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

21:41Dave Aronberg:Wait a minute, because he pleaded guilty to solicitation of. Yeah. OK, but let's not 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. 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. 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, like, you know, forgive me. Of course, Mark's way of saying it.

22:15Mark's correct. The ultimate goal is to see if any of these people, these names bandied about were involved in molesting children. 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 haven't done anything wrong. And look, Megan, you've covered it extensively. I mean, look what happened to Dershowitz. This woman blamed on their oath in writings all over the place. 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 everything that he worked for for all of those years.

22:59And with all due respect to Virginia Dufresne, 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. 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. Megan, she lied so much that she did not testify in Ghislaine 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. And there's that famous picture of her and Prince Andrew and Ghislaine's right in the picture.

23:38So if she had any kind of truth coming out of her mouth, you know they would have thrown her on the stand and they did. 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? The inference, however, is going to be that they did nefarious things with children. And we saw what happened to Dershowitz. 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. So my concern is, what are we really going to get out of this?

24:19because 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. And, um, they've gotten pictures of his famous, they call it a townhouse. It's a mansion, um, 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. He owns, owned, I don't know if he still owns, Victoria's Secret, The Limited. He was like this with Jeffrey Epstein. Pals, like two peas in a pod, and seemed to really take care of Jeffrey financially.

24:59Unclear to me why, because Epstein didn't have particular expertise that Wexner would have needed. In any event, in this mansion, I'm going to get to the part about, you know, the, the people who, who they point out were in it,

25:14Dave Aronberg:but they, they write dozens of framed prosthetic eyeballs lined the entryway, 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. It looks like a mannequin in a wedding gown sliding down like a rope, like a fireman's rope. 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. They show guests sat in leopard print chairs around a large rectangular table. Occasionally, a magician would perform.

25:49He preserved a map of Israel drawn on a chalkboard with Mr. Barack's signature. That was his good buddy, Ehud Barack, who visited Epstein scores of times. Photos show a credenza crowded with framed snapshots, flaunting Mr.

26:03Dave Aronberg:Epstein's connections to some of the world's most recognizable people. There was Epstein smiling along Pope John Paul II. I think it's fair to say none of us suspect Pope John Paul, although I recognize the Catholic Church has had some issues. Mick Jagger, Elon Musk, Fidel Castro, Larry Summers, President Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, Mr. Trump, and Melania Trump. A framed dollar bill signed by Bill Gates, possibly as payment of a bet because written on the dollar bill is, I was wrong. They go on, there was a taxidermied tiger lounging on a lush rug. In the office, he showcased a green first edition of Lolita.

26:49Ew, disgusting. We all know why he liked that book. Atop a wooden sideboard were more framed photos, including one of Mr.

26:56Dave Aronberg:Epstein with Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. 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. 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 Megan Kelly. You can see it there in the corner. Let's see. A second camera can be seen in an adjoining room. 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.

27:39I 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. And I don't know what that means.

27:52Dave Aronberg:But that's just a list of the people, Arthur, who were on the credenza in photos. Michael Wolf gave an interview recently saying he walked in. The Dalai Lama was there. 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. Exactly. And the world we live in now, and what Mark said is like, it doesn't matter. The truth doesn't matter. All of a sudden, you become from the famous lawyer or the famous actress or the famous politician. Oh, yeah, that's it's a Jeffrey Epstein guy, right? He was hanging out with Epstein.

28:35The 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 that was his magnet. Right. Why are they all hanging out with him? I mean, I don't know why Mick Jagger is hanging out with him. on one end and the Dalai Lama on the other end. You know, he would invite people. You want to come on my plane? You want to come to my private island? You know, 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.

29:10But, 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 time he was on the island.

29:18Dave Aronberg:That's verified. 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. I mean, it's just a couple, Mark, and then they all come flocking. How many people said during the Diddy investigation and then the trial, how many other celebrities were at his parties? That became the question. But that wasn't the right question. 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.

29:58And that's what's happening here. 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. Megan, can I ask you the question that Mark touched on? Who would know, though? Who would know the answers to these questions?

30:15Dave Aronberg:Does anyone in this panel represent such a person who might actually know the answers to these questions? Oh, okay. Right, but Megan, here's the ultimate question, really. And Mark touched on it. There's so much stuff going on in the world. Ukraine and Gaza and 13 million American kids going to sleep starving. Like, why are we so infatuated? The Epstein thing, he's dead, what, five years now, right? When it's six years, 2019 is going to be this month. Like why all of a sudden? Well, is it because of Trump? Is it because of that happy birthday card that we're going to talk about next with the lawsuit?

30:55How about that interview where Pam Bondi tempted us? She said the, you know, incorrect words. She meant just the files on my desk. But she led all of us to believe erroneously, maybe, that there is a list. 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. It was a file that was on my desk. So the pitchforks were up, right?

31:22Dave Aronberg:I didn't mean it. 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, and Elon tweeted Trump's in the Epstein files. And I think Trump's 100 % in the Epstein files in the, in the, insofar as the Dalai Lama is in there. And, you know, like he was a friend of his, so he's going to, his name's probably in there in some fashion that doesn't tell us anything in what capacity, what did he do? Was he, was he somebody being funneled, barely legal girls by Jeffrey Epstein? I've never seen anything to suggest a whiff of that.

31:52Um, but I also think there's a genuine, genuine interest in, you know, whether there are pedophiles or pedophile adjacent, powerful men in this country

32:04Dave Aronberg:who are powerful enough that people just keep covering for them. And let's face it, you know, 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. 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. 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.

32:41Dave Aronberg:And they have a feeling that if you have enough money and enough connections, you can get away with it. 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. So that's the short version. None of those stories you just mentioned, Megan. All of those stories put together. All of a sudden, the 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've had some high-profile cases.

33:16They're going crazy about Ghislaine. They don't care about Harvey. They don't care about Steve Bannon. They don't care about these other times. Rudy Giuliani. Because it's still a mystery. They're out of their minds for. Yeah, because this one still is a mystery. And if 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 possible charges. I understand, you know, the Dalai Lama doesn't need to be dragged through this. But 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.

33:50No one wants to see actual kiddie porn. 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. OK, you mentioned it just in passing. Quickly, on this Wall Street Journal lawsuit, Trump has filed a 10 billion dollar lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for publishing that he sent Jeffrey Epstein a letter that was bawdy for Epstein's 50th birthday. And it had like, isn't it great to share secrets or some line about that?

34:19Dave Aronberg:Trump has totally denied that he wrote it. And it's a kind of an interesting case, you guys, because Trump is saying, I did not write it. 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. 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 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.

