June 11, 2025 • 47 mins
We’re starting off with the recent sexual misconduct allegations against Jared Leto.
Then, we talk about Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ huge win against Justin Baldoni this week.
Plus, we dive into the key points surrounding the Diddy trial this past week.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, guys, Welcome to another episode of Legally Brunette. I
will be your host today Emily Simpson with my co
host Shane Shane. First of all, so much has been
going on with the Diddy trial, so we are going
to try our best to get into a little bit
of that. Also, so much going on in Blake Lively
(00:22):
and Justin Baldoni, and I appreciate that so many of
you have sent dms to me asking us to break
that down because it is very complex the judge's latest ruling. However,
first let's get into just a little bit with Jared Letto.
Do you know who Jared Letto is?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, you do thirty Seconds to Mars.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I know the name thirty Seconds to Mars. It's a band.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, so he's the lead. I know he's the lead singer,
but he was also he's also an actor. He's been
in things. I know him best because I'm jen X,
but I know him best as Jordan Catalano from my
so called life.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Oh I don't know that either.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, if you are my age and you are a
big fan and you were in love with Jordan Catillano
like I was in the nineties, then you'll know who
he is. Okay, Apparently he has been accused of sexual
misconduct by multiple women who have come forward. So nine
women have accused Jared Letto.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You know how to pick them?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, you know. I was the big I was a
big Sean Combs fan too. So nine women have accused
Jared Letto of impropriety. This was an Aramelse story published.
It was on Friday, June sixth. Some of the allegations
include assaulting a seventeen year old, walking in front of
another seventeen year old completely nude, and engaging in sexually
explicit conversations with a sixteen year old. One woman, a
(01:37):
former model named Laura LaRue, said she met Letto at
an animal rights benefit. I love that he loves animals.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Though, well does he Maybe this is where he picks
up women.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I don't know, so I guess she met him out
of animal rights benefit.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Which she was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
You go, I just said she met him out an
animal rights benefit. This led to email correspondence between them
that eventually resulted in her visiting him in April two
thousand and nine. I remember him teasing me the whole
time I was there, LaRue told airmail. He was flirting
with me. Then when Laru was seventeen, Leto allegedly walked
out of a room completely naked and the model's presence.
He just walked out, dick out like it was normal.
(02:15):
I thought, maybe this is just what adult men do
some in Hollywood. Yeah not you, though, a representative for
Lettos stated their communications contained nothing sexual or inappropriate, and
Miss LaRue later applied to work as a mister Letto's
personal assistant, further underscoring the absence of anything inappropriate in
any of their interactions. LaRue denies ever applying to work
(02:38):
as Leto's personal assistant. You know, it's always the personal
assistant defense.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
But that's what we said last week, wasn't it when
with the chryslies, it was like, oh, it wasn't me.
It's the accountant. Oh yeah, well that's here. It's like,
it's not me, it's the assistant.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well no, he's claiming she wanted to be a personal assistant.
So basically, if she was sexually harassed by him, why
would she apply to work for him? As the argument, but.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Quick touching me, do you have a job application?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Stop walking around naked?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Can I can I come to your house.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Another woman named Ali Teals is a Los Angeles base DJ.
She reposted a twenty twelve Facebook status to her Instagram
story last month. You're not really in La until Jared
Leto tries to force himself on you backstage in a
kilt and a snow hat, she wrote. At the time,
She also referred to him as Hollywood's most persistent predator
and a kilt and a follow.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Up story like there's a cat. There's a bunch of
men in kilts, yeah, in Hollywood that are sexually assaulting,
and he's the worst of them all.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
He is, He's the worst. He's the prolific kilt wearing
sexual predator, a legend.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, my father always told me never trust a man
in a kilt.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Oh yeah, that was one of his us. Yes, he
was like, live and let live, don't let things bother you.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And never never trust a man in a kilt.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Got it? Oh you forgot the snow hat.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
That's indifferent. Oh snowatter not.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Oh that doesn't make a difference. It's really it comes
down to the kilt, all right. In a follow up story,
Teals claimed she was assaulted and traumatized by this creep
when I was seventeen, alleging that he knew my age
and did not care. What he did was predatory, terrifying,
and unacceptable. There's other anonymous claims coming forward. Another woman,
whose name Ahrmel did not publish, said she was an
(04:25):
underage actress when she began texting with Letto, and alleged
that the relationship took a sexual turn when she turned eighteen.
The woman claimed that at one point, Leto began masturbating
in her presence and asked her to quote spit on it. Wow,
this podcast just took a completely different turn, didn't the Yeah,
we might have to call this explicitly legally Brunette. A
(04:48):
fourth woman alleges that she began texting Leto after meeting
him at a cafe when she was only sixteen, and
that the conversation turned sexual. According to the outlet, he'd
asked things like, have you ever had a boyfriend? Have
you ever Alright, this is making me so uncomfortable. Have
you ever had oral sex? A representative for Letto told
Airmail all of the allegations are expressly denied. Of course,
(05:14):
other strange occurrences that are alleged in this article as well.
