The Megyn Kelly Show - Truth About Twitter Files, and Amber Heard Appeals, with Michael Knowles, Arthur Aidala, and Mark Eiglarsh | Ep. 447

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire to discuss the truth about the "Twitter Files" story, the revelations about the censorship and suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the reality of the internal communications, Trump's valid anger over the story but over-the-top rhetoric, hysterical media reaction that reveals their guilt in the story, Harry and Meghan's latest self-pitying Netflix trailer, Harry and Meghan complaining about the media, media craziness about Ron DeSantis, and more. Then it's Kelly's Court with Arthur Aidala and Mark Eiglarsh, to talk about the status of the Harvey Weinstein cases in New York and Los Angeles, the evidence in the Weinstein cases and value of a female lawyer in a case like this, the relevance of Weinstein's genitalia, Amber Heard filing her appeal in the Johnny Depp case and whether she has a shot, how Heard should have handled her case the first time, Heard's initial lies and claims now, the GMA TJ Holmes and Amy Robach scandal and legal angles, Balenciaga dropping its lawsuit, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday. I hope you had a great weekend. I have to tell you, we had a great weekend in the Kelly Brunt household. I tweeted this out. We went to see The Music Man on Friday night with our kids. You know how you're always looking for Broadway tickets if you're coming to New York. You never know what's good, what's not good. It's tough to know. This was so fun. I would go just me and Doug. The two of us would have been totally delighted there. But if you have kids in particular, you'll have so much fun. Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. It was a team all the

way. Totally enjoyed every second of it. So super, super fun. And saw some dear friends on Saturday and just had such a nice time. It's great to this time of year. One of the great things about it is the the excuse to get together with friends and family who you may not have seen, you know, whether it's Christmas parties or office parties or what have you. So take advantage of it. I know you're tired, probably like me. You work hard, you got kids like you don't want to go out. Trust me. I, most nights I'd rather sit at home watching a Christmas special this time of year, but I made myself get up and go out and I was very happy to do it even though I have a touch of social anxiety. So if I can do it, you can do it, do it. Uh, okay. In just a bit, we're going to be joined by two people who never give me anxiety.

They only bring joy into my life. And that's Arthur Idalla and Mark Eichlausch for Kelly's Court. Lots of interesting cases to get to, including Amber Heard, who just filed quite the appeal in the Johnny Depp case. But first, on Friday night, Elon Musk entrusted our pal Matt Taibbi with the so-called Twitter files, the Twitter files. He had a bunch of documents that he found when taking over the company, and he decided to release them to Matt Taibbi. Great choice. Independent journalist who doesn't have any particular axe to grinds other than with dishonest media. media so good call uh taibi prefaced his 36 tweets as a frankensteinian tale of a human built mechanism grown out the out of the control of its designer the tweets show proof of suppression of the hunter biden laptop story okay we knew that we knew that it was suppressed but it was so there's a lot of color behind the scenes on the discussions that went on about it uh the entire thing was

readily dismissed by the media, as you know, when the story broke, as Russian disinformation, our own government. We were told Russian disinformation. Remember all those former CIA and intelligence officials who said it's Russian disinformation. But Twitter was the first one to say it's disinformation. Twitter went before the so-called experts.

So what did we actually learn here? Is it big or is it not big? Here to discuss that and more is host of the Michael Knowles show over at the Daily Wire, Michael Knowles. Michael, great to see you again. How are you? Megan, wonderful as always to be with you. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's great to see you. So, okay. I will be honest. I did not see huge new news in there. You know, to me, it was color, additional color, but not that many new additional facts. But all the color that came out was pretty damning to the internal discussions at Twitter and just could further confirms that they suppress this story really without much of a care at the top levels for whether doing so was the right thing was the moral thing was what had any journalistic integrity to it uh and and there was a knee-jerk instinct to simply suppress it i think because it was bad for joe biden um and i'll just i'll just give the audience the uh what i see is sort of the biggest reveals and that was here's one matt released this as i said in like 36 tweets number eight said um

by 2020 requests from connected actors within the biden campaign and twitter to delete tweets were routine one executive would write to another more to review from the biden team the reply would come back handled uh now matt points out quickly thereafter both parties had access to these tools however the trump was trump white house was doing it and the biden campaign were doing it they're all pressuring twitter and twitter is exceeding but it wasn't balanced he says it was based on context and uh twitter is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation meaning democrats so there were more channels and ways to complain open to the left.

OK, that's not a huge reveal. By the way, we're told that most of the things that were connected in that mortar review from the Biden team and then the reply coming back handled was about Hunter Biden D picks for all over his laptop. And I understand the Biden team did not want those appearing all over Twitter or for that matter, in The New York Post. So, OK, get it. We're not yet in smoking gun category. We're not really yet even in gun category. But then he says the following, that to suppress this laptop story released by the Post, that decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal policy and trust Vijaya Gatti playing a key role. They just freelanced it, is how one former employee characterized the decision. Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn't going to hold,

but no one had the guts to reverse it. You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gad, Gaddy and former trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Coms official Trenton Kennedy writes, I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe. They realized they didn't have the justification to suppress it. They suppressed it anyway. The answer is unexplained. I think we can accurately deduce it was politics. What did you make of it? This is the bombshell from the Twitter file story. It's nothing to do with Hunter Biden. It's nothing really to do with Twitter. It's actually about us. The news from the Twitter file story is that we are not crazy. The news from the Twitter file story is that they have been gaslighting us for years at this point. And we can finally now see,

not only did they suppress the story, which everybody knew, but they knew that it was wrong to suppress the story. They knew that they were not only on shaky ground, but they didn't have a single leg to stand on. The decision to prohibit Twitter users from privately messaging the story, not just from posting it on their public feeds, but from privately messaging it, was a category previously reserved only for child pornography. And the Hunter Biden laptop did include pretty dodgy pornography. Who knows if the girls were 18, but that was not the file that you couldn't send. It was the New York Post story that you could not send either. So now the new category at Twitter was that you could not send child pornography or something that would be severely damaging to Joe Biden in the lead up to an election. Now, I think that all polls and statistics are basically nonsense,

but there was a poll taken after the election, which showed that 12% of Biden voters would not have voted for Biden had they known about the laptop story. So that would have been enough to sway the election. If you're the sort who believes statistics and polls, certainly the Twitter people, the people who are running this, believed that this would help Joe Biden. And then this gets to the question of Jack Dorsey. What did he know? Apparently nothing. While the cat was away, the mice played. They were all bickering about this. The people with the power on the safety and trust team were not listening to the people on the communications and policy team, and they were just doing basically whatever they wanted to do.

And then you had the lone Democrat in America, Ro Khanna, Representative Ro Khanna, who writes into Twitter. This was so egregious that you had a Democrat congressman writing in and saying, hey fellas, we're getting a little pushback here on Capitol Hill on account of you're obviously rigging the election here and you have no justifiable argument for why you're doing that. Can you explain?" And then we see in the Twitter files a response from Vijayagati who says, well, you understand.

It's because of our policies here and because we think this could be unsafe and harmful. And then you get Connor responds and says, right, but you know the First Amendment, you know these principles of free speech that our country is based on. This really doesn't look good. The reason that it is a political matter is because Twitter is not merely a private company. Twitter represents the public square. In the public square, in at least notionally self-governing republic, that is where we make our laws.

We persuade our fellow citizens. So if half the country is booted out of the public square, or if the conservative point of view at the crucial moments is not permitted to be spoken in the public square, then you've got a takeover of the political order. And by the way, Twitter is the smallest of these big tech companies. And forget about the Twitter files for a second. There are some liberal journalists who are responding to this report and saying, well, there's no evidence that the Biden administration or the government really played any role here. This was just Twitter libs making their own decisions. But we do know that the government was putting their fingers on the

scales in the social media censorship because Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Joe Rogan's podcast that the FBI warned him to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, the very same story we're talking about. So we know that that is all happening. Now we just know that we know. Now we've got the receipts provided by Matt Taibbi. And it's very funny that Matt Taibbi, a liberal journalist, though he's more independent than most liberal journalists, but the man is not on the right, the reaction to his exposing this widespread corruption at a crucial moment for our political order from the journalists on the left is to say, how dare you, Matt Taibbi, expose the truth and speak truth to power?

