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

the least.

“Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly show. We have a great”

great program for you today. You will not believe who Katie Porter is blaming for

the leak of that infamous video of her berating her staffer. Get him Katie. She's mad and she's naming names and we've done a deep dive on it. And we have a Kelly's court with another twist in the Blake lively Justin Baldoni case, which despite that shock settlement is not over just yet waiting till you hear what her lawyer just said. First up, we're going to do something a little different today. Have you heard

about or seen this new Michael Jackson movie? It's called Michael and it has already

grossed nearly $600 million worldwide since it's released on April 24th. I mean, that's

no time at all ago with a legitimate chance to hit the billion dollar mark. It's causing a lot of controversy. We'll explain why, but here's the movie's trailer. I love my family. I just want to do my own thing. She's having all these ideas in my head. She's got to get them out. And do it, Michael. Not a little boy anymore. Michael, I know you were

“different than mom and you were born. You have a very special life. I believe music could”

change the world. Spread love, joy, and peace. That is what I want the world to feel.

Now, the movie ends before Michael Jackson was accused of sexual abuse of children. It originally

did not end there, but it does in the version that you're seeing in the theaters. Despite the film ignoring the controversy surrounding that, you know, the allegations of Jackson's behavior around children, the movie has reopened the debate about the pop stars legacy and the credibility of his accusers. I listened to a full hour on this by the New York Times the Daily the other day. The reporter, who they assigned to go see the film and so on, was

refusing to actually see it. So convinced he was of Michael Jackson's guilt as a child predator. The Times apparently had to make him see it before he would appear on the Daily to talk about it, which is kind of derelict as a reporter. But that's just one example of the feelings that just the name Michael Jackson still engender for some people. Now, I'm just going to tell you story a couple of years ago. When I was off, I was in between NBC and this show. I took

a deep dive into the allegations against Jackson made in that so-called documentary finding neverland. I had very little time, very little things to do with the time that I had in my hands. So I actually took a deep dive into the Woody Allen allegations in the Michael Jackson allegations at the time. And I have to tell you I found serious problems with both of them. Now, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm convinced that the Woody Allen things did that happen. I don't think

“Woody Allen molested his daughter. I think crazy me a feral put that in her daughter's head and”

that Dylan genuinely believes it because of her crazy mother, not because of her perverted father. But that's the conversation for another day. Michael Jackson, I wouldn't go there. However, I do see serious credibility problems with at least the two men who were featured in finding Neverland. And my problem at the time was that the documentary, again, that's an air quote, did not disclose any of them. Oprah Winfrey did a terrible job at the end of it trying to sort

of glaze the whole thing without asking any tough questions of the two accusers and with all to respect to them. And maybe they're telling the truth, but they have massive credibility problems especially the one, the main guy. And none of it was raised, none of it was raised by the quote, Phil Maker on the quote documentary. But I haven't done a deep dive on all of the Michael accusers. So I'm not going to go that far. In fact, I've seen a lot that I find deeply, deeply disturbing.

And we're going to talk about it today. And there's a great guest who you know very well.

our MK True Crime podcast channel. If you just go to any podcast button and type in in the Well,

“you can find it or just type in MK True Crime. It'll take you there. And you can do the same on YouTube.”

All right. So go ahead and subscribe and you can listen to Mark along with his partner in crime, Matt Murphy, lifelong prosecutor Matt, lifelong defense attorney, Mark, do good out on some of the greatest cases of our time and in some great worst stories of their own. Okay. So go to MK True Crime for all of the proper links. Whether you are heading into allergy season or just trying to stay healthy in a crowded world, you need a defense system that actually works. Let me tell you about beekeepers,

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he represented Michael Jackson when he was officially charged with endangering a child,

“charges that dominated the news and the country's attention for months mark. I remember watching”

you handling this and you look pretty good by the way. You look the same. Your hair is like maybe

a little bit grayer but you look the same. You look very good anyway but what that case must have caused it to go gray because you did not have the most compliant client in the world. You see in that? Let's just start there as you as you look at that picture. Ben Broffman between me and Michael. Ben has one of the great lines of all time and I'll tell some of the stories. I remember Ben and I went to the arrangement there and that could be right outside of the

arrangement and we were standing after the arrangement and next to Michael and all the sudden Michael was on top of the SUV. He had in one fell swoop jumped up on top of the SUV and Broffman turned to me and he said, if we don't get this down, we'll play it and then you finish your thought. There he is. He's got a low walk. This is right after he was indicted. Can you imagine this happening to me? You see me looking up there with my sunglasses on.

Broffman literally saying to me, if we don't get this guy under control, he's going to come to court in his pajamas and I started laughing hysterically and sure enough, he did come to court in his pajamas. But he was accused of child molestation and he's like having a great time. The indavian diving on top of the van doing the moonwalk. But of course, his instincts were not wrong that he knew he was beloved. Wait, where are you, Mark? I didn't know. Right in the bottom

“life. Right there and there's Ben. I think it's the me. We're talking. We were. We were. It gets out.”

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

brought me in much earlier to represent Michael during the child protective services investigation. And what was the year? Yeah, probably 2000 and to end of 2002, beginning of 2003. And so I was handling the child services protective services. And at the same time, I knew that there was this

mission was to investigate the family. And as soon as I had done a little bit of investigation and my PI, who's now passed away, actually discovered this incident that had happened at JC Penney's involving the mother. As soon as we saw that, we had to get the family away from Michael because obviously. Okay, wait, just to jump in because the same family that was that was alleging Michael had molested their son had sued JC Penney alleging that a guard had roughed them up. They started to

look like a vexatious litigants who, you know, never miss an opportunity to make a dime off of a

“rich company or client of yours. So that's, that's what you're saying. You've discovered it. They've”

got a history. Correct. And once we discovered that once I got them moved out of Neverland and we had done all of that. And then I'm having discussions in real time after the search for it was executed on Neverland. Mind you, remember Megan, you may have been there. I don't remember that well. But I was doing a preliminary hearing in Modesto for Scott Peterson. I was wearing a pager. I got a page from the 805 area code recognized it as the house. And literally as I'm finalizing the preliminary

hearing for Scott, they're executing the search warrant at Neverland. So we knew that this was happening. And I had, we, there's a whole bunch of stories about what happened right after that and getting taped by the, the private plane jet operator who, uh, then tried to sell the tape of Michael and I on the jet. You and Michael had been on this private plane and they had the nerve of taping a lawyer with this client and trying to sell it to the highest bidder, which is insane. Beyond

“insane, the only thing there is a court of appeals justice. I think she's retired now. I ended up”

suing the private plane operator and getting a $20 million verdict for, for that. And when we went up to the court of appeals, she, um, I don't know if it was joking or not, she said, are you telling me that it would shock garages as conscious to be conscious to have a camera, filming him and to get $22 million. And so that ended up getting reverse and we had to reach right. But the insanity of what was happening then with Michael in Santa Maria and Scott in Medesto and then later San

Mateo was truly one of the craziest times. But Michael had support. He had an unbelievable support

compared to when I always contrasted it with Scott, who was kind of the infamous book end to the,

to that. And what happened was I then quickly realized that Thompson, who was the then DA, was coming after Michael alleging that he had obstructed just this basically by moving the family

“off of. Neverland, that's why I brought it. And just just so I'm clear Mark about who we're talking”

about because the boy that he was accused of molesting in the trial in 2003 was named Gavin Arvizzo. But that it was technically the second accusation. The first was by a child named Jordi Chandler 10 years earlier in 1993. So when you're referring to the family or you're talking about Gavin's family that was at Neverland because that's the family with JC Penny. So you had marked them a little earlier as being too close to Michael with a questionable history like

let's get them away from each other. But too late because this child who was a cancer patient

would ultimately accuse Michael and you would have to go defend him in criminal. It's a great point.

It's a great point. You bring that because remember in the 90s there was a criminal grand jury that Howard Weitzman was handling Michael's case along with Johnny in the Los Angeles County court. And they ended up settling in the 90s with a young man then who was making the accusation. And then lo and behold 10 years, 20 years later you're having this accusation and there was a fear in the camp that oh here we go again. Ironically they were right. It was a 10 years actually

both families. I think at one point had the same lawyer or law firm which is ironic because now you've got at least in the Diddy case. You have the kind of same lawyers involved in a lot of accusers there. But what ended up happening was I realized I was going to be a witness. I brought in Ben Brockman and I did. I ended up testifying not once but twice in Michael Jackson's trial.

witness for the defense and the judge had me wave on the record attorney client and work product

“in order to testify. And so that happened. He was famously acquitted. I thought Tom”

who handled the trial as a wrote that a workman like job in that under extremely difficult circumstances.

And but that acquittal because I had always wondered how we would ever get through that trial.

