Epstein and Ghislaine, Possible Diddy Pardon, and Trump Suing WSJ, with MK True Crime Contributors

Transcript

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Speaker 18 Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.

Speaker 18 Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
Today, we have got a lot for you.

Speaker 18 I have spent hours and hours preparing for today's show because it's True Crime Day here at the MK Show as we prepare for the launch of the newest member of the MK Media Podcast Network family, MK True Crime.

Speaker 18 Our very first channel built around a whole host of contributors and the ones that you will recognize from the nearly five years of the Megan Kelly show and going back even further from my time at Fox News.

Speaker 18 I mean, when I was just a baby at Fox News and still named Megan Kendall, that was my first husband's last name,

Speaker 18 we launched Kendall's Court. And some of the folks who are now going to be participating in the MK True Crime channel would appear regularly with me on that thing.

Speaker 18 I mean, we're going back to 2004, my friends.

Speaker 18 We have got eight of our contributors joining me today. There are many more who are going to join us on the channel, MK True Crime.

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Speaker 18 And when there are, you know, cases that are being tried live that we can watch, they'll have regular updates for you there. It's going to be twice a week feature to start, okay?

Speaker 18 But in any event, here's what to expect. A little preview here from our MK True Crime.
Watch.

Speaker 18 Coming soon to the MK Media Podcast Network, MK True Crime.

Speaker 19 All right, let's get moving.

Speaker 18 We got to go. The FBI does not want you doing this interview.
The reason why is for my own safety. Original shows, live trial coverage, in-depth investigations, expert legal analysis, and more.

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Speaker 18 With all of your Kelly's court favorites for years at the Megan Kelly Show.

Speaker 18 Mark Garagos, Arthur Idala, Mark Eiglarsch, Dave Ehrenberg, Phil Holloway, Ashley Merchant, Jonna Spilbore, and more we're going to be announcing soon. Bus, yours truly.
Who that knows he's done this?

Speaker 18 Sits willingly for a polygraph and an interview with police. Hello? MK True Crime launches August 6th on YouTube and all podcast platforms.
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All right, so you can go to a couple different places.

Speaker 18 Wherever you're getting this podcast, just type in MK True Crime and it'll come up and you can subscribe.

Speaker 18 It's like a new podcast feed that you can follow and it's going to have me and all of our friends doing legal commentary. And then go to YouTube.

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Speaker 18 Or you can just go to mktruecrime.com and that'll have all the links for you. So we've done three different ways for you to get it.
I think you're really going to enjoy it.

Speaker 18 You're going to love the names and the legal commentators.

Speaker 18 This is not hyperbole. There are no better.
Like these are the best in the legal commentary business who are joining MK True Crime. Everyone sees the potential in this.
Everybody knows.

Speaker 18 how much our audience loves true crime and follows these cases and that it's a smarter approach to true crime.

Speaker 18 It's not just true crime like Kohlberger and Diddy, but we do, as you know, elevated legal analysis on things like RussiaGate and Epstein, some of which you're going to get today. This is a panel.

Speaker 18 We've intentionally chosen people who can do the full gamut. Not everybody can, but as I point out, I've been doing this for 20 years and I know who's graded it.

Speaker 18 And we were very selective in who we offer this opportunity to. And you're going to love them all.
You can completely trust them. Okay.

Speaker 18 So joining me today, two of our OG Kelly's court favorites, Arthur Idala, who's managing partner of Idala Bertuna and Caymans PC and host of the Arthur Idala Power Hour, and also Mark Eiglarsch.

Speaker 18 He's a criminal defense attorney. You can go find him at speaktomark.com.
They were both one-time prosecutors. Now they're defense attorneys and do some civil work as well.

Speaker 18 But before we bring them in and start talking about the latest cases, I want to bring you just an update on what just broke in the Jeffrey Epstein case in Congress. All right.
It just broke.

Speaker 18 Attorney General Pam Bondi ordering prosecutors to start. Okay, there's a couple of things because there's Epstein and then there's Russia Gate.

Speaker 18 First, Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered prosecutors to start a grand jury probe in the Obama administration's role in the RussiGate hoax.

Speaker 18 Okay, we've been covering this at length with Matt Taibbi and Aaron Mate and Glenn Greenwald. So she's now officially opening a grand jury proceeding.
Who's the target? What does she have in mind?

Speaker 18 Who's likely to be charged? We don't know exactly. We have some theories.

Speaker 18 And we are going to get to the Russia gate latest when Dave Ehrenberg joins us second hour.

Speaker 18 But we're going to start this hour with the latest on another update that just broke, not from Pam Bondi, but from James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee and has just subpoenaed basically every attorney general that ever was, that's still living,

Speaker 18 to come testify about Epstein and not just them, but Hillary and Bill Clinton, my God,

Speaker 18 and

Speaker 18 James Comey and Robert Mueller, both former FBI directors. On the ex-attorneys general, we've got everyone from Alberto Gonzalez under George W

Speaker 18 to Jeff Sessions, who was Trump's, Bill Barr, who was Trump's, Eric Holder, who was Obama's, Loretta Lynch, who was Obama's, and Merrick Garland, who was Biden's. Biden's OMG.

Speaker 18 Will they show up and testify? This is all about Epstein. What will they say?

Speaker 18 Comer has also subpoenaed the Department of Justice for records related to Jeffrey Epstein's case.

Speaker 18 I mean, he's gone wide with his net and is trying to get everyone and everything that knows anything about Jeffrey Epstein. Joining us now to discuss it, Arthur and Mark.

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Speaker 18 arthur so glad you're here for this because you represent ghelaine maxwell so you have to follow this for your day job what's happening here what does this mean to you

Speaker 24 okay so let me just put it all in perspective so uh we have represented ghelaine for probably better part of two years um we wrote submitted and argued her case her trial where she was convicted in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals here in Manhattan, of which we lost, not surprisingly so.

Speaker 24 And then my friend and colleague, David Marcus, he did the cert petition for the Supreme Court of the United States, and he has handled down in Florida everything that we've heard going on with conversations with Ghelane and all of that stuff.

Speaker 24 I'll also tell you this, Megan, and you and I go back 21 years now.

Speaker 24 And I think you'll understand this.

Speaker 24 When I have had the, I don't even know, hundreds of conversations with Ghelane Maxwell, Like, I don't ask her, like, oh, what happened on the island and who was there? And

Speaker 24 it's really been all about her trial and how she was mistreated, like, where she was sleep deprived during her trial. She was not able to eat food because

Speaker 24 those kinds of issues, evidence that was allowed in, evidence that wasn't allowed in, all of it. And then, of course, there's this non-prosecution agreement.

Speaker 24 So people who are calling me, my friends in the media and all around the world are just like, what happened? Was Bill Clinton there?

Speaker 18 And did she really have a three-week or like, yeah,

Speaker 24 look, I get it, but I, I know you know what professionals we all are. Like, those are just not questions you need to ask a client who you're representing them on their appeal.

Speaker 24 It's more about what happened in the courtroom during the trial. So with that being said.

Speaker 21 Quit holding out, Arthur. Give us some details.

Speaker 18 Spit it out.

Speaker 24 With that being, you know, with that being said, I don't have like some magic information.

Speaker 24 I do know what the legal focus is, is

Speaker 24 whether the United States Supreme Court is going to accept her case, where

Speaker 24 some states in the United States of America say that when a free- Wait, wait, wait, wait, before you get to that, let me just set it up.

Speaker 18 Okay. Her appeal is based on, at least in part,

Speaker 18 what's going up to the Supreme Court, you hope, because they can take it or reject it, is she says Jeffrey Epstein, when he struck that plea heart or that sweetheart deal, plea deal in 2008, that there was a non-prosecution agreement saying you the the United States will not prosecute Jeffrey Epstein's associates in connection with these crimes that I'm pleaing on and he named four associates specifically and

Speaker 18 Ghelane was she one of them no

Speaker 18 she wasn't one of them but it went but it had a catch-all that seemed to suggest not it was like these four but not limited to these four will not be charged and so now you guys are saying this entire prosecution of Ghillain in 2018-19 was inappropriate because Jeffrey Epstein basically covered her with that sweetheart plea deal that he struck back in 08.

Speaker 18 The other side's disagreeing that that applies to Ghelane. And they're also arguing the government, federal government right now, this Attorney General's office is arguing.

Speaker 18 When we said the United States won't prosecute, we only meant the Southern District of Florida. We did not mean the Southern District of New York or any other U.S.
Attorney's Office.

Speaker 18 So those are the two big things that are being appealed.

Speaker 18 And the Supreme Court's got to decide whether that non-prosecution agreement can be interpreted the way you guys are arguing or should be interpreted the way the government is arguing.

Speaker 18 And there's a split in the underlying circuits on the law.

Speaker 24 Correct. So just so people understand what that means, certain states of the United States of America acknowledge that the lane should be covered under that.

Speaker 24 And other states say no, it only pertains to the district where the cooperation agreement is signed.

Speaker 24 And those are the types of the cases that the Supreme Court of the United States of America is supposed to take when

Speaker 24 different states or different circuits are contradicting each other. They're supposed to be the tiebreaker.
However, to be blunt, all of this notoriety around

Speaker 24 Malay in the last two months, I think, I've already said on your show, I think the chances of her get being heard in the Supreme Court are diminished by her name recognition.

Speaker 24 And now that's even more so. Do you really think, Chief Justice?

Speaker 21 agree with harvest wants to get in the middle the jeffrey epstein thing they're having enough problems with their reputation this is not going to help her this is only going to hurt there's that arthur but but also the question is is this a large enough issue that affects that many people that the supremes want to take on their docket a very limited docket i'd like them to selfishly i'm making deals in federal court every day and when prosecutors say we're not going to do something, I don't think, well, wait a second.

Speaker 21 Do you work for a different government? Aren't you all under the same employer? You mean somehow, somewhere else, they could violate this agreement, this contract that you and I have?

Speaker 21 But that said, I don't know that the supremes are going to think that this has that kind of far-reaching effect and take it on their docket.

Speaker 18 Just to make clear for the audience listening at home, just to make clear, there's a split in the underlying circuits right underneath the U.S.

Speaker 18 Supreme Court on whether when the government agrees that it's not going to prosecute you, like like I was saying, it's agreeing for the entire federal government in all jurisdictions, or it's only agreeing in your jurisdiction that you currently have this legal issue in.

Speaker 18 And Ghillain and Arthur are arguing when it says the United States will not prosecute, it means the United States government, period, in any jurisdiction.

Speaker 18 And there are some federal district or federal circuit courts of appeal that have agreed with that.

Speaker 18 But unfortunately for Ghelane and Arthur, there's another set of federal courts of appeal that have said, no, it only means the one limited jurisdiction in which the criminal case at issue was brought.

Speaker 18 So this would be the kind of thing the U.S. Supreme Court might take up because it's its job to resolve splits in the circuits, but it only would take it if it's like

Speaker 18 a big enough case and the right case, and it depends on how sharp the split is, how recent the split is.

Speaker 18 And basically, it seems like this is not the best vehicle to get the split issue resolved, Arthur, that on top of the publicity of having it be Ghelane Maxwell, the Supreme Court, and John Roberts.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I agree with you. Probably won't want to touch that with a 10-foot bowl.
Go ahead.

Speaker 24 So just so folks understand, when you make this agreement, when they made this agreement down in Florida,

Speaker 24 and Mark could attest this as well, when you make these big agreements that really matter, they always tell us, the defense attorneys, well, this has to go to Washington to be approved by the Attorney General of the United States of America.

Speaker 18 So it's

Speaker 18 locally that happened here. Correct.

Speaker 24 Correct. So that it's like just the you, the local prosecutor is saying this.
And someone can say, well, how could a guy

Speaker 24 in Florida handcuff someone in Manhattan? And they can't. But the Attorney General of the United States of America, who they

Speaker 24 Maine Justice can. And that was our argument to the Second Circuit.

Speaker 24 And I'll be blunt, they weren't buying it like for a second because in the Second circuit, their position is no, you can only handcuff whatever circuit you're in.

Speaker 21 Yeah, and the

Speaker 21 problem is it sounds very fact-specific. In other words, Arthur has very unique facts, like that it went up to the highest in that department.

Speaker 21 And, you know, the Supreme Court, they're not going to get involved in something that just has

Speaker 21 appeal to this particular defendant.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 on that front,

Speaker 18 another unique thing about Ghelane's appeal is normally it's the guy who signed with the government. It's the guy who got off the hook.
Like

Speaker 18 this would be a more typical case if it were Jeffrey Epstein saying, you can't prosecute me. You signed a non-prosecution agreement with me back in 2008.
But this is not Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 18 It's an associate of his. And on top of that, it's an associate who wasn't specifically named in the non-prosecution agreement.

Speaker 18 And so these are all excuses for the Supreme Court to say, this one's not the right one for us to resolve this issue because they do.

Speaker 18 Do they have enough heat coming down on them every day thanks to all these Trump rulings? Now, we're going to get Russigate rulings. We're going to get, does Obama have immunity?

Speaker 18 All this stuff is about to come to them. They don't want to touch hot-button political issues if they don't have to.
And this one's about as hot as they come.

Speaker 18 All right, let me shift gears and ask you guys, as just people who are members of the criminal bar, what's going to happen in response to all these subpoenas? It's the House Oversight Committee.

Speaker 18 They've issued valid subpoenas. Generally, if you blow off a subpoena that you get from the House of Representatives, they refer you to the DOJ for prosecution if they want to.