34:54I 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. The issue is whether Trump, probably the most popular man in the land, can prove actual malice. They get it wrong all the time. 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. 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.

35:33So they better investigate before they put that out there. And they did, supposedly, and they believe they have a good faith basis to publish it. that's the problem for his hand his handwriting is you know easily attainable right i mean mark and i are involved in cases where there are there were subpoenas for search words actually for people's handwriting because they need to compare it trump's handwriting is everywhere it's not hard to do an analysis of okay here's the card on one hand and then we don't know if

36:02Dave Aronberg:we know we don't know if they didn't print the card well they describe something but we don't know if 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. So we actually don't know. Okay. Now, you know, that's a case. That's what litigation is all about. I mean, they're not reckless. I mean, the Wall Street Journal, in my opinion, They're not a reckless reporting agency. And they know Trump is litigious. Litigious. Right. I mean, they just got millions from CBS. Of course, Colbert is job.

36:44And ABC. They vetted this, Megan. 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, if they have a file. Yeah. I know they know they discarded, recklessly disregarded whether it's true or false. That's the standard when you're when you're a public figure suing over defamation. 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.

37:23It was more a report about a story that's in the news tied to whether Trump as president might be covering up, you know, the Epstein story. So that is a matter of public concern. And you're making the comment about a public official, which means you as the as the journalist have the greatest amount of protection.

37:42Dave Aronberg: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. And that leads me to the lawsuit by Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron against Candace Owens. So Candace will have a measure of protection. She's being sued for defamation by the first lady and president of France because she has said that Brigitte Macron 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.

38:24And 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. You could argue it's a big fraud on the people of France. I don't know. But still, there'll be a very, very high standard either way for the Macrones to win on a defamation case against Candace Owens. 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 McCrone's birth certificate, which is attached. 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.

39:08And it's got like the actual birth announcement and other proof, including pictures of a young Brigitte. Yeah, Brigitte, they say her last name is Trogneau. That's her maiden name. And in French, it says that her brothers and sisters welcome their little sister in Amiens, France, on looks like 1st of December. Anyway, she's now got to defend this. 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 Macron at a deposition and hear her asked about her penis. That's what Candace's direct, I think that's a direct quote and it's never happened before.

39:45So she's not backing down one bit. 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. She will get the chance to ask those questions through her lawyer

40:03Dave Aronberg:directly to the first lady of France, Arthur. So what is really going on here and how do you like the macron's chances this is nuts uh this is pardon the pun yeah i mean i mean you know the truth is an absolute defense right and that's that's the law right so this is not a hard case to prove or disprove it's a matter of you can actually get there In other words, you get a judge to rule at some point, you know, what anatomy is attached to the body. But I would say if there is a birth certificate that was sent to Miss Owens that shows a girl born, I think you said on my birthday, December the 1st.

40:52A birth announcement. You know, birth announcement. OK. Well, OK, that's a little different. That is a little different. A birth announcement is different than an officially stamped. I mean, I don't know how they do it in France, but you know. Maybe she has a birth certificate, too, that she'll produce. I don't know. Well, OK, 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. I'm, you know, I'm a girl. And Candace is still doing this. She's on notice. She's got she's not. OK, but wait, let me ask you something.

41:21She's got evidence. 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 Macron that was born on that date and that she lived and that she may have died and said, do we have this on tape, Deb? And said, I will allow my brother, because I think one of her theories is that it's Brigitte's brother posing as Brigitte and that maybe Brigitte died and allowed her brother who wanted to be a woman to assume her identity. Here's Candace in SOT 6. This is after the lawsuit was filed. And so at this point, she's definitely seen the birth announcement.

42:07If I said certificate, I misspoke. Here's that in SOT 6. I do believe that Brigitte Trogneau, the real Brigitte Trogneau existed. it's plausible that Brigitte Trogneau got sick, that the real Brigitte Trogneau got sick and perhaps had a dying wish to help her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneau, who was living perhaps as Veronique, right? And knowing that, okay, well, he's never going to be allowed to live his life authentically. He's always going to be hiding and doing these sorts of things because this is just It's not a time where people are recognizing this transgendered identity. Well, what if she gifted her brother her entity here?

42:49You know, this is not a thing yet. You can you can just become me. OK, that's again, we're surmising there's no evidence that Brigitte Trogno died. There's no evidence of that. But that's what it feels like to me. It feels like to me that Brigitte Trogno did her brother, the real Brigitte Trogno did her brother a favor and allowed him to become her. Wow. I mean, wow.

43:14Dave Aronberg:I'm working on it. Working on it. Good luck with that. She's so close to the line, if not over it. It's one thing to just say someone looks like a man. OK, that's protected, offensive, but protected. It's another thing to say, you know, maybe this happened, maybe that happened. 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 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 but if that's the best she's got it seems completely half-cocked again pun intended well that's her rebuttal her her case in chief and i confess i haven't watched any of this.

44:04I have no important things to do than worry about Brigitte Macron. But my producers watched it and they did tell me and they have nothing against Candace, but they did say that it's there's 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 that I don't know whether this will be one of them, but I don't I don't

44:31Dave Aronberg:totally get like she is positing that Brigitte is a man. And if Brigitte is a man, if Brigitte's a man, then she's always been a man or she. 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. There are pictures of Brigitte when she's a child. Candace still claims that that that child is not Brigitte, that it's somehow now Brigitte's brother, who is Brigitte in the photos. And yet the problem for this theory is that the brother is still alive. The brother was at Emmanuel Macron's swearing in ceremonies, both of them, and pictured in at least one picture with Brigitte Macron.

45:17So 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. He took over the family's chocolate confectioner business. And so that doesn't really jive, but it doesn't look, we don't have to fully buy into

45:35Dave Aronberg:this or not to do good legal analysis on it. And what they're going to have to prove Arthur is that Candace knew it was false or recklessly disregarded that it, it was, that it appeared to be false. And I will say this in her defense, I believe she's a true believer. I do not believe she knows this is false. Reckless disregard is going to be the interesting question. 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? So we were involved with that and I'd spoken to her several times and she got it all right.

46:15I mean, and even things that I didn't want her, like weren't that helpful for Mr. Weinstein, like she still reported on things accurately. um so on that limited uh exposure that i had to her and her reporting she dug deep and she was very thorough and and she was very ethical and honest in that particular scenario 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 so if she was really, you know, playing with fire when you put on notice months ago, like, hey, don't do this.

