The Megyn Kelly Show - The TRUTH About Michael Jackson as Biopic Sets Records, and Blake Lively's DOOMED Legal Strategy, with Mark Geragos and Matt Murphy

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Megyn Kelly is joined by Mark Geragos, co-host of "In The Well," to discuss the new Michael Jackson movie "Michael" dominating the culture, the controversy over his legacy back into the spotlight, credibility questions surrounding his accusers, the phenomenon of representing Jackson at the trial, the abuse Michael Jackson suffered throughout his childhood at the hands of his father, the truth about the completely unique level of fame he achieved, the various child abuse allegations made against Michael Jackson, why the accusations remain so difficult to assess years later, major questions surrounding the accusers featured in "Leaving Neverland," the changing story we've heard from them over the years, and more. Then Matt Murphy, co-host of "In The Well," joins to discuss the shocking 2003 interview moment of Michael Jackson talking about kids, how the comments fueled public backlash and legal scrutiny, Blake Lively’s lawyer attempting to spin her client’s brutal legal loss after she settled for no money, the remaining battle over attorney fees, why Blake Lively’s legal strategy against Justin Baldoni was doomed to fail, whether her lawyers are trying to cover their own failures now, and more.    Subscribe to MK True Crime to find ALL the new shows: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MKTrueCrime?sub_confirmation=1 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mk-true-crime/id1829831499 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4o80I2RSC2NvY51TIaKkJW Social: http://mktruecrime.com/   BeeKeeper's Naturals: This Memorial Day go to https://beekeepersnaturals.com/MEGYN or enter code MEGYN for 25% off your order Ethos Life Insurance: Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at: https://ethos.com/MK Byrna: Go to https://Byrna.com or your local Sportsman's Warehouse today. SimpliSafe: Visit https://simplisafe.com/MEGYN to claim 50% off any new system!     Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKelly Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShow Instagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShow Facebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow  Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. We have a great, great program for you today. You will not believe who Katie Porter is blaming for the leak of that infamous video of her berating her staffer. Get them, Katie. She's mad and she's naming names, and we've done a deep dive on it. And we have a Kelly's court with another twist in the Blake lively Justin Baldoni case. which despite that shock settlement is not over just yet. Wait until you hear what her lawyer just said. First, though, we're going to do something a little different today. Have you heard about or seen this new Michael Jackson movie? It's called Michael, and it has already grossed nearly $600 million worldwide since its release on April 24th. I mean, that's no time at all ago with a legitimate chance to hit the billion dollar mark. It's causing a lot of controversy. We'll explain why, but here's the movie's trailer.

I love my family. I just want to do my own thing. Just have all these ideas in my head. Just got to get them out. And do it, Michael. Not a little boy anymore. Michael, I knew you were different the moment you were born. You have a very special life.

I believe music can change the world. Spread love, joy and peace. That is what I want the world to feel. Magic. Wow. Now the movie ends before Michael Jackson was accused. of sexual abuse of children. It originally did not end there, but it does in the version that you're seeing in the theaters.

Despite the film ignoring the controversy surrounding that, you know, the allegations of Jackson's behavior around children, the movie has reopened the debate about the pop star's legacy and the credibility of his accusers. I listened to a full hour on this by the New York Times, The Daily the other day. the reporter who they assigned to go see the film and so on was refusing to actually see it so convinced he was of Michael Jackson's guilt as a child predator. The Times apparently had to make him see it before he would appear on the Daily to talk about it, which is kind of derelict as a reporter. But that's just one example of the feelings that just the name Michael Jackson still engender

for some people. Now, I'm just going to tell you a story a couple years ago when I was off, I was in between NBC and this show. I took a deep dive into the allegations against Jackson made in that so-called documentary, Finding Neverland. I had very little time, very little things to do with the time that I had in my hands. So I actually took a deep dive into the Woody Allen allegations and the Michael Jackson allegations at the time. And I have to tell you, I found serious problems. with both of them. Now, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm convinced that the Woody Allen thinks did that happen. I don't think Woody Allen molested his daughter. I think crazy Mia Farrow put that in her daughter's head and that Dylan genuinely believes it because of her crazy mother,

not because of her perverted father. But that's a conversation for another day. Michael Jackson, I wouldn't go there. However, I do see serious credibility problems with at least the two men who are featured in Finding Neverland. And my problem at the time was that the document Again, that's in air quotes, did not disclose any of them. Oprah Winfrey did a terrible job at the end of it, trying to sort of glaze the whole thing without asking any tough questions of the two accusers. And with all due respect to them, maybe they're telling the truth, but they have massive credibility problems, especially the one, the main guy.

And none of it was raised. None of it was raised by the, quote, filmmaker on the, quote, documentary. but I haven't done a deep dive on all of the Michael accusers, so I'm not going to go that far. And in fact, I've seen a lot that I find deeply, deeply disturbing. And we're going to talk about it today. And there's a great guest who you know very well. Mark Garagos is here. He is co-host of In The Well, which is a new program we've just launched on our MK True Crime podcast channel.

If you just go to any podcast button and type in In The Well, you can find it. or just type in MK True Crime, it'll take you there. And you can do the same on YouTube. All right. So go ahead and subscribe and you can listen to Mark, along with his partner in crime, Matt Murphy, lifelong prosecutor Matt, lifelong defense attorney. Mark, duke it out on some of the greatest cases of our time and then some great war stories of their own.

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Mark is the perfect person because he represented Michael Jackson when he was officially charged with endangering a child, charges that dominated the news and the country's attention. for months mark i mean i remember watching you handling this and you look pretty good by the way i have to say you look the same your hair's like maybe a little bit grayer but you look the same you look for very good anyway but what that case must have caused it to go gray because you did not have the most compliant client in the world you see in that let's just start there as you as you look at that you see in that picture ben brothman between me and um michael ben has one of the great lines of all time. And I'll tell some of the stories. I remember Ben and I went to the arraignment

there, and that could be right outside of the arraignment. And we were standing after the arraignment next to Michael. And all of a sudden, Michael was on top of the SUV. He had in one fell swoop jumped up on top of the SUV. And Broffman turned to me and he said, if we don't get this guy There you go. There it is. Oh, sorry, Mark. That's it. We'll play it. And then you finish your thought.

There he is. He's up for it. Okay, he's up on top of the way. Bannon, he's going to moonwalk. This is right after he was indicted. Can you imagine this happening today with social media? You see me looking up there with my sunglasses on? Broffman literally saying to me, if we don't get this guy under control, he's going to come to court in his pajamas.

And I started laughing hysterically. And sure enough, he did come to court in his pajamas. But, oh, my God. He was accused of child molestation and he's like having a great time, the end day of the indictment on top of the van doing the moonwalk. But of course, his instincts were not wrong that he knew he was beloved. Wait, where are you, Mark? Right there in the bottom left, right there. And there's Ben standing right next to me.

We're talking. We were. Get down. Get down right now. I mean, Ben and I are just, we were just shaking our heads at the time in real time. It was unbelievable. And I will tell you, let me give you just a little bit of history as to how many cross currents I have and why I can actually talk to you about this. So when Michael was indicted, and that was the arraignment right there, the reason we brought Ben Brofman in, I had called Johnny Cochran. Johnny was very sick at the time, and Johnny had brought me in much earlier to represent Michael

during the Child Protective Services investigation. What was the year? Yeah, probably 2000 and end of 2002, beginning at 2003. And so I was handling the child services, protective services, and at the same time, I knew that there was this family that had kind of attached themselves. to Michael. And one of the things that was also on the mission was to investigate the family. And as soon as I had done a little bit of investigation and my PI, who's now passed away, actually discovered this incident that had happened at J.C. Penney's involving the mother.

As soon as we saw that, we had to get the family away from Michael because obviously... Okay, wait, just to jump in, because the same family that was alleging Michael had molested their son, had sued J.C. Penny alleging that a guard had roughed them up. They started to look like a vexatious litigants who, you know, never miss an opportunity to make a dime off of a rich company or client of yours. So you, that's what you're saying. You've discovered they've got a history. Correct. And once we discovered that, once I got them moved out of Neverland and we had done all of that. And then I'm having discussions in real time after the search warrant was executed on Neverland. Mind you, remember, Megan, you may have been there.

I don't remember that well, but I was doing a preliminary hearing in Modesto for Scott Peterson. I was wearing a pager. I got a page from the 805 area code recognized it as the house. And literally, as I'm finalizing the preliminary hearing for Scott, they're executing the search warrant at Neverland. So we knew that this was happening. And I had we, there's a whole bunch of stories about what happened right after that and getting taped by the, the private plane jet operator who then tried to sell the tape of Michael and I on the jet. You and Michael had been on this private plane and they had the nerve of taping a lawyer with his client and trying to sell it to the highest bidder, which is insane. Beyond insane. The only thing there's,

is a court of appeals justice. I think she's retired now. I ended up suing the private plane operator and getting a $22 million verdict for that. And when we went up to the court of appeal, I don't know if it was joking or not. She said, are you telling me that it would shock Garragus's conscience to have a camera filming him and to get $22 million? And so that ended up getting reversed and we had to retry. But the insanity of what was having to have. happening then with Michael in Santa Maria and Scott in Modesto and then later San Mateo was truly one of the craziest times. But Michael had support. He had an unbelievable support compared to, and I always contrasted it with Scott, who was kind of the infamous bookend to that. And what

happened was I then quickly realized that Tom Sneddon, who was, was the then DA, was coming after Michael alleging that he had obstructed justice, basically, by moving the family off of Neverland. That's why I brought... And just so I'm clear, Mark, about who we're talking about, because the boy that he was accused of molesting in the trial in 2003 was named Gavin Arvizzo. But it was technically the second accusation. The first was by a child named Jordy Chandler, 10 years.

earlier in 1993. So when you're referring to the family, are you talking about Gavin's family that was at Neverland? Because that's the family with JCPenney. So you would mark them a little earlier as being too close to Michael with a questionable history. Like, let's get them away from each other, but too late because this child who was a cancer patient would ultimately accuse Michael and you would have to go defend him in criminal court. And it's a great point. It's a great point you bring up because remember in the 90s, there was a criminal grand jury that Howard Weitzman was handling Michael's case along with Johnny in the Los Angeles County Court. And they ended up settling in the 90s with a young man then who was making the accusation.

And then, lo and behold, 10 years, 20 years later, you're having this accusation. And there was a fear in the camp that, oh, oh, here we go. Again, ironically, they were right. It was a 10 years. Actually, both families, I think at one point, had the same lawyer or law firm, which is ironic because now you've got, at least in the Diddy case, you have the kind of same lawyers involved in a lot of accusers there. But what ended up happening was I realized I was going to be a witness.