So this is where I feel like the story is today. And perhaps we'll learn more in what Elon says is coming, more to Matt and also Barry Weiss now. So I look forward to reading both of those submissions on Substack and learning more and am open minded to more. Thus far, there isn't a smoking gun. It's more color on a story we already knew, which is Twitter's abhorrent behavior with respect to the Hunter Biden laptop story, which the New York Post had exclusively a couple of weeks before the election

and which Twitter not only suppressed, but as you point out, refused to allow people to even share privately on their Twitter DMs. If I wanted to send it to you because we follow each other via DM, Twitter would not have allowed it. I mean, it's insane. As you point out, the standard for that previously was something illegal. And internally, the communications that we've just seen now make very clear, they did not know whether this was hacked. They had a suspicion that it was hacked, backed up by nothing, by absolutely nothing. There was one exchange that was interesting in which the, I want to get the titles right uh former global communications vp brandon borman seemed to be having some hesitation over their suppression and asked can we truthfully claim

that this is part of the policy i think he means like the policy to suppress hacked documents and james baker the controversial former fbi general counsel who'd been involved in the bureau's Russian collusion, ridiculous investigation, and from there went ahead Twitter's legal ops. He responded by saying it's reasonable for us to assume that they may have been hacked and that caution is warranted. It's reasonable for us to assume they may have been hacked and caution is warranted. It's reasonable for us to assume they may have been hacked and caution is warranted. Caution might have included we are not sure whether of the providence of these documents. There's been an allegation made that there may have been some hacking. We were not able to verify that. But the New York Post, one of the nation's oldest newspapers, is claiming that it

wasn't right. No, they suppressed. They suppressed because they wanted to suppress because they understood full well that it could cost Joe Biden votes. That's really where we are. But your point about the media is the real scandal here. Go ahead. By the way, even the hacking defense that you heard from some of these hacks at Twitter, pun unintended, is a weak argument when we're talking about journalism. And you see that from Ro Khanna in Congress. This lone Democrat who said, guys, we're getting a lot of pushback on the free speech. Ro Khanna says, even if the materials were hacked, you wouldn't apply this principle to any other journalistic story. I think the insinuation is you'd have no problem

publishing some piece that were damaging to Republicans if it were hacked. The New York Times has no problem publishing information, even if the source of that information is somewhat dubious. You're only applying this here. Trump's tax returns, Sarah Palin's emails. We can go back to the Pentagon Papers. The journalist is not held accountable for publishing hacked materials unless the journalist participated meaningfully in the hack or encouraged the hack in the first place. The New York Times knows that. Twitter understood that. They didn't care. Keep going.

Of course. Of course. And so that falls apart. It doesn't matter, though. It was a Twitter conclusion in search of a justification. And that's why as their justification kept falling apart, and Matt Taibbi points this out very well in the Twitter files, the Twitter leadership decided to double down on the error. It's an old principle known to New Yorkers and Italian Americans in New York in particular. I remember I could hear some of my relatives say this, deny till you die. You get caught

in a bad action and you just don't give up the game. And so I think that is the effect of the Twitter files. As you say, there's no new news here. It just shows us we are not crazy. And Donald Trump is reacting in a very aggressive way to this, but rightly so, because what he has been saying for years has now been revealed. There is mass corruption going on. There was a rigging of the election, whatever you want to talk about the details. And so he's furious. I think a lot of people will be furious too, because now we know for sure what we already knew. That's the thing. So I want to get to what is really done is triggered the same people who ignored the story and supported the suppression of the story in the first place. They're very triggered that more color on the story is coming out and that Elon Musk gave the story to Matt Taibbi, an independent journalist. Trigger, trigger, trigger. We'll get to that one sec. You mentioned Trump, but I want to stop there. He understandably is angry, honestly, like Trump, of course, over the top rhetoric and response. You can take it to the bank with him. But who could blame him?

Who could blame him? The media is so excited to talk about his absurd proposed resolution to this problem. They skip right over what was done to him. He was running for president. He was trying to get reelected as president of the United States. And this is more proof that there were massive media organizations colluding to stop it, whether it was Twitter suppressing the story or Facebook suppressing the story. And so Trump tweets out a massive fraud of this type of magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Well, that's not true. It's not true. He undermines himself. He doesn't need to go that far. You know, he should just make the point that what he's been saying all along, which is this was not a free and fair election, has been further validated.

Megan, no matter what one thinks of Donald Trump, I think we all need to agree, he always needs to go that far. It is just intrinsic to who the man is. He will always go as far as one can possibly go. I was reading his response, which as you say, he has given to hyperbole in his rhetoric. That is just a fact of his oratory and approach to politics. But when he makes this statement, a massive fraud of this sort allows for the upending of all of our rules, including the Constitution. It depends on what the meaning of the word allows, allows, not to sound too much like Bill Clinton here. But if what he is saying is prescriptive, that now as a result of this expose, we will have either the immediate reinstatement of Donald Trump as president or a snap election like you might have in

a parliamentary system, obviously that is not going to happen. But if allows is being used here in a descriptive way, saying that the fraud that we have seen perpetrated by our most powerful institutions, including the government, but also the media, and also big tech, and all the rest of it, if given that fraud, this allows for the upending of our constitutional rules, that actually is a descriptive fact. You did see that happen. You saw the upending of election laws in Pennsylvania, for instance, in 2020. You see the upending of the rules governing our public square. You see that in particular in the Twitter files. And so if the point that Trump is making,

which I think one could read into it, whether or not that is what he is implying or not, if what he is saying is that our government is not currently operating like the bill up on Capitol Hill, like we were taught in civics class, like we read in the Constitution, that is simply a fact. It's up to conservatives now either to do what we always do, which is fight the previous war and complain about how things aren't exactly the way that they were at the end of the 18th century and how upset George Washington would be. Or we can fight the war that we are currently in and recognize that the lowercase C constitution that governs our country is a little bit different than what we read on the parchment and engage in the system that we do in

fact live in. That's what you saw Elon Musk do. Elon Musk put his money where our mouths were, and he just bought up Twitter and exposed files, mostly because he was irritated that they banned the Babylon Bee. Well, whatever the man's motivations, he is engaging in that real political system, and it was expensive to do. It's shedding a lot of light, and I think conservatives need to react in much the same way. Well, don't forget the New York Times suppressed the story. The Washington Post suppressed the story. They went along with, oh, it's hacked, hacked, disinformation, disinformation. And it took months for them to come around. CBS two weeks ago finally ran a report saying, oh, we've been able to verify that the laptop was real after Leslie Stahl looking Donald Trump in the face

and saying that can't be verified. It can't be done. So the the mass media all participated. It wasn't just Twitter. Twitter was first, but all of them agreed. We're not going to publish this information. We're not even going to look into it. And it was verifiable, as we now know, because they've all gone on to verify it. So what does Elon Musk do? He's in a pickle, right? He's got to find somebody who will report the truth. You know, it's like Wonka. He couldn't bring any adults into the factory to take over because they would have wanted to do it their own way. They'd already proven they couldn't

just be loyal to Wonka. So he had to go outside. He had to go to children. Elon Musk was in a similar position. He couldn't go to the New York Times. He couldn't go to The Washington Post. They'd already shown their their bias against reporting anything fairly about on this story. So he had to go to an independent journalist like Matt Taibbi, who will not do what Elon wants. He will do what the facts show. That's what Matt Taibbi's over. He's loyal to none of these hacks. He's known for sticking a finger in the eye of these corporate people. So if that's what it had shown, you know, with respect to Elon or anybody else, that's what he would have reported. But he is under such attack right now, Michael, Matt Taibbi, just for reporting what the files show. The richest part of this whole story, as far as I'm concerned, is the media. It's as I say, the story is about us and how we're not crazy. And then the news that we're seeing is in the news itself. Because the line that you're seeing leveled against Matt Taibbi coming from people like Wajahat Ali, coming from people like Ben Collins at NBC, coming from all of these blue checks in journalism is they say, Matt Taibbi is

now a PR flack for the richest man in the world. This guy, he used to be a good journalist, but now he's nothing but a spokesman, a tool for the richest man in the world. And I think, you know, fellas, you work for NBC, you work for this outlet, you work for that outlet, and really we're talking about the entire journalistic establishment. Collectively you're talking about powerful entrenched entities that are much, much richer than Elon Musk. Elon Musk has a lot of money, but he is one guy, okay? And Matt Taibbi is reporting an actual story that all of you people not only didn't uncover,

not only didn't investigate, but actively worked to cover up for interests that are far more entrenched, far more powerful and far richer than Elon Musk. So before you accuse Matt Taibbi of something, how about you take a look in the mirror and look at your own corruption? That is such a good point. It's what choice did he have? What was he going to what was going to happen if he went to The New York Times or to the Washington Post or to NBC with this story? They would have done exactly what they did before, only they had even more reason to do it this time around because now their own reputations were already invested in the oh, this is disinformation, right? Like now they've they've embarrassed themselves already by going along that line. They're not going to be

running to report how bad their embarrassment really should have been, how it really was being wrongly suppressed. And they went along with viewpoints trying to appease different political factions. He then gave leaks in quotes to Substack Man to present it as a blockbuster. What a prick Ben Collins is. Substack Man? Matt Taibbi? I mean, honestly, what has Ben Collins ever done? I never heard of him. I never heard him ever until he's been saying all the social justice bullshit lately. Matt Taibbi, we could go down the list of all the great reporting he's done. His his his quotes in his journalism are on the back of several books because they're so clever and insightful on and on it goes. He's made it as an independent to the point where he's trusted by both sides. He is of the left, but he's a guy who could appear on Fox News as well. Ben Collins should take a seat because Substack Man just got a great scoop.