Speaker 18 And if they can prove you're not complying, you could wind up going to jail like Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon. So I was going to say

Speaker 24 my client Steve Bannon wound up doing some time in jail because he wasn't going to go in there. But I mean, Mark could explain, there are procedures and they have to have cause.

Speaker 24 They can't just start issuing subpoenas to Megan Kelly and Mark Aglosh. There needs to be supporting

Speaker 24 probable cause. I don't know if that's the correct standard to bring Bill Clinton in.
You can't just bring him in for

Speaker 24 on a whim because the New York Post is reporting that Ghillain may have said, you know, A, B, or C.

Speaker 21 Yeah, this is going to be challenged. These people are not going to ignore the subpoenas.

Speaker 21 They're going to get great lawyers like Arthur who will then argue that this is harassment there's no real purpose for them to come in and try to get that uh subpoena quashed they'll go into a federal district court and make those objections

Speaker 21 i think so yeah i think that's the appropriate place i've never done it but yeah

Speaker 18 Because they need somebody to tell to slap Comer's hand. I mean, obviously, if they object to Comer, he's going to say, overruled, come in here.

Speaker 18 But I mean, we're talking about heavy hitters, you know, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Like, they're they're definitely going to find out Lynch.

Speaker 24 Like, why, what does Loretta Lynch have to do with any of this? I mean, look, I shouldn't have to say that.

Speaker 18 She may know a lot. She definitely knows a lot about Russia Gate and Hillary Clinton.
I mean, I like when I first saw these names, I was like, I want to talk to all these people about Russia Gate.

Speaker 18 And then I realized, wait, this is an Epstein list, which makes sense. Like Alberto Gonzalez, that makes sense.
He was the AG when they signed that plea, that sweetheart plea deal in 2008.

Speaker 24 So I get that. That's the one that would be relevant.
He's probably,

Speaker 21 can I ask you guys something?

Speaker 21 all of this stuff all of the effort the Clinton this and that all this stuff Don't we really care at the end of the day who was harming children with Epstein?

Speaker 21 Do you really think that this circus is ever going to get down to that? I feel like we're we're back to when Geraldo opened up Al Capone's vault and there was nothing in there.

Speaker 21 And we waited with anticipation. I feel like it's the same damn thing with this subject matter.

Speaker 18 I see what you're saying. I don't think this is the list that you would subpoena if you actually wanted answers in the Epstein case.
Like I, right.

Speaker 18 So what are we doing? And I actually don't even think it's witness testimony that they need. I think, including your client, Ghelane, I think what they need is documents.

Speaker 18 You know, I mean, what we really need to see is what the hell was in Epstein's safe?

Speaker 18 You know, what, what was found and seen when the FBI conducted the raid of Epstein's properties early on in 2019, because they didn't take the stuff and then they had to go back.

Speaker 18 Like that stuff might might actually tell us something. I'm not sure James Comey is going to know what we need to know.

Speaker 18 And I have even more doubts about, I don't know, Merrick Garland, Jeff Sessions, Jeff Sessions, all these people sound relevant to me on Russia Gate.

Speaker 18 And I wonder if this is some sort of backdoor way of getting testimony on Russia Gate. Anyway, your thoughts on it, Arthur.

Speaker 24 My thoughts are this.

Speaker 24 First of all, Mark said what a lot of people are saying, children and pedophilia, the charges against Epstein, everything you mentioned against Delaine, it was never pedophilia.

Speaker 24 It was never 13, 14, 15. They were all overage.
They were old. They were young.
They were 18, 19, 20.

Speaker 18 But everyone was.

Speaker 18 Wait a minute. Because he pleaded killing the solicitation of a...
Yeah, okay, but

Speaker 18 let's not fool the audience. He did like the 14-year-olds.
That is true. And I know that.
And I know that from somebody very close to the case.

Speaker 18 Now, he would try to find one that looked older, but if given his choice, Jeffrey Epstein would take a 14-year-old all day long.

Speaker 18 There is a question about whether he wanted a four-year-old. And we are still wondering about that because the FBI says it has tens of thousands of videos of him looking at actual child pornography.

Speaker 18 Like,

Speaker 18 kitty, you know, forgive me. I just know that's a good way of saying it.

Speaker 24 Mark's correct. The ultimate goal is to see if any of these people, these names bandied about,

Speaker 24 were involved in molesting children.

Speaker 24 But we also know, and I compliment the Department of Justice, we're not just releasing a bunch of names that they've found and are associated just to tarnish people who have, who haven't done anything wrong.

Speaker 24 And look, Megan, you've covered it extensively. I mean, look what happened to Dershowitz.
This woman claimed on their oath and writings all over the place.

Speaker 24 She had sex with him multiple times in multiple locations and ultimately said, I may have been mistaken. And you know how it has destroyed Alan Dershowitz and his reputation and

Speaker 24 everything that he worked for for all of those years.

Speaker 18 And that's this, Arthur. I mean, with all due respect to Virginia Duffrey, God rest her, she lied about a lot.
I mean, she's the number one victim that they put out there as like the Epstein victim.

Speaker 18 And I believe she was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, but she lied about a lot. And now people want to like resurrect her word like it's the word of Mother Teresa, and it really wasn't.

Speaker 24 Megan, she lied so much that she did not testify in Delaney Maxwell's trial. She was interviewed by the U.S.
Attorney's Office and the FBI after they spoke to her. He was not a witness.

Speaker 24 And there's that famous picture of her and Prince Andrew. And Delane's right in the picture.

Speaker 24 So if they, if she had any kind of truth coming out of her mouth, you know they would have thrown her on the stand and they didn't.

Speaker 21 And Megan, to Arthur's point, what I fear is that this inquiry that they're conducting may at best get you to more people. who hung around Jeffrey Epstein.
So what?

Speaker 21 The inference, however, is going to be that that they did nefarious things with children. And we saw what happened at Derschwitz.

Speaker 21 There's no innocent way of your name being mentioned in this arena. And then even when it's found that the person lied, somehow you get your name back in whole.
You don't.

Speaker 21 So my concern is, what are we really going to get out of this?

Speaker 18 Because there's a downside, too.

Speaker 18 Everybody hung out with Epstein. You know, there's a report out today from the New York Times.
It's a look inside of Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan Lair.

Speaker 18 And they've gotten pictures of his famous, they call it a townhouse, it's a mansion,

Speaker 18 which is a stone's throw from Central Park, sold to Epstein in 1998 by Leslie Wexner. I have lots of questions about this guy, Les Wexner, a lot.

Speaker 18 He owns, owned, I don't know if he still owns, Victoria's Secret, The Limited. He was like this with Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 18 Pals, like two peas in a pod, and seemed to really take care of Jeffrey financially.

Speaker 18 Unclear to me why, because Epstein didn't have particular expertise that Wexner would have needed. In any event,

Speaker 18 in this mansion, I'm going to get to the part about

Speaker 18 the people who they point out were in it. But they write, dozens of framed prosthetic eyeballs lined the entryway.

Speaker 18 A sculpture of a woman wearing a bridal gown and clutching a rope was suspended in the central atrium. Look at this bizarreness for the listening audience.
I don't even know how to describe this.

Speaker 18 It looks like a mannequin in a wedding gown sliding down like a rope, like a fireman's rope.

Speaker 18 It's bizarre and creepy, and you would really want to turn around and walk out if you walked into somebody's lobby like this foyer.

Speaker 18 They show guests sat in leopard print chairs around a large rectangular table. Occasionally, a magician would perform.

Speaker 18 He preserved a map of Israel drawn on a chalkboard with Mr. Barak's signature.
That was his good buddy, Ehud Barak, who visited Epstein scores of times.

Speaker 18 Photos show a credenza crowded with framed snapshots flaunting Mr. Epstein's connections to some of the world's most recognizable people.
There was Epstein smiling along Pope John Paul II.

Speaker 18 I think it's fair to say none of us suspect Pope John Paul, although I recognize the Catholic Church has had some issues.

Speaker 18 Mick Jagger, Elon Musk, Fidel Castro, Larry Summers, President Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, Mr. Trump, and Melania Trump.

Speaker 18 A frame dollar bill signed by Bill Gates, possibly as payment of a bet, because written on the dollar bill is, I was wrong.

Speaker 18 They go on, there was a taxi-dermied tiger lounging on a lush rug. In the office, he showcased a green first edition of Lolita.
Ew, disgusting. We all know why he liked that book.

Speaker 18 Atop a wooden sideboard, were more frame photos, including one of Mr. Epstein with Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman.

Speaker 18 Another flight up, up to the third floor, his sanctum, a suite that included his bedroom, the mansion's infamous massage room, and a cluster of bathrooms.

Speaker 18 Mounted in a corner above his bed, a surveillance camera. And you can clearly see it on the photos that they're showing.
We're showing them here on youtube.com/slash MeganKelly.

Speaker 18 You can see it there in the corner.

Speaker 18 Let's see. A second camera can be seen in an adjoining room.

Speaker 18 Several victims have said the mansion was outfitted with a network of hidden video cameras in the massage room, paintings of naked women, a large silver ball and chain, and shelves stocked with lube, according to photos reviewed by the Times.

Speaker 18 I mean, it's another Ditty situation. Nothing but lube and baby oil everywhere.
No surveillance cameras were visible, however, in the photos of the massage room, which is interesting.

Speaker 18 And I don't know what that means.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 18 that's just a list of the people, Arthur, who were on the credenza in photos. Michael Wolfe gave an interview recently saying he walked in, the Dalai Lama was there.

Speaker 18 I mean, if they really did just start releasing the names of anybody they found, quote, in the Epstein files, it would feel very much like Salem.

Speaker 24 Exactly. And the world we live in now and what Mark said is like, it doesn't matter.
Like the truth doesn't matter.

Speaker 24 All of a sudden, you would become from the famous lawyer or the famous actress or the famous politician to be like, oh, yeah, that's, he's the Jeffrey Epstein guy, right?

Speaker 24 He's the guy who was hanging out with Epstein.

Speaker 24 The real question for me, Megan, is this guy Epstein from Coney Island, how did he accumulate this wealth at such a relatively young age? He clearly had enormous wealth. That was his magnet, right?

Speaker 24 Why are they all hanging out with him? I mean, I don't know why Mick Jagger's hanging out with him

Speaker 24 on one end and the Dalai Lama on the other end. You know, he would invite people, you want to come on my my plane? You want to come to my private island? You know,

Speaker 24 Geraldo used to do that with his island in Puerto Rico. But, you know, when you go there, you just drink a lot of rum, not fooling around with a bunch of young ladies.

Speaker 24 But, you know, I mean, when Dershowitz went to the island, he went with his wife and his 12-year-old daughter. That's when he was the one who was

Speaker 18 verified.

Speaker 18 Once you have a couple of connections, like once you say you're hanging out with Prince Andrew or the president of MIT, you can get, as the lady said, the mother in Pride and Prejudice, that will open the door to other rich men.

Speaker 18 I mean, it's just a couple mark. And then they all come flocking.

Speaker 21 How many people said during the Diddy investigation and then the trial, how many other celebrities were at his parties?

Speaker 21 That became the question, but that wasn't the right question.

Speaker 21 Merely because they attended a white party, you know, everybody's wearing white hanging out, didn't mean that they were lubing it up at the freak offs. And that's what's happening here.

Speaker 21 Merely because they're on his private plane or even went to his island doesn't mean that they were privy to the freakish criminal acts that he was engaged in.

Speaker 18 Megan, can I ask you a question that Mark Mark touched on? Why do you know, though? Why, why do you know the answers to these questions?

Speaker 18 Does anyone in this panel represent such a person who might actually know the answers to these questions? We all have to do that.

Speaker 24 Right, but Megan, here's the ultimate question, really. And Mark, Mark touched on it.

Speaker 24 There's so much stuff going on in the world, Ukraine and Gaza and 13 million American kids

Speaker 24 going to sleep starving. Like, why are we so infatuated? Epstein think he's dead, what, five years now, right?

Speaker 24 It's six years. 2019 is going to be this month.
Like, why all of a sudden? Is it because of Trump? Is it because of that happy birthday card that we're going to talk about next with the lawsuit?

Speaker 21 How about that interview where Pam Bondi

Speaker 21 tempted us? She said the, incorrect word. She meant just the files on my desk, but she led all of us to believe, erroneously, maybe, that there is a list.

Speaker 21 And we all wanted that list because we like justice. Anybody who harms children should be prosecuted.
We should know who those people are. Oh, sorry.
It wasn't the list.

Speaker 21 It was a file that was on my desk. So the pitchforks were up, right?

Speaker 18 And it means. Yes.
And honestly, and I think most people, you know, the left right now is taking advantage of that ridiculous Wall Street Journal report, like Trump's in.

Speaker 18 And Elon tweeted Trump's in the Epstein files. And I think Trump's 100% in the Epstein files

Speaker 18 insofar as the Dalai Lama is in there. And he was a friend of his.
So his name is probably in there in some fashion. That doesn't tell us anything.
In what capacity? What did he do?

Speaker 18 Was he somebody being funneled barely legal girls by Jeffrey Epstein? I've never seen anything to suggest a whiff of that.

Speaker 18 But I also think there's a

Speaker 18 genuine interest in

Speaker 18 whether there are pedophiles or pedophile-adjacent powerful men in this country who are powerful enough that people just keep covering for them.

Speaker 18 And let's face it, you know, I mean, I casually referenced the pedophile scandal of the Catholic Church. It's one of the biggest scandals of the past 50 years.
Arthur's Catholic. I'm Catholic.