I brought in Ben Broffman, and I did. I ended up testifying not once but twice in Michael Jackson's trial. So not only did I kind of shepherd him through the Child Protective Services, I was also a witness for the defense and the judge had me waive on the record attorney-client and work product in order to testify. And so that happened. He was famously acquitted. I thought Tom, who handled the trial, Meserode did a workman-like judge.

in that under extremely difficult circumstances. And the, but that acquittal, because I had always wondered how we would ever get through that trial, it's my opinion that that trial really took it out of him. I mean, he was, he was fragile when I first started with him. But by the time the trial ended, and I wouldn't have, if we had prediction markets, I wouldn't have bet on his stamina for that trial. I think the trial really did him in. And I think there's also speaking of, you know, the movie that you're talking about and the amount of money that it's generating, the wellspring of support and the kind of the way they've characterized him or portrayed him in the movie, they ended it, to your point, prior to the allegations.

That was not the first cut. By all reports, once they had that they were trying to have a more elongation. treatment of his life, then the case involving the 90s person who made an accusation that was settled for reportedly eight figures, had a clause in the settlement that you couldn't kind of treat this, if you will. So the estate, I presumably had to make a pivot, and that's why they truncated this earlier. It actually may turn out to be... Yes, the Jority Chandler case. Yes, that's what the New York Times is reporting. that originally this biopic, Michael, ended with an attempt to address the abuse allegations

and an attempt to take down of some number of the accusers, maybe just Jordy, maybe more. I don't know. I haven't, obviously hasn't been released. No, it was reported to be more, and I've got a pretty good indication that it was more. And there was a lot of the machinations that have not been reported by the New York Times and that I can tell you actually existed was that they were going to originally try to address Jordie Chandler. But there was a monumental problem that was going on behind the scenes when there were other accusers that were there that they had not dealt with. Some of the people who were financing this film had been felt like they had been misled. There was all kinds of back and forth in order to try and read.

remedy this. And I think where where the film landed was the solution. We're just not going to go there in that period of time because it's too hard to navigate all of this. I mean, frankly, it wound up being the best thing that could happen to them because the movie is making so much money. It allows people to take in just his genius and his incredible talent without really having to wrestle with the other side of Michael Jackson, which is frankly what we'd all like to do. No one wanted this to be Michael's ending or a piece of his story. So it kind of gives the watcher permission to just think about him in the best light. Amazingly, and very coolly, he's played by his nephew, Jafar Jackson, who is Jermaine, Michael's brother's son. So it's

kind of cool that somebody who's in the family is actually playing Michael Jackson. Before we get to the darkness, so I just want to spend a minute on Michael's upbringing, Mark, because he really is whatever the legacy, you know, whatever the truth is about Michael and children. And it does matter. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. But whatever it is, you cannot deny his talent. You cannot deny his importance as a cultural figure in the United States. In the world, music scene, it's just, it is enormous and it's like too big to really understand. It's hard to overstate the phenomena that was Michael Jackson in the 80s. If you were a adult and sentient in the 80s.

And he was literally the kind of soundtrack of that decade and longer. And it was, I cross every, there's a picture you've got with the Reagan's. I mean, he cut across every socioeconomic ethnic. You name the category. He was, he permeated it. It was unbelievable what the kind of phenomena that he was. even going into 2000. I've had my good fortune of representing some of the most...

Princess Diana. The Princess Diana adored him. Look at the now king. He was enthralled. I mean, it was unbelievable the kind of rarefied air that he occupied. And the bigger star. No matter who he met, he was the bigger star. A world-class talent, almost godlike in the way people would respond.

to him just because in this one package, this overwhelming amount of talent, you know, just the number of things he could do unlike anybody else, better than everybody else. And we grew up with him. I mean, he was a child star with the Jackson Five. He was the star of the Jackson Five. There was a story online as I was preparing for today where his mother was saying that she went to Joe and said, let Michael sing. And he said, no, Jermaine's the singer. And she said, no, no, but listen to Michael sing. And he was like, Jermaine is the lead singer. And she apparently insisted, and Joe Jackson was an asshole, terrible father. But he listened to her in this one case and let Michael sing. And Michael immediately became the lead singer of the Jackson Five, which

they practiced all the time. They were from Gary, Indiana, which is a very rough run-down town with all due respect to Gary. I don't know if it's seen better days. In my lifetime, it's never been good days for Gary. And he was determined to see that family rise up out of that. And boy, did they ever. So the kids become huge stars, but not without awful sacrifices. And Michael, when he became an adult, gave some key interviews on what it was like growing up in that household and what it was like to have this guy as your dad. And of course, Michael was like a large child when he was a grown man and sounded it, had the voice of a young child, had the demeanor of a young child. So for those who have, you know, our younger audience may not have seen any of these clips.

They may be sort of shocked by how he looks and sounds. But here he is in a famous interview with Martin Bashir talking about the abuse warning. This stuff is disturbing. Sot 2. He was tough. How often would he beat you? Too much. Would he only use a better?

Why do you do this to me? No more than a belt. What else would he use to hit you with? Iron courts, whatever's around. Throw you up against the wall, hard as he could. See, it's one thing to... But you were only a child. I know.

You were a baby. I know. It's one thing to discipline. And you were producing. successful records. I know. He would lose his temper. I just remember hearing my mother's scream,

Joe, you're gonna kill him, you're gonna kill him, stop it. I'm scared, so scared that I would regurgitate. You would vomit? Mm-hmm. When would you vomit? What would produce that sort of reaction in you? His presence, just seeing him. And sometimes I'd faint, and my bodyguards would have to hold me up.

When he was beating you, did you hate him? Yeah, strong hate. That's why to this day I don't lay a finger on my children. I don't want them to ever feel that way about me. Ever. And he didn't allow us to call him Daddy. And I wanted to call him Daddy so bad. He said, I'm not Daddy. I'm Joseph to you.

You know, it's... Just one more, Mark. Before you go to the next, remember, this was what triggered to my mind in retrospect. I didn't know it at the time, obviously. But this Martin Bashir interview is what triggered, I think, in a lot of ways, the dominoes that led to his downfall in death. because that interview so, it was so used against him or weaponized against him, that it ended up fueling the fire that was the DA.

It ended up being kind of the wind at the back of the prosecution. And he never recovered from it. It was just that. I'll play that sound by two. But before I get to that, before I get to that piece of it, just want to stay on the abuse because, of course, if Michael Jackson was a child molester, the odds are overwhelming that he was molested, too, when he was a child. And, you know, everybody wants to know how does one become like this,

because we want to prevent the creation of more. And he never accused his father of sexual abuse, but I did find an extraordinary clip. This is from a recording made for the book, the Michael Jackson tapes. And it's Michael's voice over old people. pictures of the family. And you heard him there saying his dad used to hit him with an ironing cord. He means, and he explains here, the cord of an iron, like literally the plug that plugs into an iron. And here he goes further with it. It was some disturbing additional details in Sot 3. He was left. The way he would beat you was, you know, it was hard. Sometimes you take them, make strip nude first. You were always.

oil you down. Your whole ritual, he would oil you down. So when the flip of the ironing cords hit you, it would just, you know, and it was just like me dying. You just flips all your face, your back, everywhere. I always hear my mother, but, no, Joe, you're going to kill him, you're going to kill him, no. I would say, I would just give up. I'd always nothing I can do. And I hated him for it. Now I have to say a father making his son get naked and covering him in oil takes me to a different place. And it is very plausible to me that Michael Jackson might not have been ready to admit or ever prepared to admit what else happened.

But it's just very strange to hear of a father making his child get nude and oil him up before a beating. Either way, Mark, you can make the argument that that behavior plus physical abuse, that behavior plus sex. abuse could have created something very dark inside Michael. Well, I mentioned earlier the first time I was brought in was when child protective services was called on him. And you see there that he's talking about her in one of the previous things, talking about his own children. And I think in retrospect, he was prepared for, later prepared for the criminal case.

I don't think he was ever prepared in retrospect for that child protective services investigation. It was so hurtful, devastating, and shook him to his core. I just remember talking to him about it, and he just could not wrap his head around the idea that he would be doing anything untoward towards the kids. And we did get it shut down, but by that time it was shut down, the criminal case, had kind of heated up and so there was no rest for the weary, so to speak. And it was a very difficult time for him. I remember, I think I'd mentioned this once before. One of the most terrifying times to have a client was being called one time and finding him on the floor,

OD'd in the run-up to the trial itself. And he had this wonderful housekeeper who was living in the house, who had called and was panicked. And obviously you couldn't take him to the hospital immediately. He had to have a doctor there. I mean, by the time the 2000s came around, he had undergone so much. And he was, used the term self-medicating,

having others medicating. It was just a spectacularly hard fall from the heights to your point that he had been at. you know, 20, 10 years earlier. Yeah, I mean, it was everything, right? Just from my vantage point out in the press and in the public, it was the multiple accusations now, the 93 accusation, the 2003 accusation of abuse,

the endangerment of his own children, injected into the conversation as, you know, he could lose custody of his kids. The multiple plastic surgeries, which, like, that's a whole, his name is almost synonymous with like the bizarre plastic surgery trend that's kind of taken over since then. But he was a pioneer. And just doing too much and getting addicted to it and not knowing when to stop. The skin color changes, you know, there's so many eccentricities about him.

And some, you could kind of easily dismiss as the product of mega. fame, like ultra fame, like Elvis-like fame. And of course, he would wind up marrying Elvis's daughter. That's another whole twist, right? But like, part of the mystery is, was it, how much was attributable to incredible fame and this bizarre upbringing, like that might happen to any child who was as much as he was at a young age? And how much, here's Lisa Marie Presley, just loving on him on stage. Oh, sorry. No, no, it's just a family. It's just a fan. I was going to say, I don't think that's Lisa Marie. For a second, I thought, this woman's too tall to be Lisa Marie.

And how much is attributable to abuse? Look at those fans. For me, just as an observer, I don't remember that kind of reaction except for the Beatles back in the 60s. And Elvis, I'd say. Look at that. I feel like Elvis brought people there too. But yeah, no, like, it is a term starstruck.

Yeah. And it's, that's exactly what these people were, like, struck by this megawatt star. And unlike so many of these stars, Mark, he delivered. You know, it's not like we, we today build people up with image making and PR firms and, you know, sort of the social media blitz. Here's a woman being taken away on a stretcher. She's so overwhelmed by him. But he delivered in terms of the performance and the skills and the talent and just, you know, the way he moved was not human. It was overwhelming to behold.

And what you see was is just that kind of that tearing apart of him. And it's the analysis. I've thought a lot about it over the years and at what price and, the kind of the collateral damage around him and most recently with the new accusers and the you know on the heels of what we're talking about here which is the movie that is out there that kind of truss drops off right before next up i'm uh i i believe will be a movie that talks about the trial and uh that my guess is is be out momentarily as well and you've When you see there, by the way, that clip that you showed, I don't know a whole lot of men that could do what he did in terms of leaping up on top of an SUV, even at that stage in his life and with the physical ailments that he had.

