a word about America. Right now, in most places, we are not arrested for speaking
the truth about gender and biological sex, no matter if someone finds it insulting. That's why
I can still freely say men cannot become women. He's are he's, not she's. Those surgical wounds are not vaginas. Facial feminization will never make a man
female. Men who play women's sports are vile cheaters. Men do not belong in women's bathrooms,
locker rooms, sororities, prisons, or OBGYN offices. Men cannot give birth. Chest feeding is child abuse. But far too many blue states
are coming dangerously close to Scotland, suggesting hostile work environments result
from, quote, misgendering a colleague, for example. We've seen that in California and
other places. Right now, the U.S. Supreme Court is holding the line.
It ruled last summer in 303 Creative, which we covered here on the show,
that governments may not compel speech by forcing citizens to speak messages they do not wish to
speak. But make no mistake, we are heading for a legal showdown on this issue here in America.
And it is imperative that we pay attention and win.
Joining me now, Arthur Aydala. He's partner at Aydala, Bertuna & Kamens and host of the
Arthur Aydala Power Hour. And Mark Eiglash is a defense attorney at Eglash law, which you can
find at speak to mark.com. Martha, welcome back to the show. Can you believe this insanity? I mean,
very nice, lighthearted topic. Start off. Well, it's outrageous. Is it not Mark? I mean,
you'd like to say never in America, but I don't but I'm not sure I totally believe that, but never yet have we gone this far.
Megan, it sounds to me that free speech and fundamental fairness in Scotland is as elusive and evasive as their national animal, the unicorn.
I think you're right, that would be J.K. Rowling's defense.
So, you know, we're always honest on this show. And you're focusing basically on men transitioning
to women or boys to girls. But I was at a high school reunion, not even a year ago,
and there was a woman who I was very close with
in high school almost 40 years ago. And she starts to tell me this tale of her daughter, who is 16,
transitioning into a boy. And I think she just saw Megan, the look on my face, like,
like, give me a break, right? And she looks at me and she's like, what were we supposed to do?
We did the counseling.
We did all kinds of counseling as families of her alone, him alone, whatever.
And now I wound up meeting this person.
We're supposed to call it a boy, but it's a person with a vagina who has a beard,
who's a sweet kid. And, you know, you're, you're,
you're, look, I was totally on your side of the fence until you're actually confronted with
the reality of it, the reality of suicide, the reality of a parent losing a child.
They can not to lose. First of all, I have two trans people in my family. Okay. So I understand
trans. That's not the same as the usurpation of women's
spaces and women's rights. It's not happening the other way around. It's not happening the other way
where girls pretend to be boys and then take over boys rights, boys, opportunities, boys, safety.
That's not an issue. But if your friend had a, had a boy who tried to transition to girl and then play against
my daughter in soccer, you and I would be going at it. It's not about bullying that kid. It's about
protecting my kid and other girls so that you're raising something which is anecdotal and fine on
a one on one. I hope this young child gets better and feels better.
But that's beside the point. I can still say that girl is a girl. She's pretending to be a boy,
and I hope she does better. By the way, the counseling's part of the problem.
You take your gender-confused kid to a counselor in modern-day America, they are going to do one thing, affirm, affirm, affirm. And you are setting
them on a course to commitment to the other gender. You are not helping them read irreversible
damage by J.K. Rowling. I'm sorry, by Abigail Schreier. To your point here in Nassau County
in New York, the Republican county supervisor, county executive, he has passed a law. I don't
know if it's really, he had the power, he's being disputed that the transgender men into women
cannot participate in any girls sports that are, I don't know, in public institutions in Nassau
County. So there are people who are raising the flag and saying it's just not fair to the young women who try so hard. And I did speak to someone whose daughter is in one of
these sports. And they said, besides the fact that it's an unfair advantage, it also takes away all
of the pomp and circumstance. Like that daughter is supposed to be the star of the team, but all
of the notoriety, all of the media attention is going towards the trans person, as opposed to the person who's
really the star of the lacrosse team, who's the best player on the team, because, you know, it's
a trans thing and it's an issue. So on another level, he was talking about how negatively it
affected her daughter. I mean, Mark, JK Rowling lives there. She lives in Glasgow. She's just out of
the country right now. I'm sure she's got a very busy life. So she's going to go back and she's
going to do what she's been doing for years. She's not even the pointy part of the spear on this
issue. You can get far more provocative on this subject than J.K. Rowling has. J.K. Rowling has pretty much said
men are men and women are women. There are two sexes. That's it. And men can't have vaginas.
And we don't want to be called people with vaginas, things like that. She's she's sort of
high level. She doesn't get down into the nitty gritty. And yet there there's a real chance one
of the most famous, richest women in the world could wind up behind bars in her home country now as a result of this insanity.
And I feel for J.K., 280 man who's calling himself a she and you don't say she.
You could be found guilty of creating a hostile wire of a work environment and fired.
That's thanks to the law in the United States of America, at least in the peoples republic of California.
All right. So we have the Constitution here. I'd like to believe that because of the wide latitude we're afforded
to spew even outrageous and offensive speech, we're okay here. I'm more concerned about Scotland,
where we're not just talking about people who comment about transgender issues. It sounds like
the law goes five steps in a completely different direction, affording prosecution for anyone who now offends
people. The language is so broad and so problematic for me that it almost doesn't sound like it's
coming from anywhere other than a third world country. Yeah. Insult, Arthur, insult. Can you
imagine here in the United States if you could get arrested for insulting somebody?
I mean, we don't have enough prisons. And I just can't get over the fact that like,
Scotland, you know, you've got to be kidding me. This isn't some like weak-kneed,
lily-footed country where like we're used to them being whiners and complaining about it.
This is like, this is the country where like the toughest Klansmen and all the fight.
Like, I don't know what's happened,
but if we don't fight, we're going the same way here.
Thank God for a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court right now.
I have to ask you a question.
What countries does Megyn Kelly consider
to be like the weak-kneed, whining countries?
I'm just curious.
Like, you know, Sweden. Switzerland. Iinding countries? I'm just curious. Like,
you know, Sweden.
Finland. I knew it. I knew you were going to go up to the R&D.
No, no, no.
But you know, those are also voted
the happiest countries are Norway,
Finland, Sweden. That's where supposedly
people are the happiest if you look at all these
crazy polls. Well, I'm glad to hear that because we're actually going to go visit those countries. And
now I've completely ruined my ability to charm the people. But I'm just saying they're not exactly
known for their toughness. You know who is like America? We are. We're supposed to be tough. We're
supposed to be able to take hurt feelings. And that's what we need to remember as we see these issues come up domestically. It's just, look, I'm very grateful
for what happened in 303 Creative. There was great language in that case. We actually had the woman
who was behind that case who was involving like gay messaging and whether you can be forced to
support, you know, lesbian marriages and so on. In any event, the Supreme Court sided
with the creator and created some good language in there for people who fight this battle. But
this specific battle hasn't yet gone up as high as the high court. And I think the trans activists
are trying to avoid that given the makeup of the high court. Well, guess what? You know,
it's going to be at least five, four, it's six, three now conservatives to liberals for a long
time, God willing. And so I believe when this gets resolved, it will get resolved the right way,
notwithstanding the fact that Gorsuch has not been totally solid on these issues.
Okay, let's move on. Trump. Trump's been gagged in the Judge Merchant case. This is the Stormy
Daniels hush money pay case against him. It's going to start on April 15th, the criminal trial.
And he's got Judge Merchant April 15th, a criminal trial.
And he's got Judge Merchant, who he calls very distinguished looking, but also all sorts of bad names.
Trump doesn't like him, says he's suffering from severe Trump derangement syndrome.
And in this case, we're going to have witnesses like Stormy Daniels saying, I got paid off
to keep quiet about our affair right before the 16 election.
Michael Cohen saying, I was Trump's lawyer at the time and I'm the one who did the payment.
And Trump knew all about it. This is the presumptive testimony. And Trump's been
railing, as he does about anybody who he feels is coming after him, about the judge,
about the prosecutor, about the assistant prosecutor, about Michael Cohen, about Stormy
Daniels, about everybody. And everybody includes the latest,
the judge's daughter, who I have to say by Trump's standards, it hasn't been that bad.
What he said about the Trump's daughter, like Trump can definitely go nuclear on you. Trust me.
He hasn't yet on her, but he's gone after her a bit.
And now, hold on, I'm trying to find exactly what he said.
Okay, let's see.
I believe it was at Alvin Bragg's request that the family members be added in.
Yes, but I'll get to that.
I'll get to that.
I just want to set it up what he said. Her name is Lauren Merchant.
And Trump said, quote, So let me get this straight.
The judge's daughter is allowed to post pictures of her, quote, dream of putting me in jail.
The Manhattan D.A. is able to say whatever lies about me he wants.
The judge can violate our laws and constitution at every turn.
But I'm not allowed to talk about the attacks against me and the lunatics trying to destroy my life. Maybe the judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money by working to get Trump. And when he rules against me over and over again, he is making her company and her
richer and richer. How can this be allowed? Well, then you're right. Alvin Bragg, the DA,
went in and said, judge, you need to expand your gag order. And the judge just did yesterday saying, you're right. I'm going to expand my
gag order to bar Trump from attacking the court's family members, the judge's family members,
along with those of Alvin Bragg, the DA, though he can still criticize Alvin Bragg.
Trump's not correct that he's not allowed to criticize Alvin Bragg or the judge himself.
He can still go after them.
And I'll just give you a little color on what the judge said.
He said Trump has a pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys
assigned to his cases, and that pattern serves no legitimate purpose.
It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members as well, are fair game for defendants' vitriol.
It is no longer just a mere possibility or a reasonable likelihood that there exists a threat to the integrity of the judicial proceedings.
That threat is very real. The average observer must now, after hearing defendants' recent attacks, draw the conclusion
that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for
themselves, but for their loved ones as well. Such concerns will undoubtedly interfere with
the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law itself.
So there's more, which I'll get to in a minute. But what do you make of Judge Merchant saying, that's it, you're done, you can't attack my
daughter and Trump saying she's fair game, she's a political operative?
I say take it up.