Speaker 18 Like, it's a stain on a church we love. And then there's no question that there's been a pedophile behavior in Hollywood for a number of years and certain powerful people.

Speaker 18 And like, look at the story that came out this year, last year on Nickelodeon and what was going on in just one show alone. Like this does happen at very high levels and people are horrified by it.

Speaker 18 And they have a feeling that if you have enough money and enough connections, you can get away with it.

Speaker 18 So that's another like very strong driving force, that plus a general distrust of the elites and a demand that someone like Trump bust up these circles as opposed to protect them.

Speaker 18 So that's the short version. I don't want to.
None of of those stories you just mentioned.

Speaker 24 All of those stories put together, all the

Speaker 24 Catholic Church and Nickelodeon, all of them put together have not garnered the publicity that Epstein has garnered. I can tell you from my own phone, you guys know I still

Speaker 24 have high-profile cases. They're going crazy about Ghelan.
They don't care about Harvey. They don't care about Steve Bannon.
They don't care about these other Rudy Giuliani.

Speaker 18 Because it's still a mystery.

Speaker 24 Like they're out of their minds for.

Speaker 18 Yeah, because this one still is a mystery.

Speaker 18 And that's why if there would just be full disclosure and you could redact names for which there was no actual accusation or actual evidence supporting, you know, possible charges, I understand, you know, the Dalai Lama doesn't need to be dragged through this.

Speaker 18 But there is a way of releasing more information, and they haven't done it. And I will say again, I think it's documents and whatever videotape evidence that could be released.

Speaker 18 No one wants to see actual kiddie porn.

Speaker 18 But I don't think it's witness testimony. I just, I don't have a ton of hope about this list.
Maybe I'm wrong. We'll wait and find out.
Okay.

Speaker 18 You mentioned it just in passing.

Speaker 18 Quickly on this Wall Street Journal lawsuit, Trump has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for publishing that he sent Jeffrey Epstein a letter that was bawdy for Epstein's 50th birthday.

Speaker 18 And it had like, isn't it great to share secrets or some line about that? Trump has totally denied that he wrote it.

Speaker 18 And it's a kind of an interesting case, you guys, because Trump is saying, I did not write it.

Speaker 18 He said to the Wall Street Journal when they went to him for comment before they printed it, Mark, it was not me. I didn't write it.
That's not mine. Don't print that.
That's a lie.

Speaker 18 And the journal felt they had it, you know, to the point where they could report it and they did. And now he's suing them for defamation.
So

Speaker 18 how does the court resolve that? Because I don't know that the journal can prove that Trump did write this. And Trump's going to go in there and swear under oath that he didn't.

Speaker 21 I don't think they need to prove that. As you know, because you're very familiar with this line of law, The issue is not whether it's true or not, because they get it wrong all the time.

Speaker 21 The issue is whether Trump, probably the most popular man in the land, can prove actual malice. They get it wrong all the time.

Speaker 21 The question is, did they know that it was wrong or a reckless disregard of the truth? So it starts the analysis does with Trump saying, before you publish it, it's not me.

Speaker 21 You need to realize I didn't do it. That either means that he did do it and he's saying he didn't do it, or he really didn't do it.
So they better investigate before they put that out there.

Speaker 21 And they did, supposedly, and they believe they have a good faith basis to publish it.

Speaker 18 That's the problem for the... Signature.

Speaker 24 His handwriting is

Speaker 24 easily attainable, right? I mean, Mark and I are involved in cases where there were subpoenas for search warrants, actually, for people's handwriting because they need to compare it.

Speaker 24 Trump's handwriting is everywhere. It's not hard to do an analysis of, okay, here's the card on one hand, and then here's the card.

Speaker 18 We don't know if they have the card.

Speaker 18 We don't know if they didn't print the card. Well, they described something, but we don't know if

Speaker 18 it actually exists. Maybe it was just described to their reporters.
They did not include the image in their reporting. They did not represent that they had actually laid eyes on it.

Speaker 18 So we actually don't know.

Speaker 24 Okay. Now, you know, that's a case.

Speaker 24 That's what litigation is all about. I mean,

Speaker 21 they're not reckless.

Speaker 24 I mean, the Wall Street Journal, in my opinion, they're not a reckless reporting agency.

Speaker 18 And they know Trump is

Speaker 18 litigious. Litigious, right?

Speaker 24 I mean, he just got millions from what? CBS? Cost Colbert his job.

Speaker 18 And ABC.

Speaker 21 They vetted this, Megan.

Speaker 21 And again, no one knows with 100% certainty whether something's authentic. No one could ever know that.
But that's not the standard, unfortunately. Again,

Speaker 18 do they believe it's true

Speaker 18 yeah

Speaker 18 recklessly discarded

Speaker 18 recklessly disregarded whether it's true or false that that's the standard when you're when you're a public figure suing over defamation now and also the problem for trump is that when you are commenting on a matter of public concern about a public figure you have the most protection you can get so this wasn't actually a comment about Trump's personal life.

Speaker 18 It was more a report about a story that's in the news tied to whether Trump as president might be covering up the Epstein story.

Speaker 18 So that is a matter of public concern, and you're making the comment about a public official, which means you

Speaker 18 as the journalist have the greatest amount of protection.

Speaker 18 However, if you're speaking about a public official and commenting on their private life, you still have more protection than if you're commenting on a private person and their private life, but it's not quite as high as doing public official and public life.

Speaker 18 And that leads me to the lawsuit by Emmanuel and Brigitte Macrone against Candace Owens.

Speaker 18 So, Candace will have a measure of protection.

Speaker 18 She's being sued for defamation by the First Lady and President of France because she has said that Brigitte Macrone is actually a man who's posing as a female and posing as, you know, having been a female for years and that she has a penis, to put it bluntly.

Speaker 18 And this, I think, would be, I think would be, I could be wrong, but it could, it's definitely a comment on a public figure and more of a measure of private behavior.

Speaker 18 You could argue it's a big fraud on the people of France. I don't know.

Speaker 18 But still, there will be a very, very high standard either way for the Macrones to win on a defamation case against Candace Owens.

Speaker 18 They say that they sent her a letter in December saying, you better take down those claims. We are warning you.
And that they sent her Brigitte Macron's birth certificate, which is attached.

Speaker 18 It's reprinted in the complaint. It does show a little girl named Brigitte, whatever the maiden name was, I don't have in front of me, was born on such and such a date in the 1950s.

Speaker 18 And it's got like the actual birth announcement and other proof, including pictures of a young Brigitte.

Speaker 18 Yeah, Brigitte, they say her last name is Trogneau. That's her maiden name.

Speaker 18 And in French, it says that her brothers and sisters welcomed their little sister in Amiens, France, on looks like 1st of December. Anyway, she's now got to defend this.

Speaker 18 And Candace Owens is saying, I look forward to it. Great.
And she's saying, for the first time, I'll get to sit across from Brigitte Macrone at a deposition and hear her asked about her penis.

Speaker 18 That's what Candace is direct, I think that's a direct quote. And it's never happened before.
So she's not backing down one bit.

Speaker 18 And it is reckless for the Macron's to sue Candace Owens for defamation. if this is true, right? It's somewhat reckless for them to do it because Candace is not wrong.

Speaker 18 She will get the chance to ask those questions through her lawyer directly to the First Lady of France, Arthur. So, what is really going on here? And how do you like the Macron's chances?

Speaker 24 This is nuts, huh?

Speaker 21 Pardon the pun.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I mean, I mean,

Speaker 24 you know, the truth is an absolute defense, right? And that's that's the law, right? So

Speaker 24 this is not a hard case to prove or disprove. It's a matter if you can actually

Speaker 24 get there. In other words, you get a judge to rule at some point, you know, what anatomy is attached to the body.

Speaker 24 But I would say if there is a birth certificate that was sent to Miss Owens that shows a girl born, I think on you said on my birthday, December the 1st.

Speaker 18 A birth announcement.

Speaker 24 Birth announcement. Okay.
Well, okay, that's a little different. That is a little different.
A birth announcement is different than an officially stamped.

Speaker 24 I mean, I don't know how they do it in France, but you know what?

Speaker 18 Maybe she has a birth certificate, too, that she'll produce. I don't know.

Speaker 24 Well, okay, a birth certificate with a raised seal, with a raised seal. And you're saying, what are you talking about? Here, here's my birth certificate.

Speaker 24 I'm a girl, and Candace is still doing this. She's on notice.
She's got, she's not only

Speaker 18 on notice. But wait, let me ask you something.

Speaker 18 She's got everything.

Speaker 18 In Candace's defense, what she says, I think, she said a few different things about this, but what she has alternatively posited that perhaps there was a Brigitte Macrone that was born on that date and that she lived and that she may have died and said,

Speaker 18 do we have this on tape, Deb? And said, I will allow my brother, because I think her, one of her theories is that it's Brigitte's brother posing as Brigitte.

Speaker 18 and that maybe Brigitte died and allowed her brother, who wanted to be a woman, to assume her identity. Here's Candace in SAT 6.
This is after the lawsuit was filed.

Speaker 18 And so at this point, she's definitely seen the birth announcement. If I said certificate, I misspoke.
Here's that in SAT 6.

Speaker 26 I do believe that Brigitte Tragneau, the real Brigitte Tragneau, existed. It's plausible that Brigitte Trogneau got sick.

Speaker 26 that the real Brigitte Tragneau got sick and perhaps had a dying wish to help her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneau, who was living perhaps as Veronique, right?

Speaker 26 And knowing that, okay, well, he's never going to be allowed to live his life authentically.

Speaker 26 He's always going to be have to hiding, you know, always going to be hiding and doing these sorts of things because

Speaker 26 this is just not a time where people are recognizing this transgendered identity. Well, what if she gifted her brother her identity? Here, you know, this is not a thing yet.

Speaker 26 You can, you can just become me. Okay, that's again, we're surmising there's no evidence that Brigitte Trogneau died.
There's no evidence of that. But that's what it feels like to me.

Speaker 26 It feels like to me that Brigitte Trogneau did her brother, the real Brigitte Tragneau did her brother a favor and allowed him to become her.

Speaker 18 Wow.

Speaker 21 I mean, wow.

Speaker 18 I'm working on it.

Speaker 18 Working on it.

Speaker 21 Good luck with that. She's so close to the line, if not over it.

Speaker 21 It's one thing to just say someone looks like a man. Okay, that's protected.
Offensive, but protected.

Speaker 21 It's another thing to say, you know, maybe this happened, maybe that happened.

Speaker 21 She's reporting something and she's coming out with a statement and then trying to come up with some theory to back it up. In one respect, again, it doesn't have to be true.

Speaker 21 What she's saying doesn't have to be true. It just has to be not a reckless disregard of the truth.
So if she's got theories to back it up, then okay.

Speaker 21 But if that's the best she's got, it seems completely half-cocked. Again, pun intended.

Speaker 18 Well, that's

Speaker 18 her rebuttal.

Speaker 18 Her case in chief, and I confess I haven't watched any of this. I have more important things to do with and worry about Brigitte Macron.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 18 my producers watched it, and they did tell me, and they have nothing against Candace, but they did say that

Speaker 18 it's thin and it's disjointed, and it's hard to follow at times. And it's, you know, it sounds a lot like conspiracy.
Some of the conspiracies that we've criticized in the past have come true.

Speaker 18 I don't know whether this will be one of them, but I don't totally get like she is positing that Brigitte is a man.

Speaker 18 And if Brigitte is a man,

Speaker 18 if Brigitte's a man, then she's always been a man, or she,

Speaker 18 yes, possibly was a woman who died and gave her identity to somebody. If she's always been a man, why is there a birth announcement, right, showing that a Brigitte was born on such and such a date?

Speaker 18 There are pictures of Brigitte when she's a child.

Speaker 18 Candace still claims that that child is not Brigitte, that it's somehow Brigitte's brother,

Speaker 18 who is Brigitte in the photos. And yet, the problem for this theory is that the brother is still alive.

Speaker 18 The brother was at Emmanuel Macron's swearing-in ceremonies, both of them, and pictured in at least one picture with Brigitte Macron.

Speaker 18 So, like, the brother who she's claiming has assumed Brigitte's identity because he was so dying to be trans, is alive and well. There he is.
He's the bald guy back there.

Speaker 18 He took over the family's chocolate confectioner business. And so that doesn't really jide, but it doesn't, look, we don't have to fully buy into this or not to do good legal analysis on it.

Speaker 18 And what they're going to have to prove, Arthur, is that Candace knew it was false or recklessly disregarded that it was, that it appeared to be false. And I will say this in her defense.

Speaker 18 I believe she's a true believer. I do not believe

Speaker 18 she knows this is false. Reckless disregard is going to to be the interesting question.

Speaker 24 I totally agree with you. And my interaction with Candace hasn't been too deep, but deep enough where, I mean, she did a whole thing on Harvey Weinstein, right?

Speaker 24 So we were involved with that, and I'd spoken to her several times, and she got it all right. I mean, and

Speaker 24 even things that I didn't want her, like weren't that helpful for Mr. Weinstein, like she still reported on things accurately.

Speaker 24 So on that limited exposure that I had to her and her reporting, she dug deep deep and she was very thorough and she was very ethical and honest in that particular scenario.

Speaker 24 I don't know enough about this, but I don't think she's reckless with herself and her family that she's going to just make the, I mean, she knows she knows what these laws are. She was put on notice.

Speaker 24 So if she was really, you know, playing with fire, when you're put on notice months ago, like, hey, don't do this. And here's proof.