It's my opinion that that trial really took it out of him. I mean he was he was fragile when I first started with him. But by the time the trial ended and I wouldn't have if we had prediction markets I wouldn't have bet on his stamina for that trial. I think the trial really did him in. And I think there's also speaking of the movie that you're talking about and the amount of money that it's generating. The the wellspring of support and the kind of the way they've characterized

him or portrayed him in the movie. They ended it to your point prior to the allegations. That was not the first cut by all reports. Once they had that they were trying to have a more elongated treatment of his life. Then the case involving the 90s person who made an accusation that was settled for reportedly eight figures had a clause in the settlement that you couldn't kind of

“treat this if you will. So the estate I presumably had to make a pivot. And that's why they”

truncated this earlier. It actually makes it happen. Yes, the majority Chandler case. Yes, that's that's what the near chance is reporting that originally this biopic Michael ended with an attempt to address the abuse allegations and an attempt to take down of some number of the accusers. Maybe just Jordi maybe more. I don't know. I haven't. No, it was really hard. I've got a pretty good indication that it was more and there was a lot of the machinations that have not been reported

by the New York Times and that I can tell you actually existed was that they were going to originally try to address Jordi Chandler. But there was a monumental problem that was going on behind the scenes when there were other accusers that were there that they had not dealt with. Some of the people who were financing this film had been felt like they had been misled. There was all kinds of back and forth in order to try and remedy this. And I think where where the film landed was the

solution. We're just not going to go there in that period of time because it's too hard to navigate

“all of this. I mean, frankly, it wound up being the best thing that could happen to them because”

the movie is making so much money. It allows people to take in just his genius and his incredible

talent without really having to wrestle with the other side of Michael Jackson, which is frankly what we'd all like to do. No one wanted this to be Michael's ending or a piece of his story. So it kind of gives the the watcher permission to just think about him in the best light. Amazingly and very coolly he's played by his nephew, Jeffar Jackson, who is Germain, Michael's brother's son. So it's kind of cool that somebody who's in the family is actually playing

Michael Jackson before we get to the darkness. So I just want to spend a minute and Michael's

upbringing mark. Because he really is whatever the legacy, you know, whatever the truth is about

Michael and children. And it does matter. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. But whatever it is, you cannot deny his talent. You cannot deny his importance as a cultural figure in the United States in the world, music scene. It's just it is harmless and it's like too big to really understand. It's hard to overstate the phenomena that was Michael Jackson in the 80s. If you were adult and sentient in the 80s and he was literally the kind of soundtrack of that decade and

longer. And it was I cross every there's a picture you've got with the Regans. I mean he cut across every socio-economic ethnic. You named the category. He was, he permeated. It was unbelievable what the kind of phenomena that he was even going into 2000. I've had my good fortune of representing some of them. It's a stand out. Yeah, the princess band is a door to him. The look at, look at the now king. He was enthralled. I mean, it was unbelievable the kind of rarefied air that he occupied.

God-like in the way people would respond to him just because in this one package, this overwhelming

“amount of talent, you know, just the number of things he could do unlike anybody else, better than”

everybody else. And we grew up with him. I mean, he was a child star with the Jackson Five. He was the star of the Jackson Five. There was a story on Lino as I was preparing for today where his mother was saying that she went to Joe and said, let Michael sing. And he said, no, Germaine's the singer. And she said, no, no, but listen to Michael sing. And he was like, Germaine is the lead singer. And she apparently insisted. And Joe Jackson was an asshole, terrible father. But he listened to her in

this one case and let Michael sing. And Michael immediately became the lead singer of the Jackson Five, which they practiced all the time. They were from Gary, Indiana, which is a very rough rundown town with all due respect to Gary. It's, I don't know if it's seen better days. In my lifetime,

it's never been good days for Gary. And he was determined to see that family rise up out of that.

And boy did they ever. So they, the kids become huge stars. But not without awful sacrifices.

“And Michael, when he became an adult, gave some key interviews on what it was like,”

growing up in that household and what it was like to have this guy as your dad. And of course, Michael was like a large child when he was a grown man and sounded it, had the voice of a young child, had the demeanor of a young child. So for those who have, you know, our younger audience may not have seen any of these clips. They may be sort of shocked by how he looks and sounds. But here he is in a famous interview with Martin Bashir, talking about the abuse warning this stuff is disturbing

sad too. He was tough. How often would he beat you? Too much. What he only used about. Why do you do this to me? No more than a belt. What else would he use to hit you with? Areing courts, whatever's around. Do you have a piece of a horse you could see it's one thing too, but you were only a child. I know you were a baby. I know. It's one thing to bits and you were producing successful records. I know. He would lose his temper. I just

remember hearing my mother's screen. Joe, you're going to kill him. You're going to kill him. Stop it. I'm scared. So scared that we would regret to take. You would vomit. When would you vomit? Well, what would produce that sort of reaction in you? His presence just seen him. And sometimes I'd faint. And my bodyguards would have to hold me up.

“When he was beating you, did you hate him? Yeah. Strong hate. That's why to this day and only a”

finger on my children. I don't want them to ever feel that we're about me. Never.

And he didn't allow us to call him daddy. And I wanted to call him daddy so bad. He said, I'm not daddy. I'm Joseph to you. You know, it's just one more mark. But before you go to the next, you went on. This was what triggered to my mind in retrospect. I didn't know it at the time, obviously. But this Martin Bisher interview is what triggered I think in a lot of ways, the dominoes that led to his downfall in death because that interview was so used

against him or weaponized against him that he'd ended up feeling the fire that was the DA.

It ended up being kind of the wind at the back of the prosecution. And he never recovered from it.

It was just that I'll play that sound by too. But before before I get to that, before I get to that piece of it, I just want to stay on the abuse because of course, if Michael Jackson was a child molester, the odds are overwhelming that he was molested too when he was a child. And, you know, everybody wants to know how does one become like this because we want to prevent the creation of more. And he never accused his father of sexual abuse. But I did find an extraordinary clip. This is from

of the family. And you heard him there saying his dad used to hit him with an ironing cord. He

“means, and he explains here, the cord of an iron, like the literally, the plug that plugs into an iron.”

And here he goes further with it. And it was some disturbing additional details in Psalm 3.

When we make strip nude first, you oil you down. If you're whole ritual, you oil you down.

So when the flip of the ironing cord hit you, which is, you know, and it was just like me dying. And you just put all the space and back everywhere. I wish you my mother, but no, Bill, you got to kill her. You got to kill her, you got to kill her, love. I wish I would just give up. I know it's nothing I can do. I can hate it on court. Oh, no, I have to say a father making his son get naked and covering him in oil

takes me to a different place. And it is very plausible to me that Michael Jackson might not have been ready to admit or ever prepared to admit what else happened. But it's just very strange to hear a father making his child get nude and oil him up before a beating. Either way, Mark, you could make the argument that that behavior plus physical abuse, that behavior plus sexual abuse could have

created something very dark inside Michael. Well, I mentioned earlier the first time I was brought in

was when child protective services was called on him and you hear see there that he's talking

“about and one of the previous things talking about his own children. And I think in retrospect,”

he was prepared for later prepared for the criminal case. I don't think he was ever prepared in retrospect for that child protective services investigation. It was so hurtful, devastating and shook him to his core. I just remember talking to him about it and he just could not wrap his head around the idea that he would be doing anything untoward towards the kids. And we did get it shut down. But by that time it was shut down, the criminal case had kind of heated up. And so there was

no rest for the weary sort of speaking. It was a very difficult time for him. I remember I think I mentioned this one once before. One of the most terrifying times to have a client was being called one time and finding him on the floor. Odeed in the run-up to the trial itself. And he had this wonderful housekeeper who was living in the house who was who had called and was panic that obviously you couldn't take him to the hospital immediately. He had to have a doctor there.

I mean, he by the time the 2000s ran or came around, he had undergone so much and he was used to terms self-medicating, having others, Medicaid. It was just a spectacularly hard fall from the heights to your point that he had been at, you know, 2010 years earlier. Yeah, I mean, it was everything, right? I just from my vantage point out in the press and in the public, it was the multiple accusations now, the 93 accusations, the 2003 accusation of abuse,

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

kind of easily dismiss as the product of mega fame, like ultra fame, like Elvis, like fame,

“and of course he would wind up marrying Elvis's daughter. That's another whole twist, right?”

But like part of the mystery is, was it how much was it attributable to incredible fame and this

bizarre upbringing, like that that might happen to any child who was exploited as much as he was at a young age and how much, here's Lisa Marie Presley, just loving on him on state. Oh, sorry.

First thing that I thought, was she this woman's too tall to be Lisa Marie.

And how much is attributable to, but look at those, look at those fans for me as a just as an

“observer. I don't remember that kind of reaction except for the beetles back in the 60s. I”

know that. And Elvis, I'd say. Look at that. I think, I feel like Elvis brought people there, too. But yeah, no, like, it was a term star struck. And it's, that's exactly what these people were, like, struck by this mega watt star. And unlike so many of these stars, Mark, he delivered. You know, it's like, we, we today build people up with image making and PR firms and, you know,

it's sort of the social media blitz. Here's a woman being taken away on a stretcher. She's

overwhelmed by him. But he delivered in terms of the performance and the skills and the talent. And just, you know, the way he moved was not human. It was overwhelming to behold. And what, and what you see was, is just that kind of, that tearing apart of him. And it's the analysis. I thought a lot about it over the years. And what price and the kind of the collateral damage around him and most recently with the new accusers and the, you know, on the heels

of, we're talking about here, which is the movie that is out there, the kind of truss drops off right before. Next up, I, I believe, will be a movie that talks about the trial. And that, my guess is the out momentarily as well. And when you see there, by the way, that, that clip that you showed, I don't know a whole lot of men that could do what he did in terms of leaping up on top of an SUV, even that stage in his life and with the physical ailments that he had, it's just hard

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

as a board certified anesthesiologist to administer propaphal to him night after night in 2008 or

“nine and killed him. I mean, he, he died. That is not a safe thing to have happened. And that's how”

he ultimately died. Yeah, I'm just going to say it reminds me, I see this all too often, but a lot of

people trying to basically turn their brains off when they reach these kinds of levels. And that was, I think, to some degree where he was is just trying to, um, literally anesthetize himself to the point where he could sleep, where he can just stop being having the neurons firing and everything else. I mean, it's an immense tragedy and it's, uh, a first cousin to the talent, uh, that, uh, I mean, I don't even think there are not enough words to describe just how talented he was

and the kinds of, uh, he even even in the somewhat adult state that he was by the time all of this other stuff was swirling around him. He had flashes, flashes of of just an incredibly brilliant mind. And so I think to some degree, it was a way of just turning off that brain activity. I'm sure. I mean, propaphal, anybody who's ever had a surgery knows what that feels like. They

“can't, you have to count back from 10 and you never make it past eight because of the propaphal,”

which knocks you out, um, and you lose consciousness prior to, you know, them operating on you. And he could have anything. He had the money and the resources and the connections to get anything and in the same way that the helicopter pilot should not have flown Kobe on that day because the weather was not safe, but he did it. I think out of fame, you know, admiration, like wanting to please Kobe, Michael Jackson had enablers like that in his own life and one of them killed him.