In other words, take it up to the appellate court if you think the judge went too far.
I'm a huge free speech advocate. I think
you don't touch it unless it absolutely clearly steps over the line. He has wide latitude under
the First Amendment to spew outrageous and offensive stuff. That said, there are limits.
And I know personally, I wouldn't feel bad if somebody came after me, but you come after my family.
I can understand why the judge would want to do this. If it runs afoul of the law,
then the appellate court would say, hey, judge, you stepped over the line. Your daughter is fair
game. And candidly, I didn't know anything about the judge's daughter until Trump said something.
And then I learned about it in preparation for the show. So thank you for that. You know, there is a legitimate purpose. It at least lets me discern what
credibility I want to give to his statements and decide whether the judge has some type
of interest in the outcome. I'm not saying that he does or he doesn't. I just want to
know all available information. So I say take it up.
Let's see what the appellate court says.
You know, Arthur, the way I see it is this is not like, you know, your little guys are
my little guys, right?
Like my kids are 14, 12 and 10.
That's not the same.
He shouldn't be allowed to go after a judge's minor children.
But this woman is an adult and a professional political operative
who makes her living getting people like Adam Schiff reelected, who is fundraising
off of the Trump trials. So Trump's point is the more money Adam Schiff raises off of my trial, the more money the judge's daughter makes,
who's already been paid reportedly $10 million by Schiff in his reelection quest.
And so why on earth am I barred from calling her out as a partisan hack and saying the judge has
an interest in promoting his daughter and everybody on the
merchant side will do much better if Trump is a criminal than if Trump isn't a criminal. Why
can't he talk about that? Well, let me just address one thing because what you're talking
about, the financial aspect of this and his daughter's financial gain, if she lived in the
judge's household, he would unequivocally have to recuse himself, the judge.
The ethical rules state that if it's a spouse or a child who lives in the judge's household,
has a financial interest in the outcome of the matter, then the judge has to recuse him or herself.
Now, she doesn't live in his house. She doesn't even live in his state.
But boy, I will tell you, and I know it's hard to do from an egotistical point of view, but if I was that judge, I would recuse myself. I said, listen, personal views because I want to protect my daughter going to affect my judgment in this case.
But, you know, he has a little out because she doesn't she doesn't live with him. But you're
right, Megan, she does have a financial interest in the outcome of this in terms of the gag order.
You know, for me, I have PTSD with this whole case. It's in the same courthouse,
in the same courtroom that I tried the Harvey Weinstein case with the same DA's office.
And we were told to shut up.
I mean, I went on Imus just to talk about, like, what was going on in jury selection.
Like, just vanilla how jury selection works in the county of Manhattan.
And I got, oh, I got so yelled at by the judge.
And you're not supposed to talk about this case as a judge.
It could have been this case or any other case.
I was just talking about the logistics.
You better not say another word.
And then what would happen every day after the Harvey Weinstein case?
It was either Gloria Ulrich or Doug Wigdor having their own press conference,
beating the hell out of us.
And unlike Donald Trump, who will probably have surrogates protecting his role in all of this, there wasn't too many people standing up for Harvey Weinstein
giving his side of the story. So I think gag orders should be put in very limited
circumstances. But I think the overall message has to do with witness tampering.
The judge does not want to have someone as powerful as the former
president of the United States or maybe the next president of the United States. His words, his
Twitter account, so powerful that it thwarts other people who might want to come forward and be
witnesses and participate in any trial from doing so. You know, a word on the recusal, Mark, because there was a request that he recused himself
and the judge apparently went to, um, team Trump asked him to recuse himself and he apparently
went up the line.
I don't know who he asked, probably the state bar, whether he needed to.
And they said, you're good, which doesn't surprise me.
Um, but Arthur's right.
The standard under section one zero zero point three of the statute governing when a judge shall recuse says, um, he's disqualified. Yes. If there's a minor child and so on, and who's affected. that he or a person known by him to be within the sixth degree of relationship to him,
which would include a daughter, has an interest that could be substantially affected by the
proceeding. I can see the argument that her interest is somewhat attenuated. She's not
she's not Adam Schiff, right, running on whether Trump is a criminal.
If Adam Schiff were the kid, the judge would definitely have to recuse.
She's helping Adam Schiff and Democrats in the Senate run for reelection.
So it's more attenuated.
But I think if there's a doubt, you recuse yourself as a judge.
And the fact that he didn't is what's put his daughter in this situation where Trump has a right to criticize her and to criticize the judge
for the for this relationship, saying this is a family of Democrat operatives. He's his politics
are likely to be those of his daughters. And on his daughter's allegedly now defunct Twitter
account, X account, there was up until a couple of days ago, you know, the picture you put of yourself there as your little like face, a picture of Trump behind bars.
Now, there's a whole story behind that here.
This is her Twitter handle.
And this is what Trump reacted to.
Understandably, this is the daughter of the judge,
but only when Trump called it out, did Lauren Merchant's representative say
that wasn't her. She did have that account. Then she deleted her account and all the tweets
associated with it. Then someone in April of 23, just as this case was
brought, resurrected that account, got that exact account moniker. And they're the ones who posted
that picture of Trump, which I have no reason to dispute. But you can understand why Trump reacted
to it the way he did. It did, in fact, used to belong to the judge's daughter.
In any event, this is all very thick and sticky. And I think the judge has done the wrong thing here. What do you think? And if he did do the wrong thing and Trump is convicted, then the
first issue on appeal is going to be this judge shouldn't have been the judge. He should have
accused himself. I know this judge is aware of that. And the judge at least feels like he's on solid footing,
at least if the appellate court ever looks at this, to say he didn't have to. And I looked at
the same statute that both you and Arthur talked about. I don't think that the daughter meets the
definition that would require him to remove himself. So now we're traveling under, does it
give the image of impropriety? And I think
there you can make a strong argument, you know, that while he doesn't have to recuse himself,
you know, it does give the image of impropriety when your dear daughter, you know, hates the very
defendant that's in front of you. That said, yes, it'll be an appellate issue. No, the judge,
in my opinion, doesn't have to recuse himself.
But it'll be an issue on appeal.
We'll see.
So here's by the way, here's Lauren Merchant in is it is it Merchant?
Arthur, somebody's been in front.
Is it Merchant?
They say Merchant.
They say Merchant.
Merchant.
Yeah.
Oh, and the daughter's Lauren.
Lauren Merchant.
OK, so this is Lauren Merchant. Um, okay. So this is Lauren
Merchant back in 2019 talking about Trump, her father, uh, this judge and social media. Take a
listen. So I've actually had a couple of conversations with my dad recently where he's
kind of like, I hate that politicians use Twitter and like it's so unprofessional. And, you know, that's not how a politician should behave themselves. And I explain that like, yeah,
I think there are a lot of instances where it is not used in like when our president tweets
anything that he thinks and like that's not what he should be using it for.
So that just shows she's commented on Trump in the past and on her
conversations with her father, this judge about Trump in the past and Trump's social media use.
They're talking about his Twitter use is directly at issue in this trial. It's it's one of the
reasons why they just got a three-week delay because this case was supposed
to start in March, but they got a bunch of documents from the feds that related to this
case and potentially related to Trump's Twitter use. This is one of the reasons, let me correct
myself, this is one of the reasons why Trump is arguing that he has immunity because some of the
things at issue are tweets he sent out while president. So in any
event, the judge's thoughts on his immunity, the judge's thoughts on his Twitter use all of this.
The judge is too close. Like there's just I'm sorry that your daughter became a political
operative and ruined your chances of trying this case. But I think this judge should be gone.
And I think this is actually a legit issue, even though I have empathy. Truly, I do have empathy
for the daughter who it's okay to
be in Democrat politics. It's okay to be in Republican politics. Um, while your father is a
judge, it doesn't really, shouldn't really make her a direct Trump target, but that's the world
we live in. We've crossed the Rubicon and indicting, you know, former presidents and
would be presidents. And so here we are now, I want to talk about Michael Cohen. This is crazy. So he's
a witness in the case. So Stormy Daniels and Trump can't criticize them. This is crazy talk, you guys.
I don't like Michael Cohen can't get enough of criticizing Donald Trump here. He was just the
other night talking about what a victim he is because of
Trump's many threats on Joy Reid. This is this past Thursday, Sat 3. This is not a joke. He
knows what he's doing. And I think it's incumbent upon the Manhattan D.A., along with whatever Judge
is capable of doing to do something to protect not just staff, not just his own child,
but all of the witnesses that are being asked to testify.
How can it be that he can go out and say what he wants, but Trump cannot?
Well, I think, Megan, I think it goes back to what I was saying about, you know, tampering with a witness. This isn't Arthur Aydala sending out these tweets or going on the airwaves. This is the guy who was the former president of the United States and could be the next president of the United States.
So what? It's the same as someone going into the coffee shop, sitting next to the witness, and he looks like a tough guy.
And he goes, you know, it would be the worst idea if you weren't around next Monday.
You know, we'll see what happens.
You know, everyone knows where your family lives.
So he has fewer free speech rights than the average Joe because he has a large platform?
You know that there are limitations to free speech rights? know that there are limitations to free speech rights.
We just talked about it.
Michael Cohen has access to
all day MSNBC,
all day CNN,
all day. He's got a
big voice and uses it.
That's fine with me.
But how can he
be protected from return fire?
Because what the judge is saying is, Mr. Trump, if you and your team want to go after Mr. Cohen's credibility, you're going to do so in my courtroom in front of 12 jurors under the rules of evidence.
You're not going to just start spewing things out and taking the whole jury pool here in New York City before the trial starts.
Why isn't he banned from going on MSNBC?
I mean, Mark,
he's a witness. He's not a criminal defendant. He's a witness.
But he's not. He's nonstop talking. He's prejudicing the defendants. He has those rights. He has those rights. He hasn't lost them as being indicted in this case.
It's so many. It's like it reminds me of these cases where my clients are ordered to stay away
from the alleged victim in a case.
And then my client's like, I want that person to stay away from me.
Why doesn't judge order that person to stay away?
Because you're the defendant.
You're the one that's appearing in front of the court.