46:55And here's proof. And she still disregarded that. She must have something, as you just said, that she believes she's holding on to that makes sense, that will clear her in any lawsuit. Well, here's to that point. The lawyers who are representing the Macron's are like the defamation lawyers. They do plaintiff's defamation cases for a living, Clairlock. And they're two very well known, very well respected lawyers. And it's a husband wife team. And the husband, Tom Clare, went on with Jake Tapper right after they filed this case against Candace. And here's how that went.

47:33How much money do you want? And do you want her to apologize? 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. 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. Okay, sorry. That was one, but we needed the other one. SOT7. 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? It could be both, of course.

48:07It's one of the reasons why our complaint is 219 pages long. We wanted to lay out exactly that. 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, 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. Like what? Like the first lady's birth certificate? Like what kind of facts? 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.

48:49This is the complaint. It is huge. And it does have pictures of Brigitte Macron through childhood. And it's got all the things that we've been talking about. 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. OK, so is that defamation?

49:20Dave Aronberg: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. She's a conspiracy theorist who got twisted up on this Macron thing. And it's not true. And she refuses to see reason. I'm not sure that's reckless disregard. That's the worst case scenario. The best case scenario for Candace is it's true when these people are lying about it because they don't want to be humiliated. 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?

49:55And beats to her own drum. 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. Wow. But let's go to the second tier. A reckless disregard for the truth. He's not going to be able to do that. Well, it's amazing that he... No way. Listen, if I'm an attorney, I don't go to the highest tier. An audio tape. 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. 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.

50:31Yeah, I think that's I'm saying this is the worst case. She's that for I don't know anything about her. I but I will say this. Delaware federal court is not great for her. Most of the I've spoken to a bunch of defamation attorneys and most of them say this is not ideal for her. There will be a question about whether the Macron's want to see this thing through to trial. I feel like she probably will. and it's tough.

50:55Dave Aronberg:I'll tell you just as a media personality, it's tough to get insurance for defamation. I was going to ask you that question. I was going to ask you that question. Can you get insurance? No, she's got skin in this game, no question. And I'm sure she has to consider, you know, the effect this would have on her family. And I - Just curious, you think these - It helps me believe she believes it. You think these - Just curious. Plaintiff's lawyers, Do 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.

51:28Probably that. I bet they're getting paid hourly. I get that. I know. They're 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. Coming up next. Thank you, Megan.

51:39Dave Aronberg:More MK True Crime favorites. Mark Garagos, Jonas Bilbo, and Matt Murphy. Let's be honest. America can still be a dangerous place and you cannot afford to wait for help. Sure, you could use a firearm, but in today's America, defending yourself with deadly force could have legal consequences. According to FBI data, 99.9 % of all altercations do not require lethal force. And that's exactly why many are turning to Burna. Burna is proudly American. Hand-assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana, these less lethal self-defense launchers are trusted by hundreds of government agencies, law enforcement departments, and private security companies.

52:16Dave Aronberg:Over 600 ,000 Berna pistols have been sold, most to private citizens who refuse to be victims. Berna launchers fire rock-hard kinetic rounds and powerful tear gas and pepper projectiles capable of stopping a threat from up to 60 feet away. No background checks, no waiting periods, and Berna can ship straight to your door. Take responsibility. Protect your future. Visit Berna.com right now or your local sportsman's warehouse. That's B-Y-R-N-A dot com or your local sportsman's warehouse. Visit now and be prepared to defend.

53:39We'll see you next time. I'm glad I asked for help. Ask your loved one's doctor about... Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with Stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply.

54:21Dave Aronberg:Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. Joining me now, Mark Garagos, who's managing partner for Garagos and Garagos. Jonna Spilboer, founding attorney, Jonna Spilboer Law. Matt Murphy, former homicide prosecutor and author of The Book of Murder. 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. 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. Those two days. And you can just subscribe to the podcast.

54:58Dave Aronberg:Just as soon as you subscribe to The Megan and Kelly Show. So just go to your podcast, type in MK True Crime. It'll come up, hit subscribe or follow. And then on YouTube, go to youtube.com slash 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. 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. Go subscribe now. So you don't miss any of the best legal analysis in the business.

55:34Dave Aronberg:Thanks for being here, guys. And thanks for joining MK True Crime. Thank you. So happy to be here. Johnis Bill, where 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. So it's great to be taking our relationship to the next level. It's an honor to have, I won't say the old and new, but long-term friends and newer friends all on board. Okay, let's kick it off with Diddy. and um this is this case was tried for the defense by mark's daughter tenny garagos who no matter what you think of diddy and i the audience knows i'm not a fan she crushed it mark 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 you You know, what I can tell you is I sat and watched her opening statement, and I was in the kind of the back right in where the family was.

56:36And 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. And I was thinking he was one generation away from his mother escaping the Turks in the Armenian genocide. And here is his granddaughter giving this opening statement. And so it was quite a moment to watch it. You're right. She did crush it. That's awesome. Honestly, good for her. I I'm not one of those loons who can't separate the lawyer from 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.

57:18We 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.

57:27Dave Aronberg: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. But now he came back and said, but please, please, I really want bail. And he said, oh, I'll agree to all these extraordinary conditions. Fifty million bond. I would do that. He said, I'll do electronic monitoring. 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. I'm being held to a higher standard here and said, you got to let me out. And the judge said, goodbye.

58:06No. He said, you, 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. 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. 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. I don't think he did. And I don't want to put my daughter in an uncomfortable situation. But I I think from my standpoint, he was charged with counts that had mandatory minimums.

58:50He rolled the dice. 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. 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. And so people understand the so-called victims of the Mann Act are rather strapping young males who crossed state lines. 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.

59:33Code that makes this violent. Well, that may be the case, but 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. 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. Do 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. 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.

1:00:16They now, in their response to this bail application, are saying, we may ask for double that. I mean, give me a break. Yeah. Matt, care to defend the government? Not really on this one, Megan. I can tell you. 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. Once you separate out the emotion and everything that we saw Diddy do on that video with Cassie Ventura, 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.

1:00:59They really did. I think that, you know, what Diddy is going to deal with in this 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. And if you remember back during one of the very first bail hearings, 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 here in law school. 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.

1:01:41And that's, I think, where he really screwed up. I think that 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. Where they hung their hat or where they should have hung their hat is danger just based on the fact that he is such a prolific domestic violence dude. And I'm sure he could keep it straight 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 served. So it looks like the judge is probably planning on dinging him something.

1:02:22But I also look, I agree with Mark. The in federal sentencing, you can't have gross disparity between one case and another. And so he's there. The government's going to be lucky if they get four or five years, frankly, I think. John, what do you think of it? 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. With this judge, he's doing one of two things, my opinion. 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.