Conrad Murray killed Michael Jackson by, and he was later, uh, found guilty in a trial, right, a criminal trial. I believe he was the hero. And of course, lost his license as he should

took him. But if it hadn't been Conrad Murray, it would have been something else. It might have been

“a different kind of OD. Right. And we could have, well, he was slowly, but surely killing himself.”

Yeah, we could have a whole other discussion. I'm coming fresh off of the so-called ketamine queen and Matthew Perry. And I, you just wondered, at a certain point, I know you want to hold people accountable. I guess about, I get that. But at a certain point, if you've ever, and I, I've argued this for years with people who are in the throes of addiction or have a loved one, who doesn't have one degree of separation to somebody with a mental health or an addictive

challenge and doesn't understand just how determined and how much they can persevere when they want to get whatever it is, is the carrot at the end or that is being held out in front of them. So it's a, it's a very pernicious thing to be under the influence of pun intended. So we've gotten childhood abuse. We've gotten allegations of abuse, child abuse and molestation against him. We've gotten the threat of his own losing his own children potentially.

We've gotten, you know, crazy, avid, obsessive plastic surgery and skin color changes and

incredible fame, like just mind numbing, crazy as fame and attention. And then, and then

a bizarre death. So that's kind of the arc of the Michael story. But in there, there really has been the question of, is he or isn't he on the molestation? It's, everyone wants to know, you know, is he or isn't he? We want to know. I would like to know. You know, if I'm, if I'm at the the roulette table and I can put it all on black or white, I guess this black or red, what do I put it on? Yes, thank you. Yeah. What, what do I put it on? He was or he wasn't. And I got to say,

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know enough. But there are some very disturbing allegations. So I'll start with the most recent. The, you mentioned that there were recent allegations and indeed there are. So this is a family that was supposedly his, quote, second to family. And they had been defending Michael for all these years, saying no, no, no, no, no, no, including I think four four young children who used to spend tons of time at Neverland Ranch, which was made to look

like Disney. I mean, Michael's room. He always used to say he was like Peter Pan who never grew up

and his bedroom had a Peter Pan figure in there, a Captain Hook figure like hanging from the ceiling. It was all done up to look like a Peter Pan. Well, I was telling you, at Neverland, the two things that always struck me was there was a two-story video arcade that when you've turned on the lights was absolutely incredible. And then you've got right there the, the other area that is adjacent.

“I think as I remember it was adjacent to the theater, which I also thought was, yeah, he's there”

with McColley Culkin in one of the rides, but keep going on. So the, the interesting thing in full disclosure, the family you're talking about is the Casio family and they, I've spent an enormous amount of time with them and I will tell you, if you spend time with them, they are convincing. They are persuasive. They, you, you don't have a heart if you doubt the, their, their, their emotional damage and sincerity and their authenticity. I, I, I saw it firsthand. I've spent an

an ordinary amount of time with them listening to them. I, I used to say about the RVs open because I used to get all the time. The question is, did you believe, did you believe back that in real time? And I used to say, well, I will tell you, I don't know about any other accusers, but I know in that particular instance that everything that we investigated, everything that we saw led us to believe that it was a shakedown and I, I, that was, I, I'm not going to be

dissuaded from that. I can't speak to and nor should I ever speak to any of the other accusations. I will, I just know what I know, which is when you look at all of the accusations, when it turns out that the RVs of family apparently hired the same lawyer, the Jordi Chandler had, when you see the kinds of history involving the family, all of those things give you great pause. But then

“sit down and talk with the casios and that will give you great pause. And I think that”

somebody who's not there can, is going to make their own decision and it's almost the

will have in these cases, which is computers filled with child porn or a tape of the molestation or some kind of a an eyewitness or some direct what's called direct evidence, even though I often

will make the argument circumstantial and director equally powerful. And a lot of cases circumstantial

is more powerful, but it's a very, it's a very mind numbing kind of exercise to get into. When you have somebody who is so enormously talented, who's been dead for so long and you're revisiting

“whether or not there was this unbelievable dark side to him. And that's I think what is”

captivated people, but it's certainly did not hurt the box office, which doesn't surprise me in the least. No, it's one of those things. It would be one thing if they were like Michael Jackson was a shop lifter. You know, he had a win-one or writer problem, even though he was rich, he just felt the need to do this thing. People would have moved on who really cares, but he's been accused of literally the worst possible crime you can commit. I mean, it is arguably worse, even if you're God for

big, you're ever sent to prison. You would rather be convicted of murder than you would have child molestation. You've got a longer shelf life than for somebody who's a child molested. They just don't last long and prison because it's considered the worst of the worst. Yes, there is a, there is some weird honor code even amongst the worst among us who have been sent

“away for for life that, you know, you, you heard a child, you're in a special class of evil.”

And so like this guy who we've been spent the first 20, 40 minutes in the show, revering and celebrating and, you know, no question at his talent, how much are we both admire it, may have been the absolute darkest worst, most evil thing. You can be as a human on this earth.

That's, that's the incredible mystery around Michael Jackson. And it's also why those of us who

want to just celebrate his music and his talent may very much like this biopic, you know, may very much like Michael because we don't have to deal with it. You know, it ends just as he's about to go on the bad tour, you know, I'm bad. And we, we don't have to even go there. But back to the Capitol. Back to the Capitol. Yeah, that's great. You can celebrate all that. We celebrated all that, but you can't believe the, every morning, and I think of one in

one of them in particular, every morning, I wake up. I have to deal with this, my life has been run. And it's, it's, say, it's emotionally, it is impactful in ways that it's hard to just to give voice to. Oh, I mean, of course, if you've been the victim of child molestation, I mean,

“it's just a total game changer without heavy heavy doses of therapy, your life is going to be”

really tough to get back on track. Some people have done it. So it's not impossible, but my God, what a massive challenge that's been given to you, but through no fault of your own. And so the Casio family has now come forward. They've been long time defenders of Michael, but now they are alleging in a lawsuit that he did sexually abuse them as children over many years, many years. They'd long describe themselves as his second family I'm reading here from a New York Times piece,

appearing publicly, including on Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010 to deny allegations against him and defend his reputation. And this is very helpful for Michael, because when he was being accused, either posthumously or during the course of his lifetime, to have children like McColley Calkin was one of them who had spent a ton of time with him during those tender ages. By the way, pedophilia is defined as the DSM5 as sexual attraction to prepubescent children. It specifically says

those prior to age 13. And that was reportedly Michael's thing. Some said between seven and maybe

14 at the oldest was what he liked. But to have them come out and say never mean never me,

would be very helpful from the Casio kids to McColley Calkin and there were some others. And they now say that they were groomed, that they were conditioned to protect him, calling themselves his soldiers, and saying that they publicly deny the abuse for years because of fear, manipulation, and emotional dependence. They recently appeared on 60 minutes Australia, and here's a bit of that. For Aldo, the family's youngest, at times the fear was overwhelming.

Did you find his appearance scary as a kid? Yeah. Yeah, especially when you're in bed with him at night, and he turns into the zombie. And you don't love me, you don't love his eyes were like this. Learning there were other victims,

he did this to other kids. That was enough for my courage to just blossom. I was like no,

no, no, no. This isn't made up. This is real. Aldo decided to tell his family of the abuse he'd endured, unaware he would also be opening the lead on the suffering of each and every one of his siblings. I called everyone to meet at my mom and dad's home, and I said, just want you guys to know that everything that they're saying is true because it happened to me too. Aldo's courageous admission led to all his siblings,

finally sharing what they say Jackson had done to them. It was the hardest thing for me to do was to admit it. Oh, yeah. I can't describe the feeling, the range of emotions that I was feeling at

the time and coming out. It's pretty powerful stuff. I mean, I will say just one caveat,

a little less so because they filed the lawsuit. Like if the people who if people would just come

“forward and say this happened without then filing the lawsuit, I think it would be a lot more”

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

casios wanted. I talked to them and without betraying a turning client. I will tell you that they tried mightily. I tried mightily to get them what they needed and it's just the tough, tough situation. You know, I imagine what they're in. They're in a situation where they didn't know the extent of what the others then subsequently told them number one. One of the reasons

“that I thought was most compelling is I remember going to pick up Michael at one point”

for a court appearance and they told me about that and they told me where they were hidden and it was a location that nobody knew about, meaning a hotel, nobody knew that I was picking them up in and they told me where I was and that I was being hidden from Michael at the time and it was kind of a stunning story to be told. Given in retrospect, I too had been a clearly a defender of his a witness that once but twice during his trial as well. So I'm as perplexed and torn as you are

from the outside and having been on the inside as to these cross currents and it's a kind of a

conundrum that I don't know where ultimately at the end I fall so personally. And he's not

here. He's not here to defend himself and that was the problem too with finding Neverland. You heard them reference, you know, watching the claims and then the one son then coming out and saying it happened to me too and he found the two accusers stories and finding Neverland equal documentary to be credible based on his own experience. Now, of course, I did not. I safechuck possibly more than Robson, Wade Robson and we'll talk about those two next. We have take a quick

“break but we've got to talk about finding Neverland and I which I think did more harm to”

like these current allegations by this family than good because Wade Robson in particular has got a lot of issues with his story and was clearly caught lying under oath in his civil suit against the Jackson estate which it's just devastating to the whole story and safechuck less so but also had some money issues before he filed his lawsuit which the documentary didn't disclose and also didn't come forward until after Michael died. So it's okay. So that's sort of a pattern.