It's just hard to. Well, that's one of the sad things. If it hadn't been for the drugs, he probably would have lived a long life because he was obviously extremely fit. You know, I mean, from years of aggressive dancing. I mean, for the love of God, Keith Richards is still alive, just based on what he did on stage with the Rolling Stones. Can you imagine we could have had Michael for decades? But a man named Dr. Conrad Murray entered his life and bizarrely agreed as a board-certified

anesthesiologist to administer propofol to him night after night in 2008 or nine and killed him. I mean, he died. That is not a safe thing to have happened, and that's how he ultimately died. Go ahead. You know, I was just going to say, it reminds me, I see this all too often with a lot of people trying to basically turn their brains off when they reach these kinds of levels. And that was, I think, to some degree where he was, is just trying to literally anesthetize himself to the point where he could sleep, where he could just stop.

having the neurons firing and everything else. I mean, it's an immense tragedy, and it's a first cousin of the talent that, I mean, I don't even think there are not enough words to describe just how talented he was and the kinds of, even in the somewhat addled state that he was by the time all of this other stuff was swirling around him, he had flashes, flashes of just an incredibly brilliant mind.

And so I think to some degree it was a way of just turning off that brain activity. I'm sure. I mean, propofal, anybody who's ever had a surgery knows what that feels like. You have to count back from 10 and you never make it past 8 because of the propofal, which knocks you out and you lose consciousness prior to, you know, them operating. on you. And he could have anything. He had the money and the resources and the connections to get anything. And in the same way that the helicopter pilot should not have flown Kobe on that day, because the weather was not safe, but he did it, I think, out of fame, you know, admiration,

like wanting to please Kobe. Michael Jackson had enablers like that in his own life. And one of them killed him. Conrad Murray killed Michael Jackson by, and he was later found guilty at a trial, right, a criminal trial, I believe he was put through. And of course, lost his license, as he should have, because no anesthesiologist would do this, you know, in any respectable way. And so that's what took him. But if it hadn't been Conrad, Murray, it would have been something else. It might have been a different kind of OD. Right. And we could have a whole, he was slowly but surely killing himself. Yeah, we could have a whole other discussion. I'm coming fresh off of the so-called ketamine queen and Matthew Perry, and you just wonder at a certain point, I know you want to hold people accountable,

I guess about, I get that, but at a certain point, if you've ever, and I've argued this for years with people who are in the throes of addiction or have a loved one, who doesn't have one one degree of separation to somebody with a mental health or an addictive challenge and doesn't understand just how determined and how much they can persevere when they want to get whatever, whatever it is is the carrot at the end that is being held out in front of him. So it's a very pernicious thing to be under the influence of pun intended. So we've gotten childhood abuse. We've gotten allegations of abuse, child abuse and molestation against him.

We've gotten the threat of losing his own children potentially. We've gotten, you know, crazy, avid, obsessive plastic surgery and skin color. changes and incredible fame, like just mind-numbing, crazy-ass fame and attention. And then, and then a bizarre death. So that's kind of the arc of the Michael story. But in there, there really has been the question of, is he or isn't he on the molestation? It's everyone wants to know, you know, is he or isn't he? We want to know. I would like to know. You know, if I'm at the the roulette table and I can put it all on black or white, I guess it's black or red. Black or red, yes. What do I? Black and white, I think was the song. Yes, thank you.

Yeah. What do I put it on? He was or he wasn't. And I got to say, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know enough. But there are some very disturbing allegations. So I'll start with the most recent. The, you mentioned that there were recent allegations and indeed there are. So this is a family. that was supposedly his, quote, second family. And they had been defending Michael for all these years saying, no, no, no, no, including, I think, four young children who used to spend tons of time at Neverland Ranch, which was made to look like Disney. I mean, Michael's room, he always used to say he was like Peter Pan,

who never grew up. And his bedroom had a Peter Pan figure in there, a Captain Hook figure, like hanging from the ceiling. it was all done up to look like a Peter Pan. Well, I will tell you, at Neverland, the two things that always struck me was there was a two-story video arcade that when you've turned on the lights was absolutely incredible. And then you've got right there the other area that is adjacent.

I think, as I remember, it was adjacent to the theater, which I also thought was. He's there with McCauley Culkin in one of the rides, but keep going. So the interesting thing, in full disclosure, the family you're talking about is the Casio family. And they, I've spent an enormous amount of time with them. And I will tell you, if you spend time with them, they are convincing. They are persuasive. They, you, you don't have a, a heart if you doubt the, their, their, their emotional damage.

and sincerity and their authenticity. I saw it firsthand. I've spent an inordinate amount of time with them listening to them. I used to say about the Arvizo family, because I used to get all the time the question is, did you believe, did you believe back then in real time? And I used to say, well, I will tell you, I don't know about any other accusers,

but I know in that particular instance that everything that we invent, investigated. Everything that we saw led us to believe that it was a shakedown. And I, I, that was, I, I'm not going to be, uh, dissuaded from that. I can't speak to and nor should I ever speak to any of the other accusations. I will, I just know what I know, which is when you, uh, look at all of the accusations, when it turns out that the Rviso family apparently hired the same lawyer that Jordy Chandler had when, you see the kinds of history involving the family, all of those things give you great pause. But then sit down and talk with the casios and that will give you great pause. And I think that somebody who's not there is going to make their own decision. And it's almost the Rojok test, I suppose, because we don't have anything along the lines of what sometimes you will have in these cases, which is computers filled with child porn or a tape of the molestation or some kind of an eyewitness

or some direct, what's called direct evidence, even though I often will make the argument circumstantial and director equally powerful. And a lot of cases, circumstantial is more powerful. But it's a very mind-numbing kind of exercise to get into when you have somebody who is so enormously talented, who's been dead for so long, and you're revisiting whether or not there was this unbelievable dark side to him. And that's, I think, what is captivated people, but it certainly did not hurt the box office, which doesn't surprise me in the least. No, it's one of those things. It would be one thing if they were like, Michael Jackson was a shoplifter.

You know, he had a Winona Ryder problem, even though he was rich. He just felt the need. to do this thing. People would have moved on. Who really cares? But he's been accused of literally the worst possible crime you can commit. I mean, it is arguably worse even than murder. I will tell you, if you're, God forbid, you're ever sent to prison, you would rather be convicted of murder than you would have child molestation. You've got a longer shelf life than for somebody who's a child molester. They just don't last long in prison because it's considered the worst of the worst. Yes, there is a, there is some weird honor code even amongst the worst among us who have been sent away for life that, you know, you heard a child, you're in a special class of evil. And so like this guy who we've been spent the first 20, 40 minutes of the show, revering and celebrating and, you know, no question about his talent, how much we both admire it may have been the absolute darkest, worst, most evil thing you can be as a human on this earth.

That's the incredible mystery around Michael Jackson. And it's also why those of us who want to just celebrate his music and his talent may very much like this biopic, you know, may very much like Michael because we don't have to deal with it. You know, it ends just as he's about to go on the bad tour, you know, on bad. And we don't have to even go there. But back to the Cassio family. To the point to the Cassio family, they will tell you, yeah, that's great. You can celebrate all that. celebrated all that, but you can't believe the every morning, and I think of one of them in

particular, every morning I wake up, I have to deal with this. My life has been ruined. And it's, it's a, it's emotionally, it is impactful in ways that it's hard to just to give voice to. Oh, I mean, of course. If you've been the victim of child molestation, I mean, it's just, just a total game changer without heavy, heavy doses of therapy. your life is going to be really tough to get back on track. Some people have done it. It's not impossible, but my God, what a massive challenge that's been given to you, but through no fault of your own. And so the Cassio family has now come forward. They've been longtime defenders of Michael, but now they are alleging in a lawsuit that he did sexually abuse them as children over many years,

many years. They long described themselves as his second family. I'm reading here from a New York Times piece, appearing publicly, including on Oprah Winfrey's show in 2010, to deny Alex against him and defend his reputation. And this is very helpful for Michael because when he was being accused either posthumously or during the course of his lifetime, to have children like McCauley Calkin was one of them who had spent a ton of time with him during those tender ages. By the way, pedophilia is defined in the DSM-5 as sexual attraction to prepubescent children. It specifically says those prior to age 13, and that was reportedly Michael's thing. some said between seven and maybe 14 at the oldest was what he liked.

But to have them come out and say, never me, never me would be very helpful from the Cassio kids to McCauley Colkin. And there were some others. And they now say that they were groomed, that they were conditioned to protect him, calling themselves his soldiers, and saying that they publicly deny the abuse for years because of fear, manipulation and emotional dependence. they recently appeared on 60 Minutes Australia, and here's a bit of that. Faraldo, the family's youngest, at times the fear was overwhelming. Did you find his appearance scary as a kid? Yeah. Yeah, especially when you're in bed with him at night, and he turns into the zombie.

and you don't love me, you don't love you. His eyes were like this. Learning there were other victims meant this was no longer just his secret to keep. And I was like, oh my God, he did this to other kids. That was enough for my courage to just blossom. I was like, no, no, no, no. This isn't made up.

This is real. Aldo decided to tell his family of the abuse he'd endured, unaware he would also be opening the lid on the suffering of each and every one of his siblings. I called everyone to meet at my mom and dad's home, and I said, I just want you guys to know that everything that they're saying is true because it happened to me too.

Aldo's courageous admission led to all his siblings, finally sharing what they say Jackson had done to them. It was the hardest thing for me to do was to admit Oh, yeah. I can't describe the feeling the range of emotions that I was feeling at the time and coming out. I mean, it's pretty powerful stuff, Mark. I mean, I will say just one caveat, a little less so because they filed a lawsuit. Like if the people who, if people would just come forward and say this happened without then filing the lawsuit, I think it would be a lot more powerful.

But they did say it in the context of seeking money, which must be noted. Go ahead. Well, we do have a civil justice system, and there are clear abuses in the civil justice system. I can think of cases. I'm sitting here in New York and in the Southern District. There's been all kinds of sanctioning of lawyers who bring cases that are patently ridiculous. And so there is that. But in this case, I think that was the last thing that any of the Casios,

wanted. And I talked to them and without betraying attorney-client, I will tell you that they tried mightily. I tried mightily to get them what they needed. And it's just a tough, tough situation. You know, imagine what they're in. They're in a situation where they didn't know the extent of what the others then subsequently told them, number one. One of the reasons that I thought was most compelling is I remember going to pick up Michael at one point for a court appearance. And they told me about that and they told me where they were hidden. And it was a location that nobody knew about, meaning a hotel, nobody knew that I was picking them up in. And they told me where I was and that I was being hidden from Michael at the time. And it was kind of a stunning story to be told,

given in retrospect, I too had been a clearly a defender of his, a witness not once but twice during his trial as well. So I'm as perplexed and torn as you are from the outside and having been on the inside as to these cross currents. And it's a kind of a conundrum that I don't know where ultimately at the end I fall. So personally. And he's not here. Correct. He's not here to defend himself. And that was the problem, too, with finding Neverland.