1:03:11So this judge wants to inflict as much pain as he can beforehand. hand or it's some sort of foreshadowing that this judge is going to be amenable to departing from the sentencing guidelines upwardly to really stick it to Diddy because Diddy is not a likable guy. He's a misogynist. He's a woman beater. He's a horrible person. But yes, 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. Well, I will tell you, 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 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?

1:04:00He's not getting bail. This is the final. He doesn't have a remedy with this judge. He does have a remedy with somebody else in the executive branch. So I think - All right.

1:04:12Dave Aronberg:Is it true? Is he trying to persuade Trump to get a pardon? Yeah, I think Trump's admitted. I just saw an interview in which not one, but twice he's admitted that the president has been talked to. I actually think this would be above my pay grade. But politically, I can see where this resonates with him. Because 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. He was accused of everything. They threw everything at Trump. Including Rico. Trump had a Rico case too.

1:04:58Exactly. 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. 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. He can see that same thing here. I mean, there was, you know, this Emile Bove, who is now on the circuit, who was the one who had to trek down to New York on Mayor Adams' case to tell the judge in the Southern District, hey, set that aside and talked about Damian Williams, the previous U.S. attorney who brought the case against Adams and against Diddy.

1:05:43They 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. So there are some things that I think resonate with Trump. And I think he should commute the sentence, if not pardon him. Oh, my God. You're such an effective advocate. But I'm so jarred by all of that. But why are you so, look, I agree that there, I've known Sean for 15 years and he has - You always do this.

1:06:19Dave Aronberg:You love all the worst people. You love the Menendez brothers. You love Scott Peterson. You've never seen a client who did it. Okay. That's a little ad hominem argument, but let's go back. Let's go back to what I'm saying. He has had his troubles. He has had his substance abuse. If you go through all of the violent acts, they're almost always related to his substance abuse, almost exclusively. He has been on a cocktail of drugs, which is a story often told in Hollywood, which is where these people go up, they go down, they're just dispensed, all kinds of stuff. 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.

1:07:07And he's made some kind of amends. And, you know, he did get Gina, who was victim number three, to write a letter in support of him being released. So stop putting your head in your hands.

1:07:24Dave Aronberg: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. He had caught me texting another man. We was in Miami.

1:07:42And it got really crazy that time. We were in his closet and he pushed me and I fell to the ground. And then he stood over me. So I was laying on my back and he stood over me. And he started punching me like this. He avoided my face, but he started punching me. like on the side of my head, and I was just, like, covering my face. He, like, stomped on my stomach, 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? I can't breathe. And he, like, stopped for a little bit.

1:08:28He, like, grabbed my hair from the back and, like, was, like, punching the back of my head because he was just avoiding my face when he was like hitting me. He's a real gentleman. That was on the Tasha K blogger show in June of 2019. Six years later, she's writing a letter. Now she's saying he's super sweet.

1:08:55Dave Aronberg: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 it went on all the way the physical abuse the freak offs all of it yeah go ahead okay just but just hold on 12 new yorkers heard all of this they didn't hear gina because he didn't dispute the physical violence he didn't even dispute it right he wasn't charged with it that's i mean now we're arguing about whether he's an asshole and he is the jury is back in but you're trying to tell us he's also warm and cuddly now that he's off the drugs it was just the drug single tear bullshit matt you've heard defense lawyers do this a thousand times or listen not only what you just witnessed megan's not to cut you off mark this is why i've known mark for years we go back decades together this is why mark is the first guy i'd probably call if i got in trouble especially if I did it.

1:09:50You just witnessed it, America. That is Mark Garagos that is best. 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. And if we'd seen that interview just then by itself, without that Cassie Ventura video, we'd all be going, maybe yes, maybe she's after money. But it's all true. 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 frigging dirtbag. And that is why in my, and I'm spitballing here like we all are. That's why everything Mark said was right about, I think with Trump and New York, and it wasn't fair.

1:10:30And I think that a lot of people believe that. The problem is, is that he's got two parts. Number one, he is a total dirtbag. He is an abuser of women in the most bullying kind of way. All that came out. 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 all that's going to, all that's going to feed in. So I, Mark, Mark was right, but Jonna is more right. Uh, I think on the, on the grand scheme and I don't, my money is he's not going to do it. It's too, too controversial.

1:11:02Dave Aronberg:On the pardon, Jonna, I mean, I tweeted this out the other day, but I, that already the GOP is struggling with women. This will not help. Already the GOP base is mad at Trump. The Epstein sort of the 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. Trump gets zero upside, zero from pardoning Diddy. 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 uh the system i get that but this would hurt trump more than it would help diddy why because diddy's gonna walk pretty damn soon no matter what happens on sentencing day he's not going to be there forever 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 But look, Donald Trump likes to forgive.

1:11:56He forgives a lot of people. He can fight one day and then shake hands with the next. He doesn't need to do that in this case with Diddy. Diddy's not going to be there for that much longer. Go ahead, Mark. I'll give you a last word. I was just going to say, you can prosecute him by proxy, but I'll go back to what Tenney said in the opening. 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. And by the way, you can always make that argument, and that's the argument they made about Trump in New York.

1:12:35You can always torture the law into a prosecution. I think it was the judge. He did the thing he was convicted of. He did. He did transport prostitutes. And by the way, when I go back to 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. Oh, Mark Garagos is having different flights than I am. Okay, interesting. Stand by. We'll put a pin in that. You don't fly Southwest anymore.

1:13:06Dave Aronberg:When you fly out of the Northeast, you're not surrounded by that kind of crowd, Mark. That's all I can tell you. All right, let's do 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. Can I tell you something? So Matt's put how many serial killers on death row? Eight, 12? I've done eight death penalty trials. So I just want to say this. When I covered this case, I hadn't yet read this book that Maureen Callahan recommended to me, The Stranger Beside Me, which was written by a woman who was friends with Ted Bundy.

1:13:46And 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. 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 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 and I'm now convinced because we did see in the in the materials released that he had an obsession with Ted Bundy and um he took the selfie with the the hood the hoodie on he uh had reportedly been googling Ted Bundy and there was speculation that he was also potentially obsessed with this Elliot Roger serial killer or just multiple murderer, I should say, when I got a murdering spree on a college campus.

1:14:31I think he was more obsessed with Ted Bundy now having listened to the story because there's so many similarities. And what they, what Anne, the writer of this book posits, knowing Ted, is that he, Ted Bundy was re-killing 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. All, for the most part, looked exactly the same. Between the heights of maybe five foot one and five foot six, dark hair, parted in the center, almost always wearing jeans or slacks. And oftentimes, when not in that outfit, asleep in their beds.