We're going to pick up that piece of it right after this quick break. Don't go away Mark's days with us. Let's talk about an uncomfortable reality. What happens financially to our loved ones? Once we're no longer here, we put off thinking about it for all these reasons but the best thing we can do for our family is to just take a few minutes and deal with this problem to ensure that they're not left with a financial burden of mortgage, tuition, medical bills and so on.

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host of In The Well. That is our new MK True Crime Show. It's on our MK True Crime channel. If you go to your little podcast button and you just type in MK True Crime and subscribe. You will get in the well or you can go to MK True Crime.com. In order to show you how to subscribe directly to the show via YouTube, et cetera, but get it because it's on fire after just two episodes. They kicked it off with the quite a bang. It's Mark Garagos and Matt Murphy, Mark a lifelong criminal defense attorney and also

civil attorney and Matt Murphy lifetime prosecutors. So the two of them in California have gone round and round with each other in the well of the courtroom and out of it. And now they bring that expertise to all of you. So we're very lucky to have him. All right, keeping on taking a look at the two men featured in this leaving Neverland quote unquote documentary. Wade Robinson was, they both met Michael when they were children. Wade was this Michael Jackson

“look alike from Australia who got folded into Michael's orbit. I think you want to contest and”

met him and might have appeared in like a music video with him and went on to become well-known choreographers stayed close with the Michael Jackson estate with Michael himself who said very,

very nice things about Michael his whole life actually testified under oath that Michael never

laid a hand on him both in the 1993 accusations that one didn't go to trial but did testify or told the sheriff nothing absolutely nothing with me. And then in 2003 in your case, Mark was again a witness for Jackson under oath nothing nothing nothing then comes this documentary again in quotes leaving Neverland and he has a very different story. Here is part of it. This is viewer warning disturbing and I must say for the record we took out the most disturbing parts just because

it's very dark but you can imagine it. So it's not seven. And then him guiding me to do the same thing

“with him. So moving my hands to touch his penis which you know was erect and I remember him putting”

my hands on his head when he was down there. I'll have forget the the feeling of his hair I was rough almost like a like a brillo pad like this roughness on his down there and you know with his his mouth on on my you know seven year old penis. Okay Mark so I have to say when I watched the the movie I was horrified and I found him very credible and then I started to research him and let's just say less so. So he sued at the Jackson estate

reportedly after he found out that he was not going to get this job with Cirque du Soleil and their production of Michael Jackson like they Cirque du Soleil had licensed some Michael Jackson songs and they were sort of rehabilitating the MJ name and he thought he was going to get a role with them and didn't and reportedly had some sour grapes over it and then lone behold said I was a victim too and filed a lawsuit against the estate and in the deposition testimony he had to give in the context

of the civil case was asked did you ever write anything about these allegations that you're making

now and he claimed under oath he testified no never but it turned out he had written a whole book

alleging that he'd been molested the defense team demanded the copies of it

it and he wiggled out he tried to wiggle out of doing it and then they actually got some of the

metadata from the drafts from the publishing companies they went the defense team to publishing companies saying did you get a pitch to book about Michael Jackson by Wade Robinson and they did and they got their hands on other versions of the book and his story differed version to version

“and then there was testimony of him earlier that made clear he didn't remember the details”

but by the time he got around to this documentary again in quotes his memory was crystal clear for all of the abuse allegations all of which left me with a lot of questions with all due respect to this manx i don't know whether this happened and i don't want to attack somebody who may have been molested but i just have to be honest did not find this story credible at all when it was said and done your thoughts well the the experience i've had with leaving

neverland is famously they have a clip of me coming out and saying i'm going to land on you like a ton of bricks or something along those lines the implication being is that i was coming out and attacking the the but we have this month well not i'll show this down by this is

“from the documentary leaving neverland it's you sat night a news clip of mark garagos who initially”

represented Michael in 2003 the criminal case his manipulated to appear as if he's threatening an accuser after michael's arrest he will land on you like a ton of bricks we will land on you like a hammer if you do anything to besmirch this man's reputation anything to intrude on his

privacy in any way that's actionable we will unleash a legal torrent like you've never seen

in fact he was talking about a completely different legal case in which he and Michael were secretly videotaped on board a charter aircraft to disclose those two video cameras which also apparently had audio on them were surreptitiously placed in there were recording attorney client conversations so just make clear mark that was there was a rebuttal to leaving neverland called lies of leaving neverland it's on youtube now and that was one of the lies they were pointing out

that they perceived in the documentary as regards you keep going correct and that was one of it was so offensive to me when leaving neverland came out because of what I had described there in the press conference in real time and what I was so angry about was they had filmed my conversations with him attorney client which are sacrosing and they were marketing it in fact grid of ancestors who was the one who called in the next day saying this guy this lawyer has got

the tape and he's shopping it for a million bucks and I called the lawyer said if you lost your mind

and he said well this is my client's lottery ticket I went into court immediately got a court order before I could execute the court order to go get it the FBI was there they seized it from the lawyer and this guy was indicted who had done the surreptestious taping so it was a wild situation to them take that and manipulate it one of the reasons sometimes these documentaries dried me crazy because it's great to tell a story and documentaries can be some of the most effective

storytelling there is but you shouldn't really manipulate the facts to the point that you just

“literally tell a story that is not true and that's why I was sorry no then it's a documentary and”

that's yeah so they did that if they played fast and loose like that with you what did they do with these other two men who are featured in it and I just think I don't know whether those those facts are fatal to Wade Robinson's claim which has been resurrected because California passed one of those laws like New York did where claims that were out of time and were sort of dead claims could be resurrected for a brief period of time if they related to sexual abuse and Wade and James

safe chuck took advantage of that and got their claims against the M.J. estate resurrected they go on to this day as a result but I do know that as a journalist or a storyteller doing a documentary you must include the credibility problems in your documentary and let the audience decide and this guy did not do that on either one of these men which is a failing it is a fatal flaw in the presentation. By the way if you're in a jury trial and this happened they say that this kind of

manipulation happened you would get a jury instruction that says a witness who is willfully false

thinking this morning it's funny Megan that I before I did this I was watching the closing argument

“in Harvey Weinstein's third trial here in New York and then Manhattan Court Mark Agniflow was”

giving it I ran into speaking of podcast Arthur Raidala who tried it the second the second time

and he sends his regards and I was thinking as I sat there about this the accuser in this third trial and such damage goods no matter what you you say given the testimony given the medical records the accuser is clearly has mental health issues that are off the charts so the argument becomes when you're analyzing it did the abuse cause this or is the are the mental health chicken or egg is it the mental health that is causing the person to make the accusation and those

kinds of determinations should be left up to jurors in the courtroom and viewers in documentary

to your point why ignore things that that could be credibility issues let people decide based on a full sum record as opposed to a skewed argument or kind of a rhetorical device. Yes absolutely there was in that lies of leaving neverland they pointed out this thing I just

“mentioned about how Wade's deposition reveals that he had to ask his mom to remember details”

about the alleged abuse and that was at an earlier point in time than when he's with leaving neverland remembering them all he's got great details he's a good storyteller he can really take you there if you watch the documentary again in quotes boy he really adds a lot of color none of which he remembered years earlier when he was under oath and asked to tell this story so it's there are a lot of questions James safe chuck he made equally disturbing allegations in the

peace leaving neverland the knock against him is that he was reportedly facing a serious lawsuit that hit right before he sat down for that documentary and was facing some financial some serious financial threats and that would have incentivized his filing the civil suit as he did and participating with this quote documentary and again that may not move you at all but it should be disclosed by a filmmaker in any event here's James safe chuck in part again with a viewer warning

on the disturbing nature of what he's going to say inside eight had the train station there's a room up stairs and we would have sex up there too what happened every day it sounds sick but it's kind of like

when you're first dating somebody right and you do a lot of it so it was very much like that

he liked um if I rubbed his nipple so we would do stuff and then in the end when he wanted to ejaculate he would he would finish himself you'd be in the hotel room and he would pretend like somebody's coming in and you had to get dressed as fast as possible without making noise

“so I'm not getting caught most of it like just kind of fundamental he was very much a secret and”

he would tell me that if anybody found out his life would be over and my life would be over he did say there that he remembers the abuse in Michael Jackson's train station he had like out you know like I'm just going to say you know you mentioned Matt Murphy in my podcast partner Matt handle in fact Matt and I faced off on a number of sex crime prosecutions and Matt and I'm going to channel him and say that he would say that some of those things have the kind of insignia or

indicia of what he has seen repeatedly and what I've seen coming at clients who are accused as well so there it's a very tough situation I don't think there are any easy answers and the look back statutes which you referenced which are these statutes that revive statutes of limitations that are

stodder where they said you can't prosecute somebody criminally when you're going to take away their

“liberty after the statute is expired but they left open the issue on these civil cases and some of”

these civil cases and these look back statutes present real problems for my standpoint when you're trying to re-litigate these later on years later when somebody didn't have noticed or anything like the defendant is dead and now you've got the state and you've got and you don't see it happening

against somebody who's a to quote my other podcast and close friend Adam Corolla you never see

people coming after the empty bags so there is that as well so it really is a condition. Yeah it reminds me of the Christine Blasey Ford situation against Brett Kavanaugh where it's like how is the guy supposed to defend himself 30 years later on you know what he did or did not do on a particular day now in that case where you're dealing with a form where they would be Supreme Court justice so it just so happened he did have detailed day planners even from his

time as a teenager which was extraordinary and to his great luck but I mean Trump didn't when E.G. and Carol tried to come after him and claim he raped her and a burglary off goodman dressing or if he if she had brought that claim that year or within you know two years or five years he could have defended it he could have easily you could have looked up on his computer and now this is what I was doing that day that that didn't happen it's just allowing this to

be brought decades after the fact just sets the poor defendants up for it's certain disappointment. It's precise these very facts precise why you have a statute of limitations I mean there is a reason why there is a statute of limitations with carved out exceptions traditionally for hundreds of years for things like murder I obviously there should be and you can think of every public policy reason why there shouldn't be a statute of limitations for murder and and fast forward now

to cold case DNA things of that nature and it makes perfect sense but for other things where it is traditionally a he said she said and when you're in what I like to call money court which is what civil court is you're over there fighting over other people's money there ought to be