Speaker 24 And she still disregarded that, she must have something, as you just said, which that she believes she's holding on to that makes sense, that will clear her in any lawsuit.

Speaker 18 Well, here's to that point.

Speaker 18 The lawyers who are representing the Macrones are like the defamation lawyers.

Speaker 18 They do plaintiffs' defamation cases for a living, Claire Locke, and they're two very well-known, very well-respected lawyers. And it's a husband-wife team.
And the husband, Tom Claire,

Speaker 18 went on with Jake Tapper right after they filed this case against Candace. And here's how that went, Sot eight.

Speaker 19 How much money do you want and do you want her to apologize?

Speaker 27 Well, we'd love an apology, of course. A court can't order her to apologize.
And based on her conduct, especially today, we don't expect her to do anything other than double down.

Speaker 27 We'll put forward our damage claim at trial, but if she continues to double down between now and the time of trial, it'll be a substantial award.

Speaker 18 Okay, sorry. That was one, but we needed the other one.
Sot 7.

Speaker 19 I don't know what she knows to be true or not. She says a lot of lies.
How do you know that she's lying as opposed to a deeply disturbed individual?

Speaker 28 It could be both, of course.

Speaker 27 It's one of the reasons why our complaint is 219 pages long. We wanted to lay out exactly that.

Speaker 27 We wanted to explain to the court and we wanted to explain to the people that will see our lawsuit how we can prove that she knows it's false. We have put this information directly in front of her.

Speaker 27 Even if you want to give her a pass for the early crazy stuff that she said, after we put facts and information in front of her, black and white, multiple times.

Speaker 28 What? Like her birth, like the first lady's birth certificate? Like what kind of facts?

Speaker 27 Yeah, we have laid out extensive evidence in our complaint demonstrating that she was born a woman, she's always been a woman, and the allegations of CIA control conspiracy and the incest and all the other things are demonstrably false.

Speaker 18 This is the complaint. It is huge.
And it does have pictures of Brigitte Macrone through childhood and it's got all the things that we've been talking about.

Speaker 18 And their point is this was all given to Candace before they filed the lawsuit in this December retraction demand and she didn't and I think the reason she didn't I mean I think the worst case scenario for Candace is she didn't because she doesn't believe that okay I so is that defamation you know mark like she did she rejected it and let's let's go the Let's go the nastiest possible interpretation of what she's done.

Speaker 18 She's a conspiracy theorist who got twisted up on this Macrone thing, and it's not true, and she refuses to see reason.

Speaker 18 I'm not sure that's reckless disregard. That's the worst case scenario.
The best case scenario for Candace is it's true, and these people are lying about it because they don't want to be humiliated.

Speaker 21 Tepper makes a good point. If she's, and I don't know her like Arthur does, I don't know her at all.
Let's say she's a little wacky. Let's say she's a little off, right? And beats to her own drum.

Speaker 21 Again, that's going to help her. If she doesn't know it to be false, like they're claiming, I mean, the plaintiffs came out there on his show and said, we believe we can prove she knew it to be false.

Speaker 21 Wow. But let's go to the second tier, a reference to the game.

Speaker 18 He's not going to be able to do that.

Speaker 21 Well, he claimed, I mean, it's amazing that he,

Speaker 21 listen, if I'm an attorney, I don't go to the audience.

Speaker 18 I'd like to audio tape. You know, it'd have to be an audio tape of her being like, I know it's not true.
I'm just doing it for ratings.

Speaker 21 But the key is whether it's a reckless disregard and the fact that she's eccentric, a little wacky, whatever that is, I believe can help her.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I think that's, I'm saying this is the worst case she's had for her. I don't know anything about her.

Speaker 18 But I will say this. Delaware federal court is not great for her.

Speaker 18 Most of the, I've spoken to a bunch of defamation attorneys, and most of them say this is not ideal for her.

Speaker 18 There will be a question about whether the Macron's want to see this thing through to trial. I feel like she probably will.

Speaker 18 And it's tough. I'll tell you, just as

Speaker 18 a media personality, it's tough to get insurance for defamation.

Speaker 24 I was going to ask you that question.

Speaker 18 I was going to ask you to ask me. She's got some real.

Speaker 18 No, she's got skin in this game, no question.

Speaker 18 And I'm sure she has to consider what the effect this would have on her family. And I just curious, you think these

Speaker 18 are the things that you're doing. Plaintiffs' lawyers.

Speaker 21 You think these, just curious, plaintiffs' lawyers, you think they're being paid hourly or they're doing this on a retainer, meaning they have a vested interest in how much money they're going to get out of this or they're being paid hourly.

Speaker 18 It's probably that. I bet they're getting paid hourly.

Speaker 18 getting paid hourly. I know.
But these two are no joke. So you'd have to be a little concerned.
All right, we'll continue to follow it. Fair and balanced as we always do.
Guys, thank you.

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Speaker 18 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show.

Speaker 18 Joining me now, Mark Garagos, who's managing partner for Garragos and Garagos, Jonas Bilbore, founding attorney, Jonas Bilbore Law, Matt Murphy, former homicide prosecutor and author of The Book of Murder.

Speaker 18 They are all contributors to our new MK True Crime podcast. It's a new podcast and YouTube show.
It launches tomorrow. We'll have episodes to start on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Speaker 18 You can go subscribe right now. You'll find all of our greatest legal commentators who are going to be talking about true crime and law and so on.

Speaker 18 Those two days, and you can just subscribe to the podcast, just the same as you subscribe to the Megan Kelly show.

Speaker 18 So just go to your podcast, type in MK TrueCrime, it'll come up, hit subscribe or follow. And then on YouTube, go to youtube.com/slash

Speaker 18 at, you know, the at sign, MK True Crime. Apparently, YouTube is making you include the at sign after the slash now on any new YouTube show.
That's annoying, but we all have to do it, except for me.

Speaker 18 I've been grandfathered in because I launched earlier. But my new channel here, and those of my friends, it's going to be youtube.com/slash at MK True Crime.

Speaker 18 Go subscribe now so you don't miss any of the best legal analysis in the business. Thanks for being here, guys, and thanks for joining MK True Crime.

Speaker 21 Thank you. So happy to be here.

Speaker 18 Jonas Bilbert, you are one of those OGs I mentioned at the top of the show where we've been doing this now for 21 years together, my sister.

Speaker 18 So it's great to be taking our relationship to the next level.

Speaker 18 It's an honor to have,

Speaker 18 I won't say the old and new, but

Speaker 18 long-term friends and newer friends all on board. Okay, let's kick kick it off with Diddy.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 this case was tried for the defense by Mark's daughter, Tenny Garagos, who, no matter what you think of Diddy, and the audience knows I'm not a fan, she crushed it, Mark.

Speaker 18 I mean, there's no question this was a huge defense verdict, even though he was convicted on the two lesser charges. But I mean, huge victory for the defense.
So hats off to your daughter.

Speaker 25 You know, what I can tell you is I sat and watched watched her opening statement, and I was in the

Speaker 25 kind of the back right in the where the family was.

Speaker 25 And all I could think of, I'll reminisce just a minute, was my father, who was also a homicide prosecutor, formerly like Matt, recovering when he was in partnership with me.

Speaker 25 And I was thinking, he was one generation away from his mother escaping the Turks and the Armenian genocide. And here is his granddaughter giving this opening statement.

Speaker 25 So it was quite a moment to watch it.

Speaker 25 You're right. She She did crush it.

Speaker 18 That's awesome. Honestly, good for her.
I'm not one of those loons who can't separate the lawyer

Speaker 18 from the, you know, the person. It's like, it doesn't mean any defense lawyer is endorsing a person or saying anything whatsoever about whether the person did the thing or didn't do the thing.

Speaker 18 We need defense lawyers to test the system and make sure guys like Matt have to cross all their T's and dot their I's before they put somebody behind bars. I'm sure Matt agrees.

Speaker 18 So let's talk about Diddy because he really, really, really wanted bail, even though he had already been told you're not getting bail.

Speaker 18 But now he came back and said, but please, please, I really want bail. And he said,

Speaker 18 oh,

Speaker 18 I'll agree to all these extraordinary conditions. 50 million bond.

Speaker 18 I would do that. He said, I'll do electronic monitoring.

Speaker 18 It's unusually dangerous in this detention center where I'm being held in Brooklyn. And other defendants who are convicted of my type of charges are usually released.

Speaker 18 I'm being like held to a higher standard here. and said, you gotta, you gotta let me out.
And the judge said, goodbye. No.

Speaker 18 He said, you,

Speaker 18 I'm trying to find the exact quote here. Basically, what he said was, you have acknowledged that you behaved badly in other ways here.

Speaker 18 You might have had traction with me in a case that did not involve evidence of violence, coercion, or subjugation in connection with the acts of prostitution at issue.

Speaker 18 But the record here contains evidence of all three, Judge Supermanian said. So, Mark, I'll give you the first crack at whether the judge got that right.

Speaker 25 I don't think he did, and I don't want to put my daughter in an uncomfortable situation, but I think from my standpoint, he was charged with counts that had mandatory minimums. He rolled the dice.

Speaker 25 He beat the RICO. He beat the two sex trafficking, which I think last I looked at, the mandatory minimum of 15 to life each of them.

Speaker 25 And the RICO would have been, I mean, the old joke, your money or your life, that would have been all of his fortune. He beat both of those and he got convicted of two man acts.

Speaker 25 And so people understand the so-called victims of the man act are rather strapping young males who crossed state lines.

Speaker 25 So if there was ever a ticky-tack foul, to quote the late great Chick Hearn, that was it. And the judge has said, well, this falls under a chapter of the U.S.
Code that makes this violent.

Speaker 25 Well, that may be the case, but he also, His Honor also asked them to do a survey of every case. He wanted to see it prior to sentencing, before they even made this last bail application.

Speaker 25 And nobody found a case where anybody has been similarly situated, let alone prosecuted and detained. So do I think he got it right? No.

Speaker 25 Do I I think there's too much deference given to the government? Yes, because the government is, frankly, and to my mind, are a bunch of sore losers.

Speaker 25 I mean, they came out on the day of the verdict when they had lost spectacularly, said we think it's 41 to 50 months.

Speaker 25 They now, in their response to this bail application, are saying we may ask for double that. I mean, give me a break.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Matt, care to defend the government?

Speaker 21 Not really on this one, Megan.

Speaker 21 I can tell you, and the only thing I really disagree with on Mark on that is Diddy didn't beat the case. His daughter beat the case in the defense team.
And I'm with you on that, Megan.

Speaker 21 Like once you separate out the emotion and everything that we saw Diddy do on that video with Cassie Ventura,

Speaker 21 he comes off. pretty bad as an individual.
It was his defense team that saved him. And they, from a purely mercenary point of view, they did an outstanding job.

Speaker 21 They really did.

Speaker 21 I think that,

Speaker 21 you know, what Diddy is going to deal with in this in the sentencing and also for this bail review is one of the things that nobody's talking about, Megan, is we got to go back to when he was using other inmates calling codes to call witnesses in the case, supposedly.

Speaker 21 And if you remember back during one of the very first bail hearings,

Speaker 21 he was doing that. And that is the type of thing, Mark's familiar with this.
I'm sure you are too. There's an old adage you hear in law school.

Speaker 21 The second most powerful thing to God on earth is a federal judge. And that is a lot of judges will take a personal affront at that.
And that's, I think, where he really screwed up. I think that

Speaker 21 when the prosecution came out and said he's looking at more time, so he poses a flight risk, it's just like, it makes me cringe. It's like, come on, guys, that's just dumb.
Sorry, that's dumb.

Speaker 21 Where they hung their hat or where they should have hung their hat is dangerous just based on the fact that he is such a prolific domestic violence dude.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 21 I'm sure he could keep it straight for until sentencing, but it also indicates potentially he's looking at a custodial sentence beyond what Mark or I would call CTS or credit time serve.

Speaker 21 So it looks like the judge is probably planning on dinging him something. But I also, look, I agree with Mark.

Speaker 21 In federal sentencing, you can't have gross disparity between one case case and another.

Speaker 21 And so he's there, the government's going to be lucky if they get four or five years, frankly, I think.

Speaker 18 John, what do you think of it?

Speaker 20 I think Diddy is a dirtbag. And because the judge knows that, he is paying lip service to the law.
I don't think this judge really believes that Diddy is a flight risk. I don't believe any of that.

Speaker 20 What this judge is doing, he's doing one of two things, my opinion.

Speaker 20 He either is trying to punish Diddy because he knows that he's not really going to be able to throw the sentencing book at him and that Diddy will get what is very close to credit for time served and walk very shortly after sentence.

Speaker 20 So this judge wants to inflict as much pain as he can beforehand, or it's some sort of foreshadowing that this judge is going to be amenable to departing from the sentencing guidelines.

Speaker 20 upwardly to really stick it to Diddy because Diddy is not a likable guy. He's a misogynist.
He's a a woman beater. He's a horrible person.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 20 I agree that Mark's daughter did a good job and this was this was a just verdict. I don't want to get hate mail for that, but it was.

Speaker 18 Well, I think that's. It's not that like the verdict couldn't be supported.
It could be supported. I totally disagreed with it, fully and completely, but it's not something you could say.

Speaker 18 There was no rational basis for the jury to come to this. But here's, he's still, like, does he have any remedy between now and the October sentencing, Mark, or is it done now? He's not getting bail.

Speaker 18 This is the final action.