1:15:07And one of his most infamous crime days was when he walked into, in Tallahassee,

1:15:13Dave Aronberg:the Florida university there and murdered, attacked. It was six, six, I think, Florida sorority sisters and three died. 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, 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. 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. She was like a popular cheerleader who was blonde.

1:15:53She looked a little similar to Kaylee and to Maddie. 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. It's what Brian Kohlberger did here. And now we're hearing from Kaylee's dad. This happened right after, um, the, it was the week of the sentencing where he's talking about some more details on the cases. Here's SOT 12. An investigator called me and said, yeah, he, not only did he have searches related to, um,

1:16:28Dave Aronberg:uh, drunk girls, he also had really related to gagging and some of the, uh, damage to Kaylee He could have basically seemed like he was trying to quiet her. He was trying to silence her, which if he's searching for gag, choke porn, then in that murder scene, he had drunk girls and choke porn. Literally, so for a prosecutor to say that there's no sexual motivation at all, we know there's no assault. OK, we know this person was interrupted, literally interrupted. So who knows what his intentions were. But for you to go and say that it wasn't motivated, really, it insulted so many people that my phone started ringing.

1:17:16Very interesting, Matt, because we were critical of the prosecutor for saying that. And now here's one of the victim's father saying that they did find so-called choke porn on his phone. 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. And lo and behold, if that's accurate, and it's a little bit of a telephone game here because you get the detective to the dad saying that he found that, but he hasn't seen it. But of course he did. And that aligns with every case like this that Mark and I have ever done, certainly.

1:17:51There's almost always porn on the computer. So and yeah, the prosecutor, I've got a lot of problems. 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 had the opportunity to do it in a way. Yeah. To really give some 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. The families never get over this. and you know it's like 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 and by the way having watched olivia gonzalves that woman when she ripped into koberger i guarantee was not afraid of the process or facing koberger in court in the penalty phase and it's like i 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.

1:18:49You know, yeah, we could do it that way, Mr. Prosecutor. We could just give everybody a frigging 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 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 i wanted to know what changed after he made his announcement and the answer was nothing changed other than kohlberger wanting to come in and plead guilty and in my view um that's not a reason to to come off the decision to seek death and i know a couple of families supported it the gonzalez certainly didn't themselves now i want that guy i want that guy to go away megan i want him to retire he keeps talking about retiring i want him to comb his beard or ride his horses or whatever 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.

1:19:51And it's very frustrating. I have a question for you. I thought about you, Matt, on this. And I didn't understand. I still don't understand. 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 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. There was absolutely nothing that was done to at least get some information so that people could have some answers, right? Isn't that astounding, Mark?

1:20:36I 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's the defense lawyer. 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. 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. We're going to do it as Mark Mark said a proffer where you can't use the statement against them, but you can answer those questions.

1:21:05They can structure that any way they want. 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. 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 other cell phones. He qualified at 18 different ways. Mark is 100 percent 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. I did that job and I did it horribly every single time.

1:21:38You can do the job and then you can do the job in a way where you still kind of suck at it. And sorry, I don't want to be too harsh on him. It's a very difficult position. I've been there. Too late and totally justified. I was going to say, too late, Laureny. 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. Among the other pieces of evidence that we've just gotten our hands on are photos, a photo of Kohlberger in the wee hours of the morning that they arrested him in his parents' house in the Poconos 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.

1:22:15Here 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. They also talked about how they briefly suspected that he had attacked a different woman in 2021 in the Pullman area, Pullman, Washington. 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. 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.

1:22:51But your thoughts on where we are now as he gets moved to solitary confinement for the rest of his life and we're supposed to, I guess, go along with this prosecutor's revisionist history of we're pleased, we're relieved, the community, the victim's families aren't going to have to go through, they're going to have to continue to live through this. 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 allocute. He didn't have to admit to shit. And that is a slap in the face to all the families. And not only that, 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 so he doesn't have to admit anything in front of them.

1:23:35He'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? You want to know why I picked that house? You want to know what my motivation is? 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. I'm professionally offended by that. But the second thing quickly that I'm professionally offended by is right before prosecutors decided to accept this deal, defense attorneys decided to do this deal.

1:24:06Remember 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 in a rabbit hole that professionally offends me too that's the end of my soapbox on that now now kohlberger is going to be in solitary and the policies of this prison require that he is confined alone for up to 23 hours a day with limited human interaction he will receive meals in his cell um 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.

1:24:48He 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? That will probably be the end of his. I'd say death sentence if he does that. Yeah.

1:25:06Dave Aronberg: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. Thank you so much, Megan. 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. 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 slash at MK True Crime. And you can follow there for all these great true crime discussions. We have the best in the business.

1:25:38Dave Aronberg:And coming up next, three more of them, Phil Holloway, Dave Ehrenberg, and Ashley Merchant, the woman who brought down Fannie Willis. The American dream has changed. Forget the white picket fence. For most Americans, the real dream is getting out of debt. If you are feeling the pressure from rising prices, mounting credit card debt, and just trying to stay afloat, I want you to know there could be a way out with done with debt. They've got one goal, to break you free from debt permanently. They're not pushing loans or bankruptcy. Instead, their tough negotiators go straight to your creditors, slashing what you owe, wiping out interest, and eliminating penalties.

1:26:14Dave Aronberg:And the best part? Most clients see more money in their pocket month one. You've worked too hard to let debt steal your future. With Done With Debt, your dream of being debt-free could be possible. Visit donewithdebt.com and speak with one of their experts. It's completely free. But some of their solutions are time-sensitive, so do not wait. Go to donewithdebt.com. That's donewithdebt.com. More and more Americans are prioritizing their health and getting back in shape, but diet and cardio alone are not enough. If you really want to build muscle and burn fat, you have to do strength training. That's why I want to tell you about Don and the team at Jacked Up Fitness.

1:26:52Dave Aronberg:Their all-in-one home gyms are already best in class, and their all-new X series elevates home fitness to a whole new level. The Jacked Up Power rack extreme lets you do hundreds of exercises, basically everything you used to do at the gym, all from the comfort of your own spare room or garage. It features a completely upgraded cable crossover system. And if you are new to strength training, they offer a free get jacked up program that has full body video workouts, simply press play and follow along. So no more excuses. It's time to take control of your fitness, go to get jacked up.com and sign up for their free training program.