You're the one that needs the control, according to the judge.
And it is different.
You don't want there to be, and I'm not saying that there is. But this judge
is saying that the legal distinction is that whatever Trump is putting out there could have
an adverse effect on justice and could intimidate witnesses. To Arthur's point, this is so unfair.
I mean, you're right. That's what the judge said. He wrote as follows. Courts are understandably
concerned about the First Amendment rights of the defendant, especially when the accused is a public figure. The circumstances of the instant matter, however,
are different. The conventional David versus Goliath roles are no longer in play,
as demonstrated by the singular power defendants' words have on countless others.
I mean, that bothers me because he's basically saying Trump is so well
known with such a powerful online following that he, he in particular should be gagged because he's
not David versus Goliath, the system. And that's just not true because the system is still Goliath,
even if the person they're going after is the former president. The system goes
in there. Alvin Bragg goes before this jury with the being able to say, I represent the people of
New York. And I'm telling you, this guy's a criminal. The deck is still stacked in favor
of the prosecution, not the defendant. And if his his attempt at fighting this battle,
which is all over the media,
is basically jury nullification, saying everybody's corrupt. This is all a political,
you know, partisan hack job, a job on me. It is prejudicial to take his rights away from him in
that way. Megan, are you actually have a right to hold on? Hold on. When Megan, are you actually
saying that it's not relevant for the judge to consider
the reach that the person sending out the message has that somehow Donald Trump has the same impact
on potential witnesses and potential jurors as the average Joe who has 16 followers?
I am saying that. Yeah, I am. I am saying that. I don't. Yeah, I am. I don't think Donald Trump's
rights. Look, I just feel the need to say this. I was on the receiving end of this guy's threats
for a year. OK, and I understand acutely how disruptive it can be to one's life and one's
children and one's safety. I genuinely get it. So I do feel for those who are on the receiving
end of it. I really do. Whether it's are on the receiving end of it, I really do,
whether it's the judge's daughter, Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels. I want my audience to remember
that too. I want you to remember that just because you may love Trump doesn't mean it's
appropriate for him to be threatening anybody. But these are not threats. What I see here are
criticisms and attempts to diminish the credibility of the people who are going to come for him,
like Cohen, like Stormy Daniels. And that is fair game. And if they are going to take the stand and
come for him in a criminal setting, they have to expect that he is going to have thoughts on those
accusations and their behavior. And Michael Cohen, not only he's all over MSNBC, but Stormy Daniels just had a whole
documentary made about her and her relationship with Trump. It's being aired right now. She was
on The View two weeks ago. That's fine. But he's got to sit there and just say, she's an angel.
She's a sweet little lady. She's like she's like Mother Teresa. I've got no thoughts on her.
No, his very fine lawyers, Susan Necklace and Todd Blanche, they'll be able to destroy him on the witness stand. Didn't you just get in trouble in federal court for submitting cases
that were artificial intelligence that didn't exist? Aren't you a convicted felon? Didn't you
plead to lying and this and that in front of a jury under the rules
evidence, under the control of a judge. And yes, Donald Trump as a criminal defendant,
whether you like it or not, he loses certain rights and privileges that those of us are
entitled to. He doesn't have bail. Let me ask you this. What about Dershowitz is always railing
about your client and your friend. He's always railing about on the right
to free speech. It's not only Trump's right to speak, it's our right to hear him speak.
You know, he is going to be the Republican nominee. Right now, he's polling in a way that
suggests he's going to be the next president of the United States. We have a right to hear
what he has to say about these public attacks being launched against him.
And therefore, this ruling is stifling our rights, too, in a way that's unconstitutional.
There's some truth to that.
I do want to hear some of the messages.
But let me ask you, let me turn it around.
Are you saying, Megan, that you think that every single message that he sent out in this
context is appropriate?
Well, I think it can rise to the level of a threat
and that's where his power comes in. You know, if I were the judge, I would not allow threats. I
would allow him to attack the daughter. I would, I would say, if you want to attack my daughter,
it's unfortunate. I hope you don't do that, but okay. But if you start threatening her or any
other witness in this case, we're going to have a problem.
And but I'd also say this.
If my daughter attacks you first or if a witness attacks you first publicly, then go for it.
Like, I would not allow them to be out there publicly attacking Trump every night on the airwaves and in movies and so on.
Because you're ignoring his other lane, which is the future president of and in movies and so on. And then say he has no right to,
because you're ignoring his other lane,
which is the future president of the United States
and all like that.
That's not the judge's role.
The judge is allowed to ignore his other lane.
The judge is looking at him with blinders on.
Why does the judge get to take into account his power
when deciding whether he needs to be silenced,
but not in deciding whether he has the right to speak
and we have the right to hear him.
It's about intimidating a witness. I'll give you the scenario I just gave you. If there's a witness in the coffee shop who's about to testify and
some big bruiser comes and says, you probably shouldn't go to court on Monday. That's one
thing. If some little meek, like 17 year old kid says it, it's not really a big threat. You say,
whatever you say, kid. So the judge is allowed to take into consideration. Am I allowing a criminal defendant to prevent a witness from testifying in a case against him?
It cannot allow that to happen. This is utterly unfair. It ignores the reality that you're
indicting the former president who's the Republican nominee. It completely ignores that
there is this other lane in which it's extremely important for
Trump to be able to fucking fight these charges. Sorry. It's not it's not my love for Trump. It's
my love for the system and for his rights and for free speech in America. And what's being done for
him or to him is outrageous. And this is the problem. So the judge wants to hide behind the
shield of, oh, I'm just protecting the innocent. They're out there in a constant smear campaign with the help of all the media.
This is what ticks me off about America and the injustices.
Look, the people we like, like Trump, he's getting a bad deal.
No one said Harvey Weinstein got a bad deal when they slapped a gag order on him.
And he wasn't even the one talking.
It was me.
I wasn't allowed to say
these witnesses are full of it. These witnesses are money hungry. They have Gloria Allred trying
to get, oh, Harvey Weinstein got a gag order. Megyn Kelly doesn't care. Nobody else cares.
But because it's someone we like, it's Donald Trump. Now we're pissed off. We should be pissed
off when everyone, when Galee Maxwell happens to Harvey, we should be pissed off at everyone, not just Donald Trump.
Mark assumes facts. I may or may not like Trump. I don't really love Trump, to tell you the truth.
He's fine. But I prefer his politics to those of Joe Biden, for sure. And my goal as a media
person is not to like him or love him or hate him or whatever. It's just to try to cover him fairly, which I do. So it's not about loving Trump. It's about watching what's being done to him and
an understanding that there is a reality here of which the judge is very aware and he can't,
you know, both take into account his power to like upend his daughter's life with a mean tweet and then not take into
account the reason he has that power. It's because he's the likely Republican nominee for president,
which is why he must respond to these public attacks publicly. It's not about intimidating
witnesses. It's about keeping the playing field for the nation and the contest that he's in fair.
All right. That that's we got to
take a quick break. We got like a couple of minutes until we got a heartbreak. So I'm going
to squeeze it in and come back. Very interesting discussion today, guys. Don't go away.
Team Trump in the Fannie Willis prosecution down in Atlanta, Georgia,
has now officially appealed the ruling by the judge McAfee not to recuse
Fannie Willis, not to disqualify Fannie Willis. They only need one judge from a three judge panel
to agree to take the case. So that's pretty good just to get the one saying yes. But,
you know, the odds of like the court wanting to get involved in this,
Mark, you're shaking your head. No, you don't think they're going to want it.
No, they're not. It's that simple. It's a legal opinion. I don't believe that they're going to
find that this judge, assuming they take the case, that this judge committed error. And I think it's going to go nowhere.
You know, they're harping, not harping. That sounds judgmental, but they're playing up
the comments, Arthur, which is kind of interesting that she made in the church speech, you know,
about why did they only come after the one special prosecutor who is black, right? Like that whole bit. And they're arguing that
that's church speech alone is disqualifying. Um, and then they're also going after the fact
that she knowingly filed a false sworn affidavit from former special prosecutor, Nathan Wade,
uh, as part of her motions and that she's utterly unrepentant for her misconduct and that of Nathan
Wade, that she's expressed no remorse. In fact,
she was just on camera. We played it last week saying, I have nothing to apologize for. I didn't
do anything illegal except submit that perjured testimony. And they're basically saying it's an
outrage. So what does the court of appeals do with that? Well, for open disclosure, Megan,
we're a litigant on the case. My firm represents Rudy Giuliani. So we've been in constant contact with
Mr. Sadow, who is President Trump's attorney. And those papers, although we didn't sign out
to the actual appeal, we would be beneficiaries from it as well. First and foremost, if she didn't
do anything wrong, what's interesting is she didn't appeal. She had the opportunity to appeal. She had the opportunity to be like, no, no, no, I didn't do anything wrong.
He's my lead prosecutor. I had picked him. I want him on the case. How dare you take him off the
case? She did not do that. She took him off the case in a millisecond, number one. Number two,
you read the judge's actual decision. This 34-year-old judge, a man who's not old enough to be president of the United States
but could be a decisive part of deciding
who could be president of the United States.
I mean, he comes right up to the borderline of saying,
basically, you're disqualified unless,
to any will, you're out of the case
unless you make this concession.
And he does find her to be not credible. So I don't know,
Mark. I mean, I don't know. The odor of mendacity still lingers in the courtroom, he said. Keep
going. Yes. So I don't know who the three judge panel is. If you get one judge that says,
I think we need to look at this. I mean, she behaved very like non-prosecutorial on the stand.
I mean, the judge who she was his supervisor back in the day,
he reprimanded her several times about her demeanor on the stand saying, if you don't-
And in his order, in his order, he said it was unprofessional.
Right. And he said, I'm going to strike your testimony. So I don't know, I think there's a
chance that one of those judges may say, we're going to definitely take a look at this. This
is a pretty important case. Mark, let me ask you about that, because we just did just a quick search tells us that most of the judges in the Court of Appeal of Georgia are Republican appointed.
As you might expect, Georgia, though, it's turning more blue, has been traditionally more red.