You heard them reference, you know, watching the claims and them, the one son then coming out and saying, it happened to me too. And he found the two accusers' stories in finding Neverland, quote, documentary, to be credible based on his own experience. Now, of course, I did not. Save Chuck, possibly more than Robbins. and Wade Robson. And we'll talk about those two next. We have to take a quick break, but we've got to talk about finding Neverland, which I think did more harm to like these current allegations by this family than good, because Wade Robson in particular has got a lot of issues with his story and was clearly caught lying under oath in his civil suit against the Jackson estate, which it's just devastating to the whole story.

And safe Chuck less so, but also had some money issues before he filed his lawsuit, which the documentary didn't disclose, and also didn't come forward until after Michael died. So it's, okay, so that's sort of a pattern. We're going to pick up that piece of it right after this quick break. Don't go away. Mark stays with us. Let's talk about an uncomfortable reality. What happens financially to our loved ones, Once we're no longer here.

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So take 10 minutes to get covered today. Just get it out of the way with life insurance through Ethan's. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash mk. That's ethos.com slash mk. Applications times may vary as may rates. Mark Garagos is back with me now. He is a very well-known, successful attorney. And he's also the host of In the Well.

That is our new MK True Crime show. It's on our MK True Crime channel. If you go to your little podcast button and you just type in MK True Crime and subscribe, you will get in the well, or you can go to mKTruecrime.com, and it'll show you how to subscribe directly to the show via YouTube, et cetera. But get it because it's on fire after just two episodes. They kicked it off with quite a bang.

It's Mark Garragos and Matt Murphy, Mark a lifelong criminal defense attorney and also civil attorney and Matt Murphy Lifetime Prosecutors. So the two of them in California have gone round and round with each other in the well of the courtroom and out of it. and now they bring that expertise to all of you. So we're very lucky to have him. All right. Keeping on taking a look at the two men featured in this leaving Neverland, quote-unquote, documentary.

Wade Robson was, they both met Michael when they were children. Wade was this Michael Jackson look-alike from Australia who got folded into Michael's orbit. I think he won a contest and met him and might have appeared in Lowe. like a music video with him and went on to become a well-known choreographer, stayed close with the Michael Jackson estate with Michael himself, said very, very nice things about Michael, his whole life, actually testified under oath that Michael never laid a hand on him, both in the 1993.

Accusations, that one didn't go to trial, but did testify or told the sheriff, nothing, absolutely nothing with me. And then in 2003, in your case, Mark, was, again, a witness for Jackson under oath, nothing, Nothing, nothing. Then comes this documentary, again in quotes, leaving Neverland, and he has a very different story. Here is part of it. This is viewer warning, disturbing. And I must say, for the record, we took out the most disturbing parts, just because it's very dark, but you can imagine it. Sot 7. And then him guiding me to do the same thing with him. So moving my hands to touch his penis.

which you know was erect and I remember him putting my hands on his head when he was down there I'll forget the the the feeling of his hair I was rough almost like a like a brillo pad like this roughness and he's down there and you know with his his mouth on my seven-year-old penis. Okay, Mark, so I have to say, when I watched the movie, I was horrified, and I found him very credible. And then I started to research him,

and let's just say less so. So he sued the Jackson estate, reportedly after he found out that he was not going to get this job with Cirque de Saleh and their production of Michael Jackson. Like, Cirque de Saleh had licensed some Michael Jackson songs, and they were sort of rehabilitating the MJ name,

and he thought he was going to get a role with them and didn't, and reportedly had some sour grapes over it. And then, lo and behold, said, I was a victim, too, and filed a lawsuit against the estate. And in the deposition testimony, he had to give in the context of the civil case, was asked, did you ever write anything about these allegations that you're making now? and he claimed under oath, he testified no, never.

But it turned out he had written a whole book alleging that he'd been molested. The defense team demanded the copies of it. My information was he did have to produce what he had, and that took a motion and a judge ordering it, and he wiggled out, he tried to wiggle out of doing it, and then they actually got some of the metadata from the drafts from the publishing companies. They went the defense team to publishing companies saying,

did you get pitched a book about Michael Jackson by Wade Robson? And they did. And they got their hands on other versions of the book and his story differed, version to version. And then there was testimony of him earlier that made clear he didn't remember the details. But by the time he got around to this documentary, again in quotes, his memory was crystal clear for all of the abuse allegations, all of which left me with a lot of questions. With all due respect to this, man, because I don't know whether this happened and I don't want to attack somebody who may have been molested, but I just have to be honest, did not find the story credible at all when it was said and done.

Your thoughts? Well, the experience I've had with Leaving Neverland is famously they have a clip of me coming out and saying, I'm going to land. land on you like a ton of bricks or something along those lines. The implication being is that I was coming out and attacking the... But we have this, Mark. Hold on. I'll show the soundbite. This is from the documentary Leaving Neverland. It's you, Satinae.

A news clip of Mark Garagos, who initially represented Michael in 2003 in the criminal case, is manipulated to appear as if he's threatening an accuser after Michael's arrest. We will land on you like a ton of bricks. We will land on you like a hammer. If you do anything to besmirch this man's reputation, anything to intrude on his privacy in any way that's actionable, we will unleash a legal torrent like you've never seen. In fact, he was talking about a completely different legal case in which he and Michael were secretly videotaped on board a charter aircraft. Disclosed that those two video cameras.

which also apparently had audio on them, were surreptitiously placed in there, were recording attorney-client conversations. So just to make clear, Mark, that was, there was a rebuttal to Leaving Neverland called Lies of Leaving Neverland. It's on YouTube now. And that was one of the lies they were pointing out that they perceived in the documentary as regards you. Keep going.

Correct. And that was one of, it was so offensive to me when Leaving Neverland came out. because what I had described there in the press conference in real time and what I was so angry about was they had filmed my conversations with him, attorney client, which are sacrosan, and they were marketing it. In fact, Greta Van Sustrin was the one who called me the next day saying this guy, this lawyer has got the tape and he's shopping it for a million bucks. And I called the lawyer. I said, have you lost your mind?

And he said, he said, well, this is my client's lottery ticket. I went into court immediately, got a court order before I could execute the court order to go get it. The FBI was there. They seized it from the lawyer, and this guy was indicted who had done the surreptitious taping. So it was a wild situation to then take that and manipulate it. One of the reasons sometimes these documentaries drive me crazy because it's great to tell a story. And documentaries can be some of the most effective storytelling there is. But you shouldn't really manipulate the facts to the point that you just literally tell a story that is not true.

And that's why it was so. No, then it's a docudrama and not a documentary. And that's, yeah. So they did that. If they played fast and loose like that with you, what did they do with these other two men who are featured in it? And I just think, I don't know whether those facts are fatal to Wade Robson's claim, which has been resurrected because California passed one of those laws like New York did, where claims that were out of time and were sort of dead claims could be resurrected for a brief period of time if they related to sexual abuse. And Wade and James Sefchuk took advantage of that and got their claims against the MJ estate resurrected. They go on to this day as a result.

But I do know that as a journalist or a storyteller doing a documentary, you must include the credibility problems in your documentary and let the audience decide. And this guy did not do that on either one of these men, which is a failing, it is a fatal flaw in the presentation. By the way, if you're in a jury trial and this happened, say that this kind of manipulation happened, you would get a jury instruction that says, a witness who is willfully false in a material part of his testimony, he or she can be and should be disbelieved in others. I was thinking this morning, it's funny, Megan, that before I did this, I was watching the closing argument in Harvey Weinstein's third trial here in New York and the Manhattan court. Mark Agniflo was giving it. I ran into, speaking of podcast, Arthur Idalla, who tried it the second time, and he sends his regards.

And I was thinking as I sat there about this, the accuser in this third trial, and such damaged goods, no matter what you say, given the testimony, given the medical records, the accuser is clearly has mental health issues that are off the charts. So the argument becomes, when you're analyzing it, Did the abuse cause this or are the mental health chicken or egg? Is it the mental health that is causing the person to make the accusation? And those kinds of determinations should be left up to jurors in the courtroom and viewers in documentary. To your point, why ignore things that could be credibility issues?

Let people decide based on a fulsome record as opposed to a skis. argument or kind of a rhetorical device. Yes, absolutely. There was, in that lies of leaving Neverland, they pointed out this thing I just mentioned about how Wade's deposition reveals that he had to ask his mom to remember details about the alleged abuse. And that was at an earlier point in time than when he's with a few. leaving Neverland, remembering them all. He's got great details. He's a good storyteller. He can really

take you there if you watch the documentary again in quotes. Boy, he really adds a lot of color, none of which he remembered years earlier when he was under oath and asked to tell this story. So there are a lot of questions. James Safechuck, he made equally disturbing allegations in the piece leaving Neverland. The knock against him is that he was reportedly facing a serious lawsuit that hit right before he sat down for that documentary and was facing some financial, some serious financial threats. And that would have incentivized his filing a civil suit, as he did, and participating with this, quote, documentary. And again, that may not move you at all, but it should be disclosed by a filmmaker. In any event, here's James Safechuck, in part,

again, with a viewer warning on the disturbing nature of what he's going to say in SOT 8. at the train station there's a room upstairs and we would have sex up there too what happened every day it sounds sick but it's kind of like when you're first dating somebody right you do a lot of it

so it was very much like that he liked um if I rubbed his nipples so we would do stuff and then in the end when he wanted to ejaculate he would finish himself.

You'd be in the hotel room and he would pretend like somebody was coming in and you had to get dressed as fast as possible without making noise. So not getting caught was a big, like just kind of fundamental. It was very much a secret and he would tell me that if anybody found out his life would be over and my life would be over. He did say there that he remembers the abuse in Michael Jackson's train station. He had like a, you know, like a play. I was just going to say, you know, you mentioned Matt Murphy and my podcast partner.

Matt, he handled. In fact, Matt and I faced off on a number of sex crime prosecutions. And Matt, I'm going to channel him and say that he would say that some of those things have the kind of insignific. or indicia of what he has seen repeatedly and what I've seen coming at clients who were accused as well. So it's a very tough situation. I don't think there are any easy answers. And the the look-back statutes, which you referenced, which are these statutes that revive statutes of limitations that have already expired. They actually started when they in the criminal context, and there was a case Stodner where they said you can't prosecute somebody criminally when you're

going to take away their liberty after the statute has expired, but they left open the issue on these civil cases. And some of these civil cases and these look back statutes present real problems from my standpoint when you're trying to relitigate these later. on years later when somebody didn't have notice or anything like that. Like the defendant is dead. Yeah. And now you've got the estate and you've got, and you don't see it happening against somebody who's, to quote my other podcast and close friend Adam Carolla, you never see people coming after the empty bags. So there is that as well. So it really is a conundrum. Yeah. It reminds me of the Christine Blasey Ford situation against Brett Kavanaugh, where it's

it's like, how is the guy supposed to defend himself 30 years later on, you know, what he did or did not do on a particular day? Now, in that case, where you're dealing with a would-be Supreme Court justice, so it just so happened. He did have detailed day planners even from his time as a teenager, which was extraordinary and to his great luck. But I mean, Trump didn't when E.G. Carol tried to come after him and claim he raped her in a Bergdorf-Gudman dressing, if she had brought that claim that year or within, you know, two years or five years, he could have defended. He could easily look up on his computer. No, this is what I was doing that day.