1:27:29Dave Aronberg:And when you're ready to purchase your own jacked up power rack extreme, use my promo code MK to save yourself 10 % at checkout. That's get jacked up.com code MK at checkout.

1:27:44She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding. Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard, but then we found out she had agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. and that was a different kind of difficult. So we asked our doctor for more help. Seeing symptoms like these in a loved one? It could be time to ask their doctor about Rexulti, Rexpiprasol 2 milligrams, the first FDA-approved treatment for this condition. Rexulti is proven to reduce agitation symptoms. Rexulti should not be used as an as-needed treatment. Elderly people with dementia-related psychosis have increased risk of death or stroke.

1:28:16Report fever, stiff muscles, and confusion, which can be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High blood sugar can lead to coma or death. Weight gain, increased cholesterol, unusual urges, dizziness on standing, falls, seizures, trouble swallowing, or sleepiness may occur. Learn more about these and other side effects at ricksalty.com. Tap add for PI. I'm glad I asked for help. Ask your loved one's doctor about... Hi, I'm Daniel, founder of Pretty Litter. Cats and cat owners deserve better than any old-fashioned litter. That's why I teamed up with scientists and veterinarians to create Pretty Litter.

1:28:50Its innovative crystal formula has superior odor control and weighs up to 80 % less than clay litter. Just one bag lasts up to a month, meaning fewer refills and less scooping. Pretty Litter even monitors health by changing colors to help detect early signs of potential illness. It's the world's smartest kitty litter.

1:29:07Dave Aronberg:Go to prettylitter.com and use code PANDORA for 20 % off your first order. I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time.

1:29:45Dave Aronberg:I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply. Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. We've got three more huge stars joining the MK True Crime show and podcast. They are Phil Holloway. You can follow him on X at Phil Holloway, ESQ for Esquire. Ashley Merchant, who's a criminal defense attorney, who is the woman who brought down the Fannie Willis case and Fannie Willis herself.

1:30:34Dave Aronberg:Let's face it. Donald Trump would still be dealing with that nonsense if it weren't for Ashley. And our friend Dave Ehrenberg, author of Fighting the Florida Shuffle. He's former Palm Beach County attorney. 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. Great to see you. How have you been? I've been so good. I'm so glad that you are doing this. 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 this.

1:31:05Thank you. I'm so excited. 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. 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 it. Yet. You know what? I find myself agreeing with him more and more on social media, which is scary. I don't know. The worlds are colliding. My head's blowing up. But that's what happens when it comes to Middle East politics. That's another matter. Oh, it's even more fun with Mike in person, too. I mean, my word.

1:31:38He's something else.

1:31:39Dave Aronberg:I love when people are like, you're an asshole. And he's like, yes. He never disputes any of the attacks that get leveled against him. OK, let's just start with Russiagate because that's the harder news. And then we've got to get to Jussie Smollett. What a weird segment, but we've got to do it. Russiagate. OK, the DOJ is launching a grand jury investigation now into the Russiagate conspiracy allegations per Fox News. They've seen a letter from Bondi that they say she has directed her staff. She did this yet 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 try to tie President Trump to Russia.

1:32:24They 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. Um, CIA director, John Ratcliffe did mention in his last Sunday news, uh, interview with Maria Bartiromo, the following dates and keep mind virtually every federal crime is like a five-year statute of limitations and perjury definitely has a five-year statute of limitations. 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 Russiagate allegations during Trump 1.0.

1:33:00Brennan testified in private to John Durham August 21st, 2020. Today's August 4th. So what we got a couple of weeks until that one expires. 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. Comey, last time we can see him testifying publicly or privately is December 2018. 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? I'll start with you, Ashley Merchant, as you are clearly the biggest star here amongst our legal panel.

1:33:46You're very sweet. I don't know if that's true, but immediately as you're talking about this, I'm like, oh, it sounds like RICO. It sounds like 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 Fannie Willis saga. The Democrats taught us that. So exactly. And so, you know, what's good for the goose? Exactly. And so, 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.

1:34:18And 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. 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 stands, stories don't match, things change. And so, you know, why not do this at this point? Why not at least give the American people some more information? 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.

1:34:49It's 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. Like that. Now you're talking about, OK, actual criminal liability potentially. And probably most of these people will plead the fifth. No. Well, it depends. You know, there's the lesson of the John Durham investigation. We saw this before where John Durham investigated and brought charges for perjury. And then it blew up in his face as the two trials led to acquittals. And so - Didn't go so well. DOJ doesn't want that. Yeah, it doesn't go so well. So that's the built-in protection.

1:35:22There are guardrails. So if the prosecutors go down the road and start 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 Comey said to investigators. I don't know that. But I got to say, just like Andrew McCarthy, I'm I am skeptical of this whole Russiagate thing, because a lot of this stuff stems from these emails that really were seems like Russia disinformation. I mean, that's why the report John Durham put those emails in the annex of his report rather than this main part, because he didn't believe me either.

1:36:02There's also that John Brennan memo. Now, that's the other thing people are focused on, which explain what you're talking about. Sure. So a lot of this is focused on a note, a memo that John Brennan wrote from a meeting he had with Obama and others 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. And that's the way to win the election. Let me just read it. I'll just read it and then I'll let you resume. This is just a recap on his note. He made handwritten notes after an August 3rd, 2016 meeting at the White House where he briefed Barack Obama and other U.S.

1:36:48officials, including the attorney general at the time, Loretta Lynch, and the FBI director, James Comey, about the Clinton plan.

1:36:54Dave Aronberg:The notes claim he alerted them to the, quote, alleged approval by Hillary 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. And the contention is that this was Brennan's CYA memo. Like I told them that this is all a Hillary operation and every denial that's going to come from these Obama officials thereafter saying we really believe Trump was a Russian asset is this puts the lie to it because they were told in August of 16. This is all a Hillary plan. Go ahead, Dave.

1:37:35okay well the russia investigation the whole crossfire hurricane the whole thing into russia election interference that began before there was this russian intelligence report 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 that is the whole source of this controversy but see when john brennan discussed this so-called it's not the whole source we know she was behind the Steele dossier and that she was potentially behind this crowd strike group as well. That is believed that that is the one that said Russia hacked the DNC and she that's she funded them, too.

1:38:20So it's not all just, oh, some Russian email said she did this shit. She her campaign was 100 percent behind that Steele dossier. 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. So, yeah, just just to let that be clear. And also keep in mind, Marco Rubio's Senate Intelligence Committee came out and said, yes, there was Russian meddling in the election. They were doing it to help Donald Trump. We think it was a rubber stamp, but I got it. All right.