And even if you don't think there's a smoking gun in it, there's no question that it's a major scoop for Matt. And rather than saying, hey, let's see what he has. Why attack him unless you're feeling defensive about your own positioning on it? Well, of course, Matt Taibbi's report here just exposes all these guys, Ben Collins in particular, but the rest of them as total hacks. But you can see the hackery even in the way they've changed their tune on the story. In 2020, we were told that this story was so explosive and dangerous that it had to be actively suppressed by the people who control our public square, some of the most powerful people on earth. You couldn't even private

message it. Now we're told, oh, it's a nothing burger. This is the classic Clinton PR strategy. The Clintons for their entire career, going back to the 80s, they would say, oh, here's a scandal. No, it isn't. What do you mean a scandal? No, there's no scandal. Stop asking me about that scandal. There's no such thing as a scandal. For months and months and years and years, and then finally when they couldn't deny it anymore, they would say, oh, that's old news. Oh, forget about it. Who cares? At this point, what does it matter? And so when we talk about these people sounding like PR hacks, which is the accusation against Matt Taibbi,

these establishment liberal journalists are using all of the tactics of PR professionals. I just think the difference here is that they're not doing it very well. They're not convincing anybody, hence the need to resort to insults and ad hominems. Well, what's left to come? Well, the shoe that's left to drop is what contact was there between Twitter and the FBI? And what warnings did the FBI give Twitter about this Hunter Biden, quote unquote, disinformation on this laptop? Right. Because we know they spoke to Zuckerberg over at Facebook specifically in advance of this or about around this. And what what happened with respect to Twitter at the time that that'll be someplace in here. Elon is apparently overwhelmed with information and a company he's trying to turn around and

so on. And so he kind of just it sounds like he gave a document dump to Taibbi. And so we'll see in the coming days, he's saying that we're going to get more information. I'm looking forward to that and to more media embarrassment. um meanwhile can i just end with this as we leave the laptop discussion that the the legally blind computer repair guy in delaware who found this thing in the to begin with well you know hunter biden left it in 2019 like a dope like the dope that he is and the guy found it and figured out what was on it and gave it to Rudy Giuliani. And in addition to the FBI, he gave it to the FBI. They did nothing. Then he gave it to Rudy

Giuliani, who gave it to Miranda Devine of The New York Post. He comes out and makes a good point. Listen to him. I think this is on Fox. It's not one. I basically was financially ruined by Twitter last year. I tried to save my career because Twitter labeled my actions hacking. I went after them in a defamation suit. I think, though, ultimately the goal from the opposition was to make sure that Twitter would cut my legs off and make sure that I would never have an opportunity to fight my battles in the court of law again. So obviously watching Elon release this material over on what Friday night was very exciting for me

because what I felt like I knew the whole time was true. And I feel vindicated. It's a good point. You forget about the smears against that guy in this narrative that it was all hacked. You know, that everybody knew and there wasn't much of a dispute that he was sort of ground zero for the release of the laptop. But this speculation that it was a hacking did impugn that man unfairly.

No, it's a great point. And it's vindication for him in particular, and it's vindication for all of us. My problem is rather than be vindicated after the fact, I would much prefer to win in real time. And so yes, I feel vindicated in my suspicions on Twitter and big tech censorship. Yes, I feel vindicated on the COVID misinformation that we were all told on the origins of COVID, on the efficacy of some of those treatments and the masks and all the rest of it, on the involvement between the NIH and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Yes, I feel vindicated on the Russia hoax. Yes, I feel vindicated on the FBI spying on Trump's campaign.

I feel vindicated on all these things, but I'd rather stop being vindicated and start winning. So the question for the Republicans and for the conservatives right now is, how do we stop the next one? How do we stop just uncovering problems and corruption two years later and prevent the next liberal operation that is probably underway right now? One piece of that is making a big deal out of the exposure of the other side's bad acting. You know, I mean, it is important that the general population hear about this, about these discussions about CBS and The New York Times and Washington

Post ultimately verifying what was unfair, verifiable, not for no other reason than this. It should shame those organizations or at least make them slightly more reluctant to repeat the same behavior the next time. You know, you don't get mulligan after mulligan after mulligan. You know, you get the one. And this was a huge one. This really was a huge one two weeks before a presidential election. So it's important for those of us who are not beholden to the politics of the left to hold them to account so that the word gets out and so that they know we're watching them and and are very well aware that we will embarrass them again and it'll be worse and it'll grow and at some point it won't be ignorable by anybody who's not you know a partisan hack in the media

all right more with michael knowles after this megan and harry just dropped a longer trailer for their big netflix documentary which is coming out this Thursday and next Thursday, like the double. Wait until you see this, folks. Don't go away. Michael, they're back. I guess they weren't satisfied that their first trailer was titillating enough that it didn't get enough people talking about them, which is always their goal, even though

they really want privacy. OK, that's what they want. Could you just take a seat and stop talking about because they want their privacy. They released yet another go at a trailer trying to get people to watch the documentary. I have air quotes up about Meghan and Harry, Kardashians part two. OK, here's the latest attempt. It's really hard to look back on it now and go what on earth happened you hear that that is the sound of hearts breaking all around the world she's becoming a royal rock star

everything changed there's a hierarchy of the family you know there's leaking but there's also planting of stories there was a war against megan to suit other people's genders it's about hatred it's about race it's a dirty game the pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution this really frenzy. I realized they're never going to protect you. I was terrified. I didn't want history to repeat itself. No one knows the full truth.

We know the full truth. Oh my God. There's so much to say i mean first of all like they want to pretend that they had nothing to do with this it's really just their story but it's told through somebody else's vision um the fact that she's including in there that she was a royal rock star okay all right got it and then everything changed just in a snap everything changed what what could it have been what could it have been that changed could it have been you guys being narcissistic jerks at every turn bullying members of the palace complaining constantly if not every piece of press was complimentary enough of you being nasty to William and Kate. I could go on. But

there's a reason the press turned on her that has nothing to do with, as the clip says, hatred and race. What did you make of it? Megan, you know how when people have problems in life and, you know, everybody goes through problems when people just consistently seem to have problems at every single stage with all of their relationships and circumstances, usually that's everybody else's fault, right? That could never possibly be the person who is the only common thread here as some have suggested Meghan Markle might be. I don't really even understand what the object of the whining is here. You mentioned and they mentioned racism. I always thought that was the most laughable part of Meghan Markle's international self-pity party, because if you looked at Meghan Markle,

you would have no idea that she's black. I am significantly darker than Meghan Markle. My Sicilian family is significantly darker. That one always seemed so preposterous. But then I loved Prince Harry there. He says, you know, in this family, my accent's not that great. I'll just turn it to Paul McCartney. Yeah, she was good. I was into it. Thank you so much. Well, you know, in this family, there's always a little bit of a hierarchy, you know. In my mind, when I hear British people, they all just sound like Paul McCartney. And so if the point is that Harry is second banana here to Prince William, yeah, buddy, that's true. That's the way it goes. And so yes, Meghan is going to be second banana to Kate. That's what you signed up for. Did Meghan Markle Google the royal family before

she accepted the wedding proposal? Oh, she would have you believe she didn't. She would have you believe she had no idea who Prince Harry was. Oh, Prince who? Who are you? Who's Lady Diana? What? I never heard. No, that's really what she wants us to believe. No, I'm not ringing a bell. Of course. It's absurd. She went prince hunting and she got her prince and then pretended that this is not what she wanted whatsoever. And now they just whine all the time. I am not watching the documentary, you'll be shocked to hear. I am watching The

Crown. I love The Crown. Overall, quite a good show. Does show the similarities between Meghan Markle and Princess Diana, actually, by the way, but not in the way that I think Meghan's fan or two would like. But what you take away from watching the crown and from following the royal family for the reign of Queen Elizabeth is that that woman might be the only admirable person in that whole family. I do think William and Kate have really stepped up and they've shown a lot of dignity and restraint and done a lot to rehabilitate the royal family. But when you look, especially in those early days, the only person in that family who seemed

to have any sense of duty, of obligation, class, decorum, was Queen Elizabeth, surrounded especially in the 90s with all of those insane scandals of these royals who can think of nothing more than themselves. And it's a consequence, I think, of the modern view of politics on the left and even on the right, which looks at politics predominantly through a lens of rights and entitlement. You know, I am owed this, this is my right. But that is not the traditional conservative understanding of politics and it's not the point of the monarchy.

The point of the monarchy is duty, obligation, suppressing one's personality to take on the role as a sovereign and as a representative of the whole country. And these narcissists are just completely incapable of it. And so they are going to be singing their sob song for the next several decades. And I think we're going to be over here. Well, we're going to be playing the soundtrack, I think, with the world's tiniest violin. Yes, that's her pain and suffering that she lost her voice. What did you think was going to happen

when you thought of marrying a prince? You only thought about the castle and you forgot about what would also happen, which is you're no longer allowed to spew your woke nonsense because the royal family is about more than themselves. They represent a huge constituency that doesn't want to hear their political views, whether you're named William, whether you're named Kate, Elizabeth, Philip or Meghan Markle. And so her pain and suffering at losing her voice really is none of our concern.