That didn't happen. It's just allowing this to be brought decades after the fact just sets the poor defendants up for a certain disappointment. It's precisely why you have a statute of limitations. I mean, there is a reason why there is a statute of. of limitations with carved out exceptions traditionally for hundreds of years for things like murder. Obviously, there should be, and you can think of every public policy reason, why there shouldn't be a statute of limitations for murder.

And fast forward now to cold case DNA, things of that nature, and it makes perfect sense. But for other things where it is traditionally a he said, she said, And when you're in what I like to call money court, which is what civil court is, you're over there fighting over other people's money. There ought to be some bright line at a certain point where it doesn't change. I think back to when sitting here in New York, the Adult Survivors Act was about to expire. And the number of clients I had on the eve of that expiration who were handling cases, trying to settle cases just because they'd, didn't want to have to undergo the torrential downpour of the media lynching, so to speak, which also people tend to forget is a real problem. You can win the case eventually. It can get

thrown out eventually. But how do you get your reputation back to quote the original Ray Donovan? Well, that's like this J.P. Morgan sexual assault allegation that's being made by this guy who tried to go under John Doe, who was also at J.P. Morgan against this poor woman who I don't think did anything. I don't believe him. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I don't believe one word of what this guy is alleging. But it's the same thing where, you know, he's completely smearing her day after day after day. And it comes out that J.P. Morgan offered him a million dollars to settle this thing, which they, said was reported a two years of his salary. So it's, for them, it's a rounding error mark. It's J.P. Morgan. They've got more money than the U.S. government. And by the way, that must mean they think she did it. I'm like, no, that does not mean they think she did it at all. I, you can, I could, I could count a series of employees that I have extricated from large corporations, friends mostly, in the last two years where I have gotten them that kind of money as a severance when they are either laid off or they're perp walked out of the place.

So for those who think the $1 million signifies guilt or an acknowledgement of guilt, no, it's when you have a high earner and you want to separate. I'm old enough to remember when nuisance value was $15,000 and now a nuisance value. is a million and a half. So that's just the reality of it, especially in corporate America. Exactly. Like you point out, the higher earnings of the person threatening you, the more it's going to cost to make them go away quietly, even if you think their claim is total bullshit, which J.P. Morgan says this is because they say, among other things, he produced none of his records, his phone, all the things that he claimed support him. He wouldn't produce, they say.

where she did. They say she handed over the phone. Take it. Look at everything. Talk to everyone. I never laid a hand on this guy, but I'm having my reputation ruin nonetheless. All right, back to Michael. And Matt Murphy's here, by the way. We're going to bring him in in a minute. But I do want to play these two sound bites on. And I have to point out the one thing on Steve Chuck, though. He mentioned that he was allegedly abused in this like Disney-esque train station that Michael had built on Neverland, his property, which is made to look like, you know, Peter Pan's world. I'll tell you, it is very Disney-esque. I definitely want to talk to you about it, but what happened after the documentary,

in quotes, dropped was Jackson biographer Mike Smallcombe revealed that that train station was not built until 1994. And in the documentary, James Safechuck claims he was abused from 1988 until 1992, and therefore could never have been molested in a room at the Neverland train station. This guy, Smallcomb, tweeted out, Santa Barbara County construction permits showing approval for the building did not happen until September 1993. So that would seem to be a pretty glaring error here. That's one of those. In response to that, that's a no-shit moment for the director, Dave Reed.

If you're the defense lawyer and you find that fact, you can only imagine what you're saying to your associates at the time. Yeah. It's not ideal. Oh, we have a clip of the director's response, do we? Okay. So once again, from Lies of Neverland, the rebuttal, they address this. Let's watch it. He says that one of the locations where Michael Jackson was abusing him on a daily basis was the Neverland train station. And he vividly describes the interior of the train station. Now, this version of the story that he tells in the TV show places that abuse in the train station in 1988, 89. The train station did not even open until 1994. And as you correctly say, in his sworn declarations, in his ongoing litigation with the estate,

he says that Michael Jackson stopped molesting him when he was around 14 years old in 1992 because he got too old for him. And the whole narrative of this film is that Michael Jackson molests boys. And then when the boys hit puberty and get too old, he then ditches them and moves on to a younger boy. That's the whole narrative that they're selling with this documentary. But when it's revealed that this location where Safechuck is describing his abuse did not exist when he was the age he said he was, Dan Reed, the director of the documentary, goes on to Twitter and says, well, there's no dispute about when the train station was built, but what's in dispute is the dates of the abuse.

So James Safechuck was abused after the train station was built. Well, firstly, he is now accusing his own star witness of perjury because James Sefchuk has signed not one but two sworn declarations in which he states that Michael Jackson never abused him after 1992. So in order to defend his documentary, he's throwing its star witness under the bus. Very persuasive. And Mark, on top of that, even if you extend the period of abuse to 1994 post when the train station went up, now James Safechuck is pushing 17. And during that time, Michael was living in New York for most of the year. He wasn't sitting at Neverland with James Safechuck, according to those who knew him.

So it does raise questions about whether these two complainants in finding Neverland or leaving Neverland, who had previously testified repeatedly that Michael never touched them. But after he died and they fell on hard times, then came forward and said he did, how much credibility we can give them. And Wade Robson was another one who was reportedly found to have been looking up news articles about what had happened to other boys.

Now, that could be the behavior of a victim too, just trying to compare stories. Or it could be somebody, yeah, or it could be somebody who, you know, was looking for details he didn't have because it didn't happen to him. So all of this, okay, but that leads me to where I wanted to go with you,

which is you mentioned, a moment ago, the nice maid you knew it at Neverland. And was that Adrian McManus? It was a different nice maid. Okay, because speaking of 60 Minutes Australia, he's shaking his head, no, wasn't her? Speaking of 60 Minutes Australia, which I think we all need to start watching, a former Jackson maid named Adrian McManus gave some damning testimony about Michael and what she eventually started to clean up.

in Michael's bedroom. She said after three months, they said, now you can start working. You can start cleaning Michael's bedroom. At first, they just gave her the rules of like, don't look at Michael, don't talk to Michael. You're not friends with Michael. You're the maid here.

And then she did get to know him a little. And she said he was very nice to her. And then she started cleaning his bedroom and didn't go well. This is an allegation. And here it's part of it. And underwear is also in, his bed. I did find um, underwear that were minch briefs in the walking closet and they were, um,

I, and I don't like to say this. They were like crunchy, hard with yellow stains all over them. I didn't know who they belonged to because the little boys started wearing Michael's briefs. There was a lot of Vaseline at Neverland. Sometimes it was found in the golf cart. when Mr. Jackson would take off with the boys. Vaseline? Yeah, Vaseline. And there was a lot of Vaseline in Michael's bedroom. It was actually all over the ranch.

Is there possibly an innocent explanation for that? I don't think so. Okay, now I will say on the Vaseline, like the guy was the king of plastic surgery, so who the hell knows what he needed the Vaseline for? You know what I mean? Like maybe that makes you go from black to white or soothes the journey somehow or the scars he must have had all over him.

I don't know. Yeah, remember. Having Vaseline in the golf cart. Right. I don't know. Vaseline, you know, I'm still PTSD from baby oil last year with Diddy. And so I'm always, I think there's a, I take all of that with a certain grain of salt. But, you know, the interesting thing is here that I believe the case is set for trial next year.

in the Beverly Hills Courthouse in 2027. So we're going to have. Wade Robson and James Safechuck? I think that's set for trial. 2027, Beverly Hills Courthouse. And if I'm not mistaken, then if that's televised, I can't even imagine what that's going to be like. I mean, that will be.

And I, frankly, for a case like this, that's where this belongs in a court. to try and settle it with admissible evidence as opposed to speculation or this, that, things floating out in the ether. I think that that's one of the great things about being in a courtroom is that you can actually get the evidence. I was thinking yesterday completely off topic about that. But this Rebecca Grossman and the pitcher and that civil trial that's being tried in Los Angeles

right now that's being televised, where she was. was convicted of the murder of the two little scander boys. And we're finding out stuff in the civil trial that we never knew about in the criminal trial. I have a sneaking suspicion. I know the lawyers involved and they're all really top flight that we will find out a lot that we didn't know and that has been reported once we get into trial next year. I mean, in very few of these cases where you have a sexually molested child or a sexually abused woman. Do you have somebody whose testimonial is totally pristine and they have absolutely no credibility issues? I mean, they're humans. You know, like most humans have some

credibility problems if you really dug deep or, you know, if you've been victimized by somebody who's extremely wealthy and famous, you probably would file a civil lawsuit. Like, F them. You know, So it's like, it's very hard to find just like the perfect little, you know, sweet Pollyanna who has absolutely no dirt on her to come forward and say this happened to me. You know, I want to keep that in mind as we go over these testimonials. And to that point, there are cases where some of the most heartbreaking cases in the criminal justice system are young children testifying against the family member. And then you say to yourself, why would they lie?

Then if it's against the backdrop of a custody fight or something like that, and then it turns out that one of the mom or dad is programming the child, and upon cross-examination, you find that out. I mean, these are the kinds of struggles that you deal with in trials. And that's, I would never want to be a juror in those kinds of cases, but they happen every day across the country. I do want to say this about this woman, Adrian McManus, the maid. So she was a prosecution witness in 2003.

By the way, Matt Murphy just joined us. Hi, welcome to the party. Matt, lifelong prosecutor now doing some defense work, some criminal defense work, but only for cops. Because that's how he's built. I was just going to say, yeah, you got to pass the first responder law enforcement lit this fest with Matt for real defendants. That's what we love about him, Mark. Can I just say after watching this little clips of Mark, he's much more handsome now with the gray hair, Megan. I'm just going to go out there and say it looks good.

Thanks, Mark. I just say you don't have an additional line on your face, which is saying something for a Californian in particular. It makes him even more frigging persuasive, which is maddening to me in so many different ways. Well, I want to know Matt. It's the last thing we want from him. To Megan's point, have you ever had a pristine complainant as a witness when you were prosecuting a case? Oh, there's always, it's always messing. What you were just saying, Mark, it's giving me flashbacks, those custody disputes.

Megan, just so you know, I used to have a sexual assault detective named Don Hall at Huntington Beach Police Department. And if you can believe this one, Mark, he was in there for about 25 years. I'm sure you've, you encountered him at one point or another. Multiple times. He used to send me the custody dispute stuff with a yellow stickiana with R&R, which stood for read and reject, because it's so common that those are false. allegations and it really undermines the integrity of real victims. Okay, I wanted to just offer one thought on the maid because we kind of left that testimonial hanging out there.

But the truth is that she was accused earlier of having stolen on the job while she was working for Jackson during the trial also on a separate point. She identified one of the boys who she allegedly saw Michael Jackson kissing. and she saw him touching their bottoms or their crotches, and she identified one of them as McCauley Culkin. He, too, has denied ever being molested in any way, shape, or form by Michael Jackson. So, you know, she's also got, there's some questions about her testimonial and her credibility and certainly her honesty if she was accused of stealing.