1:38:50But but just just to finish my point about Brennan, he did not endorse this as credible intelligence. In fact, the context of his notes showed that intelligence officials were skeptical of the authenticity of this so-called Clinton plan because it came from what they believed was Russian intelligence trying to create this disinformation campaign. So if they want to do a grand jury to look at stuff. It came from, it came, where it really came from was 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.

1:39:28That actually was a Russian hack. No, but the person who allegedly sent the email and the person who received the email both said they've never seen this before. And if you look at the emails, and I've read both of them, they certainly look like emails from Russian disinformation. That's why John Durham didn't put it in his main report. 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. Instead, he put it in the annex of his report because he didn't believe them either.

1:39:56Dave Aronberg:But that's the whole reason to have the grand jury. Why did the annex go to the CIA safe at Langley and where it was buried to the point where even the archivist didn't get a copy? Nobody got a copy of it. Why? 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. Phil, let me get you to weigh in. Your thoughts. 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. There's a five-year general federal statute of limitations.

1:40:23But 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? So any acts that are taken at any point 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. 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. But see, the thing is with Durham, he went and he briefed the president of the United States.

1:41:04And he said, look, we know this is Hillary Clinton. We know that she's coming up with a scam to blame Trump for being a Russian agent. And I'm sorry. Yeah, Brennan. So then he briefed the president, President Obama. And the U.S. 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 a new assessment at the direction of the president of the United States. And then they just drop this this 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?

1:41:46Are 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? So if they find the conspiracy, and it's a criminal one, I don't think we're going to have one bit of a problem with the statute of limitations. 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. It needs to have a very thorough grand jury investigation. And with all due respect to my friend Dave, I think there's more there than he thinks is there.

1:42:22He thinks there's no there there. I think there is definitely something there. 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. And I think seditious conspiracy is probably the way to go. 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. They are really complicated. And I think this is a problem that the Trump side, this DOJ is going to have.

1:42:57I mean, I have been I can't even tell you the number of hours I've spent reading materials on this over the past two weeks. And I'm a lawyer. I'm I'm a journalist. You know, I do this kind of thing for a living. I'm still confused.

1:43:10Dave Aronberg:so 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 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 are they going to do it in dc or are they going to do it in florida 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. 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.

1:43:50You're likely to get an indictment based on that. 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 D.C., where you probably have a jury pool that's not going to be as receptive to it, or do you want to hear it in South Florida? Okay, so this is, I thought it was very interesting, Dave Ehrenberg, that that there's speculation that eventually that this people are wondering where the grand jury is. Where do they convene it? 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.

1:44:21Or 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. The raid at Mar-a-Lago was key.

1:44:34Dave Aronberg:They were actually looking for the House intelligence report. That's really what the FBI was doing there. And look, they may have been on a fishing expedition for Russiagate documents because that was still the left's pet project. But I think that's going to be the key. That's 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 D.C. over Florida. 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.

1:45:09And now Dade County in Miami has turned has turned red. So, yeah, I think you're right. 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. That's why they searched Mar-a-Lago. It had nothing to do with trying to get the House intelligence report. I don't even understand where they're coming from with that conspiracy theory. It caught me by surprise, too. Yeah, like that's the only place. But then when I thought about grand jury jurisdiction, it started to make some more sense and potential criminal case liability.

1:45:43Well, I think it's clear that they want to have that grand jury in South Florida. And it's because they don't want to in D.C. and South Florida is becoming redder and redder. 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. 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. Apparently, when the administration, Trump administration, wanted to prosecute Andrew McCabe from the FBI, they couldn't do so.

1:46:19They couldn't get a grand jury to vote that way. So it's not automatic. 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. You've got to be careful before you go down this road. I think they're interested in making them pay, even if the process is the payment. Go ahead, Phil. Yes, 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. So maybe there's obviously things that I don't know.

1:46:54But 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. I think to a large degree that might insulate any purported defendants that are part of some conspiracy from that piece of it being some act that's in furtherance of the conspiracy. There's certainly a Florida nexus because that's obviously the home now of President Trump when he's not in Washington, of course. 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.

1:47:34But 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. 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. 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. 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. Maybe they're going to do it.

1:48:07And those are two people who are very close to the allegations around this issue. So it was no accident that they're both now suggesting that that Mar-a-Lago raid was about Russiagate and not just recovering documents. 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. They both raised it. And so it could be this. Go ahead, Phil. I think they have to have evidence that whoever swore out that warrant with a judge, that maybe they lied to the judge or that it was somehow a pretext.

1:48:41There could be your stated reason and your real reason. 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. 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. They might be immunized. Who knows? 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.

1:49:15They'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. 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 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 they don't do documentaries there are sometimes mockumentaries yeah shockumentary They are not always fact based. And this one is called The Truth About Jussie Smollett with a question mark.

1:50:02So like even they know they're about to peddle a bunch of bullshit from the sound of it. We don't have a trailer. They haven't dropped one yet. But here's what they say.

1:50:12Dave Aronberg:The doc tells, quote, the shocking true story of an allegedly fake story that some now say might just be a true story. 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. He was touring local organizations to whom he donated in the civil settlement of his lie case. 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.

1:50:57He 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.

1:51:03Dave Aronberg:on a Friday or Saturday. He was walking through Chicago innocently when two guys wearing MAGA hats on South Chicago jumped him. 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 for Jesse sitting there, wasted everybody's time. 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.

1:51:40It 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 rearrested him. 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. 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. 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.

1:52:24And so he is walking around touring the organizations that received 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.

1:52:37Dave Aronberg:It'll make sense when y 'all watch it. OK, 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. 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. Ashley Merchant, do we believe one word of any of that? No, because if he had that footage, that footage would be everywhere. There is no way he's going to be holding onto that footage. 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.

1:53:20Are 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?

1:53:29Dave Aronberg: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. 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. 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. The judge would be, I would be begging for continuance, playing the footage over and over again. No way.

1:54:02No way. At a minimum, you'd release it to the media. All right.

1:54:04Dave Aronberg:I know you've got to run. We will see you over on MK true crime. 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, uh, tomorrow. And then again, on Friday for now, we're starting with two days a week. I, 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, not they, 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.

1:54:44Dave Aronberg: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. 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. 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. Here's a clip. Wait, stand by, stand by. Here is a clip. So we waited here for about what? Four minutes, about four minutes, but it felt like forever because it was cold as balls.

1:55:27As we crossed the street, we said, hey, to get his attention. Hey, n******t. 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 n******t? 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. And 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. I just placed it on his face. And that's when we took off.