Speaker 25 He doesn't have a remedy with this judge. He does have a remedy with somebody else in the executive branch.
So

Speaker 25 I think.

Speaker 18 All right. Is it true? Is he trying to persuade Trump to get a pardon?

Speaker 25 Yeah, I think Trump's admitted.

Speaker 25 I just saw an interview in which not one, but twice, he's admitted that he's been taught

Speaker 25 the president has been talked to. I actually think

Speaker 25 this would be above my pay grade, but politically,

Speaker 25 I can see where this resonates with him.

Speaker 25 Because remind, you know, let's you lived as, and I did many shows with you during the time Trump was being prosecuted both civilly and criminally in New York, which is reminiscent of what is happening with Diddy.

Speaker 25 He was accused of everything. There was, they threw everything.

Speaker 21 Including Rico.

Speaker 18 Trump had a Rico case too.

Speaker 25 Exactly. And by the way, Trump did not get, in my humble opinion, ever get a fair trial in New York.
I thought that was preordained.

Speaker 25 I mean, he was the worst place in the world for him to have been tried was in New York, and it was an unfair prosecution from the get-go by prosecutors who had an agenda.

Speaker 25 He can see that same thing here. I mean, there was, you know, this.

Speaker 25 Emil Bove, who was now on the circuit, who was the one who had to trek down to New York to on Mayor Adams' case to tell the judge in the Southern District, hey, set that aside.

Speaker 25 And talked about Damian Williams, the previous U.S. attorney who brought the case against Adams and against Diddy.

Speaker 25 They cited the fact that he put up Diddy and the mayor on his website when he left office, and that he was trying to curry favor to become the attorney general under Kamala.

Speaker 25 So there are some things that I think resonate with Trump, and I think he should commute the sentence, if not pardon him.

Speaker 18 Oh, my God.

Speaker 18 You're such an effective advocate. But I'm so jarred by all of that.

Speaker 25 But why are you so... Look, I agree that there, I've known Sean for 15 years.

Speaker 21 He has. You always do this.

Speaker 18 You love all the worst people. You love the Menendez brothers.
You love Scott Peterson.

Speaker 18 You've never seen a client who did it.

Speaker 25 Okay, that's a little ad hominem argument, but let's go back. Let's go back to what I was saying.
He has had his troubles. He has had his substance abuse.
He is,

Speaker 25 if you go through all of the violent acts, they're almost always related to his substance abuse, almost exclusively.

Speaker 25 He has been on a cocktail of drugs, which is a story often told in Hollywood, which is where these people get just, they go up, they go down, they're just dispensed, all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 25 When he, and he's now been in there for about a year and he's clean and sober, and he's a different person when he's clean and sober. And he's made some, he's made some kind of amends.

Speaker 25 And, you know, he did get Gina, who was victim number three, to write a letter in support of him being released. So stop

Speaker 18 holding your hands.

Speaker 18 Gina's. Full of it.
Gina needs his money. This is Gina.
Here's Gina in 2019 talking about this wonderful man. Here she is giving an interview.

Speaker 30 He had caught me texting another man. We were in Miami and

Speaker 30 it got really crazy at that time. We were in his closet and he like pushed me and I fell to the ground and

Speaker 30 then he got he like stood over me.

Speaker 30 So I was like laying on my back and he stood over me and he started like punching me like this.

Speaker 30 Like he avoided my face, but he like started punching me like on the side of my head and I was just like covering my face. He like stomped on my stomach

Speaker 30 like really hard and I like took the wind out of my breath. I couldn't even, I couldn't breathe and he kept, but he kept hitting me and I was like pleading to him like, can you just, can you stop?

Speaker 30 I can't breathe.

Speaker 18 And he like stopped for a little bit.

Speaker 30 He um he like grabbed my hair from the back and like was

Speaker 30 like punching the back of my head because

Speaker 30 he was just avoiding my face when he was like hitting me.

Speaker 18 He's a real gentleman. That was on the Tasha Kay blogger show in June of 19.

Speaker 25 Six years later, she's writing a letter.

Speaker 18 Hold on.

Speaker 18 Now she's saying,

Speaker 18 now she's saying he's super sweet.

Speaker 18 But by the way, he was with Jane all the way up to the moment of his arrest. and her testimony was she was being abused up until that moment.

Speaker 18 It went on all the way, the physical abuse, the freak offs, all of it. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 25 Okay, just, but just hold on.

Speaker 25 12 New Yorkers heard all of this.

Speaker 18 They didn't hear Gina because he didn't dispute the physical violence. He didn't even dispute it.

Speaker 25 Right. He wasn't charged with it.

Speaker 18 That's what I mean.

Speaker 18 Now we're arguing about whether he's an asshole and he is.

Speaker 18 The jury is back in.

Speaker 18 But you're trying to do that. You're trying to tell us he's also Horman Cuddly now that he's off the drugs.
It was just the drug single tier. Bullshit, Matt.

Speaker 18 You've heard defense lawyers do this a thousand times or more.

Speaker 21 Hey, listen, not only what you just witnessed, Megan, not to cut you off, Mark. This is why I've known Mark for years.
We go back decades together.

Speaker 21 This is why Mark is the first guy I'd probably call if I got in trouble, especially if I did it. You just witnessed it, America.
That is Mark Garrigo. I said it was best.

Speaker 21 He got everything right. The problem is John is exactly right.
He is, to use your term, Megan, I'd never heard it before. He's an asshole.
And he's exposed.

Speaker 21 And if we'd seen that, if we'd seen that interview just then by itself without that Cassie Ventura video, we'd all be going, ah, maybe yes, maybe she's off your money. But it's all true.

Speaker 21 We know it's true. Any man who had put his hands or in his case, feet on a woman like we saw in that video is a friggin dirtbag.
And that is why in my, and I'm spitballing here like we all are.

Speaker 21 That's why everything Mark said was right about, I think, with Trump and New York, and it wasn't fair. And I think that a lot of people believe that.

Speaker 21 The problem is, is that he's got two parts. Number one,

Speaker 21 he is a total dirtbag. He is an abuser of women in the most bullying kind of way.
All that came out.

Speaker 21 And the second thing is it's not going to take people that work for Trump very long to see that he was an ardent Trump hater. And

Speaker 21 all that's going to feed in.

Speaker 21 Correct.

Speaker 21 Mark was right, but Jonna is more right, I think, on the grand scheme. And I don't

Speaker 21 think my money is he's not going to do it. It's too confusing.

Speaker 18 On the pardon, Jonna. I mean, I tweeted this out the other day, but

Speaker 18 already the GOP is struggling with women. This will not help.
Already the GOP base is mad at Trump.

Speaker 18 The Epstein sort of scandal has infuriated the MAGA base because they feel he's covering up for elites, well-connected, rich people who may be in these files. This will not help.

Speaker 18 Trump gets zero upside, zero from pardoning Diddy.

Speaker 20 Okay. And that has to be his consideration, right? I mean, on the one hand, you want to pardon somebody if you think they've been really wronged by the system.

Speaker 20 I get that, but this would hurt Trump more than it would help Diddy. Why? Because Diddy's going to walk pretty damn soon, no matter what happens on sentencing day.
He's not going to be there forever.

Speaker 20 He's not going to the chair. So why burn a favor, for lack of a better word? Why should this administration do that for him?

Speaker 20 But look, Donald Trump likes to forgive. He forgives a lot of people.
He can fight one day and then shake hands with you the next. He doesn't need to do that in this case with Diddy.

Speaker 20 Diddy's not going to be there for that much longer.

Speaker 18 Go ahead, Mark. I'll give you a last word.

Speaker 25 I was just going to say,

Speaker 25 you can prosecute him by proxy, but I'll go back to what Tenny said in the opening.

Speaker 25 If he was charged with domestic violence, we wouldn't be here. That isn't what he's charged with.
If you want to punish him for something that you couldn't do legally, I guess then that's okay.

Speaker 25 And by the way, you can always make that argument, and that's the argument they made about Trump in New York. You can always torture the law into a prosecution.
I think it was the same thing.

Speaker 18 I mean, he did the thing he was convicted of.

Speaker 18 He did transport prostitutes.

Speaker 18 And by the way,

Speaker 25 when I go back to the Burbank airport on a Friday afternoon and I'm one of 500 people going to Vegas and all of the women from Van Nuys are there going to have sex in Vegas. They all are.

Speaker 18 Oh, Mark Garagos is having different flights than than I am. Okay, interesting.
Stand by. We'll put a pin in that and come back to you.

Speaker 18 When you fly out of the northeast, you're not surrounded by that kind of crowd, Mark. That's all I can tell you.

Speaker 18 All right, let's stuke Kohlberger in the time we have left because there is some news there. He just got transferred to solitary.
Brian Kohlberger convicted of these four quadruple murders in Idaho.

Speaker 18 Can I tell you something? So, Matt's put how many serial killers on death row? Eight, twelve?

Speaker 21 I've done eight death penalty trials.

Speaker 18 Yep.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 18 I just want to say this.

Speaker 18 When I covered this case, I hadn't yet read this book that Maureen Callahan recommended to me,

Speaker 18 The Stranger Beside Me, which was written by a woman who was friends with Ted Bundy.

Speaker 18 And she was a crime reporter reporting on crimes being committed in the Seattle area, having no idea it was her friend Ted Bundy. who was doing it.
It's a crazy great read.

Speaker 18 And for days, I walked around with my AirPods and listening to it on audio. And like, people come up and pat me on the shoulder.

Speaker 18 I'd be like, oh, my God, you know, but so I was neck deep in the Ted Bundy stories, which are very creepy, but interesting.

Speaker 18 And I'm now convinced because we did see in the materials released that he had an obsession with Ted Bundy. And he took the selfie with the

Speaker 18 hood, the hoodie on. He had reportedly been Googling Ted Bundy.

Speaker 18 And there was speculation that he was may also potentially obsessed with this Elliott Roger serial killer or just multiple murderer, I should say, went like on a murdering spree on a college campus.

Speaker 18 I think he was more obsessed with Ted Bundy now, having listened to the story, because there are so many similarities.

Speaker 18 And what they, what, what Anne, the writer of this book, posits, knowing Ted, is that Ted Bundy was rekilling the same girl over and over and over and over and over, and that he may have committed any place between 30 and 130 murders, Ted Bundy.

Speaker 18 All, for the most part, looked exactly the same. Between the heights of maybe 5'1 and 5'6,

Speaker 18 dark hair, parted in the center, almost always wearing jeans or slacks,

Speaker 18 and oftentimes, when not in that outfit, asleep in their beds.

Speaker 18 And one of his most infamous crime days was when he walked into Tallahassee, the Florida university there, and murdered, attacked, it was six, six, I think, Florida sorority sisters. And three died.

Speaker 18 I'm trying to get my facts straight. There were so many murders, but he definitely attacked with a knife and with a, he used a bludgeon,

Speaker 18 just like a piece of wood to bludgeon them. And there are just so many things.
Now we've learned that he knocked out the teeth of Kaylee Gonsalves. That's something Ted Bundy did too.

Speaker 18 There's a report that Brian Kohlberger couldn't have this one high school girl that he apparently really liked. She didn't have the time of day for him.

Speaker 18 She was like a popular cheerleader who was blonde. She looked a little similar to Kaylee and to Maddie.

Speaker 18 In any event, this is a long way of saying Ted Bundy was a big fan of going to homes in the middle of the night and accosting his victims while sleeping. That's what he did to those sorority sisters.

Speaker 18 It's what Brian Kohlberger did here. And now we're hearing from Kaylee's dad.
This happened right after

Speaker 18 the week of the sentencing, where he's talking about some more details on the cases. Here's SOT 12.

Speaker 29 An investigator called me and said, Yeah, he not only did he have searches related to

Speaker 29 drunk girls, he also had

Speaker 29 related to gagging.

Speaker 29 And some of the damage to Kaylee could have basically seemed like he was trying to quiet her. He was trying to silence her, which, if he's searching for gag

Speaker 29 choke porn, then

Speaker 29 in that murder scene, he had drunk girls and choke porn.

Speaker 29 Literally, so for

Speaker 29 a prosecutor to say that there's no sexual motivation at all, we know there's no assault. Okay, we know this person

Speaker 29 was interrupted, literally interrupted. So who knows what his intentions were.
But for you to go and say that it wasn't motivated really,

Speaker 29 it insulted so many people that my phone started ringing.

Speaker 18 Hmm. Very interesting, Matt, because we were critical of the prosecutor for saying that.
And now here's one of the victim's fathers saying that they did find so-called choke porn on his phone.

Speaker 21 Well, you and I called that, Megan. If you remember the last time, I guaranteed to you that we were going to find pornography or that word was going to come out about that.

Speaker 21 And lo and behold, if that's accurate, and it's a little bit of a telephone game here because you got the detective to the dad saying that he found that, but he hasn't seen it.

Speaker 21 But of course he did. And

Speaker 21 that aligns with every case like this that Mark and I have ever done, certainly. There's almost always porn on the on the computer.
So, and yeah, the prosecutor, I've got a lot of problems.

Speaker 21 I got a problem with his, with his media tour right now where he's talking about how, what was the quote? Sorry, I got notes here. We have the opportunity to do it in a way.
Yeah,

Speaker 21 to really give some immediate finality. We're pleased and relieved that the community and the victims' families aren't going to have to live through this.
You know, that's pretty tone-deaf.

Speaker 21 The families never get over this. And, you know,

Speaker 21 it's like

Speaker 21 that applies to every single murder case. So it's like, what is the, you know, do we just give everybody a deal now so you don't put the family through the case?