Cosmopolitan reported on a now deleted twenty fifteen video posted
by the director James Gun accusing Letto of sleeping with
underage girls. The next morning, Gun posted, good morning and
sorry to all of you around the world who saw
my ambient fueled periscope session last night at three am.
(05:36):
So basically he accuses him of sleeping with underage girls,
and then the next morning takes down his posts and
says that it was the result of ambient.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
These people he can't keep up with them.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
In twenty sixteen, Leto made headlines again for reportedly sending
used condoms, anal beads, and dead rats to a suicide
squad co stars Margot Robbie will Smith and Iola Davis.
I got so many weird things, Robbie later said in
an interview with E I can't even begin to tell you.
And then in twenty eighteen, the British tabloid Metro reported
(06:10):
on a Twitter post by the actor Dylan Sprouse that read, Yo,
Jared Letto, now that you've slid into the dms of
every female model age eighteen to twenty five, what would
you say your success rate is so Apparently there are
a lot of instances with Jared Letto of a leg
You still like this, Jared Lettle guy, Well, I didn't
know about any of this before.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I just remember, I bet you all the songs are
all about sex and all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And I don't know what his songs are about.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
But you like him.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
I specified this in the beginning. I liked him as
Jordan Catalano in the nineties on MTV.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
You don't listen to thirty seconds tomorrow now.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I couldn't name a single song, can you.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
No, of course not, but I disagree. I bet you
do listen the.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Let's give an update on Lively versus Baldoni. So on
June ninth, twenty twenty five, Justin Baldoni's lawsuit against Blake
Lively was dismissed by a federal judge. Okay, let's break
it down.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
This is big, right, this is very big.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
First of all, the entire lawsuit wasn't dismissed, but the
majority of it was. So I actually it is a
one hundred and thirty two page decision by the judge,
which I made Shane print out for me, which he
loves to do, and I read through it twice to
break it down and try to break it down into
digestible chunks so that we could all understand what this
(07:38):
decision actually is.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Okay, so what's the decision.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, the majority of this claims are dismissed.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
All right, So then we have ones to talk about
that are dismissed and then the ones that still are
open for litigation.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Right, but I'll tell you the big ones. The main
ones are dismissed.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Okay, Okay, So what are the big ones?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
All right? Lit'sten to a little background. Just to give
you guys a reminder if you haven't followed the case
that closely, I just want to give you a little background.
So back in December thirty, first, the twenty twenty four,
Lively filed a complaint against the Wayfarer Parties, which is
Baldoni and his production company, bringing claims for sexual harassment, retaliation,
breach of contract, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
(08:18):
And if you remember last week, Blake Lively's team actually
dismissed from their lawsuit the intentional and negligent infliction of
emotional distress, and we talked about that in our earlier podcast.
Then Baldoni and Wayfarer, which again is his production company
then filed their claim on January sixteenth, twenty twenty five,
(08:39):
and then by January thirtieth, twenty twenty five, the judge
had ordered that the two cases be consolidated into one.
Now he sued Blake Lively as well as The New
York Times was added and then also her publicist, and
also there's some claim against Ryan Reynolds. But it comes
down to basically it was civil extortion, defamation and false light,
(09:03):
breach of contract, tortuous interference with a contract or prospective
economic advantage, promisory fraud, and breach of implied covenant. I
know those all sound very legal in their they are.
I mean I just met very legalies like they're all
very legal terms. So basically it boils down to two
main broad themes that were dismissed from the case, which
(09:26):
are the two big ones. That is the civil extortion
and the defamation. All right, the elements of civil extortion
under California law are not met. That is what the
judge says. The wayfair parties have not adequately alleged that
Lively's threats were wrongful extortion rather than legally permissible hard
bargaining or renegotiation of working conditions. Additionally, the Wayfair parties
(09:51):
have not shown that some of Lively's alleged extortionate acts
damaged them. So basically they're saying, under California law, her
act of trying to coerce some into giving her the
cut of the movie, giving her a producer's credit, having
her take over the movie using her cut of the
movie do not constitute extortion under California law because the
(10:15):
elements were not met. And basically what they're saying is coercion.
It has to be coercion, and then there has to
be some threat.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, and threat is lacking. Yeah, right, it's mostly okay,
she was a crappy person, right, Okay, so she was naggy, right,
or she was kicking and screaming a little bit in
the way she was behaving, right and not you know,
being civil according to her contract terms contractual terms. But
in this case it's like there was no threat, like
(10:45):
they never Ryan Reynolds, never sent a text or.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Something basically, and then also the where they told Baldoni
that he was the one that had to make Remember
we talked about this in an earlier podcast, where they
basically threatened that if he didn't take responsibility for the
marketing of the movie, Like they wanted him to write
that public statement that said that it was Wayfair and
Baldoni that were the ones that chose to market the
(11:07):
movie the way it was and they wanted him to
take responsibility for it. They were also claiming that that
was a type of extortion. Basically, what the judge said was,
none of that is extortion. It's really just her being
able to hard bargain and real negotiating.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Negotiating tactics are like twisting their their arm behind their
back and forcing them to sign something.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Right. And also, when it comes to extortion, under California law,
there has to be a turning over of money or property.