“some bright line at a certain point where it doesn't change I think back to when sitting here in”

New York the adult survivors act was about to expire and the number of clients I had on the eve of that the expiration who were handling cases trying to settle cases just because they didn't want to have to undergo the the torrential downpour of the media lynching sort of speak which also yes which also people tend to forget is a real problem you can win the case eventually you can get thrown out eventually but how do you get your reputation back to quote the original

rate donovan well that's like this a JP Morgan sexual assault allegation that's being made by this guy who tried to go under John Doe who is also a JP Morgan against this poor woman who I don't think did anything I don't believe him maybe I'll be proven wrong I don't believe one more to what this guy is alleging but it's the same thing where you know he's completely smearing her

day after day after day and it comes out the JP Morgan offered him a million dollars to settle this

thing which they said was reported they two years of his salary so it's for them it's a rounding era mark it's JP Morgan they've got more money than the US government by the way that must mean they think she did it I'm like no that does not mean they think she did it at all I you can I could count a series of employee that I have extricated from large corporations friends mostly in the last two years where I have gotten them that kind of money as a severance when they are either late

off or they're perp walked out of the place so for those who think the one million signifies guilt or a acknowledgement of guilt no it's when you have a high earner and you want to separate

“I'm old enough to remember when nuisance value was 15 grand and now nuisance value was a”

million and a half so that's that's just the reality of it especially in corporate America

exactly like it went out the higher earnings of the person threatening you the more it's going to

says this is because they say among other things he produced none of his records his phone all the

“things that he claimed support him he wouldn't produce they say where she did they say she”

handed over the phone take it look at everything talk to everyone I never laid a hand on this guy

but I'm having my reputation ruined nonetheless all right back to Michael and Matt Murphy's here by the way we're going to bring him in in a minute but I do want to play these two sound bites on and I have to point out the one thing on safe chuck though he mentioned that he was allegedly abused in this like Disney Ask train station that Michael had built on Neverland his property which is made to look like you know Peter Pan's world it is very anti you it is very Disney Ask

I definitely want to talk to you about it but with what what happened after the documentary in quotes dropped was Jackson biographer Mike small comb revealed that that train station

“was not built until 1994 and in the documentary James safe chuck claims he was abused from”

1988 till 1992 and therefore could never have been molested in a room at the Neverland train station

this guy small comb tweeted out Santa Barbara County construction permits showing a approval for the building did not happen until September 1993 so that would seem to be a pretty glaring error that's one of those in response to that that's a no shit moment that you can only imagine what you're saying to your associates at the time yeah it's not ideal we have a clip of the director's response to he okay so so once again this from lies of Neverland the

rebuttal they address this let's watch it he says that one of the locations where Michael Jackson was abusing him on a daily basis was the Neverland train station and he vividly describes

“the interior of the train station now this version of the story that he tells in the TV show”

places that abuse and the train station in 1989 the train station did not even open until 1994 and as you correctly say in his sworn declarations in his ongoing litigation with the estate he says that Michael Jackson stopped molesting him when he was around 14 years old in 1992 because he got too old for him on the whole narrative of this film is that Michael Jackson molests boys and then when the boys hit puberty and get too old he then ditches them and moves on to a

younger boy that's the whole narrative that they're selling with this documentary but when it's revealed that this location where safe chuck is describing his abuse is it did not exist when he was the age he said he was Dan Reed the director of the documentary goes on to Twitter and says well there's no dispute about when the train station was built but what's in dispute is the dates of the abuse so James safe chuck was abused after the after the train station was built well

firstly he's now accusing his own star witness of perjury because James safe chuck has signed

not one but two sworn declarations in which he states that Michael Jackson never abused him

after 1992 so in order to defend his documentary he's throwing its star witness under the bus very persuasive and mark on top of that even if you extend the period of abuse to 1994 post when the train station went up now James safe chuck is pushing 17 and during that time Michael was living in New York for most of the year he wasn't sitting at Neverland with James safe chuck according to those who knew him so it does raise questions about whether these two

complainants in finding Neverland who had previously testified repeatedly that Michael never touched them but after he died and they fell on hard times then came forward and said he did how much credibility we can give them and Wade Robbson was another one who was reportedly found to have been looking up news articles about what had happened to other boys now that could be the behavior of a victim to just trying to do it yeah there could be somebody who you know was

looking for details he didn't have because it didn't happen to him so all of this okay but that leads me to where I wanted to go with you which is you mentioned a moment ago the nice made you knew it at Neverland and was that Adrian McManus it was a different nice made okay because speaking of 60 minutes Australia he's shaking his head no it wasn't her speaking of 60 minutes Australia which I think we all need to start watching a former Jackson made named Adrian McManus

in Michael's bedroom she said after three months they said now you can start working

“you can start cleaning Michael's bedroom at first they just gave her the rules of like don't look at”

Michael don't talk to Michael you know you're not friends with Michael you're the maid here and then she did get to know him a little and she said he was very nice to her and then she started cleaning his bedroom and didn't didn't go well um this is an allegation and here is part of it and underwear is also in his bed I did find underwear is that we're minced briefs in the walking closet and they were I didn't I don't like to say this they were like crunchy hard

with yellow stains all over them I didn't know who they belonged to because the little boys started wearing Michael's briefs there was a lot of Vaseline at Neverland sometimes it was found in the golf carts when Mr. Jackson would take off with the with the boys Vaseline yeah Vaseline and there was a lot of Vaseline in Michael's bedroom it was actually all over the ranch these they're possibly an innocent explanation for that I don't think so

you know okay now I have to say on the Vaseline like the guy was the king of plastic surgery so who the hell knows what he needed to Vaseline for you know what I mean like maybe that makes you go from black to white or or suits the the journeys somehow or the scars he must have had all over him yeah really that's lean in the golf cart right I don't know check the Vaseline I you know

“I'm still PTSD from baby oil last year with ditty and so I'm always I think there's a I take”

all of that with a certain grain of salt but you know the interesting thing is here that I believe the case is set for trial next year in the Beverly Hills courthouse in 2027 so we're going to have weed robson and James yeah I think that's set for trial 2027 Beverly Hills courthouse and if I'm not mistaken then if that's televised I can't even imagine what that's going to be like I mean the oh my god that will be and I frankly for a case like this that's where this belongs

in a courtroom to try and settle it in with admissible evidence is opposed to an speculation or this that things floating out in either I think that that's one of the great things about being in a courtroom is that you can actually get the evidence I was thinking

“yesterday completely off topic about that but this Rebecca Grossman and the pitcher and that”

civil trial that's being tried in Los Angeles right now what that's being televised where she was convicted of the murder of the too little that scander boys and we're finding out stuff in the civil

trial that we never knew about in the criminal trial I have a sneaking suspicion I know the lawyers

involved and they're all really top flight that we will find out a lot that we didn't know and that has been reported once we get into trial next year mm-hmm I mean in very few of these cases where you have sexually molested child or sexually abused woman do you have somebody who's testimonial is totally pristine and they have absolutely no credibility issues I mean they're humans you know like most humans have some credibility problems if you've really done deep or

you know if you've been victimized by somebody who's extremely wealthy and famous you probably would file a civil lawsuit like f them you know so it's like it's very hard to find just like the perfect little you know sweet polyana who has absolutely no dirt on her to come forward and say this happened to me you know I I want to keep that in mind as we and to that to that point I there are cases where some of the most heartbreaking cases in the criminal justice system are

young children testifying against the family member and then use better yourself why would they lie and then you if it's against the backdrop of a custody fight or something like that and it turns out that that one of the mom or dad is programming the child and upon cross examination you find that out I mean these are the kinds of struggles that you deal with in trials and that's

I would never want to be a juror in those kinds of cases but they happen every day across the

country. I do want to say this about this woman Adrienne McMahon is the maid

party Matt like long-crossed the computer now doing some defense work some criminal defense work

“but only for cops because that's how I'm just going to say yeah you got to you got to pass the first”

responder law enforcement lit this fast with Matt for real defendants that's what we love about him mark he's much more handsome out the gray hair again I'm just going to go out there and say it looks good thank you I have an additional line on your face and which is saying something for a california in particular. It makes it even more for a progressive which is maddening to me so many different ways but well I want to know Matt so last thing we want from Matt to make it's point have you ever had a

pristine complainant as a witness when you were prosecuting in case

oh there's always it's always messing and what you were just saying mark it's going to be flashbacks

those custody disputes Megan just so you know I used to have a sexual assault detective named Don Hall at Huntington Beach Police Department and if you can believe this one mark he was in there for about 25 years I'm sure you've you encountered him at one point another multiple years to send me the custody dispute stuff with the yellow stick down it with RNR which stood for read and reject because there's it's so common that those are false allegations and a really undermined to integrity of

real victims okay I did I wanted to just offer one thought on the maid because we kind of left

“that testimonial hanging out there but the truth is that she was accused earlier of having stolen”

the job while she was working for Jackson during the trial also on a separate point she identified one of the boys who she allegedly saw Michael Jackson kissing and she said she saw him touching their bottoms or their crutches and she identified one of them as McColle Colkan he too has denied ever being molested in any way shape or form by Michael Jackson so you know she she's also got with there's some questions about her testimonial and her credibility and certainly her honesty

if she was accused of stealing so all these witnesses have something but here's there's a reason I brought in Matt now because the worst sound bite I mean it's to me it's worse than anything we heard from Wade from James safe chuck from the maid it's from Michael himself and Mark Garagos mentioned it at the beginning of our discussion as the thing from the Martin Bashir sit down that would change their trajectory of Michael's life would get the authorities interested in him

he would get charged there was a possibility of losing custody of his children the drugs

the ultimately early untimely death and it was this crazy ass exchange I'm going to show here

in start four can you understand why people would worry about that because they're ignorant but it is it really appropriate for a 44 year old man to share a bedroom with a child who is not related to him at all that's a beautiful thing that's that's not a worrying thing why should be wearing who's the criminal who's Jack the Ripper in the room did you ever sleep in the bed with them no but I has up in the bed with mini children