Speaker 21 And by the way, having watched Olivia Gonzalvez, that woman, when she ripped into Coburger, I guarantee was not afraid of the process or facing Koberger in the penalty phase.

Speaker 21 And it's like, and this is crass, so I hate to say this, but if I, if I'm allowed to swear, I keep thinking of Dave Chappelle's quote, you know, yeah, we could do it that way, Mr. Prosecutor.

Speaker 21 We could just give everybody a friggin' deal, or you could shut the fuck up because you are undermining the, I think, the integrity of a lot of death penalty cases in the 27 states and the federal system that still have it.

Speaker 21 By essentially, you've got this example that everybody's heard of. If the death penalty does not apply to Brian Koberger, who does it apply to? And you and I also talked about how what changed.

Speaker 21 I wanted to know what changed after he made his announcement. And the answer was nothing changed other than Koberger wanting to come in and plead guilty.
And in my view,

Speaker 21 that's not a reason to come off the decision decision to seek death. And I know a couple of families supported it.

Speaker 18 The consolidation. And they reverse themselves.

Speaker 18 I want that guy to go away, Megan.

Speaker 21 I want him to retire. He keeps talking about retiring.

Speaker 21 I want him to comb his beard or ride his horses or wherever he does in Idaho and shut the F up because he's undermining, in my view, the integrity of murder cases throughout the United States. And

Speaker 21 it's very frustrating.

Speaker 25 I have a great question for you. I thought about you, Matt, on this, and I didn't understand.
I still don't understand. understand.

Speaker 25 Almost always in cases you and I see, there is, okay, if you want a deal, you have to sit and you either give a proffer or you answer questions or you do something

Speaker 25 in which you get closer to some kind of, you know, I hate the word closure because as you say, you never get there, but I don't understand. That wasn't done here.

Speaker 25 There was absolutely nothing that was done to at least get some information so that people could have some answers, right?

Speaker 21 Isn't that astounding, Mark? I mean, and again, Megan, Mark and I have been doing this for decades with each other. We've been doing it.
Me as the prosecutor, Mark is a defense lawyer.

Speaker 21 You can absolutely do that. And the thing is, in Idaho, they got less than 10 people on death row.
It's a state where he might actually have been executed. And I know John probably agrees here too.

Speaker 21 If they had gone to him and his defense lawyers and said, look, we're going to come off death, but he has to actually explain what he was doing.

Speaker 21 We're going going to do it as a, Mark said, a proffer where you can't use the statement against him, but you can answer those questions. They can structure that any way they want.

Speaker 21 And all this guy, Thompson, did, he just rolled over and let him plead. And then also, remember, Megan, when they did that, we were live when he came in.
And he said, there's no sexual component.

Speaker 21 I just about jumped through my computer when he said that. But also, he went to lengths to say, we don't know if he was looking at the house and there's another cell phone.

Speaker 21 He qualified it 18 different ways. Mark is 100% right.
They could have structured that any way they wanted. In my view, yeah, he did the job.
I used to rake my grandmother's leaves.

Speaker 21 I did that job, and I did it horribly every single time. You can do the job, and then you can do the job in a way where you still kind of suck at it.

Speaker 21 And sorry, it's a, I don't want to be too harsh on him. It's a very difficult position.

Speaker 18 I've been there. Totally justified.
So stand by, sorry, because I want to bring in Jonna, but I want to tell the audience what I'm going to show them while she's talking.

Speaker 18 Among the other pieces of evidence that we've just gotten our hands on are photos, a photo of Kohlberger

Speaker 18 in the wee hours of the morning that they arrested him in his parents' house in the Poconos.

Speaker 18 When, of course, they burst in and he was stuffing little Ziploc baggies full of his trash, which we know from the investigators he was then discarding in the neighbor's trash can.

Speaker 18 Here he is, moments after realizing his world was changed forever. They also reported that he had scrubbed many of his searches off of his phone.
He was using a VPN to avoid detection.

Speaker 18 They also talked about how they briefly suspected that he had attacked a different woman in 2021 in the Pullman area, Pullman, Washington.

Speaker 18 Somebody went into her bedroom holding a knife, wearing a ski mask, a burgundy ski mask. His was black.
She kicked him and he ran.

Speaker 18 Then police ultimately determined he didn't live in the area at the time. I don't know.
I still got questions about that one, to be honest. He might have been out there visiting.

Speaker 18 But your thoughts on where we are now as he gets moved to solitary confinement for the rest of his life.

Speaker 18 And we're supposed to, I guess, go along with his prosecutor's revisionist history of, you know, we're pleased, we're relieved.

Speaker 18 The community, the victims' families aren't going to have to go through, they're going to have to continue to live through this.

Speaker 20 I'm professionally offended by the way that this plea went down for the reason that we were talking about. He didn't have to allocue.
He didn't have to admit to shit.

Speaker 20 And that is a slap in the face to all the families. And not only that,

Speaker 20 either I have the premise for a novel or I have a premonition because what I think this prick is going to do in the future, he's going to wait maybe till his parents are dead.

Speaker 20 So he doesn't have to admit anything in front of them. He's going to wait.
And five years, 10 years down the road, he's going to say, hey, you want to know why I did it?

Speaker 20 You want to know why I picked that house? You want to know what my motivation is?

Speaker 20 I'll tell you, but you got to shave, I don't know, a little time off my sentence, or you got to give me something for this information that you allowed me to go to prison for the rest of my life hanging on to.

Speaker 20 I'm professionally offended by that. But the second thing quickly that I'm professionally offended by is right before

Speaker 20 prosecutors decided to accept this deal defense attorneys decided to do this deal remember the defense tried to float a motion requesting that they be permitted to present evidence of a third-party culpability they did that knowing full freaking well that there that was going to be a wild goose chase and a rabbit hole that professionally offends me too That's standing in my soapbox on that.

Speaker 18 Now, now Kohlberger is going to be in solitary and the policies of this this prison require that he is confined alone for up to 23 hours a day with limited human interaction.

Speaker 18 He will receive meals in his cell.

Speaker 18 He will only be allowed to shower three times a week, which I guess he's going to be upset about because one of his other cellmates said he loved to shower for an hour at a time.

Speaker 18 He may take advantage of the step-down program that gradually transitions inmates from solitary confinement to a more open environment. Though if you were Brian Kohlberger, would you really want that?

Speaker 18 That will probably be the end of him.

Speaker 25 That's a death sentence if he does that.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Again, single tier. You guys are great.
I can't wait to watch you on MK True Crime. Thanks so much for being here and being there too.
Thank you.

Speaker 21 Thank you so much, Megan.

Speaker 18 Looking forward to it. And these guys are going to have more on Diddy on the premiere of MK True Crime.
It comes out tomorrow morning.

Speaker 18 Go now while we take this break to your podcast feed and just type in MK True Crime. It'll come up and go ahead and subscribe or go and I should say and go to youtube.com

Speaker 18 at MK True Crime. And you can follow there for all these great true crime discussions.
We have the best in the business. And coming up next, three more of them.

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Speaker 18 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show. We've got three more huge stars joining the MK True Crime Show and podcast.

Speaker 18 They are Phil Holloway. You can follow him on X at Phil Holloway ESQ for Esquire.

Speaker 18 Ashley Merchant, who's a criminal defense attorney, who is the woman who brought down the Fannie Willis case and Fannie Willis herself. Let's face it.

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Speaker 18 They're all contributors to MK True Crime. So excited to have them.
Go subscribe now, mktruecrime.com for all the links. Welcome back.
Ashley, great to see you again.

Speaker 20 Great to see you. How have you been?

Speaker 18 I've been so good. I'm so glad that you are doing this.

Speaker 18 You are such a wonderful commentator during the whole fannie willis thing and such a talented attorney so it's awesome that you're going to be part of it thank you i'm so excited um yeah and you two guys this is like you know you're family now so it's awesome to have you as part of it i we couldn't launch this without you i'm only sorry that you won't be able to argue with mike davis on mk true crime yet yet dave i might just get yet

Speaker 21 You know what? I find myself agreeing with him more and more on social media, which is scary. I don't know what

Speaker 21 the worlds are colliding.

Speaker 18 My head's blowing up but that's what happens when it comes to middle east politics but that's another matter oh it's even more fun with mike in person too i mean my word he's something else i love when every people are like you're an asshole and he's like yes and like he never disputes any of the attacks that get leveled against him okay um let's just start with russia gate because that's the harder news and then we've got to get to jussie smollette What a weird segment, but we've got to do it.

Speaker 18 Russiagate. Okay, the DOJ is launching a grand jury investigation now into the Russiagate conspiracy allegations per Fox News.

Speaker 18 They've seen a letter from Bondi that they say she has directed her staff, she did this late yesterday, to act on the criminal referral from DNI Gabbard related to the alleged conspiracy by the Obama administration to tie in Hillary to tie President Trump to Russia.

Speaker 18 They have, we're told, convened a federal grand jury, and we don't know exactly who they're looking at or for what, but I'll just tell you this.

Speaker 18 CIA Director John Ratcliffe did mention in his last Sunday news interview with Maria Bartaromo the following dates.

Speaker 18 And keep in mind, virtually every federal crime is like a five-year statute of limitations, and perjury definitely has a five-year statute of limitations.

Speaker 18 Brennan, John Brennan, former head of the CIA under Obama, testified in private to John Durham, who was the special counsel who investigated some of these Russia gate allegations during Trump 1.0.

Speaker 18 Brennan testified in private to John Durham August 21st, 2020. Today's August 4th.
So what, we got a couple weeks until that one expires.

Speaker 18 Hillary Clinton testified in private to John Durham in May 2022. So a little bit more time there.
Brennan also testified behind closed doors to House Judiciary in May of 2023.

Speaker 18 Comey, last time we can see him testifying publicly or privately is December 2018.

Speaker 18 But if any of these acts, if they're part of an ongoing conspiracy, that would be the claim, can be resurrected and used to keep the statute of limitations from expiring. So, what does it say to you?

Speaker 18 I'll start with you, Ashley Merchant, as you are

Speaker 18 clearly the biggest star here amongst our legal panel. You're very sweet.

Speaker 20 I don't know if that's true, but immediately as you're talking about this, I'm like, oh, it sounds like RICO.

Speaker 20 It sounds like some conspiracy, a RICO conspiracy, you know, the prosecutor's darling that you can take anything, whether it's past the statute of limitations, you know, a crime or not, and you can make it into a RICO case, as we learned through the Fonnie Willis saga.

Speaker 18 The Democrats shot us that. So,

Speaker 18 you know, it's good for the goose.

Speaker 20 Exactly. And so, I, you know, I think, why not have a grand jury investigate this? I mean, why not look at it? I know there's a lot of unanswered questions.

Speaker 20 And so, you know, put people under oath, put them on the stand, have them actually testify. I know we're going to have them testify in front of the house as well.

Speaker 20 See if their stories all match and see what happens. Because as we've seen from live TV, a lot of times when you have people in the stand, stories don't match, things change.

Speaker 20 And so, you know, why not do this at this point? Why not at least give the American people some more information?

Speaker 18 What about it, Dave? Because it's one thing Comer is subpoenaing a bunch of people in the Epstein investigation. We started the show with that.
This is different.

Speaker 18 I'd much rather get a subpoena from James Comer than to get a grand jury subpoena, which is not to be trifled with, right?

Speaker 18 Like that, now you're talking about, okay, actual criminal liability potentially. And probably most of these people will plead the fifth, no?

Speaker 21 Well, it depends. You know, there's the lesson of the John Durham investigation.

Speaker 21 We saw this before where John Durh investigated and brought charges for perjury, and then it blew up in his face as the two trials led to acquittals. And so

Speaker 18 TOJ doesn't want that.

Speaker 21 Yeah, it doesn't go so well. So that's the built-in protection.
There are guardrails.

Speaker 21 So if the prosecutors go down the road and start, you know, trumping up charges, to use a phrase, it's going to come back to bite them so they need to be careful now i can't say about the perjury because i don't know what hillary clinton and uh commy said to investigators i don't know that but i gotta say just like andrew mccarthy i'm i am skeptical of this whole russia gate thing because a lot of this stuff stems from these emails that really were seems like russian disinformation i mean that's why the report john durham put those emails in the annex of his report rather than the main part because he didn't believe them either.

Speaker 21 There's also that John Brennan memo. Now, that's the other thing people are focused on, which explain what you're talking about.

Speaker 25 Sure.

Speaker 21 So

Speaker 21 a lot of this is focused on a note, a memo that John Brennan wrote from a meeting he had with Obama and others.

Speaker 21 where he allegedly talked about the so-called Clinton plan, which is what Tulsi Gabbard is saying. Aha, that's the plan where Hillary Clinton is creating this whole Russia hoax.

Speaker 21 And that's the way to win the election. That is the.

Speaker 18 Let me just read it. I'll just read it and then I'll let you resume.

Speaker 18 This is just a recap on his note.

Speaker 18 He made handwritten notes after an August 3rd, 2016 meeting at the White House, where he briefed Barack Obama and other U.S.

Speaker 18 officials, including the Attorney General at the time, Loretta Lynch, and the FBI director James Comey, about the Clinton plan.

Speaker 18 The notes claim he alerted them to the, quote, alleged approval by Hillary Clinton Clinton on July 26th of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.

Speaker 18 And the contention is that this was Brennan's CYA memo. Like, I told them that this was all a Hillary operation.