So basically it's you are coercing someone into giving you something.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
So I was saying, like to a complete illegal transactions, right.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
And you're receiving a benefit. So basically what the judge
is saying is there was no turning over of property
or money that gave Blake Lively an advantage or a benefit.
It's basically like she was just using her bargaining power
as an a list actress to say I'm not going
(12:01):
to do that unless this I'm not going to do this.
I'm not going to do that. I don't want to
do that. I don't want him at the premiere. I
want this. And I guess technically what he's saying is
if that's the way she wants to be and that's
the way she wants to bargain her her role, and
that's the way she wants to negotiate things, then that's her.
That's on her. And the judge also explains that there
(12:25):
were so many things that she requested of them or
demanded or however you want to say it, that they
didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
They don't be a statement, maybe a threat could have
been more like had she or Ryan Reynolds said if
you don't do this and that, then we will not
show up at the premiere, or you don't do this
and that, and then we will not go on a
tour to promote the movie. And then then he's in
a position where he's like okay, okay, okay, and he
signs whatever document or he gives her some you know,
(12:52):
something that she wants and then now she completes the
terms of the contract. That would have been more like
civil a threat, right.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Maybe. Also the judge also says that there's just no
evidence of actual monetary loss. Like, you can't prove there
has to be damages, so there has to be duress,
and then you have to prove that as the plane
if you suffer damages, and there's just no proof that
there was damages. This is according to the judge. I mean,
you can argue both sides. I would say this guy's
reputation has been damaged his Oh yeah, I mean his
(13:22):
I don't know if he can make movies anymore. He's clearly,
in my opinion, probably lost projects because of all of
this going on. I don't know, but obviously they aren't
showing in their original pleading where they're suing her, they
aren't showing enough damages. Right. But anyway, so the civil
(13:46):
extortion part was dismissed by the judge. He just says
that lively threats were not legally wrongful, that it was
just basically hard bargaining and negotiation. There was no threat
of physical harm to person or property or threaten a
false lawsuit.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Man, do you know how much of a bigger head
those two have now? Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I know, and I keep seeing it.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, they're like, see we were in the right. See
we didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Right, And I tell you, every time I get on
Instagram and I flip through it, it's just ease posting
Blake Lively out and about it some events on a
red carpet, and I don't I personally, I don't want
to see her. I would like to put the no
Blake Lively filter on my phone so that every time
I flip through Instagram, I don't have to see her
on a red carpet. The judge goes on to say
(14:34):
Wayfairer and Baldoni do not show facts that Lively had
a contractual obligation to promote the film or to approve
marketing materials. That is a problem. And I knew this
was going to be an issue when I read the
original complaint by Justin Baldoni and Wayfairer. They do talk
about how Blake Lively never actually signed her contract to
(14:55):
appear in the movie, that there were emails going back
and forth and she took whatever the chunk of money
is to retain her, but that she actually never signed
her contract. So she went through and starred in this
movie and did promotional things and marketing things, but never.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Had an action was intentional to never really lock herself
into something.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
I don't know, but it seems like it's working in
her favor because it's saying, how can you claim that
she has a contractual obligation to promote the movie and
market the movie without for the movie, And then you're
saying there's no contract in place for her to be
in this movie.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So yeah, it's like, she didn't do what we agreed
this she would do what'd she agreed to do? Nothing
signed her contract.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Only bargaining and seeking improved working conditions is basically what
the judge comes down to, saying that she was doing
that she had every right to do what she did
and to do it the way that she did.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Wow, Like, to the next producer that signs her on, right, yeah,
I mean that he's got even a bigger head. She's like,
I'm just negotiating. I mean, get out of here, I'm
just negotiating, right, do it my way or the highway?
Speaker 1 (16:11):
That was just like an all encompassing power trip for her.
And basically like the way you've acted, the things that
you've alleged, the way that you kept him from attending
his own premiere, the way you undercut the movie, made
your own edit took over coerce them into giving you
a PGA.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Talking about this in the beginning, you said that she
was surrounded by yes people. Yes, she surrounded yes judge.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, now she's a yes judge. Well, you know, here's
the thing about the judge, and I don't know you
can you can take away what you want from this,
But his brother is a big director and producer in Hollywood.