We don't give a damn. Secondly, the notion of I and then everything changed. OK, if everything changed like that, then it wasn't racism. It wasn't racism because there wasn't a day when you were like, surprise, I'm mixed race. right? It was like they knew the press went nuts when they first covered the fact that Meghan and Harry were together. Her mixed race background came out. Okay, great. It was celebrated. I was at NBC. We did all these segments. Everyone did all

these segments on how the royal family was modernizing, you know, bringing fresh-faced Meghan Markle into the equation, an American divorcee, mixed race. Okay. The press loved her. And in today's day and age, they freaking love that narrative. Nobody was like, oh my God. Right? So what was it? The media did turn on her. Why? If it was racism, what was it? How did they go from loving to hate? Could it possibly have been her own behavior? This is the thing this woman never gets, and her husband is just as clueless.

You know, it reminds me of a line that my friend Andrew Klavan said about bigots. He said, the problem with bigots is not even that they're wrong about the other guy. Very often, bigots have a point about the other guy. It's that they can't see their own flaws. They can't recognize that they partake of the same fallen human nature as all the people that they're willing to castigate. And you see this with narcissists. You see this with the people who just think that everything is and ought to be about them. But when you take on that role, you are taking on a life of service. Uneasy is the head that wears the crown.

That's true even of those who wear the tiaras. The point is to suppress one's personality and actually to serve the public. It's such a damning reflection on the age that we're living in that people would rather play a princess in a movie than be an actual princess. You had an actress get a taste of the real thing. And what did she do? She said, I want to go back to the artifice. And she says, they'll never protect you. She's talking that, you know, they'll never protect you. She realized that meaning I assume the royal family against the press. Hello, the press does what it wants. The royal family cannot suppress the press. Sorry to break it to you, but the press is its own independent entity. And the royal family is just as limited as any other

public figure in suppressing negative stories about it or any member of it. She misunderstood that. She thought they had some massive power to make all the negative press about her go away. And they don't. It's called life in the public eye, the castle, the servants, the staff, the fame. It comes at a price. And maybe indeed it was too much for her. But why couldn't she have just said that instead of lashing out about against everyone around her who had given her all those lovely things? Right. They fast tracked her into that family. And instead of showing an ounce of gratitude, she's been playing the victim ever since.

Don't get me started on the codependent husband who is just as bad okay let's turn the let's turn the page um as i understand but how do you really feel megan i feel i got a lot of thoughts on this i got a lot of thoughts let me just tell you something michael i was cleaning out my house the other day and i found my megan and harry mug i was there for the wedding i had a megan in here i would were nicer times. I was rooting for them. I really thought it was going to be a lovely it's time. Around protesters. That's a good. I like that idea. Liz Cheney. OK. And here's the one that's really got the folks over at Morning Joe upset. I'll just play you the soundbite. Number 10. I'm going to read the short list. Hold on. This makes sense. Xi Jinping. This makes sense.

The U.S. Supreme Court. This could make sense. Elon Musk. Liz Cheney. Volodymyr Zelensky. Makes sense. Mackenzie Scott. Protesters in Iran. Makes sense. Ron DeSantis makes no sense to me. Gun safety advocates. Not just on this list, in general. Yeah, by the way, that was a blanket statement. What? And the Time guy had to go on to explain. I don't, are you familiar with what happened in Florida on voting day in November? And the fact that he is at least one of the top favorites for the Republican nomination. He's changing the face of politics down there. Now, he clearly wasn't a DeSantis fan, but she doesn't get it. It doesn't make any sense to her at all.

Well, because she understands that if Liz Cheney were, for instance, to get the award, that would be wonderful for Liz Cheney's two constituents, unlike Ron DeSantis, who has not only led in this remarkable way in Florida, and you saw the results of that on election day, but has almost singularly united the Republican Party. The Trump factions and the kind of anti-Trump factions seem to be coalescing behind this man. Whether that can keep up for two years remains to be seen. But yeah, why would we ever want to talk about that guy who is now, according to polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, obviously Florida, is leading on Donald Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee, the former president, universal name recognition for

40 years. Yeah, why talk about that guy in Florida? What's he ever done? Well, I mean, of course, it just goes, it's just a little preview of what's to come. He's a loser. He hasn't done anything. And to the extent he's done anything, it's incredibly controversial and bad. And he's Trump 2.0. Morning Joe will switch to that just very soon. As soon as they see DeSantis beating Trump in all the polls and they learn they have to let go of Trump, if that ever happens, that'll become the new narrative. But it's so funny to me that she skips right over Liz Cheney. Like, sure, OK, I get that. But Ron DeSantis, who turned the entire state of Florida, which used to be a critical swing state in presidential elections, red. I don't get it. Why? What? It is amazing. Juan Williams made this point

the other day. Juan Williams, obviously a Democrat. Name me a politician in the United States who has had a better year than Ron DeSantis. Whether you're a Democrat, Republican, moderate, you can't name one. I can't think of a single politician who has had a better year. So if you're just looking at the man of the year and you're not putting Ron DeSantis in contention for that, I think you've revealed your cards. Yeah. All right. Last but not least, we have to discuss Tampax.

Of course. Of course. They're in the news. And Michael has thoughts. They, when there were rumors that Twitter was going to go bankrupt and it was going to be offline almost any moment, they decided to tweet. I've seen Tampax tampax tweet before it's like why is my tampon tweeting at me and they they tweeted out um hold on i want to make sure i get it correct um you don't want to you don't want to misspeak for the tampons exactly so they say refused to let twitter shut down before we shared this tweet and then they tweeted presumably to elon you're in their dms we're in them we are not the same so ew ew tampax you're disgusting um and a lot of people feel the way

you feel with the ew face and don't understand why Tampax is getting political. Could you just sit down there and absorb? That's your one job. It's a reminder to everybody, you don't need to tweet everything that pops into your head, especially if you're a feminine product. And presumably you don't even have opposable thumbs in that case, with which you tweet. You don't have to do it. You don't have to chase edginess all the time, which is what social media impels us all to do, is you just always want to say the next edgiest thing. Pretty soon you're saying all sorts of madness, probably with which one does not even agree.

But you don't have to do that all the time. And also, not everything has to be sexual. I know in our culture everything has to be sexual now. I know that in our culture story time at the library for some reason is sexual now. I get it. But some things don't have to be some things. If the tampons just keep doing their job, that will be fine. They'll keep selling. I don't need those images in do we have to think about politics when we watch NBA basketball, when we watch the Super Bowl, when we watch the Academy Awards? Now I got to think about politics when I put a tampon in? No, no. This is where we draw the line. They've gone too far. Procter & Gamble, you've lost your minds. They've lost it. And I, for one, I'm boycotting Tampax. I don't know.

I will. I am going to in the future. I will be buying zero Tampax products. Play text it is. I got to figure out whether they're owned by Procter and Gamble, too, because it's it's it's over between me. I didn't know my tampon was thinking about me. Very disconcerting, actually, when one and then it had an agenda up there. It's thinking about how to manipulate me. It thinks it has an advantage because it's in there. It's thinking about how to manipulate me. It thinks it has an advantage because it's in there. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. I thought it would be. Well, I learned about that

story from you. So thank you. Thank you. The Michael Knowles show is always that entertaining. You should watch it if you're not already. Not to mention following him on Twitter, where you might want to unfollow the Tampax and follow Michael Knowles. Great to mention following him on Twitter, where you might want to unfollow the Tampax and follow Michael Knowles. Great to see you. Megan, as always, wonderful to be with you. See you next time. Okay. Coming up next, we turn to Kelly's court and the appeal Amber Heard just filed in her case against Johnny Depp. We have a full analysis of her arguments and whether they are likely to hold water. And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn

Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, you can follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcast for free and while you're downloading us there go ahead and download doug brunt dedicated with doug brunt whose podcast is en fuego where he interviews top authors including paulina port scova nelson de mel lee child and on and on you're going to find our full archives on our website and you can see doug Bruntz on his as well. Now it's time for Kelly's Court. So many hot cases to get to, including actress Amber Heard officially files an appeal over the Johnny Depp defamation verdict. And we will go through her grounds. Good Morning America anchors T.J. Holmes

and Amy Robach get pulled off the air today amid allegations that they have been having an affair. They're both married to other people. And jury deliberations are underway in the Harvey Weinstein trial right now out in Los Angeles. Joining me now to discuss it all, Mark Iglish, a former prosecutor, now criminal defense attorney, and Arthur Idalla, trial attorney and managing partner at idola bertuna and caymans and arthur represents harvey weinstein in the new york case he was a trial attorney in that case which did not go harvey's way but it is going up on appeal right now to the highest court in new york state it's called the court of appeals that's our highest court and uh looks pretty good i have to say like better than you might want if you don't like harvey weinstein arthur yeah well i guess i I have to say, like better than you might want if you don't like Harvey