So most of these are going to be more Republican, conservative leaning judges may or may not like Trump, but maybe Arthur's right, because if you read Judge McAfee's order denying the disqualification of Fannie, it reads to me like an SOS to the Court of Appeals.
Help me. I'm running for reelection. I can't do it. But you could.
I think they're going to find that there was definitely some problems with her behavior, just like the judge did. That's not the standard, though. She doesn't have to be the ideal prosecutor. It just has to be one who legally
should have recused herself. And I think that that's a whole different standard that they're
not going to be able to meet. She's supposed to be acting without fear or favor. And I don't know
if you look at her testimony, if you could really honestly say that the woman who's prosecuting
the former president
of the United States and the former mayor of New York is acting without fear or faith.
No, I mean, she's out there once again. Do we have time for Sat 9? Can we run it as we go to break?
Once again, bringing up the race thing. She plays this card every time she can. We'll play this
soundbite. We'll go to break. We'll come right back. Play it. And it's hard out here always
having to prove yourself two and three times. Recently, they tell me they don't like me to
talk about race. Well, I'm going to talk about it anyway. Truth is, it's some challenges that
come to being black. And I see so much greatness in this city that has so many great African-American leaders. And I appreciate
all of the sacrifice that you all have had to make to be in these positions.
First things first, we have, you mentioned Harvey Weinstein, but something big happened in the Harvey
Weinstein case that we have got to spend a moment on. And that is our good friend, Arthur Idalamark,
went all the way up to New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, on Valentine's Day while
you and I were wooing our loved ones. And he was trying to woo the judges on New York's highest
court into throwing out the conviction of Harvey Weinstein that got him 23 years in jail where he sits right now. He also
was sentenced to 16 years in jail out in Los Angeles. So if Arthur wins his case, it doesn't
mean that Harvey is free, but it certainly improves his lot in life. And Arthur, your
argument boiled down, we'll keep it simple for the audience, but it boiled down to the fact that
in New York, in this trial, they allowed other women
who were not the actual accusers in this criminal case to take the stand and say, me too. He's a
jerk. He's a bad guy. And me too. And that in addition to that, if Harvey had taken the witness
stand in his own defense, they would have allowed like two dozen women to come forward saying what a scumbag he
was to them. And he would have been fighting all these extraneous other battles as opposed to the
ones at hand, because New York has a law that allows these like prior bad acts in a way that's
very favorable to the prosecution. So you were arguing that Molyneux,
and there's another case, Sandoval, that these are not fair and that they ruined his chances at
a fair trial. And amazingly, because you lost that appeal five to zero at the lower appellate court,
but then the court of appeals took the case, which was very promising
for you that they, you know, they could have just rejected it and said, Hey, we'll let the lower
ruling stand. So I just want to show the audience a little bit. Here's, you know, the, some of the
descriptions are like, they, they struggled with it. Like nobody was saying, I doll is going to
lose that Harvey's going to lose. They were like, Hmm, that the court of appeals seems divided.
And I want to show the audience a little bit of one of the judges who seems to be on the side of
the prosecution trying to get after you and how you handled it. This is fun. This is Judge
Madeline Singus, SOT 17. The jury has a right to know that when these women are put into that position,
that he has done this time and time again.
And he knows this isn't a consensual situation because he knows these other
women haven't consented to that and have run out.
And amongst all the power plays of his power in Hollywood,
his power over their careers, there has to be a different assessment.
You reject that?
I reject the fact that you think, with all due respect, Your Honor,
and that's been the problem with this case in the lower court and at the appellate division.
Because he's an executive and who became the poster boy for a movement, there's a different standard.
I didn't say anything about a movement.
I know you didn't, Your Honor, but the bottom line is that it was so obvious that the jury did not need help figuring out his intent.
We could talk about, would I have been able to bring in the 30 other relationships where there was quid pro quo, where he did have sexual relations consensually?
Would I have been able to do that?
Of course not.
But they're saying between the decade between Jessica Mann and Mimi Hale, these other four people he had negative interactions
with. What about the 40 that he had positive interactions with? Well, not boy, Arthur.
And the chocolate and the flowers didn't hurt on Valentine's Day.
I said, I said, actually, what people remarked on Megan was at the end of the day,
put this argument on the end of the day. So it was like, by the time it ended,
it was like six o'clock at night. And I was the last to speak. I got rebuttal time. And literally,
as I was walking away from the podium, I said, Oh, and by the way, Happy Valentine's Day,
Your Honors. And my partner Barry Cabot just shook his head. He goes, only you would say that. And
Judge Sigis, who was clearly the one most against us, she gave me the biggest smile. You know, I know her personally. She was the Nassau
County District Attorney. And she was definitely the one who was against us. But I will tell you,
they were pretty hard on the prosecutor as well. I wasn't sure which clip you were going to run.
Well, I'll stand by. We have some of that. We have some of that. Say what you're going to say,
and then I'll show the audience what you're talking about.
No, no, go ahead. You go ahead, because I want to see maybe.
So the prosecutor, this guy, is from the Manhattan DA's office.
His name is Stephen Bowe.
Harvard and Yale.
And you're going to see a clip here.
It's Judge Jenny Rivera, who appears to question whether these other witnesses are needed in this case in order to establish some unique pattern of events. She's like, what's so unique
about a guy like this trying to exploit his power? And here's a bit of that in SOT 18.
What's unique about a powerful man trying to get a woman to have sex with him?
It doesn't have to be unique. It just has to be distinctive. What the Molyneux witnesses showed
was that defendant knew from these past experiences
that just because an aspiring actress was willing to accept favors from him, ask favors,
and even voluntarily go up to his room by themselves, right, by themselves to his private
space, that did not mean they were consenting to sexual activity.
That's what the Molyneux witnesses highlighted.
Why isn't it just the opposite?
If they're not willing to do it, but someone else is willing to do it, it must mean that
it's consensual. Why doesn't it establish the absolute opposite of your argument?
Well, I guess what I'd say is this. Sure, there is a response to the Malino evidence. There's a
way of rebutting it. But Malino evidence doesn't have to be dispositive to be admitted. It just
has to be probative to a material element.
All right. That's kind of hard to follow, Arthur. But what is she saying? What's the judge trying to say there? What the judge is trying to say is just because Harvey Weinstein
was rejected by one woman, that does not mean every other woman is going to have the same
exact reaction. And that was my point, is that, you know, he
married two beautiful women. They gladly, happily married him. He had plenty consensual girlfriends.
They tried to introduce women who rejected him under the premise that, see, these women who he's
not charged with, they rejected him. So it must be true that the women who he's charged with
rejected him as well. And that just demeans women and that's what i told
that to the judges i mean what all women react exactly the same way of course not but megan it
also had to do with the sheer numbers malino evidence can come in often for identification
purposes etc but they have three charged people and they'll have one Marlena win this. Here, it was three charged people.
They had four, four Marlena wins.
There were more women who testified against him who never went, who he was never charged
with, never went in front of a grand jury than with the women who he was actually charged
with.
And the clip I was wondering whether you were going to show was regarding the Sandoval.
That means if a defendant-
Wait, I have that too.
Stand by.
I've got that too.
So this is all along the same lines of like, how many women are we going to allow to take the stand?
We could be here for years. We're just going through Harvey Weinstein's love life, which was a threat looming over you thanks to these two rulings. And the prosecution got
pressed pretty hard on like, are we really effectively depriving these accused guys of their right to take the stand if we allow all this other stuff in?
I think this is the site you're referring to.
It's Judge Betsy Barros to Stephen Wu in Sat 19.
He never disputed that these events occurred, but said that they were consensual and the woman were lying by claiming otherwise.
You keep talking about as if he testified. He didn't testify, right? So it's one person's word
against the other, and now he can't testify. Am I correct? This Sandoval ruling, I don't think
anybody in their right mind would testify. So how is this a fair trial? The point is not that the
case is weak, but rather that it doesn't fit within that narrow band of cases like Vargas, like McKinney, where the act is so unequivocal, so unequivocal that there's no need to bring in additional evidence.
All right. What was I understood why the judge's point? I didn't understand Wu's response there.
How is he defending against the litany of other charges and other women who he would have liked to have take the stand?
Well, they keep using the word that it was so unique.
It was so like because he would like tell them, come up to my room and I'll let you read a script.
And then he would try to allegedly did fool around with them.
So he was, oh, this is so unique, so unique.
And my answer was, if this whole thing was so unique, why is this whole
thing called Me Too? Because it happened to a lot of people, and there are a lot of situations,
a lot of men, a lot of women. So they were trying to say the jury needed this evidence,
because it was so outside of their ability to understand this. They needed all these other
women to come in. But what Judge Barrows was saying, and just to give you a background,
Judge Barrows was a district attorney, assistant DA, a chief DA. She was a trial judge. She only did criminal work.
So she knows how outrageous this decision is. Because you want to talk about the Constitution,
we want defendants to have the ability to testify. Typically, when someone does not have a criminal
record, you don't bring up any of their bad acts. Here, Harvey Weinstein didn't have a criminal
record. They asked the judge to bring up like 60 bad acts. And he said, no, I'm only going to let
you bring up 32 bad acts. And that's what they said. She said, how could this be a fair trial
when it's a he said, she said case, and you took the he said out of the equation and you added more
she said, she said, she said that he wasn't even charged he said out of the equation, and you added more, she said,
she said, she said, that he wasn't even charged with. So we are waiting, honestly, on pins and
needles. I will tell you now that we found out last week, the next decisions from the Court of
Appeals will be April 18th, which is a Thursday. And then the one after that is April 23rd,
which I believe is a Tuesday. And that's when we're going to find out. And as you
said, it's not going to be a picture like there was a Bill Cosby walking out of prison. He still
has to face the counts in Los Angeles. But the truth, Megan, is this case wasn't about Harvey
Weinstein. And that's how I ended it. This is about every criminal defendant. The case is already
being cited all throughout the state of New York,
from Buffalo to Brooklyn, saying, oh, no, no, we're allowed to let this in. It's people v.
Weinstein. People v. Weinstein. All these other witnesses could testify against these people.