The judge's brother, the judge's brother, Doug Lyman. All right,
So that's the civil extortion part of Baldoni's claim that
the judge dismissed. There was also the defamation part of
(16:59):
Baldoni's suit, which those are the two big ones. It
was extortion and the defamation. It was a and defamation
is an injury to reputation by a false, oral or
written communication. And obviously there was a different standard for
public versus private person. We're talking about Blake Lively being
a public person and Justin Valdona being public. So what's
(17:19):
the standard do you know?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, a defamation doesn't include opinions, right, So it can't
be like he's a jerk, Yeah, he's a creep, right,
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It's more like a sexual predator. I think that's defamatory.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Right for private figure. Basically, it just needs to be
a fact that can be disproven, right or something like that. Right,
it has to be a false statement.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, but also you also have to it has to
be negligent, like you were you didn't try to find
the truth.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I was talking about private person. Yeah, the private person
just needs to be a false statement. Is it a
negligent standard, yes, okay, so then a public figure would
probably be more of a malicious Yeah, it's actual malice,
actual malice.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Which actual malice means knowingly you know something is false
or you have a complete disregard to reckless disregard for
the truth. So that's the standard, and there has to
be special damages. That's the legal term of it. So
I always like to give you guys a little legal background.
So if you're having a conversation with your friends, you
can just pull out, you know, your defamation. You can
tell them that it's a public figure.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
So which is because the actually don't journalists do a
lot of times they'll be like, oh, well I had
an anonymous source that told me this, so therefore, like
that was my research. Yeah, yeah, didn't Tom Cruise used
to go around Sue and everybody. I don't know Tom
Cruise and Nichols you do.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Other than movies. I don't know about him suing people looking.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I don't know anything about him.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
And he's short.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I know that's short tempered. No, he's short. Yeah, yes,
I think.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
He's maybe shorter than you.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Maybe.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I think he's like five six. I think you have
an inch on him.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
He's got nothing on me. No, but it's Tom cruisey
Nicole Kidman needs to go around Sue and all the
tabloids and stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Oh yeah, all right. Well, basically, the judge denies the
defamation suit against Blake Lively, saying that the litigation privilege applies.
Basically that everything she wrote in her original CRD complaint,
which was a civil rights and that she filed, and
then that New York Times used that complaint to then
(19:28):
write their article is basically called a litigation privilege, which
means that you can feel safe writing space. It's a
safe space, this piece of papers a safe space, a
safe space for you to write whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Anyone, no standards here, just write whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Anything you want. You can accuse anyone of anything. You
can call them anything you want. You can say whatever,
you can collude with the New York Times, and then
they can write an article accompanying it and taking all
the information that you put in your complaint, and then
you are covered on litigation.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So someone photo copies it and shares it, which is
essentially what the New York Times did. That's okay because
where it came from, it was allowed to be written
as it was.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Right, and the New York Times also falls under the
fair reporting privilege, which basically is very broad. You know
that under the Constitution, the First Amendment, there's the free press,
and they have a very broad range of being able.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
To So is that more like you can report this
what is it called a CRD.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Well, the original complaint before she.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Filed a federal civil rights it's.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The Civil Rights Department.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Okay, So she files something with the Civil Rights Department,
and then they're saying it's fair for the press to
review it and report on it.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Right, Yeah, So that's and they're saying she also due
to privileged communications, everything within her CRD complaint is privileged.
Therefore everything that she alleges about him or says about
him is privileged. So it's not defamation. So basically what
we have all learned from you can say whatever you
(21:04):
want about someone else as long as you put it
on pleating paper, file it, and then you're protected under
the litigation privilege. So and basically, also because Jessin Baldoni
alleged that even the things that she put in her
original CRD complaint where it was like she was manipulating texts,
not showing full contexts, you know, leaving emojis out, that
(21:26):
had that set a tone to what she was, you know,
implying in her and her complaints. And the judge goes
on to say she's permitted to martial the facts to
tell her side of a contested story. She doesn't have
to provide a balanced account of what happened, and the
litigation privilege still applies. It's so basically, you can just
marshal the facts, man.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
She really, yeah, I'd be careful if I was producing
her next movie that there might be some colliints with
the CRD department, because now she knows like, well she
does want to be complaining about I'll just make I'll just
put in it with the CRD.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Well, basically, what she's done is laid out the exact
steps that you need to do to take to a
store campaign someone's livelihood and reputation with zero consequences on
your part. Also, there was the false light, which is
also a form of invasion of privacy under California law,
(22:21):
the invasion of privacy by placing a planet and a
false light in the public eye. False light must be
highly offensive to a reasonable person. So this was a
claim that Justin Baldoni made in his claim against Blake
Lively that she placed him in a false light by
her litigation. The judge dismisses the slight claim because of
(22:41):
the same reasons as the defamation.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Anytime you get sued, it's a negative look on your image.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Right all right. So basically, just to break it down,
just to give a simple summary of what happened, the
judge throughout the extortion claim, which was the big one,
which was the way she went about trying to coerce
herself into taking over the movie, taking over the editing,
producing the movie, getting producer credits, and the judge basically said,
(23:14):
you know what, that's just her being an A list
actress and negotiating her way through the system.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
And just it's more like an a whole actress.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Then the second big one that got thrown out, which
we just talked about, was the defamation suits. And that's
because the judge is stating that everything she put in
her filings was privileged. And also the New York Times
has no culpability because of the fairer reporting.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Those are all legal standards. It's not like she did anything.
More like, it's not like, oh, she's a great person.