Weinstein, Arthur. Yeah, well, I guess I just have to sort of make it by saying, like, I have no objectivity on this case, right? No, we know. We know. Since I met Harvey in May of 2019, maybe April of 2019. But the fact that in a nutshell, he was acquitted of certain charges in Manhattan, but he was sentenced to 23 years on the ones he was convicted of. What's happened since then is we argued, my partner Judge Cammons argued

in front of the Appellate Division, and all of the media reports were that those five judges, the first time it was an all female panel, five female judges in the Appellate Division, they all seemed to be going after the prosecutor and the trial judge. And it seemed the headlines of the papers were like things going Harvey's way. And then they came out with a 63 page opinion, which is a very long opinion saying,

well, yeah, the judge made all these mistakes, but we're going to let it go. And that was obviously quite upsetting. And then to our shock, and I'm going to use that word shock, the most conservative judge on the Court of Appeals. We wrote a letter to the Court of Appeals and one of the judges gets the judge who was assigned to was Judge Janet DiFiori. She's the chief. She, in 1.8 percent of the time, has ruled for the defendant. The rest of the time, she rules for the defendant. The rest of the time she rules for the prosecutors. And when we got the letter saying, yes, there are issues that need to be debated here in the court of appeals, we were shocked. Diana Fahby, who wrote the letter to the judge, screamed kind of with joy

that, yes, we will be going up to the court of appeals. There's a high likelihood, actually, that I'm going to be arguing the case in Albany. I think you don't want to see this. When is it? Oh, we don't have it scheduled yet. We don't have a date. Our brief is due in about two weeks, and then they have about two months to reply. So it'll probably be in the spring. There is one little piece of news that has also taken place. The judge that tried the Harvey Weinstein case, Judge James Burke, he was just up for reappointment by the mayor. And the mayor has a committee of 14 lawyers and retired judges. And he did not get reappointed. They took all the feedback from all the lawyers of the last decade. And there was a vote and the vote was that he did

not deserve reappointments, which to say that's not going to play a role in the seven judges on the Court of Appeals would be a little naive. Just to jump in, Arthur, to sum it up for the audience that hasn't been following it as closely. One of the biggest errors you claim that judge made was, as we call prior bad acts evidence, right? Like the allowing of all these women who had nothing to do with the trial to take the stand and say, me too, me too, me too, because that creates a prejudice against the defendant that, well, if he did all that stuff, he must have done the stuff he's being accused of. But there's usually an exception to that general evidentiary rule if you're offering all the others to prove a pattern. And that's what the prosecution argued in your New York case. And that's what the prosecution's arguing out in the L.A. case, too, that that there's a pattern so do i have the basic grounds for the appeal and the um

i mean that's one of the big grounds the other big round is look this is all in new york and in california this is all he said she said in other words mr weinstein and in both cases acknowledges the encounters it's just was it consensual or wasn't consensual? And in the New York case, the judge was going to allow, I think it was 26 other bad acts, having nothing to do with sex crimes, and having nothing to do with arrests, but he had a fight with his brother and he punched him in the nose. He had a fight with his manager and left him on the side of the road. All of these crazy things that normally would never come in.

So Harvey wanted to testify so badly, so badly he wanted to take the stand. But the judge's ruling was so severe and so out of the ordinary that he couldn't. And that's another big issue that I think the Court of Appeals is going to look at. So here, that's all the setup for what's happening in L.A., where the jury is out right now.

They got the case Friday afternoon. After lunch, they deliberated for a few hours Friday afternoon, and they just resumed out in California. The verdict could come at any time. So we're officially on verdict watch. Because now, Mark, if Arthur wins in New York, Harvey Weinstein could be a free man. And then this L.A. verdict really matters. But it's raising some of the same issues that they had in New York. Right. And many of us might say knee jerk.

It wouldn't be me. But, you know, who cares? Why don't they just let everything in? Shouldn't the jurors really know the truth? And the reality is the answer is no, because think of any of your loved ones facing a trial for fill in the blank. And somehow a very open-minded liberal judge says, sure, we'll just let everything in, every bad act that that person did. And I'm not saying that's what happened with Harvey. I'd like to know if Martha's the specific acts that he believes should not have been brought in other than the one that he mentioned. But it would be unfair. This is about having a fair trial, not just for Harvey Weinstein,

because if we change the rules, we lower the burden of proof. Then when we want protection, when we want protection for our loved ones, it's not there. So that's the bigger issue here. Okay. But out in LA, they also, as I understand it, allowed prior bad acts. But even if you put that to the side, though, the testimony of the women in the Harvey LA case is getting sliced and diced in a way we've seen before. And it's somewhat disconcerting, but you got to listen to it because the defense is making points. They're scoring a lot of points, in my view, as they cross examine woman after woman, including the wife of the sitting governor. Jennifer Newsom is one of the accusers saying she was she says it was a sexual assault, a rape by Harvey Weinstein in a hotel room back in 2005 at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The defense says this was transactional sex and regret is far from rape. They said

Siebel Newsom continued to email Harvey for meetings after the alleged rape and asked if there were movie roles she could audition for. They say she only turned on Harvey when it, quote, became trendy and to, quote, join a movement. So without getting into those characterizations, I'll go to you on this, Arthur. The fact that several of these plaintiffs had ongoing relationships with him after the alleged sexual assault, it's complicated these relationships, but that could definitely play with a jury. Yeah. And it's very, very similar to what happened in New York. And you know, don't forget, he was acquitted. He was the biggest case that they wanted was Annabella Shura because that the judge could have given him life without parole. Now at 60, at 70 years old, giving someone 23 years, I think that's life without parole.

But they wanted that life without parole. And they found her unbelievable. And you know who her backup witness was? Her corroborating witness was that Harvey did this to her? Was Rosie Perez. And so the two real celebrities that testified against Harvey, he was found not guilty of. But listen, at our trial, one of the women who he was convicted of, we have an email after the alleged assault saying, Harvey, my mom's in town this weekend. I really want you to meet my mother. She's going to love

you. I want her to know all about us. But there's a big difference between January and February of 2020 in the world, a big difference. And now in terms of the Me Too movement, we literally had people outside the courthouse screaming about Me Too and convict Harvey while the jury was in the courtroom. That has definitely died down. It has definitely warded things down. And hopefully the jury in L.A. doesn't feel the kind of pressure that I know the jury in New York felt to hand down some sort of a conviction. I think that that evidence is compelling to a jury anyway. There's many reasons why people would have contact with those who they claim

abused them. But to an average juror, that is a huge issue that we can raise as defense attorneys. Why, if somebody raped you, would you then have contact? Why would you initiate contact? As a prosecutor, you've got to ask your alleged victims these questions and you need to do it in such a way where you're almost questioning, like, well, why? Why would you do that? And let them explain to the jurors. And if they're satisfied, then they can get over that issue. That's right. I mean, it's it's uncomfortable because if you're dealing with an actual rape victim, you feel like such a bad guy doing a cross examination like that. But you have to because believe all women is ridiculous. It's absurd as a moral principle and it's absurd as a legal principle, even more so. So there's this one woman out there.

By the way, I should mention the jury. Our crack producer, Canadian Debbie, tells me that there are nine women, not sorry, nine men, three women on the L.A. jury that many of them said they did not hold strong or any opinions about the Me Too movement when questioned during voir dire when being selected. One of the female jurors said she was on the fence about Me Too and her questionnaire saying, I believe most women, but not necessarily all. And at least one of the men said he was not worried about negative reaction. Who may say the verdict sets back the cause of women if they find in favor of Weinstein. So different attitudes. To your point about cross-examining some of these women on these issues, when Harvey and I first started our relationship, it was my suggestion. I was like, you need a woman. You need to bring a woman onto this team to do some of these cross-examinations, not all of them, but to do some of them. And Donna Ruccino came on and

boy, I mean, she called BS on some of these women in a way I have no problem saying I would not feel comfortable doing so, but she was just like, really? Really? He did this to you on Saturday. You took him up on his offer to fly you to see your friends on first class flight in LA on Sunday. You came back the following Saturday. And according to your testimony right now, you then had consensual sex with him. What are you going to do? You have a bridge to sell us?