Speaker 18 And every denial that's going to come from these Obama officials thereafter saying, we really believe Trump was a Russian asset,

Speaker 18 this puts the lie to it because they were told in August of 16, this is all a Hillary plan. Go ahead, Dave.

Speaker 21 Okay, well, the Russia investigation, the whole crossfire hurricane, the whole thing into Russia election interference, that began before there was this Russian intelligence report.

Speaker 21 That's the subject of all this. So the Russian intelligence came up with this report that Hillary Clinton had a plan, and then that was later discussed by John Brennan.

Speaker 21 That is the whole source of this controversy. But see, when John Brennan discussed this so-called...

Speaker 18 It's not the whole source. We know she was behind the Steele dossier and that she

Speaker 18 was potentially behind this crowd strike

Speaker 18 group as well that

Speaker 18 that is the one that said Russia hacked the DNC. And

Speaker 18 she funded them too. So it's not all just, oh, some Russian email said she did this shit.

Speaker 18 Her campaign was 100% behind that Steele dossier.

Speaker 21 Well, remember, the Steele dossier didn't originally come from Hillary Clinton. It came from the Republicans.
They're the ones who funded it and created it. And then Hillary Clinton DNC adopted it.

Speaker 21 So, yeah,

Speaker 21 just to let that be clear. And also, keep in mind, Marco Rubio, Senate Intelligence Committee, came out and said, yes, there was Russian meddling in the election.

Speaker 21 They were doing it to help Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 We think it was a rubber stamp, but I got it.

Speaker 25 All right.

Speaker 21 But just to finish my point about Brennan, he did not endorse this as credible intelligence.

Speaker 21 In fact, the context of his note showed that intelligence officials were skeptical of the authenticity of this so-called Clinton plan because it came from what they believe was Russian intelligence trying to create this disinformation campaign.

Speaker 21 So if they want to do a grand jury to look at stuff.

Speaker 18 It came from,

Speaker 18 it came where it really came from

Speaker 18 emails that had been unearthed by the Russians that they were discussing from Hillary's top emissaries discussing the plan. And they named the person on her team that came up with the plan.

Speaker 18 That actually was a Russian hack.

Speaker 21 No, but the person who allegedly sent the email and the person who received the email both said they've never seen this before.

Speaker 21 And if you look at the emails, and I've read both of them, they certainly were totally disavowed. Emails from Russian disinformation.
Yeah, that's why John Durham didn't put it in his main report.

Speaker 21 He put it in the annex. Don't you think that if this was a real email, that John Durham would have put it on page one? Because that's the point of his investigation.

Speaker 21 Instead, he put it in the annex of his report because he didn't believe them either.

Speaker 18 But that's why

Speaker 18 I said, why did the annex go to the CIA safe at Langley and where it was buried to the point where even the archivists didn't get a copy? Nobody got a copy of it. Why?

Speaker 18 That just stinks to high heaven because there was something in there that they didn't want us to see. But Ashley, your point is the grand jury will help bring some of this to light.

Speaker 18 Phil, let me get you to weigh in your thoughts.

Speaker 23 Yeah. So look, I mean, there's a lot going on here, a lot to unpack.
Let me go back to the statute of limitations. Yes, it's true.

Speaker 23 There's a five-year general federal statute of limitations, but see, the crime that I'm thinking about, if I'm a grand jury or I'm a prosecutor presenting this case to a grand jury, is seditious conspiracy, which by definition involves a conspiracy, right?

Speaker 23 So any acts that are taken at any point, you know, during the conspiracy, before it's over, and who knows, the conspiracy could actually still be going on today if there are members of the conspiracy that are trying to cover up the conspiracy.

Speaker 23 So conspiracies can last a very long time, in which case, there really would be no statute of limitations issue for things of that nature.

Speaker 23 But see, the thing is with Durham, he went and he briefed the president of the United States. And he said, look, we know this is Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 23 We know that she's coming up with a scam to blame Trump for being a

Speaker 23 Russian agent. And then, I'm sorry, yeah, Brennan.

Speaker 23 So then he briefed the president, President Obama, and the U.S.

Speaker 23 intelligence services are skeptical that any of this is true, but then he takes it and he ramrods it down the throats of the intelligence community, makes them come up with with a new assessment at the direction of the president of the United States.

Speaker 23 And then they just drop this

Speaker 23 bomb basically that explodes and tears up American society, and they all leave office. And so after they leave office, are we to believe that they didn't communicate with each other?

Speaker 23 Are we to believe they didn't go and testify contrary to the facts? Are we to believe that they didn't go on television and say things in furtherance of the conspiracy?

Speaker 23 So if they find the conspiracy and it's a criminal one, I don't think think we're going to have one bit of a problem with the statute of limitations.

Speaker 23 I'm glad a grand jury is looking at this because this is the kind of thing that, you know, it can't be done on the spot. It can't be done quickly.

Speaker 23 It needs to have a very thorough grand jury investigation. And with all due respect to my friend Dave, I think there's more.

Speaker 23 There than he thinks is there. He thinks there's no there there.
I think there is definitely something there.

Speaker 23 Whether they can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, we'll just have to wait and see. But I definitely think there's something there worth a grand jury taking a look at.

Speaker 23 And I think seditious conspiracy is probably the way to go.

Speaker 18 Let me ask you this, Ashley, as somebody who just was in the middle of a RICO case. And I'm not saying this would be RICO, but my point is simply, RICO cases as this case are complicated.

Speaker 18 They are really complicated. And I think this is a problem that

Speaker 18 the Trump side, this DOJ is going to have. I mean, I have been, I can't even tell you the number of hours I've spent reading the materials on this over the past two weeks.
And I'm a lawyer.

Speaker 18 I'm a journalist. You know, I do this kind of thing for a living.
I'm still confused.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 18 they're going to try to explain this to a grand jury in a way that's really simple and they can understand what they're indicting and why. Like, good luck.

Speaker 20 I say that all the time. I mean, I say lawyers can't figure out Rico.
You know, how do we expect jurors to? But I think that's going to come down to where they decide to do this jury.

Speaker 20 Are they going to do it in DC or are they going to do it in Florida?

Speaker 20 And that is where it really matters when you analyze your jury pool because a RICO case, a lot of times, you just throw a lot of stuff up and hope something sticks.

Speaker 20 And if you have a jury pool that is very politically motivated one way versus a jury pool politically motivated another way, you're likely to get a conviction.

Speaker 20 You're likely to get an indictment based on that.

Speaker 20 And so I think it's going to be really vital if they want to pursue this to determine, do you want to hear it in DC where you probably have a jury pool that's not going to be as receptive to it?

Speaker 20 Or do you want to hear it in South Florida?

Speaker 18 Okay, so this is, I thought it was very interesting, Dave Ehrenberg, that

Speaker 18 there's speculation that eventually

Speaker 18 people are wondering where the grand jury is. Where do they convene it?

Speaker 18 Did they convene it in D.C., which would be a terrible jury pool for anybody named Trump or related to Trump and much more favorable to Obama, Clinton, Brennan, et cetera?

Speaker 18 Or did they go to South Florida? And now I've heard multiple people who are close to Trump on air, podcasts and TV and so on, continuing to mention the raid at Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 18 The raid at Mar-a-Lago was key. They were actually looking for the House intelligence report.
That's really what the FBI was doing there.

Speaker 18 And look, they may have been on a fishing expedition for Russia Gate documents because that was still the left's pet project. But I think that's going to be the key.

Speaker 18 They're going to use that to make this a South Florida grand jury. right your hometown that's where they're going to go what do you think because there's no way they prefer dc over Florida.

Speaker 21 Oh, my goodness. D.C., I think, voted 5% for Donald Trump.
I don't think they want to go to D.C. They definitely want to go to the red state of Florida, and now Dade County and Miami

Speaker 21 has turned red. So, yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 21 But as far as the connection to the raid on Mar-a-Lago, there was a search warrant that said that evidence exists of a crime at Mar-a-Lago relating to the retention of documents.

Speaker 21 That's why they searched Mar-a-Lago. It had nothing to do with trying to get the House intelligence report.

Speaker 21 I don't even understand where they're coming from with that conspiracy theory.

Speaker 18 It caught me by surprise, too.

Speaker 21 Yeah, like that's the only place.

Speaker 18 But then when I thought about the grand jury jurisdiction, it started to make some more sense and potential criminal case liability.

Speaker 21 Well, I think it's clear that they want to have that grand jury in South Florida. And it's because they don't want it in D.C.
and South Florida is

Speaker 21 becoming redder and redder.

Speaker 21 It is still not easy, I think, to get an indictment through a grand jury on this matter because you see the arguments that I've been making.

Speaker 21 You've got to show enough where you're going to move ahead with a criminal prosecution. And although it only takes probable cause, we saw this backfire when it came to Andrew McCabe.

Speaker 21 Apparently, when the administration, Trump administration, wanted to prosecute Andrew McCabe from the FBI, they couldn't do so. They couldn't get a grand jury to vote that way.
So it's not automatic.

Speaker 21 And even if you do get an indictment, a judge can throw it out later, or you can meet the same fate as John Durham, where a jury quickly acquits. So you got to be careful before you go down this road.

Speaker 18 I think they're interested in making them pay, even if the process is the payment. Go ahead, Phil.

Speaker 23 Yeah, and I was going to, just to dovetail on that, I think Florida does make more sense, but I don't understand how Florida, the nexus, I don't see how the nexus to Florida could be the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 23 Maybe there's obviously things that I don't know, but when you have a judge that authorizes a judicial search warrant, the judge says, look, there's probable cause to believe there's fruits or instrumentalities of a crime and I authorize you to go search this specific place.

Speaker 23 I think to a large degree that might insulate

Speaker 23 any purported defendants that are part of some conspiracy from that piece of it being some act that's in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Speaker 23 There's certainly a Florida Nexus because that's obviously the home now of President Trump, and he's not in Washington, of course.

Speaker 23 But you could really make the case that any federal district in the United States would be proper because this is something that had sort of national consequences.

Speaker 23 But I'm a little bit dubious of using the raid on Mar-a-Lago as being some act in furtherance of this potential conspiracy that would give rise to the prosecution being there.

Speaker 23 I think they're going to have to find something else. Certainly, we're going to learn a lot more about the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 23 But in my opinion, that search warrant probably insulates these defendants from a lot of that. But speaking of these defendants, let me just say this.

Speaker 18 Let me just say this. I heard it now.
I heard it from Devin Nunes and I heard it from John Solomon. Not directly, I'm saying in

Speaker 18 the Abron. And those are two people who are very close to the allegations around this issue.

Speaker 18 So it was no accident that they're both now suggesting that that Mar-a-Lago raid was about Russia gate and not just recovering documents.

Speaker 18 And I don't know whether that's an attempt to get a grand jury to justify a Florida grand jury. But it did jump out at me as like, why are they raising that? There's so much more to talk about.

Speaker 18 They both raised it. And so it could be this.
Go ahead, Phil.

Speaker 23 I think they have to have evidence that the, whoever swore out that warrant with a judge, that maybe they lied to the judge or that it was somehow a pretext.

Speaker 18 There could be your stated reason and your real reason.

Speaker 23 Yeah, they're going to have to have something to call that into question because the warrant, the existence of the warrant, I think, does provide some insulation.

Speaker 23 But you've got a lot of people that are potential defendants right now that I think are lawyering up. People who have testified previously might get called to testify before this grand jury.

Speaker 23 They might be immunized. Who knows?

Speaker 23 But they're going to have to go through and they're going to have to memorize almost verbatim every word of everything they've ever said on television, radio, podcast, streaming, or under oath anywhere, because they can't stray from that one iota.

Speaker 23 They've got a lot of work to do to make sure they don't run into some problems with respect to perjury and false statements.

Speaker 18 Okay. Okay.
Let's shift gears now because I know Ashley's short on time. You guys can stick around, but we have got to talk about Jussie Smollett.
He's back amazingly, he's back at it again.

Speaker 18 Netflix is about to drop a so-called documentary, and I'm telling you, Netflix uses that term. It's like Princess Bride.
I do not think you know what that term means.

Speaker 18 They don't do documentaries. They're

Speaker 18 documentaries. Yeah, shockumentary.
They are not always fact-based.

Speaker 18 And this one is called The Truth About Jussie Smollett with a question mark. Okay, so like even they know they're about to peddle a bunch of bullshit from the sound of it.
We don't have a trailer.

Speaker 18 They haven't dropped one yet. But here's what they say.
The doc tells, quote, the shocking true story of an allegedly fake story that some now say might just be a true story.

Speaker 18 They are prepared, it sounds like, to come out here and suggest that he might have been telling the truth. And Smollett is definitely pushing that.
We've got the following tour from him.

Speaker 18 He was touring local organizations to whom he donated

Speaker 18 in the civil settlement of his lie case.

Speaker 18 The Chicago PD sued his ass for wasting all their time in chasing down a fake race hoax allegation. Just for listening audience, I'm sure you remember this, but he was an actor on the show Entourage.

Speaker 18 He claimed during Trump 1.0 that in the middle of the Chicago vortex, which was like minus four degrees in the middle of the night, 2 a.m.

Speaker 18 on a Friday or Saturday, he was walking through Chicago innocently when two guys wearing MAGA hats on South Chicago jumped him.

Speaker 18 They just happened to have a bottle of bleach and a rope, a noose, which they placed around his neck and said something like, this is MAGA country. and left poor Jesse sitting there.

Speaker 18 Wasted everybody's time.

Speaker 18 He went on Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, who could not have been more sympathetic, as was most of the media that wanted to believe this is a racist country and there's random MAGA racists on every corner waiting with nooses for any innocent black man who walks by.