It's people v. Weinstein. If he takes the stand or she takes the stand, we can let all this stuff
come in. It's people v. Weinstein. And if we get a reversal, it is not going to be that the Court
of Appeals is looking to help Harvey Weinstein. But, you know, you started off this segment saying how rare it is for the Court of Appeals to accept this case. The judge, the one judge of the seven who accepted it, was the most conservative judge, the most law and order judge, Judge Janet D. Fury. She was the chief judge. She only gave the ability for defendants to testify in 1.8% of the cases that she was asked to.
And Harvey fell into 1.8% because she knew the decisions against Weinstein were so beyond the pale, so beyond any legal research has ever found anything similar to this that it needed to be reviewed by the Court of Appeals. I have my fingers crossed, but Megan, I am afraid maybe there isn't the intellectual,
that the, you know, we talk about Judge Mershon and his order and all of that.
You know, the three men on the panel, can they go home and tell their family,
yeah, I'm helping Harvey Weinstein out.
I mean, I don't know.
I hope they can.
I pray they can for our whole system of justice.
For every defendant in the United States of America, I hope they have the strength to say,
yeah, I'm helping a bad guy because under the law, he wasn't treated fairly.
There's got to be some comfort for a judge thinking that way to the fact that he's not going to get out of jail. It's not like he goes back out onto the street and continues this pattern that the women spoke of. This is a tough one. Judges,
these look, they're New Yorkers. They're tough. They're not, they're not like the folks over in
Scotland. They're actually tough. And let's hope, let's hope they do the right thing. Fascinating.
Great job. Very proud of you. That was that you got to be sweating i just want to tell
you a mark so because you guys can appreciate it as lawyers i haven't studied that art since the
bar exam i found out on december the 20th or so that i was that was the argument date and harvey
he had a choice of people to argue it and he chose me i gave myself Christmas. And basically from December 27th until the morning of the 14th,
I worked so hard. Megan, my boy, Luca, my son, he like took care of me every weekend. I disappeared
with him and he cooked and cleaned and I was just reading and reading and reading. It's for a half
an hour. I studied for months, right? The whole argument was like 35 minutes. But I will tell you
before I walked into that courtroom, Judge Cummins, who was with
me, and Diana, who was with me, and Marion, who was texting me, they were so nervous.
But I really wasn't nervous.
And this should be a lesson to young lawyers.
If you prepare to that degree, you have the confidence of knowing there's nothing they
could throw at you that you're not prepared for.
You may get the wrong answer, but you're not going to be like, hummina, hummina, hummina.
And there's no
substitution. And Mark Eichelash can tell you that before anyone else, there is no substitution when
you're a lawyer for preparation. That's right. So true. The amount of hours you have to put into
preparing an argument like that, because you don't know where they're going to go, right? Mark, it's
like, you've been there. You don't know what they're going to ask you about. So it may just
be one tiny sliver, but it could be like a vast array and you don't know which sliver. So you've got to know everything like a
boss. And then that that's what allows you to be up there. I liked how conversational you were,
Arthur, you know, how like you were yourself, you know, charming and funny and using real world
examples like what I've been able to bring in all the women's show, how many times they consented.
That was good stuff. And I feel like New Yorkers probably responded well to another New Yorker talking in your Brooklyn accent,
giving it to him straight. Um, let's move on. Dershowitz was very helpful by the way. I know
he's one of your guests and someone you talk to often. He was very helpful. I'm not surprised.
Well, well done. Very proud of you. And, uh, we'll talk once the decision comes out. Okay. Let's move on because there is a fascinating case involving abuse, child abuse in this case, which is just,
it's just stunning. So this woman, Ruby Frankie had more YouTube followers than we do,
but most people have never heard of her. Um, she was like a mom blogger, a parent. She had like a parenting YouTube site
out in Utah. And she was known for her extremely strict parenting. And it got to the point where
people actually started to complain about her. A petition was filed with, I think, thousands of
signatures saying she needs to be looked into, this woman.
I'll just give you an example of how things started before we get to where they went. This
is a compilation of some of her parenting clips from her now defunct YouTube channel in SOC 20.
I'm going to take the scissors. Look at me. And I'm going to cut its head off.
My bedroom was taken away for seven months and then you give it back like a couple weeks
ago.
I don't think our viewers know that.
I'm sleeping on bean bags since October.
I just got a text message from teacher and she said that did not pack a lunch today.
She's just going to need to be hungry.
Okay. So, uh, this went from bad to worse. I mean, that, that wasn't great, but it turned out
that she was actually abusing her children and that she only had her two smallest children in the house. One was, I think, nine and one was 12.
If I'll go back and check those numbers, but I'm pretty sure those are the numbers.
And the boy, the son got out of the house.
She was where she was living with a woman said to be her counselor, the counselor for
her and her estranged husband who was not living in the home.
And the boy got out of the house, went over to the neighbors, pressed the doorbell,
and then asked for the man to call 911.
Here's that soundbite from the man's 911 call, SOT-22. I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help.
And he said he just came from a neighbor's house. and we know there's been problems at this neighbor's house.
He's emaciated.
He's got tape around his legs.
He's hungry, and he's thirsty.
He has duct tape around each ankle.
And he has them around his ankles.
I mean, his wrists as well.
Okay, this boy has been...
This kid has obviously been, I think he's been, he's been detained.
He's obviously covered in wounds.
Oh, my God.
It's awful, Mark. And now this mother, Ruby Frankie, and the woman slash counselor with whom she was living with those children has been they've both been sentenced to 30 years in prison for child abuse.
So what do you make of it?
I'm totally fine with that.
You know, I'm usually the one who says, really, that much time in a case like this?
Just pay attention to the detail,
what they did to these kids. They gave the kids a life sentence. I will never forget the body
cam footage that I had to watch of when the police finally come into the house and the child that was
sitting in a room that had nothing in it, child sitting in the center of the room. And the police were like, OK, we're here now. Now, this child was hungry, deprived and still
wouldn't get up, was sitting erect in the center of the room doing what she had been trained and
tortured to do for quite some time. As far as I'm concerned, 30 years is a very fair sentence.
And these kids, unfortunately, they have a life sentence.
That's right.
The woman whose house it was where they were living is named Jody Hildebrandt, age 54 at
the time of arrest.
And she's I don't know what's wrong with this person, but according to the estranged husband
of Rudy Ruby Frankie, she saw ghosts. She talked about like, you know, weird messages she was
getting from beyond Ruby. Frankie claimed that, you know, she'd been kind of brainwashed by this
woman and the husband who's an engineer. And he was a professor, college professor, I think of
engineering out at Brigham Young was like, look, I'm a, I'm a serious, reasonable man, but I'm telling you
weird things were happening in that house with like the supernatural he was suggesting.
So this woman had a way of taking people in and she was the one who was there when the cops who
had received that 911 call showed up. And because of the exigent
circumstances, they were able to go right in and search that house immediately. And she freaked out
on them. Like why? I don't know if we have that one, um, Deb, but where she was like, do we have
it? Or she was like, well, how can you come in? Where's your warrant? And anyway, um, they went
right in and they found the other, the minor child who was still in there. It's a girl, but they thought it was a boy because she was just unrecognizable.
Here we have a bit of that. Let's listen.
Horrible.
Come on, my buddy. I'm a police officer.
Hey, you okay?
Is this just you in here?
I'm Sergeant Tobler.
What's your name we at first thought
it might have been a little boy
sitting there cross-legged
staring up at us
she ate the whole thing
so they ordered another one
she ate half of a large pizza
as well along with a shake
and what does that tell you about how hungry
she was? Food deprived,
hungry,
just like R was at the time.
More than
four hours after police make entry
into Jodi's home,
he finally agrees to leave the closet.
Mm-hmm.
It's amazing that they have the actual videotape i mean and good for the cops for
holding on to that making sure those moments were documented but these children were emaciated
arthur the boy who had been you know escaped and gone over the neighbors had clear marks of being
shackled around his legs he had he had duct tape around his legs underneath. The duct tape was saran wrap, but he had visible wounds all over his body.
And it's amazing to me that this boy, this is a viewer warning, just FYI.
We are showing pictures of the results of abuse, which I understand can be jarring and upsetting to some.
But it's important to see what was happening because what happened over and over.
Oh, that's awful.
That's just awful.
What happened over and over, Arthur, was people tried to sound the alarm on this family and nothing was done.
Nothing was done.
That's exactly that.
So you just that was the question I was going to have.
Like, I know I don't have a typical lifestyle.
There's a lot of people around my world.
But, you know, even the neighbor on the 911 call says I don't forget a typical lifestyle. There's a lot of people around my world. But, you know, even the neighbor on the 911 call said, I don't forget what exactly he said.
There's some weird things going on there.
He alluded to the fact that there was some weird stuff going on at the house.
Look, I know in New York, if you call, it's not that hard.
As unfunctional, dysfunctional as the city of New York is, you start calling about kids being abused. The children's services are at your house pretty quickly because they didn't do it once about a
decade ago in a case and the girl died, the little child died. So they've really upped their game in
terms of doing wellness visits to the house. And why that wasn't done earlier or sooner. And there's teachers, there's providers that have, they're obligated to call and ask for help.
You know, the teacher who says, you know, your kid didn't come to school.
Well, she's going to be hungry, but, you know, she'll learn a lesson now.
I don't know.
I mean, you would like to think that someone along the world of all these kids would have sounded the alarm.
And where's Kevin, the husband, and all this? Doesn't he want to see his kids? Doesn't he miss
his kids? I agree. Where's Kevin? We'll talk about Kevin in one second. But before I get to that,
I want to stay on the fact that nobody was following up on obvious red flags all over
this household, Mark. There are four older children who were not living in this home. Again, where Ruby Frankie, the mother, I use that term generously, and her counselor slash friend,
Jesse Hildebrandt, sorry, not Jesse. Jesse's the niece. Jody Hildebrandt were living. And
one of the older siblings in the Frankie family called protective services and asked for a
welfare check on her younger siblings in 2022. The father, Kevin, had moved out because the
counselor, Jody, told him to get out to allegedly work on a porn addiction, which now he says he
didn't have. And what happened? Nothing. Here's SOT 21.
Hi, my name is Sherry Frankie.