Calm down. No, it's like, no, legally, legally, you have
no recourse.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Legally, you have no recourse. However, I do feel, and
I'm sure people would agree with me, that she definitely
lost in the court of public opinion and she has.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
No But I mean, is this not Is this going
to change people's opinions. Are they going to be like, oh,
so it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I don't know. I feel like if you look at
social media and anytime there's anything of her, if you
read the comments, it is just NonStop like she's a
horrible person. Get her off my page. I don't want
to see her. Why are you posting her? Why are
you giving her? It's it's bad. It looks like the
backlash is pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
But and here we are talking about her.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, all right. The judge did allow for two causes
of action to be amended and refiled, but these have
to do with contractual issues, not the bigger, overlying things
like defamation and extortion, which have been thrown out.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
It's not the juicy stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
It's not the juicy stuff. It's boring contracting, contractual stuff.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
They're going to amend and refile because they can't just
walk away.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Oh no, They'll definitely amend and refile it. I don't
know if it will be successful, but they will. One
is breach of implied covenant of good faith. The judge
said that they're able to amend this and refile it.
It means that there's the existence of some specific contractual
obligations and that she interfered with plainous performance of the
contract or failure to cooperate with the plaintiff. So basically,
(25:12):
there's no relevant contract in place. That's what we talked about,
and the judge talks about this, how there isn't a
contract because Baldoni claimed several times that Lively did not
sign her employment contract. But he's giving them the opportunity
to prove that there is some type of contract and
that she didn't fulfill her duties under that contract. And
then also they're allowing Baldoni's team to refile, to re amend,
(25:37):
refile the tortous interference with contractual relations or perspective or
perspective economic advantage. This I had to read this a
couple times to understand this because this gets down into
just like logistics and legalies, and it was difficult. But
this has to do with the accusation that Ryan Reynolds
interfered with Justin Baldoni's talent management team. You know how
(26:01):
he was dropped from WME, which is the talent company
after all these allegations came out, and Justin Baldoni claims
that they dropped him because Ryan Reynolds was like, that
guy's a sexual predator. I don't want him, you know,
I don't want to be in the same talent agency
as him, and they dropped him. So basically they're saying,
(26:23):
if you can, if you can prove that you know
you're a part of this talent agency. He's a part
of this talent agency, he forced them to drop you,
which interfered with your contract with them, and that you
suffer damages from that. Then Okay, re amend, refile, and
we'll hear that. But again, like Shane said, which makes sense.
(26:43):
All the juicy, all the juicy stuff is gone. And
this was a huge way. I hate to say this
because I don't even want to say it, but this
was a huge win.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
In the public courts.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yes, no, and yes, not in the public eye, but
in the public courts, in the court.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
System, civil court system.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
This was a no. It's a federal court.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
In the federal civil court system.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
What do you say.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
I'm just ready to move on. These people are annoying me.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
All right, let me just I just want to do
one more thing. I just on this. I like to
give Brian Friedman's response to all of this.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Oh yeah, what is it?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
So? Brian Friedman said, while the court dismissed the defamation
related claims, the court has invited us to amend four
out of seven claims against Miss Lively. I don't understand
the math there because I read the judges ruling twice
and I only see two claims that he allows them
to amend. But maybe there's some smaller claims underneath those
(27:41):
big broad claims. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I'm going to go off of what Freeman said versus
what you said.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I know whatever. He has invited us to amend four
out of the seven claims against miss Lively, which will
showcase additional evidence and refined allegations. Most importantly, miss Lively's
own claims are no truer today than they were yesterday.
And with the facts on our side, we march forward
with the same confidence that we had when miss Lively
and her cohorts initiated this battle. And I look forward
(28:08):
to her forthcoming deposition, which I will be taking. He
loves to remind her that he's taking her deposition because
you know, if you remember when we did earlier podcasts,
she was trying to do everything possible to get it
and to not have Brian Friedman be the one that
deposes her.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
So if anything that we're going to get it, hopefully
a video depots.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Hopefully we just hopefully will get a comeback. It will
be Brian Friedman deposing Blake Lively, and that will feed
our souls.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, and that you want to see on Instagram that
I want to see.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
We are grateful for the organic show of support from
the public and for the dedication of the Internet sleuth
community who continues to cover this case with discernment and integrity.
All right, So there we are on Lively and Baldoni.
That was a big one for Blake Lively. Boo hoo,
womp womp. And Reynolds and Ryan Reynolds. If you did
not think that their heads could be any bigger, I
(29:00):
feel like they have.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
They're going to have to inflated. They're going to have
to move into a new place, a bigger place. Yeah,
fit their heads.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
All right, all right, let's move on to the Diddy trial.
Have you been following Diddy? Do you know anything?
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, he's still in jail.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
He's still in chail, Yes he is. He's still in jail.
I did think I just want to talk about this.
It's on the run, Dawn, but we'll just talk about
it first because I want to know your reaction to this.