I sleep in the bed with all of them when we call a cuckoo and we're little Kiri Kirin cuckoo and we'll see from this side my cuckoo is on this side his sisters in there we're all just jamming the bed that right Michael is very right it's very loving that's what the wear on needs now more love mark I will tell you at the time every saying person recall yes and I will tell you at the time that I was one of the reasons that the calculation

was made to do that two-part 60 minutes interview because that was to my mind at least it was an insurmountable or close to insurmountable thing to get over I by the way why is it

always in my case is that it's ABC who does the interview that ends up I have to deal with

later I don't know what it is whether it's Martin Bashir Diane Sawyer but it's always I tell you why I know the answer I know the answer because ABC does a lot of crime it to its credit I mean I think all three of us are very into crime and ABC does way more of that than

“CBS or NBC even which has date line but ABC that's kind of one of their main beats so I think that's why”

thank you all this I was this many years old before I understood that thank you because it always seems it always seems like I'm fighting ABC to get the outtakes from the interview that the client did before I met the client I think that's why Matt I've got to ask you because in in the course of your lifelong careers a prosecutor you did a lot of sex crimes we've talked about that and I'm sure you've got to thought you're a Californian as well

in 1993 for an eight figure settlement that plaintiff went away then there was an actual criminal

“child trial by another accuser in 2003 he was found not guilty in that case by a jury that was the”

one in which he moonwalked on the van the day of his indictment now we have at least these two other accusers coming forward in leaving neverland weighed and James who we just went through now we have this family of four kids who we discussed with Mark who had been like his second family the casios saying it happened to all four of them even though they've all all these people had been denying that it had ever happened and had been great witnesses from Michael not wanting to admit

what they say is the truth so as a prosecutor how does all this grab you well as a prosecutor you

always want as many statements that offended as possible and you know at this the Michael Jackson

thing I think we were all shocked back in those days when we saw that interview and and much much credit to Martin Bashir's because he asked him the tough questions and he kind of he kind of asked exactly what we were all thinking in the middle of that like is that really appropriate and we saw the answer my boss is like a mentor my Lou Rosenblum when I left the DA's office and he'd been in private practice for six or seven years he hit me with a real gem that I know Mark is going to

“appreciate here he said always remember never forget the way these people think doesn't stop”

simply because they've gotten into trouble and now you've decided to represent them you know it's and you see these interviews by people whose currency has been the media like Michael Jackson we're like Prince Andrew I'm sure you saw that the the Guthrie interview that is it was he's still suffering the consequences of that absolute meltdown kind of like we saw with the the Michael Jackson clip we just we just watched it doesn't take much to shift the public perception

or another in other cases it's out there right now that I was talking to Harvey Levin about yesterday Mark and that's this David case as soon as Nathan Hawking came out and said we've got child pornography on the phone everybody ran for the exit so there's it doesn't take much especially in

cases like this you know as a prosecutor you always want him talking and you want to talking

for as long as possible because if they say something like that you've got a real weapon in your arsenal when it comes to prosecutor in them I'm thinking about Alex Murdoch who insisted on taking the stand at his family annihilation trial in South Carolina it was a disaster for him he thought he could outwit the prosecutors just like they all do and none can you know it's like but it's like my old pal from Jones Day used to say he had a great story of being across from

the CEO of a company who was doing a Jones Day client so he was with that CEO who was suing his client and the CEO's lawyer and it was like the eve of trial are we going to settle this or aren't we and he looked at that CEO and who is refusing to settle and my friend knew the guy ought to settle and said to him look is it possible that when I get you on the stand you will have a very very good day and I will have a very very bad day no it's not possible it's that it's not

thought like you're not going to outwit me and sure enough that guy settled as they all should it's like if you have a really talented civil attorney crossing you or if you have a lifelong prosecutor who knows this stuff you're going down you're not going to outsmart the map there's probably nobody in the world right now

Megan more than the guy that city city never with us right now Mark Ergoes who's probably had that

hard conversation again and again and as he said so he can't talk about it because it's all probably the clients we we all know or heard of and he can't reveal and he turned he client and I know he's just jumping out of his skin right now because he's got so many examples of that that he can't share but yeah that's uh Scott Petersen oh my god oh my god oh my god oh I knew he was going to go there well my father who was my hero mentor used to say it's a rare case for the defense that

“gets better after the prosecution rests and the boy isn't that the truth I I remember one case in”

particular a remain nameless where I had tried I thought the best murder case I had ever tried as a defense lawyer and then my client insisted that he was going to take the stand and I actually took him into chambers and I said I I will quit before I put this guy on the stand I know it's his absolute right but I can't I can't let him on and sure enough he took the stand and he did well for the first day and I refused to take him on direct I had one of my associates doing

I just said I'm not going to be a part of this massacre but by day two the prosecutor had

date line the four persons that we were never going to convict him until he took the stand and that's

“your worst nightmare okay so I want us to shift gears though in the time that we have”

because I teased at the top of the show two things I teased Katie Porter and who she's saying released that tape which we don't have time for that was actually we're gonna have to do that tomorrow but I will play I promise Mark Alperon's here tomorrow and we are going to play it and we're going to take a deep dive into it because we've actually looked into her clinic why does Mark Alperon I also told the son of Katie Porter I mean has there ever been a wars as a lifelong Democrat in

California how did we get to the point where Katie Porter is the our best in brightest I don't even understand that it makes zero sense to me the woman has absolutely no redeeming qualities as a political candidate you wouldn't hire her to run your 711 and we're going to hire her to run the fourth largest economy in the country what is this blaspheme against the

“clearly most qualified candidate don't she deserves this and so do I that's the important thing Mark”

the people of America deserve to see this woman ascend and beat up if we have to have a demo got we can't have us have you know um not can't have confidence got we've got for bid you've got confidence got for bid yeah somebody runs who actually has run something before do you helping me great Chad Bianco be great but if we can't have them it's got to be Katie she's the one who needs to do it because we deserve that okay but anyway what we teased was the Blake lively settlement and her lawyers are

already making a bunch of noise and also trying to spin the pre-existing understanding that they were going to recover some attorneys fees because he he sued her counter suit her for defamation and that claim was thrown out and there's a California statute that protects alleged victims of sexual harassment from getting sued for defamation because this is something that a lot of defendants will do saying if you do that and the person who was claiming to have been sexually

harassed has any sort of good faith basis for saying she was sexually harassed and your defamation lawsuit against her then gets thrown out as it was here you are going to be able to recover your lawyers fees against that defendant who's who filed the counter claim for defamation so she did get his defamation claim thrown out she is entitled to some measure of fees we knew that a year ago when that happened and now that she's willingly settled all the rest of her claims

whatever existed of them because all most of her case got thrown out too she's willingly walked away from all of them and she's trying to spin the remainder of those fees as her big victory she's one you see she's what me what we all knew you were getting some measure of fees here's her lawyer on a podcast just the other day hold on a second what's the name of this show the town and it was on May 8th on a little spin okay let's listen to set is it well you guys play it you've been

looking at it I don't know what you want it 19a so let me tell you why our client is happy ecstatic with this settlement the reason that our client is happy with this settlement is because it gives her the power and the opportunity to pursue what we believe is her most potent

and powerful claim in a way that is efficient in a way that is final in a way that the defendants

have no appeal rights over and in a way that cuts off most of the noise that would be surrounding this case and lets us get straight to the core issue of how the defendants retaliated against her specifically the retaliatory lawsuit that they filed that called her a liar that branded her a lie and it's not one of these statues where there's discretion for awarding the damages once the

“conditions are met and we believe the conditions of essentially already been met and what's important”

about that matter is that they filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit against our client against Ryan Reynolds against Leslie Sloan they claimed that all of this was a lie it was all made up and they were going to prove it in court they lost that well oh my god to say that this was the best claim that they had all along for attorney's fees on the throne out defamation cross claim that's

what a what a revisionist history guarantee well first of all this is what's called anti-slap

and there is this peculiar section 47.1 whatever it is that says if you prevail you can get your attorney's fees if somebody comes after you there's one problem with that as you pointed out

Blake Livley's claims were just gutted like a rainbow trout no no you see you don't know what

you're talking about Mark this in fact was her most potent and powerful claim all along for the

“attorney's fees expended defending his defamation claim by the way I think if somebody were to check”

pacer which is the federal electronic docket I believe that that gentleman who was interviewed just there by the I think that was by the puck outlet I think he filed a request or the one of his brethren filed a request to augment the briefing of what has been pending since last September asked for I believe a five page brief to supplement their arguments that was and he said yes similarly denied in record time for federal court number one number two remember judge Lyman

I've said this before I don't know him but I knew his father and his father Arthur Lyman was a lion of the bar and first amendment I mean he was one of the go-to lawyers he I don't know that the sun falls too far from the father but his father would have been appalled by the idea of this section 47 that somehow if you cross complain that you are eliminated from the ability to petition in court to vindicate your rights because that's basically what it is simply or stripping you of

your rights I just don't think number one that there's going to be anything of great note number one

“number two remember all of this is speaking of noise it are there are probably ten insurance”

companies behind all of this fighting for who's got to pay reservation or rights subregation

in denification this is never going to come out of their pockets it's always going to come out of the

insurance company pockets mm-hmm so this is what I mean I'm going to have to look it up and blacks law dictionary map but I believe this is what we call lies with this lawyer saying this has been their their purest and most potent claim all along most potent and most powerful those are lies take the next 22 seconds away and then we'll come back right after this break well the funny thing green is watching marks faces we're both listening to that clip because I can see it and it's like

we're both literally laughing out loud Albert Einstein had a great a great quote that applies to the practice of lies said if you can't explain something simply you don't understand it well enough