My four younger siblings are living in Springville.
And my neighbors have been telling me that they have been left home alone for about four or five days.
And so I was curious if someone could go check on them.
I know CPS has come a couple times because of this already,
but they never find a problem, but it keeps happening.
So we're going to have an officer give you a call back.
So to fill in the blanks here,
this daughter, after her mother was arrested,
said justice is now being served.
We've been trying to tell police and CPS for years about this.
So glad they finally decided to step up. Kids are safe, but there's a long road ahead. Police reports appear to back
her up. This is from ABC's reporting in 2020. Police told 2020 they were not able to get a
warrant to search the home. An unnamed neighbor claimed that multiple adults in the community had
been trying to get the Utah Division of Child and Family Services involved for over a year, having noticed Frankie's long absences. I'm really angry,
says one, because I spoke up. If people knew the amount of tears and time spent talking with law
enforcement and CPS over the last year, I want people to understand that. And I want these kids
to know that because I think they thought they were abandoned. The Springfield Springville
Police Department told NBC that officers did show up at Frankie's home to investigate,
but their attempts and attempts by DCSF to contact the children proved unsuccessful
because the kids wouldn't come to the door. What, Mark? What? Oh, Megan. So I would pray that somebody from that jurisdiction conducts an in-depth
analysis to how they failed these children. Right. If you can explain it away. All right. Well,
the cops showed up and then, OK, they were they they couldn't just go in because of X, Y and Z.
Then we'll we'll understand it. But someone needs to be held accountable. I bet there was something
more that could have been done.
And if something more was done, we're talking about years of torture that could have been
avoided.
I don't understand a scenario, Arthur, in which the cops are getting called by multiple
community members.
DCFS is getting called by multiple community members.
There's something wrong.
There's abuse happening in the house, we suspect.
Please go check on them.
A family member, an older sibling calls.
And they show up and the kids won't come to the door.
And so they say, oh, nothing to see here.
I mean, we now know the kids can't come to the door
because they're being kept like animals
in makeshift prisons, little closets.
The kid with shackles on his feet.
That's why they, that's, that's, it's not immediately foreseeable.
It's not what comes to your mind immediately,
but it is foreseeable in the field of I'm investigating abuse.
How could you, how do you walk away just because you can't see the kids?
So in Brooklyn, New York,
they filed a report to the child protective services.
And if I have my facts right,
child protective services said they went to the
house to do a check and everything was okay, and they didn't. And those two workers were charged,
I believe, with criminal negligence and homicide. It was a front page news story,
because the first time a city worker was indicted for not doing their job. And obviously,
things have changed. And if there's anything positive that
you want to take out of this horrible story is I would hope that the regulations and the rules and
their response time, you know, is altered. I am thinking, Megan, I'd like to hear your opinion
on this. The fact that this is in Utah, which is a kind of a different state than maybe other
states in the union. Do you think that has any effect on this? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you know, Mormons,
this isn't a Mormon thing, but there may be some extreme sect of, you know, an offshoot that is,
is more prone to like living without the authorities coming or not sending their kids
to school. I have no idea.
I mean, we've seen that in like cults. And this woman, Jodi, was accused of running her own kind
of cult because what happened was she became the therapist for Ruby Frankie and her husband, Kevin.
And then before you knew it, she had Kevin out of the house. She had Kevin out of the picture
telling him he had a porn addiction. Apparently she said that to anybody who had ever like seen porn or like, you know, self-pleasure
would get in trouble with this woman in any degree. She's got a, a niece who, when news broke
of the, her arrest, Jody and Rudy's, uh, arrest Ruby, Jesse, the niece reached out to cops to
help them with their investigation. And she said, quote, Ruby needs to be held accountable because she made these choices. She's just as guilty. But Jody's been doing this for years, that I, Jesse, the niece, needed a safe house because
my aunt Jodi subjected me to severe emotional, spiritual, and psychological abuse, accused her
that my aunt Jodi accused me, Jesse, of being a sex and a porn addict, addicted to masturbation,
said the therapy she insisted on included the niece not being able to use tampons or having
any privacy in the bathroom.
Quote, she wanted to make my life so uncomfortable that it would have forced sin out. This continuously
got worse and worse. So there's a reference there to religiosity, right? Jesse went to cops to
report the alleged abuse. Nothing was done. And then she says, this is not just a specific thing
to her, Jodi. This is the criminal aunt. Utah culture, says the niece, is permeated with
Mormon culture. And this idea of covering up and believing authority, Jody had everyone wrapped
around her finger. So that's her accusation. I want a name. I want a name. If she went to
someone in 2010, there'd be a report. I want to know who it was she spoke to and find out why
nothing allegedly was done. Me too. So can we talk about Kevin? I know you raised Kevin. I got a lot
more to get to on this case, but Kevin gets called down to the police station by the cops and he's
like, huh, what? I got kicked out of the house a year ago. I don't know anybody anymore.
I haven't seen my kids in a year.
I don't know.
I was told by Jody, the therapist, I had a porn addiction and I couldn't have any.
And so he did it.
He left, had all contact with his children severed, and he had no objections, apparently.
So he's this is, I guess I say, a well-educated man with a good job.
Here he is a little bit in the police interrogation being told about it.
He's an absolute piece.
I know you curse, but my mother gets mad at me, so I won't curse.
He's a piece of garbage, an absolute piece of garbage on so many levels.
Let's just say there was no abuse going on,
and some shrink tells you you got some addiction,
you got to get out of the house, and you just hold up camp?
And be like, okay, I'm not going to see my kids again.
Drop dead.
I got nothing to do with you.
Any father, any parent who just disregards their parental duties like that
so easily, you have no worth in my life.
I don't care how smart you are.
You can be a trillionaire.
I don't care.
That's number one.
But number two, he has an idea of the possible abuse of his kids.
He knows that his wife was not playing with a full deck.
You don't go and check.
You don't ask.
Father's Day, Mother's Day, Christmas, holidays, birthdays.
You just let it go by.
I have no idea why Kevin is not charging this in some way.
If I was the DA, I would figure out some
way to come up with some negligence theory and put handcuffs on him. If just to punish him and
scare the hell out of him. Let me list, let me, let me play Kevin. Okay. Because when he was told
about the condition of his children, I thought it was bizarre. Here's a little bit of it in 20,
SOT 25 with the cops. Well, I want to to pick up my kids i haven't seen them for over a
year any of them no no have you communicated with your wife regarding like discipline with your kids
or their care or their physical well-being no a 12 to 13 year old boy was knocking on doors in the neighborhood asking for food and water.
That he was severely emaciated.
That he had skinny, scrawny, malnutritioned, not enough food, not enough water to sustain life.
So he had...
I'm sorry, what?
Love my wife i don't want anything to incriminate her or me in ways that i don't understand okay that is just cut a little bit he that is if you listen to the whole thing he's not like
what how is he where is he what exactly what are the injuries? Oh, my God. He's like,
very measured. Like, well, what does he mean? Well, what was I mean, it is the weirdest
reaction to news of your child, your children having been. Forgive me. Here's a shot of the
poor boy who all you can think of is the Holocaust when you see those shoulder blades. I mean, this child was starving to death.
I'm not saying that this guy knew anything.
I'm saying he does a damn good impression of somebody who did know what was going on.
His effect is troubling at best.
And to Arthur's point, at a minimum, even if he didn't know what was going on in that house, the fact
that he abandoned those kids and didn't check on them at all, to me, is borderline criminal.
I mean, he says he continued to pay for them, but that he'd been kind of banned to go work on his
porn addiction. But I mean, it is a complete dereliction of your parental duties. How does
that save you? Banned by who?
He's not banned.
I would shove it up his nose.
Banned by who?
By some shrink who he disagrees with?
It's one thing when a judge in these horrible divorce proceedings says, you can't see your kid and you can't go back to the house and there's an order of protection.
Now you're banned.
Now you're going to get handcuffs put on you.
And even then you fight, you fight, you fight for that child or those children.
Here he's just like, oh, really? I have a porn addiction. Oh, you don't want me to come around.
I I'll still write you a check, but I'm not going to check on my kids. Oh, to hell, man. I got no,
no use for that guy. So what, but like, what is the possibility? And we're speculating here,
but the possibility is that he knew very well because look, all the stuff we kicked it off with,
with like the one kid who had to sleep
on a beanbag for a year,
because some minor offense in the household,
like not cleaning his room, it was something small.
So he had to sleep on a beanbag for a year,
which is what led those 8,000 people
to write in to DCSF and others saying,
you need to investigate this family for abuse.
They were posting that on the YouTube.
He was totally on board for all of that
because he was with her. That was before he'd been ejected by the counselor. So, I mean, like the Kevin
definitely knew a lot. And I think the theory that we're just kicking around or speculation is that
he knew very well that they were taking it to the next level inside that house. He, you know,
like I say, he's talking about how, I don't know what it is, but like plates were flying.
And I, you know, I don't know where who made them fly.
You know, he's buying into the fact that this therapist either has magical powers or is dealing with a demon and like measures will be taken right to fight back.
I got I think he knew.
That's my belief is that this guy knew and was on board and was part of the weird therapy prescriptions of this nutcase, Jody.
Or should have known. I mean, knew or should have known.
Well, that's a given.
Reckless or a reckless disregard of of what was going on in that home.
And to me, again, it's morally bankrupt, you know, to do something like that.
I don't know what what bother could possibly do something like that. Here he is talking to Ruby. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Arthur.
Well, to Mark's point, you know, knew or should have known it's triggering like here in New York.
I mean, that's criminally negligent homicide. He's banned from the house. There's no court
order saying he can't go home. Some civilian said, come back to the house. That doesn't mean
he can't come back to the house. And if he knows that his children are being abused,
they're minors, he has an obligation.
Endangering the welfare of the child, check.
Felony charge on him.
Early negligent homicide, check.
Felony charge on him.
He's banned from the house.
Some jerk told him, oh, you can't come home and see your kids.
He knows that there's weird stuff going on.