But he did get admonished, I think it was yesterday
by the judge because he continues to make faces at
the jurors.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, what kind of faces?
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Well, I don't know because there's no cameras in the courthouse,
so it's not like I've seen the pains.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
There's paintings.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
There are paintings, but they're not. I haven't seen any
artwork that shows me the faces that he's making.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
But he's doing that.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
He he became like when someone's testifying, he shakes his
head or he nods his head or and he looks
at the jury and I think he's I mean really,
the interpretation is that he's trying to influence them. I
agreeing disagreeing with testimony, which you you cannot do. So
he got in trouble for that.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
What kind of trouble.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Well, I don't know that. Just like spoken to judge
said that she was gonna kick him out of the
courtroom if he continued to do it. So we'll see
what happens with that. Hopefully he keeps his.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
He would probably be a video presence. He could, like
video be able to see her accusers.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Right, But I guess the problem is is that the
jury's over here to the side, and he just completely
turns to the side address.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
He slit his throat. He's like scratching his throat. I
know where you live. Yeah, well anyway, yeah, but you
were pointing like like in the manner of a gun
fingers and you pulled a trigger. What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Okay, so we have Jane, who's been testifying for the
last couple of days. It is a former girlfriend and
she's using the pseudonym Jane. We know that there was
an earlier a woman who testified under the pseudonym Mia,
So now we're to Jane, Jane.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
To take that name. Who gets to pick your pseudonym?
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
I wonder the same thing, And why Mia? And why
what would your pseudonym be?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I don't know, Frank, I don't know what it would
be John Jansen and everyone would just flood over to him.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah. So Jane dated Sean Combs from early twenty twenty
one until his arrest in September of twenty twenty four.
So this is a recent girlfriend, which is interesting. She
met Combs in twenty twenty. She's a single mother and
an OnlyFans model. Jane began testifying on June fifth, and
her cross examination begins on June tenth. What is today? Oh,
(31:46):
that's today, So she's getting cross examined today, all right,
So let's just go through some key points from her testimony.
She talks about the emotional impact. So from around May
of twenty twenty one, Combs introduced her to voyeuristic group
sex events. He called hotel nights parallel to the freak
offs that Cassie Ventura described. So here's what I'm thinking.
(32:08):
Every time he has a new girlfriend, he.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Has to change the name, change the name of his because.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
With Cassie Ventura he called him freak offs, but with
this girl he calls him hotel nights.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
It's like a new chapter in my life. I need
to rebrand my freak offs.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, so what with the next the next? Wait, so
this one is called hotel hotel nights, Hotel nights, the
hotel hotel. The first encounter involved a male escort and
a hotel room.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Set up by the next next one will be called
in my cell alone, sad with gray hair. That's what
it will be.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Nights. Yes, the first encounter involved a male escort and
a hotel room set up by Combe's assistance. Jane testified
that she was super nervous and found herself participating in
a multi man event that opened up Pandora's box. First
(33:00):
of all, you do understand, and let's just talk about
this briefly, that the fact that she's testifying that the
assistance set it up is very important because that is
going to proving rico, which is that this is a
criminal enterprise and that he has employees who are working
(33:20):
underneath them who are setting up these freak golfs, hotel
nights and criminal activity, criminal activity, and that these sex
workers are being paid and are traveling from state to state,
which then goes to the sex trafficking. Though initially exhilarated,
she regretted it, and the events became the centerpiece of
their relationship. Okay, so we have to get down to
(33:43):
coercion control and the abuse part of it. She repeatedly
told Comb she did not want to participate, texting to him,
I'm not a porn star. I'm not an animal.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
I'm an only fans star.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I'm an only fan.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
What is your problem?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
It's loveless for me. I mean, I feel like when
there's lights and people setting it up, it's IMPI apply
that is loveless, but there's like stage and baby oil
and ring lights. Combs responded dismissively, calling her crazy and
urging her to continue on. Starting in March of twenty
(34:18):
twenty three, Combs paid her ten thousand month rent, a
benefit she feared losing if she refused to comply. Basically,
this is how he leverages these women. He coerces them
by taking financial control, and then they get their self
in a position where they have to go along with
what he wants because he's controlling their finances.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Oh it sound about right.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
He also controlled her appearance, requiring veneers and regular grooming.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Then okay, can I say something? Yes?
Speaker 1 (34:48):
No, you can't?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, go I can or cannot? You can go ahead,
thank you. If he has all this money, they uses
right to control people and have these large party and
all that. So money's not an issue for him. He's
got plenty of it. Why doesn't he just find the
women that fit his criteria instead of finding someone that
needs veneers? Now I think about it, Maybe it's because
(35:10):
he wants someone that he can he can say, I'll
give you this, I'll do this, and you need this.