She was able to do that. Arthur, can I ask you something? Arthur, let me ask you this. I'm glad I'm asking this question and not answering it, but how come you couldn't have done that same cross? If Harvey said, no, Arthur, you're my guy. I don't need anyone else. Why couldn't you have done that? So I crossed the first, I crossed the first eyewitness, not a victim, but she was saying she was an eyewitness to the, I believe the Annabella Shura thing. And I made her cry. Okay. During my cross-examination, not hysterically,

but she got upset. The judge like went a little nuts on me, Mr. Aydala. And I wasn't yelling or anything like that. I was just asking her quick. I was calling BS on a lot of her, her line of questioning. And there are all these women jurors and you just feel this it's just such a balancing act that i think men have to do that so that you don't appear to be a bully that you don't appeal to be you know basically in new york and in la the word bully comes up all the time harvey weinstein was a bully harvey weinstein was a bully i think harvey weinstein was actually a bully but there's a lot of real estate between being a bully and being a rapist. So I didn't want to come off as being a bully during an aggressive cross-examination. As I said, Mark, the very first witness I cross-examined was crying on the stand. The judge made me sit

down because, you know, she was so upset. I will say I think a New York jury can take that dynamic a lot more easily than an L.A. jury. I mean, New Yorkers are tough. They're like, our life is getting bullied. We're bullies and we're bullied on a daily basis. It's New York. It's the New York way. LA is more like her feelings, sensitivity. This is just one highlight on the subject that we're discussing. One of the massage therapists who's accusing Harvey in LA, she alleged that he assaulted her after one treatment she gave him. She twice agreed to treat him again. This is I mean, I get it. I get it because he's extremely powerful. I get I get having an ongoing relationship of some sort. I got to say, I'm struggling to understand

locking yourself in a room with a man where no one is there to protect. Like that's that's a little. OK, that's tough to understand. But in any event, this is what the prosecution is up against in this trial. And I've got to spend some time on Jane Doe. Number one, some of the women have outed themselves like Jennifer Newsom. So it's OK to talk about their identities and others haven't like Jane Doe. Number one, she was the biggest focus of the prosecution's final rebuttal uh the on friday and uh they say her her allegations carry the most charges the the prosecution's argument was that jane doe number one would would not have been able to describe weinstein's genitalia if she had not been sexually assaulted by him now the the look of look of Harvey Weinstein's junk, forgive me, has been discussed a lot, and it's so

disturbing. So, trigger warning for the audience. Trigger! Trigger! During her testimony, Jane Doe number one spoke at length about Weinstein's testicles. On the stand, she tearfully told the jury that Weinstein demanded that she suck his... Okay.

Well, I have to say it because it's it's his balls um or forced her to perform oral sex on him rehashing the graphic details she said he forced me to do what he asked i was crying and so on um but during cross-examination one of weinstein's attorneys alan jackson asked jane no number one how weinstein's, audience, balls were in her mouth. If Weinstein, as it turns out, does not have testicles. Oh, my God. He doesn't have testicles. I know too much about this, Megan. More than I would ever want to know in my life about any man.

Where are they? Where are they? What happened to them? They're like on the side of his body. They're actually there, but they're not in the scrotum. They're inside of his body. He had the same. It says inside his.

Wait, my Canadian Debbie says because of an infection, his testicles were taken from his scrotum and put into his inner thighs. Right. That's what I said. But inside, you know, he had the same. He had the same infection that killed. Who was the head of the Muppets? Jim Henson. Had Jim Henson not gotten that disease, Harvey Weinstein would have died. They only knew how to treat him because Henson had that disease and he almost died. And yes, that is something that they had to do. Thank you, Balls historian. Can we go back to the relevance of these things?

It's identification. That's the relevance is the identity. Right. And I think it's powerful testimony because they are so unusual and she knows them and she can describe them. And that is the only way she would have known. She described them wrong. That's the point. She's basically saying you couldn't suck them in your mouth. Yeah. They're in his leg. You can't put them in your mouth. That's the issue, Mark. And that's why a lot of this stuff is like, if you look at all these in both states, New York and California, if you look at all of the statements and you dissect them, they're like three or four different stories and not little inconsistencies. They're a major inconsistencies,

like the one of which we speak right this second. You cannot put those testicles in your mouth. Sorry for saying that on Kelly's court here, but just sorry. I knew he'd say that. My apologies. My apologies. I apologize. They're all politically correct terms here. It became it became, you know, important legally. And this woman said, I always told the detectives that weinstein had abnormal testicles i recalled that he didn't have one it was like empty skin so that i mean that's pretty consistent like you could think you could say testicles and mean like empty sack okay sorry we've gotten way too down the rabbit hole um but in any event we are going to find out i think soon there was just a hung jury in the trial of another celebrity,

Danny Masterson, out there in L.A. And that was that was a case that I don't know. We weren't sure how that one was going to go. But now that they have a hung jury there, we'll see a hung jury for Harvey would be a huge win, would it not? I want to ask you one question about your your feeling on this, because I'm pretty sure how I know what Justice Scalia's feeling would be on this. If you're going to take the stand and you're going to accuse someone of a crime that's going to put them in jail, could put them in jail for the rest of their life, like basically the death penalty, don't you think you got to give your name? Don't you think you have to say who you are if you're going to do that to somebody else yes i do i do think so i mean this jane doe stuff is just i understand it and the in the initial accusation parts and if someone's going to take a plea and it's all going

to be quiet that's one thing but if you're going to go take the stand and you're going to point at someone say he raped me and i want him to go to jail for the rest of his life, then people need to know who you are and what your background is. And if someone pops up and says, wait a minute, wait a minute, this person made the same false accusation against me. You need to do investigations. I don't know. I just, Jane Doe doesn't seem an American way. There's another side to that, Arthur. And all you have to do is plug in someone you care about and understand what they would go through, certainly in a high profile case, by coming forward. And I think it would. But if you're going to come forward, you have to do that.

I mean, that's what the Crawford decision from the United States Supreme Court is about. Confrontation clause means you are going to confront someone face to face. You can't confront without giving the public their name so that so people can. Well, it's a public hearing. It's a public event. It's a public courtroom. So that everything is public except their name so that so people can well it's a public hearing it's a public event it's a public courtroom so that everything is public except their name and his name like he's out there he can't do Jane Doe or John Doe like

he's being publicly accused I do think and I understand the dynamics trust me and I do think there are some cases where you we should protect anonymity especially where a woman is subjected to yeah potential abuse ongoing abuse. Her name getting out there could endanger her. There are certain circumstances. But as a rule, I see your point. I think it's only fair. And I had wrestled with this to some extent in my own

life. Back in the Fox News case, I remember most of the women were like, I don't want Roger to know that I'm talking. I don't want him to know that I came forward to the investigators. And I remember having this discussion myself and saying that's not fair to him. He gets to know who's accusing him. And, you know, if I'm going to be on that list, he gets to know that I'm on that list. It's just it's only fair because he's got to now going public is a different thing. But I see your point. It's fraught. OK, let's move on because there's so many other cases that we have to get to. Amber Heard. Amber Heard has filed her appeal in the defamation verdict.

She is arguing just a couple highlights that the exclusion of some of her therapy notes in which she reported being abused by Depp resulted in an unfair trial. They were ruled inadmissible by her judge. She argued that the trial should have taken place in California, not Virginia, where the couple lived together. He filed in Virginia because that's where the Washington Post has offices and they have a more favorable defamation statute for him. And now she wants a reversal or a new trial. So what do we make of her chances? Go ahead, Mark. Sorry. Not on those issues. You know, as Arthur said earlier, you know, the appellate court, they're generally not in the business of reversing convictions. And, you know, they'll say something

is error, but then say, well, it's harmless error. It wouldn't have made a difference. And I think if they find either the venue issue or the notes not being admitted to be problematic, they're going to say, well, that wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome of this case. Well, I think the venue issue, that stands on all four. That's not a problem at all. If he's allowed to file in the venue that's more favorable to him than he's allowed to do that. What's admissible to a jury regarding those notes is very much in the discretion of the trial judge. We don't know exactly what those notes say or I don't. Wait, I do. I just got an update on that. I just got an update. I'll tell you what's in them. OK, here's the update that we just got. I asked Canadian Debbie, why were the therapy notes ruled? Canadian Debbie.

Canadian Debbie. She's got all the answers. She used to be American Debbie till she married a damn Canadian, then had a bunch of damn Canadian children. Now she lives in damn Canada. So Heard's legal team was unable to admit the documents into evidence due to hearsay. What's allegedly in them? In June of 2022, Heard gave NBC numerous documents from a doctor for a Dateline interview. She said they represented years. This is her quote, years and years of real time explanations of what was going on. She says there is a binder worth of years of notes dating back to 2011 from the very beginning of my relationship that were taken by my doctor who I was reporting the abuse to one 2012 instance, according to Dateline, in which Depp allegedly, according to her, hit her, threw her against a wall and threatened to kill her. Eight months after that, Depp allegedly ripped her nightgown, threw her on the bed.

In 2013, he allegedly threw her against a wall and threatened to kill her. So she wanted the notes of her speaking to the therapist, the therapist writing the notes down to be admitted. Technically, that's double hearsay. Yeah, it doesn't come in legally. Again, I don't think that the court's going to find that it was error. And I certainly don't think it would have made a difference. These jurors didn't find her believable. She screwed up.

She chose to just deny things that she should have admitted. You put the poop in the bed. Just say you did it and say you're embarrassed. Just admit the things that you did like he did. And you would have been found to be more credible. But the fact that they found her void of credibility certainly hurts her chances on appeal. That's so true. Wait, Arthur, now listen to this one. So the other thing that I found interesting on her appeal, she she claims that you remember how the jury did find for her on one count, they found for him on all of his counts that he had been defamed by her. And she cross sued

against him saying, you defame me by saying that you didn't abuse me and that I was a lunatic. And they said, no, no, no. Oh, wait, there's one that we say we say yes he did defame you his his agent defamed you and that's attributable to him and she said that cannot be reconciled with the jury verdict in favor of Depp she said to find in favor of Depp the jury had of had to have concluded that Depp did not abuse Ms. Hurd and that Hurd knowingly lied in accusing him of abuse I agree with that well she goes on to say but to find in favor of Heard, the jury must have concluded that Heard told the truth about being a victim of domestic abuse by death. Accordingly, the verdict against Heard cannot stand.