You don't even check on them. You don't call someone else to check on them. You don't call
your adult children to check on them. I would go far on this guy. I would send the guy from
Pulp Fiction who's going to go medieval on his ass on them. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I don't
understand. Maybe they'll still take a look at him. It doesn't sound like it, though, with the
other two already sentenced and going to jail. But here's in the beginning, he stuck by Ruby and then ultimately filed for divorce. But here
is a conversation he had with her right after she'd been arrested. She's in jail during this.
This is via 2020, SOC 26. I do feel strong and I feel calm. And you know what? Adults have a
really hard time understanding that children can be full of evil and what that takes to fight it.
They're going to be in the hospital for three days.
So weird. It's just not necessary.
I'm trying to exaggerate this.
She's out of her mind.
I mean, for the listening audience, truly, if you saw the pictures
of that boy, he does look like a Holocaust victim that he's that emaciated and his wounds on his leg
legs from where the restraints were or the tape or both are deep and look extremely painful.
And let's not forget, he went over to the neighbors that day after having escaped somehow
from the house saying, can I please get something to eat and drink?
He was starving to death.
He was dying of thirst.
They weren't taking care of his basic needs.
So she's the mother is in like they're exaggerating.
It really wasn't that bad. Megan, so to the point of whether he knew or should have known, okay, giving him every benefit of the doubt, which I'm not really, I'm reluctantly doing, now she's been arrested.
Now you would have thought that he would have found out what really she did to his kids.
And while she's talking on the phone, saying how evil kids can be, he doesn't object. He doesn't say,
what are you talking about? They're exaggerating. Look at the injuries you inflicted on them,
on my children. Nothing. I don't know. Strong argument again that he knew or should have known.
By the way, Jody Hildebrandt, the alleged counselor, decided to point the finger at the mother, even though Jody was the one who was home when the cops came and raided the house and rescued the daughter.
The mother wasn't even there at the time. Jody was there. Jody knew she knew everything. That's why she's in jail now for 30 years where she belongs.
But in the beginning, she tried to blame the mother here again via 2020 is not 27.
I should be here.
I haven't done anything wrong.
I can't believe what I'm being accused of.
I just can't believe it.
I just can't believe it.
We didn't do that.
Those pictures we did not do.
He did that to himself, yes.
We put that on him
and then he rubbed around
and cut himself, yes.
But we didn't do that.
Oh my God.
It's worse than I thought.
She was blaming the son. She wasn't blaming
the co-defendant. She was blaming the son.
Go ahead, Arthur. Didn't they do something insane
where they wrapped the kid in saran wrap
on his birthday? It was 110 degrees
outside. It made him jump down on a trampoline
until his skin was melting
off. I mean, this is...
Look, I'm with Mark.
Like normally I'm not like rah, rah, life in prison,
but this is one of them.
These people should not be out of society
and this case should be bigger than it even is
as a warning sign to crazy ass parents
and to authorities all over the nation.
And when there was any hint
that something this type of abuse is going on,
that's when we need to trample on people's rights.
You know, oh, we couldn't get a warrant to go in the house.
Give me a break.
They get warrants to do anything, anytime they want.
Give me a break.
Look in the house.
I don't understand.
There's plenty of ways to figure out what's going on.
My, you know, I have kids right around this age.
If I did not send them to school,
or if I sent them to school like this,
you know how many people would
be all over me in my house, justifiably, understandably? Like where, where were the
authorities? If there's not a full fledged investigation on how they dropped the ball,
then this is all for naught because thank God these children have finally been rescued with,
not without significant lifetime emotional scars, Mark, as you said.
But what, what other kids are out there
right now? Like the system was alerted here and it completely failed them. And who else are they
failing right now? What other kids are being treated? And not everybody should be a parent.
You know, this woman put some of the abuse on YouTube, had another child call, had a niece
of the other perpetrator call, had neighbors calling.
They showed up there. The children were not seen by the investigators who rang the doorbell to see
if they were OK. And instead of saying we're coming back every day until we lay eyes on them,
they said, ah, couldn't find them. They didn't. If the system isn't investigated itself,
this is even more of an epic fail than it
already has been. I think we're all on the same page there. Let me take a quick break.
Back on the opposite end, we'll conversations with the most interesting and important political,
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P. Diddy had his homes raided by the FBI or Department of Homeland Security, and they made quite a mess out
of things. And we've got a little bit of the video of the aftermath, courtesy of TMZ. Take a look at
this. Quite a scene. Look at this. This is like the electronics, you know, heart of his home.
And reportedly they went to town on all of his hard
drives and computers and so on. I mean, every computer, every door, every cabinet open,
a mess is made. Those hard drives are going to be important. They're obviously looking for evidence
that would support the here's inside his safes of sex trafficking, which is the believed suspicion that may have justified the raid.
So here we are, guys, you know, a week later and there's been no arrest of Diddy.
How long does it take to search the hard drives?
And what do we make of this?
Go ahead, Mark.
This is going to take quite some time.
Are you kidding me?
This is you expect after a week that they're going to take a lot of time. They've got to go through
every single line of every text, every email, make their interpretations, add that and see if
it corroborates what they're already cooperating. Witnesses are saying they don't rush it. The
minute they make an arrest,
the speedy trial clock starts to tick. So they would rather, knowing he's not going anywhere,
he's extremely famous, he's not going to flee, take their time, build their case. And then the
minute they make an arrest, they've got to be ready to go to trial. So they hand over a ton
of evidence and they go, we're ready. leaving me and Arthur, if hypothetically we were defending him, with a mountain of evidence, unable to go to trial within the constraints
given to us by a judge.
So they're going to take their time, make sure they're ready to go.
You agree with that, Arthur?
You don't think it's weird that they don't have a case just because they haven't arrested
him yet?
Yeah, that's basically what Mark said, a standard operating procedure.
I mean, that's the difference between local prosecutors. It's like, you know, robbers and bank robbers and thieves. And, you know, they kind of grab them and then they figure out the evidences. With the feds, they figure out what all the evidence is. They keep an eye on where that person is. And, you know, they don't make an arrest until, I mean, they have a 97% conviction rate or some crazy number like that because they don't
put the handcuffs on someone until they feel that there's no way they could win. And there's a lot
of stuff here to go through, but boy, they were so, first of all, those pictures that you showed,
I know they handle things differently. In New York, that's not typical when they do a search
warrant on someone of that. I represented Rudy Giuliani when they executed a search warrant
on his apartment. They definitely did
not do that in his apartment.
Now, P. Diddy and Rudy Giuliani, maybe
shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence,
but, you know, Rudy
was treated and his apartment was treated, you know,
very, very appropriately,
very nicely. There was a lot of cooperation
going on.
There was no, I mean, these guys flew in
helicopters. It's what they did to Roger Stone. It's just like, let's let's show you allegations.
There are allegations against P. Diddy about multiple guns. Now they're taking another look
at that infamous shooting in that New York club where J. Lo was with him because she was his
girlfriend at the time. And it was said to be done by one of his associates. He was there.
But now a witness is saying, actually, it was P. Diddy there. So there's allegations in his
case that he's actually a dangerous man with a bunch of guns that he's used. I'm surprised.
I'm surprised. Arthur's surprised that they left his place that way. What? Arthur's clients,
what they clean up after. I mean, you know, none of my clients, high profile or not, that's how they leave houses
after. Well, maybe my cops are nicer than yours. What do you want me to tell you? My FBI is
incredibly annoying. I hope that these pretty guys are nicer than yours here in the city.
You really don't want them to get a chocolate on the bed for your clients, I'm sure.
Yeah, exactly.
Like if they get a search warrant, they have absolutely no obligation to do it neatly or
leave your home in a nice condition.
So you really don't want it to get to that point. But it did with P. Diddy.
OK, so let's get into what we think the allegations against him are, or at least what they might potentially be investigating.
So there was a bombshell of a lawsuit filed against Diddy by his ex-girlfriend Cassie. And while he came out and said, I deny everything. And it was about abuse,
beating her up, um, sexual, you know, misbehavior. Um, he said, I deny it all. This is a lie. And within one day he settled it within one day. Well, then came this guy, Rodney, Lil Rod Jones,
who filed a lawsuit right, right, right around the same time. And he claims Diddy repeatedly sexually
assaulted him from September 22 to November 23. While Jones was a producer and videographer,
his lawsuit is for $30 million, filed the suit in federal court in New York Southern District.
He compared Combs to Jeffrey Epstein, accused him of groping his genitals, grooming him into
having sex, forcing him to
procure sex workers, strippers and drugs. Claims at one point he woke up in the bed with Diddy
and some sex workers and thought that he had been drugged by Diddy. I mean, forgive me,
but weirdly claims in the lawsuit that Diddy kept touching his anus, which is like a weird thing to
say. It just kind of keeps happening to you at home. I don't understand that allegation,
but there's a real question about whether this guy is real and had all this stuff happen to him or whether he
saw Cassie come forward, get a settlement within 24 hours and then decided maybe there's a pot of
gold there. So with all due respect to Mr. Jones, I don't know what the truth is, but that's
certainly what the Diddy team is going to say, because they say everything he's alleged is 100 percent provably false. He's another one of the
witnesses. Then I'll mention what the J-Lo shooting in one second. But just take on those two things,
Cassie and Little Rod, as far as the alleged sex trafficking allegations go.
So there's a reason why the feds took the time to apply to a federal judge and establish probable cause to go into both of Diddy's castles, because absent that corroborating, supporting evidence, they're not getting a conviction with just the testimony of that guy or her or just human beings. There is a built-in motive to allege false things against celebrities. We
call it a cash grab. So you better have corroborating, supporting evidence of your
allegations. What do I think that they're doing? This particular agency that went in, it's not a
local agency. It's a federal agency that typically handles sex trafficking cases. And those are some
of the allegations being made. If it was just a sexual assault, him touching the part of the body
that you mentioned earlier, that'd be handled by local authorities. I think that when you're
dealing with a federal agency like this who handles sex trafficking, you're talking about
an allegation of him doing something involving over state lines, the movement of potentially
young people.
That's what's being alleged.
And that's why you have this agency involved.