You you look ugly, you're.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
So you're saying. He targets like a six, seven or eight,
so that he can make them a ten and then
they or he.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Could just make them feel inferior by saying, your teeth
are nasty. You need me to help you. You need
me to make you look good. You're you're nothing without me.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Yeah, you're saying that's a way of controlling and breaking them.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Down's funny because when we got married, you got veneers.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I was just gonna say, well we got married. You
were like, I think you.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And then you were like, he come, you didn't just
marry a ten Wow, I'm just kidding. And I said,
I did marry it. Oh yeah, I like you.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
You just got yourself out of trouble. Even after an
FBI rate on his homes in March of twenty twenty four,
the sexual encounters continued in cities like Miami and la
I did not know that though, but that's very interesting.
So even after his homes got raided, he's still continued
with his hotel night So he's like, not even the
FBI is going to stop this.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Wow. That means he really thought he wasn't doing anything
wrong or he had some Indea.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
I don't know if he didn't think he was doing
anything wrong, or he just thought he was above the
law and that he.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I guess that's what I meant, Like he thought he
was untouchable.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
During her twenty twenty third birthday, and this is we're
talking about, Jane Combs orchestrated me who went.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
To the freak offs after he was raided. That's interesting.
Oh yeah, I also thought they could go like why
people kept showing up?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
I don't know, that's an interesting question. Okay. So during Jane,
we're still talking about Jane. This is her testimony. During
her twenty twenty third birthday, Combs orchestrated a multi escort
event at a hotel, which she said her feeling invaded.
Can you imagine, though, it's her birthday and he's like,
for your birthday, You're going to have sex with a
(37:09):
bunch of escorts for your birthday, and I'm going to
watch for your birthday.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Right, Well, it didn't matter even if it was Combe's birthday.
That's still wrong. You act like she got you know,
screwed out of a birthday presenter. No, I'm just saying
it didn't matter if it was a birthday or Memorial day.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I was saying the whole point of it being like
her birthday.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
That's how disgusting.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah. So, apparently in a recorded phone call that she had,
Combs is asking her is this coercion? They played this
in court, and this is after he hit her and
forced her to take ecstasy at a June twenty twenty
four dinner. He would threaten to expose sex tapes or
stop paying rent if she pushed back. You know, he
did the same thing with Cassie, And this is her
corroborating a lot of Cassie's testimony because if you remember
(37:55):
when Cassie testified that she also remember her momfied that
he said he would release sex tapes of Cassie venturay
twenty grand and then she had to take a mortgage
out on her house and pay him the twenty grand
and then like two days later he gave her the
twenty grand back. It was basically just like just to
mess with her. That's like a cat messing with a mouse.
You know, they're just playing with them.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yeah, they grab it, they go chase it again and.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Grab it exactly Like that's the kind of sick and
twisted behavior. You know that he has a lot of
her testimony had a lot of parallels with Cassie Ventura,
which is good because the prosecution has her testifying, which
helps to corroborate everything that Cassie had testified about earlier.
Jane noticed striking similarities between her experiences with Cassie Ventura's lawsuit,
(38:41):
so much so that she almost fainted when she was
reading it. During a recorded call, Comb's dismissed both experiences
as some kinky shit that we both enjoyed, which she
firmly rejected. It's interesting that when she read Cassie's lawsuit
and all of the facts and in all the details
she puts in there about her time with Sean comes
and then this this girlfriend, Jane reads it and says
(39:04):
that she like, she almost fainted because it was basically
the same thing. It just goes to show you that
it's just repeated behavior of control over these women. And
I think that he would He probably is so advanced
in how he does it and how he goes about it.
It's almost systematic, like I'm sure he looks for a
certain type of girl and then he makes them better.
(39:25):
He gives them money, he pays their rent. Then he
slowly introduces them into this voyeuristic lifestyle with the assigns.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
And I'm sure some of the things he's exposing into
him is you know, glamorous, right, big parties. You know,
he might shower them with you know, I don't know,
they go clothes shopping or whatever it is to make
them feel like this is like an upscale lifestyle and
I'm living it, and then you know, bam, he hits
(39:54):
them with a bunch of other crap.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Right. There was evidence presented which for text messages Jane
stating doescome like I'm not a sex robot, and Comb's
dismissing her objections. Recordings, there were dialogues where Combs exhibits
physical force and defensiveness, and photos. There were fifteen images
showing encounters with escorts that were displayed for the jury.
The prosecution stance is that Jane's testimony aligns closely with
(40:18):
venturas showing coercion via violence, drugs, threat of eviction, and blackmail,
fitting federal definitions of sex trafficking. So we know what
the prosecution is doing. They're just laying out this criminal
enterprise by having all of these people testify over and
over again, corroborating the way he systematically goes about setting
(40:40):
it up, about how the employees worked for him, about
how they set things up about the sex workers. And
the defense's argument is obviously that they assert that all
acts were consensual and part of a swinger lifestyle. They
also claim Comb's aggression was isolated domestic abuse, not trafficking,
(41:04):
all right, So another thing that happened was Ditty. His
defense team seeks a mistrial over alleged false testimony. This
is actually very interesting. So there was a woman named
Brianna Bongolan who testified. She's a fashion designer and a
friend of Cassie Ventura. She testified about a confrontation with
Sean Dittycomb's at Cassie's apartment. Bongolan stated that while she
(41:25):
was on the balcony, she said she was either out
there smoking or about to smoke. Diddy allegedly ran out
onto the balcony, grabbed her and held her over the
balcony railing. She said that he shouted, quote, you know
what the f you did, before pulling her back inside
and forcefully pushing her into furniture. Bongolan testified that she
sustained injuries to her leg and neck as a result,
(41:47):
and the prosecution presented photos showing large bruises on her leg,
along with marks on her neck and back.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
It's a very hip hop artist thing.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Yeah, it really is. The isn't that Suge Knight? Didn't
he hang Vanilla Ice over a balcony too?