So all these witnesses have something. But there's a reason I brought in Matt now, because the worst sound bite. I mean, to me, it's worse than anything we heard from Wade, from James Safechuck, from the maid. It's from Michael himself. And Mark Garagos mentioned it at the beginning of our discussion as the thing from the Martin Bashir sit down that would change the trajectory of Michael's life, would get the authorities interested in him. He would get charged.

There was a possibility of losing custody of his children. the drugs, the ultimately early, untimely death. And it was this crazy ass exchange I'm going to show here in SOT 4. Can you understand why people would worry about that? Because they're ignorant. But is it really appropriate for a 44-year-old man to share a bedroom with a child who is not related to him at all? That's a beautiful thing. That's not a worrying thing.

Why should it be worrying? Who's the criminal? Who's Jack the Ripper in the room? Did you ever sleep in the bed with them? No. But I have slept in the bed with many children. I sleep in the bed with all of them. When McCulley Culkin were little,

Kieran Culkin would sleep on this eye. McCulley Cuck is on this eye. His sister's in there. We're all just jamming the bed. Are that right, Michael? It's very right. It's very loving. That's what the world needs now.

More love. Mark. I will tell you at the time. Every sane person, Yes, and I will tell you at the time that that was one of the reasons that the calculation was made to do that two-part 60-minute's interview, because that was, to my mind, at least, was an insurmountable or close to insurmountable thing to get over. By the way, why is it always, in my cases, that it's ABC who does the interview that ends up I have to deal with later? I don't know what it is, whether it's Martin Bashir or Diane Sawyer, but it's always, it's always, I'll tell you why. I know the answer. I know the answer because ABC does a lot of crime, to its credit. I mean, I think all three of us are very into crime. And ABC does way more of that than CBS or NBC, even, which has Dateline. But ABC, that's kind of one of their main beats. So I think that's why. Thank you. All this, I was this many years old before I understood that. Thank you. Because it always seems, it always seems like I.

I'm fighting ABC to get the outtakes from the interview that the client did before I met the client. I think that's why. Matt, I've got to ask you, because in the course of your lifelong career as a prosecutor, you did a lot of sex crimes. We've talked about that. And I'm sure you've got a thought. You're a Californian as well on the Michael Jackson situation. I mean, there's been now we talked about him being accused in 1993 for an eight-figure settlement, that plaintiff went away. Then there was an actual criminal trial by another accuser in 2003. He was found not guilty in that case by a jury. That was the one in which he moonwalked on the van, the day of his indictment. Now we have at least these two other accusers coming forward in leaving Neverland, Wade and James,

who we just went through. Now we have this family of four kids who we discussed with Mark, who had been like his second family, the Cassio's saying it happened to all four of them, even though they've all, all of these people had been denying that it had ever happened and had been great witnesses for Michael, not wanting to admit what they say is the truth. So as a prosecutor, how does all this grab you? Well, as a prosecutor, you always want as many statements of the defendant as possible. And you know what this, the Michael Jackson thing, I think we were all shocked back in those days when we saw that interview and and much, much credit to Martin Bashir's because he asked him the tough questions.

And he kind of, he kind of asked exactly what we were all thinking in the middle of that. Like, is that really appropriate? And we saw the answer. My boss, he's like a mentor mine, Lou Rosenblum, and I left the DA's office and he'd been in private practice for six or seven years. He hit me with a real gem that I know Mark is going to appreciate here. He said, always remember, I never forget, the way these people think doesn't see. stop simply because they've gotten into trouble and now you've decided to represent them. You know, it's, and you see these interviews by people whose currency has been the media like Michael Jackson or like Prince Andrew. I'm sure you saw that. The,

the Guthrie interview. That was the biggest, it was, he's still suffering the consequences of that absolute meltdown. Kind of like we saw with the Michael Jackson clip, we just, we just watched. It doesn't take much to shift the public perception or another, case that's out there right now that I was talking to Harvey Levin about yesterday, Mark, and that's this David case. As soon as Nathan Hawkin came out and said, we've got child pornography on the phone. Everybody ran for the exits. So there's, it doesn't take much, especially in cases like this, you know, as a prosecutor, you always want them talking and you want them talking for as long as possible because if they say something like that, you've got a real weapon in your

arsenal when it comes to prosecuting them. I'm thinking about Alex Murdoch, who insisted on taking the stand at his family annihilation trial in South Carolina. It was a disaster for him. He thought he could outwit the prosecutors just like they all do and none can. You know, it's like, it's like my old pal from Jones Day used to say. He had a great story of being across from the CEO of a company who was suing a Jones Day client. So he was with that CEO who was suing his company. He was suing his company. He was suing his company. He was with that CEO who was suing his client and the CEO's lawyer. And it was like the eve of trial. Are we going to settle this or aren't we? And he looked at that CEO and who was refusing to settle. And my friend knew the guy ought to settle and said to him, look, is it possible that when I get you on the stand, you will have a very, very good day and I will have a very, very bad day? No, it's not possible. It's not possible. Like, you're not going to outwit me. And sure enough, that guy settled, as they all should. It's like if you have a really talented civil attorney crossing you or if you have a lifelong prosecutor who knows his

stuff, you're going down. You're not going to outsmart the mat. There's probably nobody in the world right now, Megan, more than the guy that's sitting there with us right now, Mark Ergos, who's probably had that hard conversation again and again. And as he says, he can't talk about it because it's all probably clients. We all know or heard of. And he can't. can't reveal any attorney client. And I know he's just jumping out of his skin right now because he's got so many examples of that that he can't share. But yeah, that's Scott Peterson. Oh, so much. I knew she was going to go there. Well, my father, who was my hero, mentor used to say it's a rare case for the defense that gets better after the prosecution rests. And boy, isn't that the truth.

I remember one case in particular who will remain nameless where I had tried. I thought the best murder case I had ever tried as a defense lawyer. And then my client insisted that he was going to take the stand. And I actually took him into chambers. And I said, I will quit before I put this guy on the stand. I know it's his absolute right. But I can't let him on. And sure enough, he took the stand.

And he did well for the first day. And I refused to take him on direct. I had one of my associates to it. I just said, I'm not going to be a party to this massacre. But by day two, the prosecutor had so dismantled him that, and afterwards, the jurors, speaking of Dateline, who were interviewed by Dateline, the four-person said, we were never going to convict them until he took the stand. And that's your worst nightmare.

Okay. So I want to shift gears, though, in the time that we have because I teased at the top of the show two things. I teased Katie Porter and who she's saying released that tape, which we don't have time for. That was actually, we're going to have to do that tomorrow. But I will play, I promise. Mark Halpern's here tomorrow and we are going to play it.

We're going to take a deep dive into it because we've actually looked into her claims. Why does Mark Alpern get all the fun of Katie Porter? Has there ever been a worse? As a lifelong Democrat in California, how did we get to the point where Katie Porter is our best and brightest? I don't even understand that.

It makes zero sense to me. The woman has absolutely no redeeming qualities as a political candidate. You wouldn't hire her to run your 7-Eleven, and we're going to hire her to run the fourth largest economy in the country? What is this blaspheme against the clearly most qualified candidate? Don't she deserves this, and so do I. That's the important thing, Mark. The people of America deserve to see this woman ascend and beat up. have to have a Democrat. We can't have, have, you know, not, you can't have confidence. God,

God forbid you've got confidence. God forbid somebody runs who actually has run something before. Steve Hilton would be great. Chad Bianco would be great. But if we can't have them, it's got to be Katie. She's the one who needs to do it because we deserve that. Okay. But anyway, what we teased was the Blake lively settlement. And her lawyers are already making a bunch of noise and also trying to been the pre-existing understanding that they were going to recover some attorney's fees because he sued her, he countersued her for defamation. And that claim was thrown out. And there's a California statute that protects alleged victims of sexual harassment from getting sued for defamation, because this is something that a lot of defendants will do,

saying if you do that and the person who was claiming to have been sexually harassed has any sort of good faith basis for saying she was sexually harassed and your defamation lawsuit against her then gets thrown out as it was here, you are going to be able to recover your lawyer's fees against that defendant who filed a counterclaim for defamation. So she did get his defamation claim thrown out. She is entitled to some measure of fees. We knew that a year ago when that happened. And now that she's willingly settled all the rest of her claims, whatever existed of them, because most of her case got thrown out too, she's willingly walked away from all of them. And she's trying to spin the remainder of those fees as her big victory. She's won. You see,

she's won. Meanwhile, we all knew you were getting some measure. of fees. Here's her lawyer on a podcast just the other day. Hold on a second. It's, what's the name of this show? The Town. And it was on May 8th on a little spin. Okay, let's listen to Sott. Is it, well, you guys play it. You've been looking at it. I don't know what you wanted. 19A. So let me tell you why our client is happy, ecstatic with this settlement. The reason that our client is happy with this settlement is because it gives her the power and the opportunity to pursue what we believe is her most potent and powerful claim in a way that is efficient, in a way that is final, in a way that the defendants have no appeal rights over, and in a way that

cuts off most of the noise that would be surrounding this case and lets us get straight to the core issue of how the defendants retaliated against her, specifically the retaliatory lawsuit that they filed that called her a liar, that branded her a liar. And it's not one of these statutes where there's discretion for awarding the damages once the conditions are met. And we believe the conditions have essentially already been met. And what's important about that, Matt, is that they filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit against our client, against Ryan Reynolds, against Leslie Sloan. They claimed that all of this was a lie. It was all made up and they were going to prove it in court. They lost that. Well, oh my God. Wait, can I just to say that. To say,

that this was the best claim that they had all along. For attorney's fees on the thrown out defamation cross claim? That's what a what a revisionist history, Gary. Well, first of all, this is what's called anti-slap. And there is this peculiar section, 47.1, whatever it is, that says if you prevail, you can get your attorney's fees. If somebody comes up to you. There's one problem with that.

As you pointed out, Judge Lyman has had this on his docket, so to speak, since last year, number one. Number two, Blake Lively's claims were just gutted like a rainbow trout. No, no. You see, you don't know what you're talking about, Mark. This, in fact, was her most potent and powerful claim all along for the attorney's fees expended defending his defamation claim. And by the way, I think if somebody were to check Pacer, which is the federal electronic docket, I believe that that gentleman who was interviewed just there by the, I think that was by the Puck outlet, I think he filed a request, or one of his brethren filed a request to augment the briefing of what has been pending since last September.

asked for, I believe, a five-page brief to supplement their arguments. That was... And he said no. Yes, summarily denied in record time for federal court, number one. Number two, remember, Judge Lyman, I've said this before. I don't know him, but I knew his father, and his father, Arthur Lyman, was a lion of the bar in First Amendment. I mean, he was one of the go-to lawyers.