“and I can add or it's just pure spend and that's what we're watching it's just you are so desperate”

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month is free by visiting simply safe that's simply s-i-m-p-l-i dot com okay simply safe dot com simply safe dot com slash Megan that's half off at simply safe dot com slash Megan there's no safe like simply safe hey everyone it's me Megan Kelly I've got some exciting news I now have my very own channel on serious x-bath it's called the Megan Kelly channel and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies along with Megan Kelly show you're

going to hear from people like Mark Halperon like Lauren Morgan Callahan Emily Dishensky Jesse

“Kelly real clear politics and many more it's full no BS news only on Megan Kelly channel series”

x-m-1-11 and on a series x-m-half Mark Garagos and Matt Murphy are back with me there the host of the brand new show on the mk true crime podcast feed it's called in the well going find it every Friday on the mk true crime youtube channel and all podcast feeds just type in mk true crime and if you hit subscribe you will get in the well in addition to our other true crime offerings well worth your time uh Matt let me stick with you on just the continuing with the absurdity I've

got some more from this lawyer Michael Gottlieb on the town but um the notion it in there that she's ecstatic with the settlement because her of her ability to pursue this most potent and powerful claim for attorneys fees not damages attorneys fees so what are you hoping to get here give me a best case scenario dollar amount that you could collect and from who so I want to step back from that

because this lawsuit has never been principally about money for our client it has been about accountability

it has been about shining a light on this underground smear machine that retaliated against her for raising clans of sexual harassment retaliation and has harmed so many other people and what you've seen since Blake stood up and brought this lawsuit is evidence coming out in our case that has led to to information being used now in other litigations uh the Nicholas case um the Amanda Ghost case this underground smear machine has been exposed and people are now on notice

that if they see uh you know if you see a Matt Belony sucks dot net website pop up you're gonna maybe have an idea of who might have put that website up really we should be grateful to Blake is what he's saying Matt no one's gonna get smeared anymore on the internet because of her you know it's more can I actually have this conversation before again and it's it's counterintuitive to me that when you're talking about defamation because we've gone in law school that in a defamation

case truth is always an absolute defense right so in this retaliation claim one of the things I

I had a hard time wrapped my head around is that truth would not operate as as a defense and if you look

“at the interviews with Blake while I believe and in that that Norwegian journalist well last time”

is uh clause I think um she just well it's spelled cadursty but I've just learned it's pronounced shersy shersy shersy shersy right and she's she's I know she's doing her job it's some pressure on confer of Woody Allen film from like 2016 and she's just asking basic questions and her Blake Lively and Parker Posey they transform into the mean girls that we all saw in eighth grade that we all every single person is triggered who went to public school but it's like we

we see that you know what I mean and and the idea that that got released and somehow they can point the finger back and blame Jason Belldoney or anybody else for that I mean she's she's got to live with that and and I'm not a part of her Posey either she was also kind of a freaking no really mean she looked terrible she she was equally nasty yeah so and then there was we heard it there Mark that that basically there's not going to be any more harassment on the

internet because of Blake Lively this is a fantasy harassment on the internet was a thing before this trial this case and it will be a thing after this case we're allowed to dislike her we're allowed to write terrible things about her and when it's raised in terms of our opinion you can't make up facts about somebody their false but if we think she's a terrible spoiled mean girl bully

Shesty among many other clips and behaviors by Blake Lively and for this guy to be pretending

that she was really just an Avenger for others meanwhile you and I both know it was her thin to her tissue paper thin skin that led her to bring this law scope because she was like there's no way anyone could possibly just hate me organically just and had to have made it happen can you imagine and just do this thought experiment can you imagine how disappointed my good friend Brian Friedman was to not be able to try this case against this guy I mean people

talk about cross examining Blake and whatever but for people who do this for a living when you

“get an opponent or an adversary that is this tone deaf you have to say to yourself and I've had”

this so many times where guys have told me I've never lost the case and blah blah blah usually

some US attorney but big firm lawyers suffer from the same thing because they're in that same access of evil so to speak they there is a tone deaf removal from reality that you just they just don't understand the person who interviewed him in this you should read the kind of tongue and cheek or maybe it was their website yesterday article about how bad this interview was and it just to mats point into what my father used to say is clients get the lawyers they deserve and boy

that holds true here mm-hmm yeah and Justin Belldoni did too there's one more the questioning was about whether he had the right strategy right is that the one is that the stone looking at my salt list here yeah let's listen to something nineteen c the lesson from this

“case isn't it that you have to think really really hard before you initiate a case like this if you”

are a major celebrity and you have brand businesses and a film career and you want that to be what people know about you not the back and forth bombs being dropped i think you got to wait and see what we accomplish in our forty seven one before you're at the final chapter of that book but what I would say mad is I don't think it's an option to sit back and let people assassinate your character and reputation with untraceable digital smear campaigns I think when you discover that somebody

has done that to you that bringing that to light and holding those people accountable is important and i think that what um miss lily's lawsuit has shown is that there actually is a way to do that you can shine a light on it this mat Murphy this is so wrong on so many levels okay can I just tell you I I've told the audience this before but back in twenty sixteenth seventeen when Trump and I were going around and around for nine months he was coming for me and then I left Fox

and I went to NBC David Pecker who owned and ran the national inquire was out to get me I mean I can't even count the number of hit pieces that he dropped I was literally on the cover of the national inquire with the headline world's most hated mom okay I'm the cover with my picture now did I try to get to the bottom it's David Pecker he's friends with Trump this these are lies he's died not the most hated they're a lot of more hated people what about case he ended

me she killed her toddler she's definitely more hated than I'm like no no I didn't because as I once told my own children as we walked by a different headline that was negative about me at a kiosk on a cover of a magazine when they said why don't you fight back against that mom

as I told them at the time because the people who want to believe these lies always will

and the people who don't require no correction he's just wrong he's wrong in his PR strategy and he's wrong about what this whole thing did to Blake lively she is not in a better place now then she was prior to this no she everybody looked at the videos and saw for themselves right there's another it video what she did in interview where she said I can't feel fulfilled and less I have authorship over the project I don't want to just be an actor who shows up and stands on a spot it's a

clip that's that is also made the rounds now everybody has seen it and it makes her look absolutely terrible so maybe these are bad moments but these are all things that she went out and did and said

“herself another thing Megan and I think this will this is something Mark and I were talking about the”

other day and I don't know it's an allegation that's out there but to get text messages between Jason Bell Downey and his publicist there's a there's an allegation that they set up a sham lawsuit they being Blake lively's team where they sued this publicist to get the phone to release these text messages

the New York State bar should look into if it's true and so to to do all that and come out and talk

“about spin machines you know that's pretty rich look you know because the thing is Mark at no point”

was or the have the allegations by Blake then excuse me they made up lies about me and use this PR firm to push them it's that they just made her look bad that they had a campaign to get her by using her actual videos and her promo interviews to promote the film and just spread them with the New York Post or the Daily Mail in a way that she thought was unflattering but I did not see in her complaint they made up a lie that I fired a pregnant girl they made up a lie that I was

you know uniformly abusive to the staff that that wasn't the nature of her complaint campaign it was that you intentionally spread mean things about me they may have been mean but they were true

“you want to know the cynic in me who as a practical matter will tell you what I think is happening”

here when when Blake lively's case was gutted by judge lineman he issued an order if you read that order he was unflinching in his criticism of her lawyers to the point where it explains why if what is being reported is true as soon as they saw that order as soon as her case was gutted she had a monstrous legal malpractice action against her lawyers how to her lawyers solve that problem they immediately beg baldonis team to go into private mediation you

might say well how is that going to solve anything there's a supreme court case in california that says in mind you they mediated this in california with a california based california who i based mediator is my understanding the california supreme court case says if you go through private mediation you can't sue your lawyer for legal malpractice so what this was was a very sophisticated legal strategy to insulate the big firm from getting sued for the tens of millions of

dollars for what could have been argued was the if you read judge lineman's order missteps by her lawyers that's just the cynic in me explaining why all this happened then what happens that's Ryan here's out and declares victory and these guys now have to concoct no what about 47 point one in our lawyers fees which everybody knows the insurance company's gonna pick up for anyway so talk about just a being a cynic here what has happened here is really kind of one of the

downsides if you will to when you when you have too much money it was a kind of a take on the richer old richer prior joke that having a big firm represent you in a civil case is God's way of telling you you make too much money because one of the things I mean the main thrust of her case

was the sexual harassment claim and it was based on a contract between the parties that never

“existed that's what came out in the course of discovery she never had a signature by the way”

fairer defendants that's Justin's a production company and they tried to scramble on team Blake's like attorneys to say well there was this one that they signed and so it was this version but the court was like many other versions came after that they may have signed this one but there wasn't a meeting of the minds yet there were like nine versions of this contract and you're asking me to enforce it which version do I enforce do I enforce the ninth version

that they left after that they kind of whatever everybody moved on after that or is that the one version that might have had a signature but it wasn't counter signed like I'm not I can't divine agreement it has to be shown to me on a piece of paper with two signatures which

any first year law student knows so how do we get to the point in this case for these you know

story lawyers didn't understand that their main claim is not supported by any document that's a very interesting theory all right so now so she will get her attorneys fees what do you make it the fact though that the judge is that they wanted to brief it again they went back in Matt and said give us another chance they already briefed it they submitted it there's

and she wants them tripled meaning tripled which is potentially a possibility under the

anti-slap statute that they're suit they're getting the fees under and the judge just came out we just saw the order because originally he hadn't actually issued the order now we've got it saying the court does not require additional briefing at this time so order Louis J. Lyman May 11th, 2026 so he's not into it he doesn't want to hear anything more from them he's probably got his mind made up do you think he's going to give them some huge word with and then triple it