So I pulled that one piece of the verdict that went her way. All right. And this is this is the story. First, just as a reminder, he was awarded 15 million by the jury, 10 million in compensatory, five million in punitive, and they awarded her two million in compensatory. Hold on a second. Where is it? Oh, OK. But here's the thing. Depp's representative, Adam Waldman, had defamed her, she said, when he called her abuse claims a hoax in a British newspaper. But that claim went on to say that this is the one where they basically said.

She he made up the story that when the police were coming to his apartment or to her apartment, she ran around knocking things over and trying to make it look like abuse had just happened. This is what this guy, Adam Waldman, allegedly said, that Amber Heard ran around trying to create the look of an abuse scene. And that's how crazy she was. She, you know, knocked shit over and like spilled wine. And the jury said, we don't think she did that. When you look deeper into what that claim actually says, it does not undermine a conclusion that her abuse claims were false. It's not an inconsistent market ideal sometimes where a jury comes back guilty on one thing and not guilty on the other. And you can't find the guy not guilty of possessing a gun, but guilty of shooting the guy in the head, right?

It's an inconsistent verdict. But here, because of the fact scenario you just laid out, that's not going to, that's not going to. I'll tell you one thing I find, I find slightly compelling, but it's not going to affect her, her appeal. I do find it interesting that a British judge made a finding that there was abuse in this relationship. And just to point that out, Mark, tell us why you're telling us that. I know it's in there and I know she's raising that issue, but I don't think it's going to help because a factual finding made by a judge across the pond, another trier of fact, has, I think, almost no relevance to what this jury is, you know, what they decided. Another judge somewhere else found that there was merit somehow means that she didn't get a fair trial because she was allowed to write about abuse. I don't agree with that. But from the court of public opinion, my feeling going into this trial was, well, can't she write that op ed piece about her experience because she feels abused? There's certainly enough that a judge found it to be in another place. Why can't she

have that freedom of expression? And now now is when you bash me, Megan, and say because she lied all about it. And that's what. Well, he's she is raising both of those issues, Arthur. She's saying what he said. A judge across the pond said he did abuse me or that there was at least enough that I can say that he abused me. It's not defamatory for me to say it. And then secondly, she's raising this claim saying, I am allowed to have an opinion. If it's just opinion, if I say, you know, I think so-and-so has an STD, it's just my opinion. That's not actionable. But if I say so-and-so has an STD, right? I like this argument before Arthur gives this. I'm telling you from day one, as an advocate of the First Amendment, this to me was the most compelling argument that she had,

that whether she technically is found to be an abuse victim by a jury or not, it's not about that. It's her experience. And if he yells at her and he throws stuff that she can write from her experience to be an abused victim, she can write that and as a legal matter under the First Amendment as a legal matter. That's the thing, Arthur, because well, and who knows, because maybe the jury doesn't have to explain what it found was or was not abusive. You know, they may not have believed any word she said about alleged abuse. And so maybe they concluded your your opinion is based on absolutely nothing. You can't like that was an opinion. It was too close to fact.

But but anyway, back to my example, I believe so and so has an STD is OK. So and so has an STD is much more problematic if he doesn't actually have it. And she's trying to say, my experience was I was abused. That's opinion. And she says in here that holding that, that this was not protected opinion, if allowed to stand, undoubtedly will have a chilling effect on other women who wish to speak about abuse involving powerful men. And, you know, Megan, as you know, very well, I've been living with this defamation stuff with Professor Dershowitz and that whole thing. I mean, when I say living with, I know more about this than I would ever want to know. And she does have a leg to stand on. But I want

to go to what Mr. Iglar said in the very beginning. Appellate courts need really smoking guns to to flip a jury's verdict. Our whole system is supposed to be set up so that the citizens make the decision, not the judges. Yes, could she say, look, a judge across the pond said this, and therefore I can't be that crazy? Yes. Is that enough? No. I mean, in my opinion, that is not going to be enough for them to flip the verdict. Let me just jump in there. I totally agree with that. Different evidentiary standards, different legal standards. That judgment in no way precludes this Virginia judgment. But you speak to that second thing about opinion versus fact and how the alleged chilling effect.

Well, as Mark is saying, I mean, we want people to be able to speak there to speak their heart, right, to speak what they really feel. But if you speak what you really feel and what you're saying is an outright lie, is an outright lie. Well, then you lose you lose that privilege that we have as Americans. If that outright lie is going to then hurt someone and really hurt them in a way that's demonstrable, not that it hurt their feelings, but where they've lost money, they've lost jobs, they've lost family members, people don't speak to them anymore. And, you know, I mean, that's why we got a decent outcome with Mr. Dershowitz's case. You did get a good outcome with the Mr. Dershowitz thing, where the woman, just to update our audience, we brought you this news, but she withdrew her claims.

He dropped his claim against her and she said she may have misremembered the incident with alan dershowitz which is as good as you're ever going to get as a defendant in a case like that but wait um wait there was an important point i wanted to raise about the opinion oh mark when you're being accused of defaming someone which is what what Amber Heard was. Johnny Depp accused her of defaming him. There is something like defamation by omission where let's say one of these incidents did happen where, you know, the notes, as she she claims, reflect he hit her. He threw her against a wall. He threatened to kill her. Not good. And abuse. Yes. But let's say for every other day of their relationship for five years, she was abusing him. She was she cut off his finger. She did all the terrible things to him to go into The Washington Post and say, I am the face of domestic violence in America.

This is what it looks like. I am an abuse victim. That still could be legally problematic because I think it's defamation by omission. You were the chief abuser. And there's very much the chance that that's how this jury felt. Best case scenario for her best. Yes. But I want to clarify something. She never said, and I'm not saying that you're saying she's saying that, but she didn't come out and say, I'm the face of domestic violence. Those were not her words. I read her words carefully and I invite everyone to carefully read the op-ed piece. It was her feeling that she was a domestic violence victim. If 98% of the time she was the abuser, but 2%, 0.2%, she had the experience of feeling

like a domestic violence victim. What she's saying is not untruthful. It's different if somehow people feel, well, you're being misleading in that, come on, your hands are dirty too. What we're saying is she cannot express her thoughts on this subject matter, period. And I found that to be very narrow. And I felt like that's going to have a chilling effect of other victims in the future. I don't know. She she I'm just pulling it back up just to refresh my my memory. She talks about getting abused when she

was younger. I'd been harassed two years ago. Here it is. Two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out. The jury clearly felt that was a statement of fact and it was defamatory against Johnny Depp in addition to the headline of the piece, which she didn't write but was held accountable for. Amber Heard, colon, I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change. I honestly, if I represented her, I would have handled it differently. I think that they didn't do a good enough job. I really, I don't think they did a good enough job expressing that it's, it's her opinion from what she went through with him. And just some of the things that were factually proven, that's enough for her to feel as if she was a domestic violence victim. But here's my point. We'll also say that her hands aren't clean either. There were some things that she did, and I would have made sure she got up on that stand and admitted the things that she did.

Admitted them. But do we really think it has a chilling effect, Megan? Is anyone of substance who's really a victim of domestic violence? Are they really not going to speak out because of this? Yes. Yes. Not really. No, not if they're really victims of the man. If they've got a black guy. Yes. Even if they're really. That doesn't change the correctness of the verdict.

But I do think that whole case is going to have a chilling effect. And I blame Amber Heard. is going to have a chilling effect. And I blame Amber Heard. I blame Amber Heard for that. If she had done what Mark just said, she might have had a way forward. She might not have seemed like such a liar. We went we've been through this, but like her direct testimony, in my view, was very good. I was one of the people who believed her. And then cross examination, she was completely decimated. She came across as a pathological liar. And she undermined her own point and the arguments of any woman to come after, because thanks to her, they're all going to be looked

at suspiciously. No, no, you're making my point. She was exposed as of lying about it. I said someone who is not lying about it, someone who actually know it really did happen. There's a big difference with saying that's a woman who was a liar she maybe was hurt emotionally yeah but women are gonna worry versus someone who is any woman who's got a guy on the other side who's got more money or more power is gonna worry that wasn't her case i mean he had more money but i she had she was pretty powerful in her own right um they're gonna worry they're gonna worry that they're gonna be sued for defamation and you know they're gonna sick the lawyers aren't gonna hire arthur idalla and he's going to come get you and make you cry on the stand.