He, I don't know that the son falls too far from the father, but his father would have been appalled by the idea of this Section 47, that somehow if you cross-complain that you are eliminated from the ability to petition in court to vindicate your rights, because that's basically what it is, stip you, or stripping you of your rights. I just don't think, number one, that there's going to be anything of great. note number one. Number two, remember, all of this is speaking of noise, there are probably 10 insurance companies behind all of this fighting for who's got to pay, reservation or rights, subrogation, indemnification. This is never going to come out of their pockets. It's always going to come out of the insurance company pockets. So this is what, I mean, I'm going to have to look it up in Black's Law Dictionary, Matt, but I believe this is what we call lies, what this lawyer is saying.

This has been their purest and most potent claim all along, most potent and most powerful. Those are lies. Take the next 22 seconds away in and then we'll come back right after this break. Well, the funny thing for me is watching Mark's face as we're both listening to that clip because I can see it. And it's like we're both literally laughing out loud. Albert Einstein had a great quote that applies to the practice of law. He said, if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. and I can add, or it's just pure spin, and that's what we're watching. It's just, you are so desperately trying to claim some sort of W.

I have more from this guy on this podcast. Yeah, I mean. Wait, stand by. Quick, quick break. Back with these two guys on the opposite side. Don't go away. You might already own a firearm, but what if you could start with less lethal methods to avoid the financial and mental repercussions of pulling the trigger?

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truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Callahan, Emily Dyshinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real clear politics and many more. It's bold, no BS news only on the Megan Kelly channel, Sirius XM 111 and on the Sirius XM app. Mark Garragos and Matt Murphy are back with me. They are the host of the brand new show on the MK True Crime podcast feed. It's called In the Well.

Go and find it every Friday on the MK True Crime YouTube channel and all podcast feeds. You just type in MK True Crime. And if you hit subscribe, you will get In The Well, in addition to our other True Crime offerings. well worth your time. Matt, let me stick with you on just the continuing with the absurdity. I've got some more from this lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, on the town. But the notion in there that she's ecstatic with the settlement because of her ability to pursue this most potent and powerful claim for attorney's fees, not damages, attorney's fees.

So what are you hoping to get here? Give me a best case scenario, dollar amount. that you could collect and from who? So I want to step back from that because this lawsuit has never been principally about money for our client. It has been about accountability. It has been about shining a light on this underground smear machine that retaliated against her for raising claims of sexual harassment and retaliation and has harmed so many other people.

And what you've seen since Blake stood up and brought this lawsuit is evidence coming out in our case that has led to information being used now in other litigations, the Nicholas case, the Amanda Ghost case, this underground smear machine has been exposed, and people are now on notice that if they see, you know, if you see a Matt Bellany sucks.net website pop up, you're going to maybe have an idea of who might have put that website up. Really, we should be grateful to Blake, is what he's saying, Matt. No one's going to get smeared anymore on the internet because of her. You know, it's, Mark and I actually had this conversation before, Megan, and it's, it's counterintuitive to me that when you're talking about defamation, because we learn in law school that in a defamation case, truth is always an absolute defense, right? So in this retaliation claim, one of the things I had a hard time wrap up in my head around is that truth would not operate as as a defense. And if you look at the interviews with Blake lively and that Norwegian journalist, the last name is Klaus, I think,

She just... It's spelled Kajursti, but I've just learned it's pronounced Schurstey, Shasty, Shasty. Right, and she's, here's this. I know who you mean. She's doing her job. It's some press jockey for a Woody Allen film from like 2016, and she's just asking basic questions. And her, Blake lively and Parker Posey, they transform into the mean girls that we all saw

in eighth grade, that we all, every single person is triggered who went to public school. by it's like we we see that you know what I mean and the idea that that got released and somehow they can point the finger back and blame Jason Baldoni or anybody else for that I mean she's she's got to live with that and and I'm not a reporter propose either she was also kind of a freaking no really mean she looked terrible she she was equally nasty yeah so and then there was there mark that that basically there's not going to be any more harassment on the internet because of Blake lively. This is a fantasy. Harassment on the internet was a thing before this trial, this case, and it will be a thing after this case. We're allowed to dislike her. We're allowed to

write terrible things about her. When it's phrased in terms of our opinion, you can't make up facts about somebody that are false. But if we think she's a terrible, spoiled, mean girl bully, we're free to say that. And we do think that. And we think that based on the interview with chesty, among many other clips and behaviors by Blake lively. And for this guy to be pretending that she was really just an avenger for others. Meanwhile, you and I both know it was her thin, her tissue paper thin skin that led her to bring this law scope because she was like, there's no way anyone could possibly just hate me organically.

Justin had to have made it happen. Can you imagine, just through this thought experiment, can you imagine how disappointed my good friend Brian Friedman was to not be able to try this case against this guy. I mean, people talk about cross-examining Blake and whatever. But for people who do this for a living, when you get an opponent or an adversary that is this tone deaf, you have to say to yourself, and I've had this so many times where guys have told me, I've never lost the case and blah, blah, blah, usually some U.S. attorney. But big firm lawyers suffer from the same thing because they're in that same access of evil, so to speak.

There is a tone-death removal from reality that they just don't understand. The person who interviewed him in this, you should read the kind of tongue-in-cheek, or maybe it was their website yesterday article about how bad this interview was. And it just, to Matt's point and to what my father used to say is clients get the lawyers they deserve. And boy, that holds true here. Yeah. And Justin Baldoni did too. There's one more.

The questioning was about whether he had the right strategy, right? Is that the one? Is that just looking at my SOT list here. Yeah, let's listen to SOT 19C. The lesson from this case, isn't it? that you have to think really, really hard before you initiate a case like this. If you are a major celebrity and you have brand businesses and a film career, and you want that to be what people know about you,

not the back-and-forth bombs being dropped. I think you got to wait and see what we accomplished in our 47-1 before you write the final chapter of that book. But what I would say, Matt, is I don't think it's an option to sit back and let people assassinate. your character and reputation with untraceable digital smear campaigns. I think when you discover that somebody has done that to you, that bringing that to light and holding those people accountable is important. And I think that what Ms. Lively's lawsuit has shown is that there actually is a way to do that. You can shine a light on it. This, Matt Murphy, this is so wrong on so many levels. Okay, can I just tell you, I've told the audience this before, but back in 2016, 17, when Trump and I were

going round and round for nine months. He was coming for me. And then I left Fox and I went to NBC. David Pecker, who owned and ran the National Enquirer, was out to get me. I mean, I can't even count the number of hit pieces that he dropped. I was literally on the cover of the National Inquirer with the headline, World's Most Hated Mom. Okay. On the cover with my picture. Now, did I try to get to the box? It's David Pecker. He's friends with Trump. These are lies. He's dying.

Not the most hated. There are a lot of more hated people. What about Casey Anthony? She killed her toddler. She's definitely more hated than I'm like. No, no, I didn't. Because as I once told my own children as we walked by a different headline that was negative about me at a kiosk on a cover of a magazine.

And they said, why don't you fight back against that mom? As I told him at the time, because the people who want to believe these lies always will. And the people who don't require no correction. He's just wrong. He's wrong in his PR strategy, and he's wrong about what this whole thing did to Blake lively. She is not in a better place now than she was prior to this. No, she, everybody looked at the videos and saw for themselves, right?

There's another video, which she did in an interview where she said, I can't feel fulfilled unless I have authorship over the project. I don't want to just be an actor who shows up and stands on a spot. It's a clip that's, that is also made the rounds now. Everybody has seen it, and it makes her look absolutely terrible. So maybe these are bad moments, but these are all things that she went out and did and said herself. Another thing, Megan, and I think this is something Mark and I were talking about the other day.

And I don't know it's an allegation that's out there. But to get text messages between Jason Baldoni and his publicist, there's an allegation that they set up a sham lawsuit, they being Blake Lively's team where they sued this publicist to get the phone to release these text messages to the LA Times. I don't know if it's true, but if it is, that is some really shady stuff that I think the New York State Bar should look into if it's true. And so to do all that and come out and talk about spin machines, you know, that's pretty rich.

Look, you all? Because the thing is, Mark, at no point was, have you? the allegations by Blake, Ben, excuse me, they made up lies about me and used this PR firm to push them. It's that they just made her look bad, that they had a campaign to get her by using her actual videos and her promo interviews to promote the film and to spread them with the New York Post or the Daily Mail in a way that she thought was unflattering. But I did not see in her her complaint, they made up a lie that I fired a pregnant girl. They made up a lie that I was uniformly abusive to the staff. That wasn't the nature of her campaign. It was that you intentionally

spread mean things about me. They may have been mean, but they were true. You want to know the cynic in me who as a practical matter will tell you what I think is happening here. When when Blake Lively's case was gutted by Judge Lyman, he issued an order. If you read that order, he was unflinching in his criticism of her lawyers to the point where it explains why if what is being reported is true. As soon as they saw that order, as soon as her case was gutted, she had a monstrous legal malpractice action against her lawyers. How do her lawyers solve that problem? They immediately beg Baldoni's team to go into private mediation. You might say, well, how is that going to solve anything? There's a Supreme Court case in California that says, and mind you, they mediated this in California with a

California-based, California-Hawaii-based mediator, is my understanding. The California Supreme Court case says, If you go through private mediation, you can't sue your lawyer for legal malpractice. So what this was was a very sophisticated legal strategy to insulate the big firm from getting sued for the tens of millions of dollars for what could have been argued was the, if you read Judge Lyman's order, missteps by her lawyers. That's just the cynic in me explaining why all this happened. Then what happens? Brian goes out and declares victory, and these guys now have to concoct, no, well, what about 47.1 in our lawyers' fees, which everybody knows the insurance company is going to pick up for anyway.

So talk about just being a cynic here. What has happened here is really kind of one of the downsides, if you will, to when you have too much money. It's a kind of a take on the old Richard Pryor joke that having a big firm represent you in a civil case is God's way of telling you you make too much money. So because one of the things, I mean, the main thrust of her case was the sexual harassment claim. And it was based on a contract between the parties that never

existed. That's what came out in the course of discovery. She never had a signature by the Wayfarer defendants. That's Justin's production company. And they tried to scramble on Team Blake's like attorneys to say, well, there was this one that they signed. And so it was this version. But the court was like many other versions came after that. They may have signed this one, but there wasn't a meeting of the minds yet. There were like nine versions of this contract. And you're asking me to enforce it. Which version do I enforce? Do I enforce the ninth version that they left after?

That they kind of, whatever, everybody moved on after that? Or is it the one version that might have had a signature, but it wasn't countersigned? Like, I'm not, I can't divine agreement. It has to be shown to me on a piece of paper with two signatures, which any first-year law student knows. So how did we get to the point in this case where these, you know, storied lawyers didn't understand that their main claim is not supported by any document. That's a very interesting theory. All right.