The the lawsuit followed filed by Mr. Jones claims that Mr. Jones looks up to this idolized
music producer, Steve Jordan, Stevie J, and that Combs exploited that to try to
get this guy, Jones, to have sex with Combs. They say Mr. Combs informed Jones that he had engaged
in sexual intercourse with rapper redacted, R&B singer redacted, and Stevie J. Mr. Combs went so
far as to share a video of who he claims was Stevie J
anally penetrating a Caucasian male without a condom. Forgive me, audience reading from the
complaint here. Mr. Jones believes that Mr. Combs showed him this and attributed it to his idol,
Stevie J, to ease Mr. Jones's anxiety concerning homosexuality. According to Mr. Jones, Mr. Combs
said, this is a normal practice in the music industry. Look, even Stevie J is doing it. Then they say that they're in possession of the video
and will provide a copy to the court, including still frames of it. That's, you know, it's kind
of reminding me a little bit of Harvey in the pattern evidence, Arthur, because they're saying
he's a deviant, that Sean Combs is a deviant and that he exploited this guy.
He exploited Cassie.
He's constantly surrounded by sex workers and weird sex parties.
And there's this video circulating on the Internet of a young Justin Bieber.
I'm not suggesting he sexually abused Justin Bieber, but I'm going to show you a couple
videos that suggest like the guy's off.
Bieber was 15 years old. It was around 2009. And apparently he was for some reason spending the
weekend with, to me, what appears to be a very creepy P Diddy. Look at this. It's not 14.
Justin, he's in, you ever seen the movie 48 hours right Right now he's having 48 hours with Diddy, him and his boy.
They're having the times of their lives, like, you know,
where we hanging out and what we doing.
We can't really disclose.
But it's definitely a 15-year-old's dream.
You know, I have been given custody of him.
You know, he signed to Usher.
I'm signed to Usher.
I had legal guardianship of Usher when, you know, he did his first album.
I did Usher's first album.
I don't really, I don't have legal guardianship of him, but for the next 48 hours, he's with
me.
So, and we going to go full, buck full crazy.
We going crazy.
What do you make of it?
Yeah, I'm happy it's not my son Luca in that video right there.
And I say that with all sincerity. You would never give custody of your son Luca to P. Diddy for a weekend.
Yeah, that is a fact.
You know, we'll talk about his defense for a second because you brought it up already and you talked about the thing with J-Lo, right?
So I know a lot about that because my father represented Jennifer Lopez at the time and I was in the courtroom for the submissions where it was Ben Brofman summing up and his opening line was basically the witness, the main witness against him has, and I remember the number, was like 80 million or 100 million reasons to lie because she's suing him.
She got shot in the face.
Right.
Okay.
So she's the one who's suing him.
So if she gets convicted, automatically she wins the lawsuit.
It's just a matter of how much money. And so the whole presentation to the jury was,
and Johnny Cochran was on the team as well, was all about, if this is her money, she's saying
what she needs to say for money. It's a money grab, it's a money grab, it's a money grab. And
he was acquitted. Now they want to revisit this saying that he actually did do the shooting and
he paid someone else off to take the fall, who got sentenced to 10 years in jail.
I'm not a big fan of going back almost 30 years looking at crimes that have already been litigated.
There's double jeopardy in the state court.
But here, the one thing about this new allegation is it's not from 30 years ago.
It's from 2022 and 2023, which, you know, I don't know, may ring true. The bottom line is what Mark said
in the very beginning, is they're going to go through everything they got from him and try to
piece it all together. This prosecutor, this Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York,
he is cut from the same cloth as Rudy Giuliani and Preet Bharara. He is looking for the big names
to, you know, to indict and get his name
out there. This is the same prosecutor who handed a search warrant to the mayor of the city of New
York, the sitting mayor of the city of New York, almost six months ago, and nothing has happened.
So, you know, these things take time. I hope for the mayor of the city of New York, nothing happens.
For P. Diddy, I don't know. Mark Reiglash saidash said p diddy's not going anywhere i don't know
if i was p diddy and i if i knew i did something wrong i wouldn't be so sure that i wouldn't be
going somewhere well you mean fleeing is that what you mean yeah yeah but is there i mean where's he
going you know well there's a report plenty of countries where you can go that he's not going
to be extradited but when the allegation you know it's fraud, maybe they don't bring him back.
When you throw out what I think we're going to hear.
And again, he's presumed to be innocent.
I don't know that he did anything.
But if they're throwing around a sex trafficking investigation, particularly involving minors,
there are very few countries that wouldn't return him right away.
So I don't think he's going anywhere.
Guys, you're the best.
All the best to both of you.
And again, Arthur, congrats on your big court of appeals argument. We're proud of you.
Thank you so much, Megan. All right, guys. Lots of love. See you soon.
Thanks, Meg. I actually have some more things I want to say about this case before we wrap.
Our panel had to go, but I've got some more thoughts on Diddy. I want to go through them.
So here's the thing. I mentioned that we're going to be
showing you some videos. There's another video of Diddy on Nickelodeon. My God, Nickelodeon.
We just did a whole show on Nickelodeon, which was like pedophile central. Not so long ago,
we talked about the number of pedophiles who got arrested there, the one with the inappropriate contact with a minor and the one with the child pornography and so on. And now Diddy swung by Nickelodeon
and appears in a video. I just had to show this to you because you got to see
what they had him do. This creepy guy, Dan Schneider, who was behind all the hit shows
there. Look, look at Diddy's appearance
on Nickelodeon back in 2002. We'll do it. Didn't work. He's still asleep. Try this.
Shall I? By all means.
It's like name the celebrity and you can find a creepy video of them on Dan Schneider's
Nickelodeon. You know, whether it's Ariana Grande squirting water all over herself and
writhing on the bed when she was prepubescent. Or now you see Diddy,
and we went through a bunch of them last week.
But I mean, this channel,
I'll never look at it the same again, ever.
So Diddy thought that was an appropriate bit to be in.
Okay, that's fine.
He also thought it was appropriate to say what he said about Justin Bieber when he was 15.
All right, less fine.
And then you've got Usher.
You heard Bieber mention, I'm signed to Usher, who was a protege of Diddy's when he was just in his teens and actually spoke to Howard Stern about it in 2016.
Looking back at when he was only 13 years old and encountered Diddy.
Listen to this.
I lived with Sean Puffy Combs for a
year. That's the crazy thing. Now that was L.A. Reid's idea, right? We're sending you over to
something called Puffy Flavor Camp. There you go. You were 13. What were you seeing? I went there to
see the lifestyle. Right. And I saw it. But I don't know if I could indulge and understand what I was
even looking at. It was it was pretty wild. So nobody tried to, you know, some
woman didn't come along?
I didn't say that.
What I did say is that there were very curious
things taking place and I didn't
necessarily understand it.
Would you ever send your kid to Puffy Camp?
Hell no.
No.
He wouldn't. And nor
should you and nor should Bieber's parents have done so. Nor should any of these parents. I mean, I wouldn't. And nor should you, and nor should Bieber's parents have done. So
nor should any of these parents. I mean, I don't understand the parent who allows their minor
child to go spend a weekend, nevermind a year with someone like a music star, uh, who, you know,
leads probably some sort of advanced lifestyle. You don't want your kid exposed to. Never mind somebody like Diddy, who, you know, as of that, that shooting incident was 2001. Like that had long
been on the record. I don't get it. And I think Diddy's questionable choices are catching up with
him in a way that I'm perfectly fine with. And I agree with the guys. It's probably not going to
be too much longer until we see Diddy in cuffs and arrested for
what appears to me to be a pattern of behavior. Having said that, his attorney, Sean Hawley,
has disputed the allegations previously, saying we have overwhelming, indisputable proof
that these claims, the ones I read from Mr. Jones, are complete lies. They also denied the claims of
Cassie in that lawsuit that they settled. And as for Stevie J, who was accused in the Mr. Jones lawsuit, as I mentioned, he has
come out and called the allegations against him false, adding that his lawyer will be
handling this going forward.
So there's a lot.
I don't know if there's a theme to today's show.
It's probably parenting, you know, and it goes by the same principle as terror.
If you see something,
say something. If somebody doesn't show up in school for a long time, if somebody shows up
appearing emaciated, if you see a kid who continues to get abandoned by his parents,
say something. Remember we talked, you know, last week about the young man who was on Nickelodeon,
a rising star, Drake Bell, who got sexually abused by a Nickelodeon worker,
the script coach, who intentionally inserted himself in between the parent and the child.
The father had a good relationship with Drake. This predator saw it, tried to alienate Drake
from his dad successfully, got Drake away from the dad and in the custody of the mother who
wasn't as attentive and had been warned by the dad to keep Drake away from the dad and in the custody of the mother who wasn't as attentive and had
been warned by the dad to keep Drake away from this particular guy because the dad smelled a rat.
She didn't. She was allowing overnights with a grown man who was 43 years old with her 15 year
old boy. And guess what happened? Drake got assaulted repeatedly, sexually assaulted by
this guy who wound up serving 18 months in prison for what he pleaded guilty to with respect to Drake Bell. A life was changed forever. Parenting is not a part-time job. It's not something you'd
take your eye off for one minute. And alone time between an adult and a young boy in particular,
coming of age, but girls too, coming of age is dangerous. You think you know
somebody you don't know. Just ask all those poor little altar boys who were abused. You think you
know somebody you don't know. Overnights are one thing when there are other people present
and your child has been prepared by you for what a dangerous touch is and what to do,
God forbid something should happen. I know it's hard to have these conversations with a kid because you got to
scare the daylights out of them, but they have to be made aware. Otherwise you see things like
this happen, like at Nickelodeon and these other stories that we're talking about, Ruby, Frankie,
get involved, be a troublemaker. So you lose a friend and Ruby, who cares? You save a child,
make a call, follow up. Why
didn't you? What do you mean they weren't there? Why aren't you ringing? Go ring the doorbell.
You could do it. It's less safe. But if there's a child safety at issue, I would do it.
Anyway, it's just so frustrating to see the weakest and most vulnerable among us continuously get
underserved and indeed abandoned by those who should be protecting them.
So lots for the day. Thank you, all of you, for listening today and every day and for watching.
We'll be back tomorrow with Glenn Greenwald.
Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.