Right. Reality, the more that the gravy trade in the real world, not the celebrity world, women who don't come out against domestic violence, typically it has to do with finances because the abuser is paying the rent, paying the child support and all of that stuff. And or there's going to be more violence that's going to then come after the proclamations, proclamations of domestic violence. I mean, we're working hard to protect, you know, the second someone comes after your next celebrity client, you will threaten with a countersuit. And that person will worry about being decimated financially, whether they're telling the truth

or not. So do not be intellectually dishonest and suggest that somehow that's not a factor moving forward. I'm talking about real people. I'm not talking about celebrities. No disrespect to Megan. I'm not saying you're not a real person because you are a celebrity, but I'm talking about in the real world that you and I live in, Mark. I don't think-

Wait, can I jump in? I got it. I got your defense. But listen, I got a question for you and And I didn't read the whole filing. But the ruling that what Amber Heard said was not opinion. I mean, is that I don't know whether the judge ruled that as a matter of law or whether the judge was that one of the questions to the jury, maybe we can go and check during the commercial break. But would that have been a matter for the jury to decide or for the judge to decide whether this is in actionable opinion? This seems like if the judge if the judge could have dismissed that as opinion right at the beginning, we never would have had a trial. Right. I don't know. Do you know, Arthur, somebody who's been in the jury question? It is a great question. A close call. A judge is going to absolutely let jurors

decide as a matter of fact how they perceive it. So that's that doesn't bode well for her. If it's a jury question, the jury considered it. Appellate courts are very, very, very reluctant to overrule, which is why she needed to be honest about everything so as not to undermine some legitimate claims she might have had about times where he treated her like a victim. If that were OK, I'm going to pause it there. We're going to come back. And I got to get to the latest on this claims she might have had about times where he treated her like a victim if that were okay i'm going to pause it there we're going to come back and i got to get to um the latest on this balenciaga just made an interesting move dropping it's one lawsuit trying to defend itself and uh if we have time we have to get to the latest on sam bankman freed who's been out there in front of well we'll

get to it stand by more with mark and arthur after this Before we get to Balenciaga, there's a mess happening over at GMA where the anchors of the third hour, Amy Robach and TJ Holmes, have now been taken off the air. Honestly, I wasn't going to get into this on the air, but now that it's turning into a legal matter, I do think it's kind of interesting. So apparently these two, both married to other people people were having an affair while co-anchoring the third hour and um daily mail like had somebody following them they they have all these pictures of like his hand on her bottom and at some cabin upstate and what was reportedly some getaway and i mean this is video of them, quote, canoodling. I read a lot of the word canoodling in the press. And so, I mean, basically, it looks like they got him dead to rights,

caught in an extramarital affair. And what happened last week was the story broke, I think, on Thursday. And they had him come out and anchored the third hour without her. Then Friday, they had them both come out, didn't acknowledge it, anchored it anyway together. And now today is Monday, and neither one was there. This morning, according to the Post, ABC News president Kim Goodwin had an internal call announcing that they would not host the 1 p.m. show, at least today. I got a foreseeable future. I'm not sure how long. Saying that the affair had become too

much of an internal and external distraction said it was not a violation of company company policy which makes sense right because they're equals um but the decision to take them out of their anchor chairs was necessary for the gma brand also saying that this whole thing has not gone down well with gma anchor robin roberts who is apparently religious and also just didn't like this kind of scandal tainting the show but here and also the new york post reporting and so is daily mail that um he had a three-year affair it before this with another married gma staffer this one was a producer that started in 2016 he was married then too he was just a correspondent at the time the The woman reportedly fell in love with him.

He had a key to her apartment. And the wife eventually discovered it. In any event, here's the thing that's interesting to me. I mean, people are fallible. They make bad decisions. But as a legal matter, most anchors on television have to sign morals clauses, which say if you do something that brings the company into disrepute, like a moral failing that brings the company into disrepute, they can fire you, which is why I thought it was so interesting on Thursday. They had him come out, but not her,

because there's no world post Me Too in which you get to blame it on one versus the other, right? Like on the woman and not the man. There's just no work. Like're both married. Maybe she was so upset. She just couldn't do the show. Maybe that's, that's true. But now they're both turfed. And I wonder whether you think in modern day America, 2022 America, they could use the morals clause to get rid of these guys. Yes. Let's go to the contract, right? You think that somehow their top attorney didn't include some language in there that essentially says that when the anchors become the story and it becomes distracting for the viewers that perhaps they should go elsewhere. I'm sure that's in there. And I actually read some comments because i'm friends with amy roback and i i i feel for her um under these circumstances um but people were asking like

you're not addressing this you're talking about the big stories of the day and you guys are just not answering that like that becomes a distraction and it's everywhere those clauses that mark um referred to they're even more amorphous for that. They're just, if the company feels that, you know, you've done something against the fabric of our company, you could go. It doesn't have to be an affair. It could be anything. You got caught smoking weed. You serve at their disposal.

They can do whatever they want. They can get rid of you anytime they want. So, I mean, that's, I think from a financial point of view they should have to pay out one way sorry are there repeat that point i i think from a financial point of view they should have kept them on their ratings are going through the roof people will be watching every day to see at least for another couple of weeks like what's going on what What are there? I need double entendres. Like, I mean, it would be much more. See you later. How just so distracting.

Really? Well, all they care about is eyeballs. Megyn Kelly can tell you that all they care about is eyeballs. Well, but here's what's interesting about the morals clause. So if they didn't violate the morals clause, like GMA can 100 percent pull these two off of anchoring duties at its at its whim you know they they require no no no news organization would say i have to keep you in that spot forever no matter what um the question is whether you get paid right whether you get paid and if they

violated the morals clause they don't get paid if they if they didn't violate the morals clause and the news organization knows they didn't violate the morals clause, then it has to pay. I've, or so I've heard in connection with other cases about which I know very little, but I'm just telling you that if an anchor doesn't violate the morals clause at all, then the news organization has to pay you every dollar they owe you. So it's going to be interesting to watch. That's murky. Morals to who and what's immoral. And, you know, immoral is you're married. You took a vow that you're going to another person. Maybe legally separated. Maybe you're starting to see other people. Is that really so immoral?

It does become more murky. Well, listen daily mail which broke the story they were not separated from their spouses when this started back in the spring and they claim again not not confirmed by anybody not by me um but they say that she wound up leaving her husband andrew shu of melrose uh place fame in aug after, you know, months into the affair and that he was still with his wife, I think, when this was outed, this affair. But the you know, if this happened 20 years ago, they'd both be fired immediately. Right. But remember, a couple of years ago, we had the scandal with Steve Croft over at CBS at 60 Minutes where like his filthy sexts with some with his affair partner were in the New York Post.

It was like the it was the dirtiest. It was like if he withstands this, you can never fire another person for having an affair. Because if like I just think like if they're going to fire them for having affairs, everybody like their defense is going to be everybody had an affair. They're going to be like they're going to be like they're going to put private detectives on every single person at abc news from the executives to the talent to the producing staff saying another affair another like affair can't be it's going to have to be something more if gama or abc wants to protect itself well having an affair and having an affair with your co-anchor is something completely different.

Why? Why? I think, look, Megan Kelly knows who I'm married to. I'm married to my law partner. But not from a moral perspective. Exactly. In terms of their argument that it affects the brand, it affects that show. Again, I have no problem with it, but I think that they have a stronger argument when it's somebody who you sit next with on the

set talking about the big stories of the day. It's awkward. That's for sure. 40 years ago. So as opposed to, you said 20 years ago, which is 2002, but in the 1980s, if this had happened, would they be fired or would it be OK? I think so. I think they'd be fired. You recall over at CNN, Jeff Zucker had that affair. But the problem, the reason it was problem there is not because they had, you know, he I think he was married. They would have been going on, according to my sources, for years. But he was her superior. So that was a totally different dynamic. And then he lied about it when asked by his superiors at CNN. This is a different scenario. They're equals. They have some explaining to do to their spouses. I don't know. I feel like that maybe I'm crazy. I feel like they could come back with their audience. But I think you're right, Mark, to not acknowledge it at all. You know, maybe as embarrassing as it might be, you can just say maybe you read some stuff in the press. You know, we we both have some work to do in repairing our personal relationships. We hope you won't hold it against us. We're all going through a lot. Something like I don't know.

Right out of the Megyn Kelly playbook. Right. Well, it's too weird. All right. I got to go quickly. So we'll do Balenciaga. They filed one lawsuit in the wake of their weird child pictures next to bdsm type teddy bears it was just such a disaster they filed a lawsuit trying to blame it all on this other company um the set designer saying oh you owe us 25 million you didn't tell us that this that behind this bag you were going to put pictures of a child pornography lawsuit they dropped it balenciaga got a bunch of headlines saying child pornography lawsuit. They dropped it. Balenciaga got a bunch of headlines saying we're going after. They dropped it. They have no case. They have only themselves to blame for their bad behavior. Am I missing something?

No, no. They're trying to be out of the box. They're trying to think out of the big, vogue and cool. And they went they crossed the line. Yeah. The public will hold them accountable. And so would a jury. So. Yeah, that's right. They tried to distract us with their lawsuit, which they tried to pretend The public will hold them accountable. That's Balenciaga. That's the one they just dropped, acknowledging that they had no case against the set desire. Why? Because they would have had to approve every single image. That's the truth. All right, Mark and Arthur, such a pleasure, gentlemen. Great to have you. Thank you. All right. See you soon. My God, thank you for joining us today. We went to a lot of places, didn't we? Tomorrow, our friends from the fifth column will be here. So don't miss that. In the

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