1:56:09It's like the greatest documentary ever on Fox Nation. Those are the Osundario brothers who reenacted their attack, their hoax. Then Phil, so how do you like the chances of this Netflix documentary rehabilitating Jussie Smollett? Well, look, I'm disappointed in Netflix. But look, this is what you're going to expect from Smollett. 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. 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.

1:56:45I think that's really the best explanation for all this. Look, are we supposed to believe that there are two people in South Chicago back then that actually owned and much like would wear a MAGA hat out in out in public? Absolutely not. They troll the streets with their bleach in their noose, Phil.

1:57:05Dave Aronberg:In addition to in addition to the two guys he hired to do that shit. Now, there are real perps who are doing the exact same thing. 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 Foxx, I guess, was her name, right? Yeah, Kim Foxx. 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 pretrial diversion agreement. And the courts later said that you couldn't go back and re-prosecute him after you ran him through pretrial diversion.

1:57:39And to me, as a lawyer, that actually kind of makes sense. But it doesn't make sense to give him pretrial diversion in the first place, considering how many resources were expended and how much money it cost and things of that nature. But she, of course, leaves office and just drops this, 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? It's the taxpayers of Chicago, because now this civil settlement, the taxpayers don't even get their money back. It goes to some nonprofit and it has nothing to do with repaying the police or repaying the taxpayers of Chicago.

1:58:17They are the losers. I agree. Unfair losers. But you know what? 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 cretins beat this poor black man.

1:58:30Dave Aronberg:And so MAGA got hurt. Like, he's paid nothing to MAGA and the smears that he made of them. Like this was all made up to demean MAGA, to demean Trump, to demean our country. Look at this. Look at him with Robin Roberts telling these lies. Watch. As I was crossing the intersection, I heard Empire. And I don't answer to Empire. My name ain't Empire. And I didn't answer. I kept walking and then I heard Empire. So I turned around and I said, did you just say to me? And I see the attacker masked and he said, this MAGA country punches me right in the face. So I punched his ass back. And then we started tussling.

1:59:24You know, it was very icy. And we ended up tussling by the stairs. Fighting, fighting, fighting. There was a second person involved who was kicking me in my back. And then it just stopped. And then I looked down and I see that there's a rope around my neck. Which I hadn't... You hadn't noticed it before? No, because it was so fast. You know what I'm saying? It was so fast.

1:59:50Dave Aronberg: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. This is the smallest type. So now he posted this on Instagram right after the settlement news hit. Um, 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. City officials in Chicago set out to convince the public that I willfully set an assault against myself. See, he's holding onto the lie. He says, this false narrative has left a stain, a stain, Dave, on my character that will not soon disappear.

2:00:33Dave Aronberg:These officials wanted my money and wanted my confession for something I did not do. Today, it should be clear they have received neither. The decision to settle was difficult, but it wasn't the hardest thing. He's maintained a lie. How dare Netflix give this loser a platform to repeat this nonsense? 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. He wrote a check, so it's easy to trace. And when it came to the prosecutor, it was Kim Foxx. So I was a state attorney at the time when this was going on.

2:01:20And 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. That's not like a conflict of interest where you're having independent prosecutor when you put your number one deputy, You're your second person in charge in charge of the case. And so the National District Attorney Association, this national organization I'm a part of, chastisers said that when you recuse yourself from a case, you don't appoint your deputy because that's a conflict of interest. So one more thing about this is that I rarely get a chance to to correct Megyn Kelly, but the show is Empire, not Entourage.

2:02:01So there's a first for everything. I actually get to correct something. You're totally right about that. Yes. And like just hearing him retell it.

2:02:10Dave Aronberg:It brings home how obviously false it was, Bill. Like, oh, Empire, N-word, 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. 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. That like, 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.

2:02:54Dave Aronberg:And here's one more. Gagan Rehill, he's the director, says as follows. 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? 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, okay, where did you find guys in South Chicago with MAGA hats?

2:03:37How does that even happen? That's like the first question I would want to know. But look, if these lawyers supposedly had evidence that squarely contradicts 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 it as part of a defense. And 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. My word, that's quite the claim to be making against your criminal lawyers who have professional reputations and saying things like that.

2:04:21you know, 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, you know, bringing such a ridiculous claim forward, because there's just no way any responsible lawyer would sit on evidence that squarely contradicts, you know, the prosecutor's claim. not only at the time, but to have it be locked away under some locking key in a secret vault or whatever for five years. It just doesn't pass the smell test, much like his initial claims don't even pass the smell test. No reasonable person would believe it. I mean, I can't wait to see how this filmmaker incorporates the Osandario brothers and their reenactment.

2:05:06I look forward to seeing how he handles that piece of the show.

2:05:10Dave Aronberg: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. It's got all these smart legal contributors that you saw today. Guys, thank you, Phil. Thank you. You too, Dave. Always happy to be here. Thank you. OK, so 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. So it'll be a rotating cast over there. of all your faves. I'm really excited for this because I think people love the legal segments on the Megyn Kelly show, which will continue.

2:05:47But 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. More is more in this particular case. So I hope you enjoy it. Go ahead. You can just go to true crime, mktruecrime.com, mktruecrime.com. That'll tell you how to subscribe to everything. But as I point out, you can easily just go to podcasts, type in MKTrueCrime and subscribe or go to youtube.com slash at MKTrueCrime. All right, we'll see you tomorrow with Charlie Kirk. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

2:06:23No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

2:06:37She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding. Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard. But then we found out she had agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult. So we asked her doctor for more help. Seeing symptoms like these in a loved one? It could be time to ask their doctor about Rexulti, Rexpiprazole 2 milligrams, the first FDA-approved treatment for this condition. Rexulti is proven to reduce agitation symptoms. Rexulti should not be used as an as-needed treatment. Elderly people with dementia-related psychosis have increased risk of death or stroke.

2:07:09Report fever, stiff muscles, and confusion, which can be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High blood sugar can lead to coma or death. Weight gain, increased cholesterol, unusual urges, dizziness on standing, falls, seizures, trouble swallowing, or sleepiness may occur. Learn more about these and other side effects at ricksulte.com. Tap add for PI. I'm glad I asked for help. Ask your loved one's doctor about... Ricksulte. Join me, Cindy Lauper, with Chef Michelle Bernstein and Dr. Panico to talk about psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, the potential connection and risk of developing permanent joint damage.

2:07:48Cosentix Secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis 300 milligram dose and adults with active psoriatic arthritis 150 milligram dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentix. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some are fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough, had a vaccine or planned to, or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen.

2:08:21Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTICS or cosentics.com slash Cindy. you