“no you're in a word no I don't see that happening at all I think Mark's exactly right”

the apple didn't fall far from the tree and his his dad was a first amendment you know pillar and this judge is over at Megan he's figured this out I think he's sorted out the egos he's read everything he knows what this is and another thing that Mark and I were talking about the other days when you get into these cases with celebrities and and again Mark has has dealt this way

more than I have but I've had a few it is it is amazing to me help you we get this image of how

glamorous they are and all the money and all the power and the red carpets and then you get into you look beyond the curtain and you see you know text messages and you see a lot of petty really small human beings like they're they're you know the the reality oftentimes is is almost so disappointing because they're not as smart as the characters they play and they get in these petty ego fueled feuds and when you've got all the money in the world behind you

“you want up in situations like this and I think somebody finally pulled her aside and said”

you are you have lost this battle you're destroying your career read the comments section of some of these things you look terrible and it's so bad you're dragging your husband into it that's my guess and that yeah I'm sure the word ecstatic because of her attorney's fees is so laughable you're just ridiculous but but like this is this is one of those I approach everything Megan and my experience from a position of victims and I've represented women since I've been

in proper practice who were legitimate real victims of sexual harassment from people that were from sisters of power and you've had that experience like that's a real thing and it's kind of like Amber heard in the Johnny Depp stuff when you it's like we should believe victims until we shouldn't and when it comes to this sort of thing when you when you march out there and say I'm going to do this on behalf of all people who have been subjected to sexual harassment you undermine them you

undermine the real victim is willing in my opinion you do stuff like this and Mark had a great point yesterday Blake lively when the judge gutted the cases because she was an independent contractor and not an employee that was the technical reason she could have taken an off ramp right then in there and said I'm going to now rally so that independent contractors also have protection under the law for sexual harassment and she didn't do that and she could have done that and Mark said

there's a great point if they'd enacted a federal law they would have called it the Blake lively act and she could have eventually been a hero right she didn't take it she didn't do it

“because in my opinion she she was driven by ego and trying to settle a score and that's that's what”

this whole thing is about and like Brian has been saying all along Mark Gary goes he knew she is one thing to say in a complaint to the California Human Rights Office one thing but when you're on the stand under oath being cross examined by Brian it's quite another to try to back up those claims about they walked in on me in my dressing room when I was breastfeeding my baby against my will and then confronted with a text message saying come on in come on in I'm breastfeeding

my baby but it's fine by the way I don't know going to get ripped apart I don't know if I and I I'm sure you've told it before but I will tell it again for you Brian became your lawyer because he started off as opposing council against you and I asked some of the the best kind of lawyering you can do is when your opponent says no no no I'm hiring this guy so I

never have to deal with him again. Oh and Gary goes I started off like I can't stand this prick

he is suction asshole I cannot stand him I hated him when he was taking uh wait no we were taking the deposition of his client he was like interfering in a way you know you know like actions in a deposition right I was like oh I can't stand him and I like that way he talked to my lawyer and so finally we get to the point where he's deposing me and I was like I was ready of course I'd been a litigator for 10 years at Jones Day this is not my first rodeo I was totally

ready for him and I fell in love with him he's so charming he's so smart he's raising good points we're having a great back and forth I had no stakes and like I whatever it was very clear

we bonded over these eight hours in a way where I was like I think I made a friend for life that

“case went away and then when I got in trouble with NBC it's a long story that I will tell some”

day and fall but um an agent connected me with Brian and the agent fled but Brian stayed with me and he was like just so you know I don't give an F at least said the word what anybody thinks of me I've got you and it was like that was it we were off to the races and he hammered them he got me everything I deserved and that was really the beginning like another beginning for Brian who was already very well respected but of this like niche practice he's really created where like any big

talent in a serious fight with somebody who's generally a bully on the other side calls Brian

you know like Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon hired him from CNN um Gabrielle Union hired him when NBC

started messing with her um Justin Baldoni uh they're in suspense along list now but like he's the

“go to if you want to if you're an individual getting bullied by some massive entity on the other”

side and that's really what Blake Lively has been she and her dragons with Brian and Taylor and Justin had no power in comparison to them you go to Brian and he is a master of the dark arts in a great way gear coach and by the way that's also one of the reasons I love Matt Murphy and I love Brian both because when you're opposing somebody who's truly talented like Matt was as a prosecutor Brian was because we first were at odds with one another Bells are the that's the the long long long

loss friendships I mean with Matt I often say one of the clients I'll never forget with him any

and what endured medium is I at one point got so frustrated at him for wanting state prison on my client that I lashed out and said you would prosecute Romeo for stalking Juliet if you had your way and and that he laughed and finally gave me what I wanted because he could see how further I was he's laughing that I had the same experience with Brian I was just the he was be definitely me on something and finally finally we resolved it and they're two of my closest friends

in the world it's funny isn't it it's like it's like it's like those fights on the playground when you're in fourth grade like like two boys fighting on the playground they're going to be best friends by the end of the day you know and that's you really do it really is a function of that and I was thinking the exact same thing I was going to say it but yeah you really do you get to learn in an adversarial process especially when you're in a good hard fight you get to learn

your opponent in a lot of ways better than their own colleagues do because you see them under pressure you're creating the pressure you see how they respond and you really can develop a true

“healthy respect for somebody like that and that's why you know number one Megan that's why”

you you brought in Brian Friedman and number two why I would hire Mark Caracos if I was in trouble tomorrow in an instant to defend me because so really yeah same and now they work together so to be super easy or are you I I don't I feel like this is I believe you when you say this that boys like resolve things on the playground girls instead of doing that we'll just say nothing and then stick needles in your back knives in your back for years quietly and your life will

slowly be destroyed you won't know why so it's a different kind of playground I put the girls revenge up against the boys and I might be the semi-ground fight where we're having lunch in the face having raised a ball busting lawyer myself I have I wish shocked in when she was in fourth grade at what those girls did do it one another it was it was like nothing I'd ever experienced up until then yes it's it's like a right of passage sadly for a lot of women but boy oh boy

the you you get tougher that's for damn sure all right before we go I want to put a period at the end of the mj discussion because the real question is what what now is going to be his legacy is this a fight for legacy and for money in the New York Times the daily podcast market pointed out that there was testimony that on the day Michael died he had his his brand was worth like twenty four dollars he had not a lot of money left in the coffers the estate was very worried

that it wasn't going to be able to generate any dough because it was so smeared you know with these allegations but now we've had the mj musical which has divide expectations and become a smash hit for five years with nearly sold out venues we've had the Cirque de Soleil now we have this movie

filmmakers which is really the estate saying we have another one that we can release quickly in the hopper which may or may not cover all the stuff we've been discussing you know there's some legal impediments to them doing it given like deals that have been signed but it's it's a fight for them to continue earning and to restore his legacy the family says they don't believe any of these allegations and they they want the legacy restored can that be done and will the public allow it

well if you want my my non legal answer my non legal answer is based on my experience yes the public will allow it and the fact that it is exceeded everybody's expectations in terms of

“the box office on this thing tells you all you need to know no I mean even though there will be”

other as I mentioned before there will be other documentaries out there will be other productions out because money spawns money and that is going to triumph in the end unfortunately or fortunately depending on who's looking at it what do you think Matt yeah I think Mark's right and remember you know these songs are so iconic that when you hear one it brings us back to a point in our life like hey that was from 10th grade or you know we remember these parties and

they're so personal to everybody because he was so huge I mean he's the largest pop star in the world and look I've dedicated my life to fighting my professional life anyway to fighting

childmasters basically and those who would sexually pray on others and I think that you know

“in the world of cancellation he's dead so I think that I don't know and this might be controversial”

just me but I think we all need to allow ourselves to enjoy the music other people are making that money now and it's also a fascinating iconic you know fall from grace and people can't can't stay away from that so I think both aspects of that story are going to go I think it's going to continue to make money and people are still going to talk about the implications of sexual salt and taking advantage of what kids and you know whether it's true or not true I think it's

going to continue to be part of our cultural landscape for a long time yeah I mean dying is the ultimate cancellation he certainly was canceled I feel like one aspect of it that wasn't discussed

that really is a critical piece of the story is the parents who allowed their seven year old children

to spend the night at a grown-up's house who you know wasn't a parent and um in his bed like they knew they knew that this was happening and they allowed it and the children who are now grown say it's tough especially when you don't have a lot of money as a kid and the world's greatest pop star pays attention to you and wants to be your friend and and had a decent narrative of I'm just a big kid myself it's not that I'm a molester it's that I'm just a bit I never got

to grow up and and it was very persuasive because he did have a very abusive father he had a childhood where he worked all the time he was obviously stunted in some ways he was childlike even

as a grown-up so it's kind of like okay I can see it you know never land looks like a an amusement park

his room looks like a Peter Pan book he is kind of a big you know you could go with it if you wanted to delude yourself and you think there's no risks here most normal people never would but you I'm just saying this is what the parents convince themselves of and this is just not a good idea nope no normal man wants a child in his bed they just don't as one thing if you have a kid and he's sick and he will come to the middle of the night I'm not talking about that I'm talking

about strange man who's not related to your child who wants him to sleep in his bed it's a hard no so maybe that is potentially helpful for anybody out there listening guys looking forward to many more episodes of in the well everybody go and subscribe at mktrucrime.com thanks for being here thank you Megan thanks Megan bye Matt all right and we'll see all of you tomorrow with Mark Halpern and our deep dive on Katie Porter and how she she has been victimized my

“fresh she she's the victim that's what you need to know more on that tomorrow thanks for listening”

to the Megan Kelly show no BS no agenda and no fear