Speaker 18 It was all fucking bullshit. He got arrested.
He was actually then released by a woke prosecutor in Chicago. And then the outrage was so great, they re-arrested him.

Speaker 18 And this special prosecutor, Dan Webb, was appointed. He was found guilty.
And then he appealed, saying, I shouldn't have been tried because the first prosecutor already let me go.

Speaker 18 And he won that argument in front of the appellate court, the Illinois Supreme Court, who found Dan Webb's decision to retry him violated that earlier agreement.

Speaker 18 So in any event, he then had to face a civil suit from the city of Chicago, and he wound up paying $130,000, or they sued for $130,000, and he wound up settling for some smaller amount.

Speaker 18 And so he is walking around touring the organizations that receive the benefit of his settlement like he's some, you know, benevolent caretaker, just did it out of the goodness of his heart, and says the following.

Speaker 18 It'll make sense when y'all watch it. Okay, because he says there's unreleased footage coming that's going to prove he did not stage this attack.
It'll make sense when y'all watch it.

Speaker 18 They found the actual footage of the people that jumped me. And it just corroborates every single thing that I've said for the last almost seven years.

Speaker 18 Ashley Merchant, do we believe one word of any of that?

Speaker 20 No, because if he had that footage, that footage would be everywhere. There is no way he's going to be holding on to that footage.

Speaker 20 And there is no way to believe what he said is that his lawyers decided strategy not to use this footage, that they had it, but they decided not to use it.

Speaker 20 Are you trying to tell me that there's a defense lawyer that's going to have footage that exonerates their client and they're going to decide for strategy not to use it at trial?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 18 That's what he said. The quote is, well, the footage was brought to my lawyers a couple days before we started trial.
And they were like, yeah, we already got our defense.

Speaker 18 So it's too late to bring that in. We can't do anything about it.
They did not go with the truth. They went with defending against the lies, Ashley.

Speaker 20 That's insane. There's no defense attorney that's going to do that.
You're going to jump up and down. I would be as loud as I possibly could.
That footage would be everywhere.

Speaker 20 The judge would be, I would be begging for continuance, playing the footage over and over again. No way.

Speaker 18 No way. At a minimum, you'd release it to the media.
All right, I know you got to run. We will see you over on MK True Crime.

Speaker 18 Go ahead now, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts, and go to youtube.com slash at MK True Crime and watch all these superstars, including Ashley, tomorrow and then again on Friday.

Speaker 18 For now, we're starting with two days a week, as something tells me it's going to get a lot more popular. Okay, Phil and Dave, let us not forget that the two men, the two black men, by the way,

Speaker 18 they were not white. We were told that they were white men.
The two black men who he hired to conduct this fake crime against him are already on record as saying that's what happened.

Speaker 18 There hasn't been like, it's not like, oh, we never found the guys, but we believe he was a race hoaxer. We just don't believe the claims.
No, they found the guys he paid.

Speaker 18 He actually had this kind of done to him. It was done to him.
It's just he was in on it. He asked for it to be done to him.

Speaker 18 And not only do we have to like wonder whether these guys exist and really did tell their story to cops, they reenacted it for Fox News for a documentary on Fox Nation like two years ago.

Speaker 18 Here's a clip. Wait, stand by, stand by.
Here is a clip.

Speaker 22 So we waited here for about what? Four minutes. It was about four minutes.
Four minutes. But it felt like forever because it was cold as balls.

Speaker 22 As we crossed the street, we said, hey, to get his attention.

Speaker 18 Hey, nigga.

Speaker 22 Hey. He turned around, looked at us, and that's when we started yelling the famous slurs he wanted us to yell.
Hey, aren't you that empire?

Speaker 22 It's MAGA country. He wanted it to look like he fought back.
That was very important for him because he said, hey, don't just beat my ass. Make it look like I'm fighting back and whatnot.

Speaker 22 After I threw him to the ground, I used my knuckle and gave him a noogie. I finally put the rope around his face.
I did not put it around his neck.

Speaker 22 I just placed it on his face, and that's when we took off.

Speaker 18 Like the greatest documentary ever on Fox Nation. Those are the Osunderio brothers who reenacted their attack, their hoax.

Speaker 18 Then, Phil, so how do you like the chances of this Netflix documentary rehabilitating Jesse Smollett?

Speaker 23 Well, look, I'm disappointed in Netflix, but look, this is what you're going to expect from Smollett.

Speaker 23 In my opinion, this is a continuation of the grift that he tried to get going and get some traction, you know, some time ago, many years ago now, at this point.

Speaker 23 This is all about attention. I'm sure there's some way he's going to try to profit and make money off of it, in my view.

Speaker 23 I think that's really the best explanation for all this.

Speaker 23 Look, are we supposed to believe that there are two people in South Chicago back then that actually owned and much less would wear a MAGA hat out in public? Absolutely not.

Speaker 18 They patrol the streets at night with their bleach and their noose, Phil.

Speaker 18 In addition to the two guys he hired to do that shit. Now he wants to believe there were real perps who were doing the exact same thing.

Speaker 23 Yeah, it's just it's it's just a grift. And look, this whole thing goes back to the prosecutor's office in the very beginning.
Was it Kim Fox, I guess, was her name, right? Yeah.

Speaker 23 She's the one that started this whole pretrial diversion thing, which she should never have done in the first place. But of course, she put him in this pre-trial diversion agreement.

Speaker 23 And, you know, the courts later said that, you know, you couldn't go back and reprosecute him after you ran him through pre-trial diversion.

Speaker 23 And to me, as a lawyer, that actually kind of makes sense, but it doesn't make sense to give him pre-trial diversion in the first place, considering how many resources were expended, how much money it cost, and things of that nature.

Speaker 23 But she, of course, leaves office and just drops this,

Speaker 23 you know, what in the punch bowl, right? And leaves it there for other people to have to clean up for years and years to come. And guess who the big losers are?

Speaker 23 It's this taxpayers of Chicago because now this civil settlement, the taxpayers don't even get their money back.

Speaker 23 It goes to some non-profit, and it has nothing to do with repaying the police or repaying the taxpayers of Chicago.

Speaker 18 They are the losers. I agree.
Unfair losers. But you know what?

Speaker 18 Like, not that anybody believed it on the right half of the country, but the left, a lot of people believed it, that these MAGA Cretans beat this poor black man. And so MAGA got hurt.

Speaker 18 Like, he's paid nothing to MAGA and the smears that he made of them. Like, this is all made up to demean MAGA, to demean Trump, to demean our country.
Look at this.

Speaker 18 Look at him with Robin Roberts telling these lies. Watch.

Speaker 32 As I was crossing the intersection, I heard Empire.

Speaker 32 And I don't answer to Empire. My name ain't Empire.

Speaker 32 And And I didn't answer. I kept walking and then I heard f empire.

Speaker 32 So I turned around and I said, the did you just say to me? And I see

Speaker 32 the attacker

Speaker 29 masked.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 he said, this MAGA country punches me right in the face. So I punched his ass back.

Speaker 32 And then we started tussling. You know, it was very icy.

Speaker 32 And we ended up tussling by the stairs.

Speaker 32 fighting, fighting, fighting. There was a second person involved who was kicking me in my back.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 24 then it just stopped.

Speaker 32 And then I look down and I see that there's a rope around my neck, which I hadn't.

Speaker 32 You hadn't noticed it before, though. No, because it was so fast.
You know what I'm saying? It was so fast.

Speaker 18 It's like high drama, Dave, except it was all lies. And now, and now, hold on, I've got to put my glasses on because it's the smallest type.

Speaker 18 So now he posted this on Instagram right after the settlement news hit.

Speaker 18 Over six years ago, after it was reported, I had been, after it was reported, I had been jumped. How did that get reported, Jesse? Oh, wait, you lied publicly.

Speaker 18 City officials in Chicago set out to convince the public that I willfully set an assault against myself. See, he's holding on to the lie.

Speaker 18 He says this false narrative has left a stain, a stain, Dave, on my character that will not soon disappear. These officials wanted my money and wanted my confession for something I did not do.

Speaker 18 Today, it should be clear, they have received neither.

Speaker 18 The decision to settle was

Speaker 18 difficult, but it wasn't the hardest thing, but

Speaker 18 he's maintaining a lie. How dare Netflix give this loser a platform to repeat this nonsense?

Speaker 21 I'm with you. I mean, this guy's a liar.
He's living in a fantasy world and he thinks we're all stupid. I mean, he's the one who's stupid.
He actually paid these two brothers $3,500 in a check.

Speaker 21 He wrote a check. So it's easy to trace.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 21 when it came to the prosecutor, it was Kim Fox. So I was a state attorney at the time when this was going on.

Speaker 21 And I was surprised because when the prosecutor, the state's attorney there, acknowledged a conflict, instead of bringing on a special prosecutor, she appointed her top deputy as the prosecutor.

Speaker 21 That's not like a conflict of interest where you're having an independent prosecutor when you put your number one deputy, your second person in charge, in charge of the case.

Speaker 21 And so the National District Attorneys Association, this national organization I'm a part of, chastise her, said that when you recuse yourself from a case, you don't appoint your deputy because that's a conflict of interest.

Speaker 21 So

Speaker 21 one more thing about this is that I rarely get a chance to correct Megan Kelly, but the show is Empire, not Entourage. So there's a first for everything.
I actually get to correct her for something.

Speaker 18 You're totally right about that. Yes.
And just hearing him retell it, right,

Speaker 18 brings home how obviously false it was, Phil. Like, oh, empire N-word.

Speaker 18 In the middle of it, like, these two MAGA guys were just lying in wait, and they just happened to run into this no-name actor who literally nobody knew and recognized him as starring in Empire, okay, and were ready with their tools.

Speaker 18 And yet, here he's going to say, and Netflix is apparently going to say, that there's previously unreleased footage that may prove he did not stage this.

Speaker 18 That, like, I don't, what I don't have any idea how they could, because they say they're inviting audiences to decide for themselves who's telling the truth about Jussie Smollett. And here's one more.

Speaker 18 Gagan Rehill, he's the director, says as follows.

Speaker 18 This story is a thrilling ride and we were lucky enough to have access to the key players i wanted this film to speak to the particular moment of rapid cultural change when this takes place in 2019 when as a society we were becoming more combative more polarized more divergent over our shared reality when we began to lack a common singular truth what

Speaker 23 So I don't understand a lot of things, starting with why when he gives that interview, why she doesn't ask any, you know follow-up questions right it's like um okay where did you find guys in in in south chicago with maga hats how does that even happen that's like the first question i would want to know but look if these lawyers supposedly had uh evidence that squarely contradicts

Speaker 23 the claims made by prosecutors against him, it would be malpractice and almost criminal negligence almost to the point of just sitting on that and not bringing in as part of a defense.

Speaker 23 And if I'm just wondering if I'm that lawyer or these lawyers who he's now, in my opinion, defaming by saying, look, I had clear proof that I was innocent and my lawyers refused to use it.

Speaker 23 My word, that's quite the claim to be making against

Speaker 23 your criminal lawyers who have professional reputations and saying things like that.

Speaker 23 I'm just wondering if that might not give rise to some kind of claim by them now against Smollett or perhaps against Netflix for even

Speaker 23 bringing such a ridiculous claim forward because there's just no way any responsible lawyer would sit on evidence that squarely contradicts the prosecutor's claim, not only at the time, but to have it be locked away under some lock and key in a secret vault or whatever for five years.

Speaker 23 It just doesn't pass the smell test, much like his initial claims don't even pass the smell test. No reasonable person would be.

Speaker 18 I mean, I can't wait to see how this filmmaker incorporates the Osundario brothers and their reenactment. I look forward to seeing how he handles that piece of the show.

Speaker 18 And as soon as it hits, we will all get back together. We'll discuss it here.
And I know you guys will talk about it over on MK True Crime, the new podcast. It drops every Wednesday and Friday.

Speaker 18 It's got all these smart legal contributors that you saw today. Guys, thank you, Phil.
Thank you. You too, Dave.

Speaker 23 Always happy to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 18 Okay, so that I mean, that's just a sampling of the all-star cast that we have who's going to be hosting these discussions and participating in these discussions.

Speaker 18 So it'll be a rotating cast over there of all your faves.

Speaker 18 This, I'm really excited for this because I think people love the legal segments on the Megan Kelly show, which will continue.

Speaker 18 But this is an expanded version where these guys will be oftentimes without me, sometimes with me, and on their own discussing in the same way they do here all these great legal cases.

Speaker 18 More is more in this particular case. So I hope you enjoy it.
Go ahead. You can just go to True Crime, MK TrueCrime.com, MK TrueCrime.com.
That'll tell you how to subscribe to everything.

Speaker 18 But as I point out, you can easily just go to podcasts, type in MK TrueCrime, and subscribe, or go to youtube.com/slash

Speaker 18 at

Speaker 18 MK TrueCrime. All right, we'll see you tomorrow with Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 18 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show: No BS, No Agenda, and No Fear.

Speaker 3 Honda cars, SUVs, and trucks are on clearance during happy Honda Days. Get 2025 accords, pilots, and ridge lines on clearance with big savings on the full Honda line.

Speaker 9 Base of 2025 2025 Consumer Choice Awards from Kelly BlueBookviskAVB.com for more information.

Speaker 17 Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zin at a store near you.

Epstein and Ghislaine, Possible Diddy Pardon, and Trump Suing WSJ, with MK True Crime Contributors

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