So now, so she will get her attorney's fees. What do you make of the fact, though, that the judge is, they wanted to brief it again. They went back in, Matt, and said, give us another chance. They already briefed it. They've submitted it. They said, oh, she's got some $400 million in damages, whatever. They briefed attorney's fees. and she wants them trebled, meaning tripled,

which is potentially a possibility under the anti-SLAPP statute that they're getting the fees under. And the judge just came out. We just saw the order because originally he hadn't actually issued the order. Now we've got it saying the court does not require additional briefing at this time. So it ordered Louis J. Lyman, May 11th, 2026. So he's not into it. He doesn't want to hear anything more from them.

He's probably got his mind made up. Do you think he's going to give them some huge award with and then triple it? No. In a word, no. I don't see that happening at all. I think Mark's exactly right. The apple didn't fall far from the tree. And his dad was a First Amendment, you know, pillar. And this judge is over it, Megan. He's figured this out. I think he's sorted out the egos. He's read everything. He knows what this is. And another thing that Mark and I were talking about the other day is when you get into these cases with celebrities. And again, Mark has dealt this way more than I have. But I've had a few. it is it is amazing to me how we get this image of how glamorous they are and all the money and all the power and the red carpets and then you get into you look beyond the curtain and you see you know text messages and you see a lot of petty really small human beings like they're they are you know the the reality oftentimes is um is is is almost so disappointing because they're not as smart as the characters they play and they get in these petty ego-fueled feuds. And when you've got all the money in the world behind you, you wind up in situations like this. I think somebody finally pulled her aside and said,

you have lost this battle. You're destroying your career. Read the comments section of some of these things. You look terrible and it's so bad you're dragging your husband into it. That's my guess. And that, yeah, I'm sure the word ecstatic because of her attorney's fees is so laughably, just ridiculous. But look, this is one of those.

I approach everything, Megan, in my experience, from a position of victims. And I've represented women since I've been in private practice who were legitimate, real victims of sexual harassment from people that were in positions of power. I know you've had that experience. Like, that's a real thing. And it's kind of like Amber Hurd and the Johnny Depp stuff. When you, it's like we should believe victims until we shouldn't. And when it comes to this sort of thing, when you march out there and say,

I'm going to do this on behalf of all people. who have been subjected to sexual harassment, you undermine them. You undermine the real victims when, in my opinion, you do stuff like this. And Mark had a great point the other day. Blake lively, when the judge gutted the cases because she was an independent contractor and not an employee, that was the technical reason, she could have taken an off ramp right then and there and said, I'm going to now rally so that independent contractors also have protections under the law for sexual harassment.

And she didn't do that and she could have done that. And Mark said, it was a great point. If they'd enacted a federal law, they would have called it the Blake Lively Act. And she could have been a hero. Right. She didn't take it. She didn't do it because, in my opinion, she was driven by ego and trying to settle a score. And that's what this whole thing is about.

And like Brian has been saying all along, Mark Garagos, he knew she is one thing to say in a complaint to the California human rights office. one thing, but when you're on the stand under oath, being cross-examined by Brian, it's quite another to try to back up those claims about, they walked in on me in my dressing room when I was breastfeeding my baby against my will and then confronted with a text message saying, come on in. Come on in. I'm breastfeeding my baby, but it's fine. By the way, I don't know.

She's going to get ripped apart. I don't know. And I'm sure you've told it before, but I will tell it again for you. Brian became your lawyer because he started off as opposing counsel against you. And that's some of the best kind of lawyering you can do is when your opponent says, no, no, no, I'm hiring this guy, so I never have to deal with him again. And Gary goes, I started off like, I can't stand this prick. He is such an asshole.

I cannot stand him. I hated him. When he was taking, wait, no, when we were taking the deposition of his client, he was like interfering in a way, you know, we don't like speaking objections at a deposition, right? I was like, oh, I can't stand him. And I like the way he talked to my lawyer. And so finally we get to the point where he's deposing me. And I was like, I was ready. Of course, I'd been a litigator for 10 years at Jones Day.

This is not my first rodeo. I was totally ready for him. And I fell in love with him. He's so charming. He's so smart. He's raising good points. were having a great back and forth. I had no stakes.

You know, like, whatever. It was very clear where this whole thing was going to go. Brian inherited it. He didn't actually take this case. It was kind of given to him. But we bonded over these eight hours in a way where I was like, I think I made a friend for life. That case went away.

And then when I got in trouble with NBC, it's a long story that I will tell someday in full. But an agent connected me with Brian. And the agent fled. But Brian stayed with me, and he was like, just so you know, I don't give an F, when he said the word, what anybody thinks of me. I've got you. And it was like, that was it.

We were off to the races, and he hammered them. He got me everything I deserved. And that was really the beginning, like another beginning for Brian, who was already very well respected, but of this, like, niche practice he's really created where, like, any big talent in a serious fight with somebody who's generally a bully on the other side calls Brian. You know, like Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon hired him from CNN. Gabrielle Union hired him when NBC started messing with her. Justin Baldoni. They're just a long list now, but like he's the go-to. If you want to, if you're an individual

getting bullied by some massive entity on the other side. And that's really what Blake Lively has been. You know, dragons with Ryan and Taylor. And Justin had no power in comparison to them. You go to Brian and he is a master of the dark arts in a great way, Garrick. And by the way, that's also one of the reasons I love Matt Murphy and I love Brian both because when you're opposing somebody who's truly talented like Matt was as a prosecutor or Brian was, because we first were at odds with one another.

Those are the, that's the long, long lost friendships. I mean, with Matt, I often say one of the clients, I'll never forget with him. And what endeared me to him is I, at one point, got so frustrated at him for wanting state prison on my client that I lashed out and said, you would prosecute Romeo for stalking Juliet if you had your way. and that he laughed and finally gave me what I wanted because he could see how frustrated I was. He's laughing now. I had the same experience with Brian.

He was bedeviling me on something and finally, finally we resolved it and they're two of my closest friends in the world. It's funny, isn't it? It's like those fights on the playground when you're in fourth grade. Like two boys fighting on the playground, they're going to be best friends by the end of the day, you know? And that's, you really do, it really is a function of that. And I was thinking the exact same thing, Mark, I wasn't going to say it. But yeah, you really do. You get to learn in an adversarial process, especially when you're in a good, hard fight.

You get to learn your opponent in a lot of ways better than their own colleagues do because you see them under pressure. You're creating the pressure. You see how they respond. And you really can develop a true, healthy respect for somebody like that. And that's why, you know, number one, Megan, that's why you brought him. Brian Friedman and number two, I would hire Mark Kerikos if I was in trouble tomorrow in an instant to defend me because- Totally.

Yeah. Same. And now they work together. So it would be super easy or you. I don't know. I feel like this is, I believe you, when you say this is how boys like resolve things on the playground. Girls instead of doing that will just say nothing and then stick needles in your back, knives in your back for years quietly and your life will slowly be destroyed.

You won't know why. So it's a different kind of playground. I'd put the girls' revenge up against the boys. I'd much rather just have a playground fight where we'd punch in the face. Having raised a ball-busting lawyer myself, I was shocked when she was in fourth grade at what those girls did do one another. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced up until then. Yes.

It's like a right of passage, sadly, for a lot of women. But boy, oh, boy, you get to. tougher. That's for damn sure. All right, before we go, I want to put a period at the end of the MJ discussion because the real question is what, what now is going to be his legacy? Because this is a fight for legacy and for money. In the New York Times, the Daily podcast, Mark, they pointed out that there was testimony that on the day Michael died, he had, his brand was worth like $24. He had not a lot of money left in the coffers. The estate was very, very, very, very worried that it wasn't going to be able to generate any dough because it was so smeared,

you know, with these allegations. But now we've had the MJ musical, which has defied expectations and become a smash hit for five years with nearly sold out venues. We've had the Cirque de Soleil. Now we have this movie with hundreds of millions already and on track to potentially make a billion dollars and the filmmakers, which is really the estate, saying we have another one that we can release quickly in the hopper, which may or may not cover all the stuff we've been discussing. There are some legal impediments to them doing it, given like deals that have been signed.

But it's a fight for them to continue earning and to restore his legacy. The family says they don't believe any of these allegations and they want the legacy restored. Can that be done? And will the public allow it? Well, if you want my, of my, non-legal answer, my non-legal answer is based on my experience. Yes, the public will allow it. And the fact

that it has exceeded everybody's expectations in terms of the box office on this thing tells you all you need to know. No, I mean, even though there will be other, as I mentioned before, there will be other documentaries out. There will be other productions out because money spawns money. And that is going to triumph in the end, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on who's looking at it. What do you think, Matt? Yeah, I think Mark's right. And remember, you know, these songs are so iconic that when you hear one, it brings us back to a point in our life, like, hey, that was from 10th grade.

Or, you know, we remember these parties, and they're so personal to everybody because he was so huge. I mean, he's the largest pop star in the world. And look, I've dedicated my life to fighting, my professional life anyway, to fighting. child molesters, basically, and those who would sexually pray on others. And I think that, you know, in the world of cancellation, he's dead. So I think that, I don't know, and this might be controversial, it's just me, but I think we all need to allow ourselves to enjoy the music. Other people are making that money now. And it's also a fascinating, iconic, you know, fall from grace.

And people can't stay away from that. So I think both aspects of that story are going to go. I think it's going to continue to make money and people are still going to talk about the implications of sexual assault and taking advantage of the kids. And, you know, whether it's true or not true, I think it's going to be a, it's going to continue to be a part of our cultural landscape for a long time. Yeah. I mean, dying is the ultimate cancellation. He certainly was canceled. Yeah. I feel like one aspect of it that wasn't discussed that really is a critical piece of the story is the parents who are. allowed their seven-year-old children to spend the night at a grown-ups house who, you know, wasn't a parent, and in his bed. Like they knew. They knew that this was happening, and they allowed it. And the children who are now grown say, it's tough, especially when you don't have a lot of money as a kid, and the world's greatest pop star pays attention to you and wants to be your friend.

and had a decent narrative of, I'm just a big kid myself. It's not that I'm a molester. It's that I'm just a bit, I never got to grow up. And it was very persuasive because he did have a very abusive father. He had a childhood where he worked all the time. He was obviously stunted in some ways. He was childlike, even as a grown-up. So it's kind of like, okay, I can see it.

You know, Neverland looks like an amusement park. His room looks like a Peter Pan book. He is kind of a big, you know, you could go with it if you want. wanted to delude yourself into thinking there's no risks here, most normal people never would. But I'm just saying this is what the parents convinced themselves of. And this is just not a good idea. Nope. No normal man wants a child in his bed. They just don't. As one thing if you have a kid and he's sick and he comes in the middle of the night, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about strange man who's not related to your child who wants him to sleep in his bed. It's a hard no.

So maybe that is potentially helpful to anybody out there listening. Guys, looking forward to many more episodes of In The Well, everybody go and subscribe at mKtruecrime.com. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Megan. Thanks, Megan. Bye, Matt. All right. And we'll see all of you tomorrow with Mark Halperin and our deep dive on Katie Porter and how she has been victimized, my friend.

She's the victim. That's what you need to know. And more on that tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show, no BS, no agenda, and no fear.