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (42:01):
There must be like a like a wrap handbooks.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Too, how to deal I don't know, negotiate effectively the
opposing party over a balcony by their ankles, yes, while
screaming at this.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
However, the defense challenged the prosecution's evidence, which was bongole
and testifying to this alleged balcony incident, pointing out that
the metadata on the photos shows that they were taken
on September twenty six, twenty sixteen, when Diddy was reportedly
on the East Coast for the Bad Boy Family Reunion tour,
(42:38):
making it highly unlikely that he was in Los Angeles
at the time. I do know that they had They
had hotel receipts from him staying in the in the
hotel in New York City. So the point is clearly
he cannot be physically in New York City a concert, yeah,
and in La hanging someone over a balcony. If she
(42:58):
claims that those bruce, this is where the result of
an incident that happened hours before or the day before
or whatever. But he's in New York City.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I don't know. Again, that's for the jury to decide, right.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Cassie Ventura recounted the violence during her own testimony at
Comb's trials, So Cassie when she was testifying, talked about
this incident on the balcony. However, Ditty's defense argued that
a series of texts from Cassie to Christina Korum, who
if you remember we talked about her before, was one
of Ditty's employees, indicated she hadn't witnessed the incident herself.
(43:31):
TMZ reported this. The text, which said I just found
out some crazy shit indicated to the defense that she
had heard of the alleged incident through another source and
had not seen it firsthand like she claimed. So just
to break that down to make that make sense, Cassie
testified on the stand that she witnessed the balcony incident
happen first person. She was there, she saw it. That's
(43:53):
what she testified to. The defense offers texts that she
has with Ditty's assistant, sating oh I heard about that.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
So basically like she did you see it or did
you hear about it?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Right, So basically her text message is saying, oh, yeah,
I heard about that crazy Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
That's there's gonna be questioning around that, and then the
jury's you have to decide which version of the story
is the truth exactly, or at least they see is the truth.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
All right, So that's where we're at, Diddy, Do you
have any final thoughts on this criminal enterprise and the
sex trafficking charges.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I don't. At the end of the day, it's as
long as he's in jail for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
You don't care what he's doing. As long as he
just never gets out of.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Project Cares, tax fraud, whatever, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
No, No, you just want him.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah, he should never be with public again, with like
people again. Yeah, because he's terrible. I mean, look what
he did. I mean, assuming all this is true. Obviously
we weren't there, but look at how he reacted to
the jury, you know, giving him you know, threatening, you know,
facial expressions or intimidating facial expressions.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Well, I don't know if his facial expressions or whatever
we intimidating or.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
It was enough for the judge to slap them and
tell him to stop doing that.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Well, it's I think his expressions and his nodding or
to influence them as to what he when he agrees
with something that's being testified to or when he disagreed.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Okay, so you're saying, not intimidate, influence, that's the same thing.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Well no, yeah, exactly, But in this.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
I'm saying dangling them over the balcony by their ankles
is just influencing tactics. No, it's intimidation.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
No, I'm saying that there were there was alleged incidents
of actual intimidation in the beginning. That's why he wasn't
allowed to be on house arrest, right, and jury tampering,
and that's why they were worried about being able to
get a jury of twelve people of his peers because
there was rumblings or I don't know if there was
(45:47):
actual evidence, but I think there was.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Well, there was a lot of concerns.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Concern, right, that's the word I was looking for, concern
with jury intimidation and people not wanting to sit on
his jury. So here he is in court actually addressing
the jury, looking at them and giving them nods or whatever.
So you're right, I mean, you can call it whatever
you want, influence, intimidation, whatever. What he's doing is wrong.
(46:12):
And so anyway, all right, Well, so we went through
a lot today, Yeah, and we tried to break it
down into digestible chunks because it was a lot of information.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, especially the Baldoni stuff that was that could be
very complicated and it is complicated, kind of boring depending
on how you go over it, or you can just
pull up the basics and yeah, you know, know the
status of the case as it is today.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
All right, Well, thank you guys for listening. We appreciate it,
and as always, I appreciate all the feedback. A lot
of you send me so many dms telling me that
you enjoy the podcast or asking about other cases that
you would like us to talk about and touch on.
So I appreciate that, so continue to do that, and
if you have any questions or comments, feel free to
DM me as well. And also we do have an
(46:58):
Instagram legally Brune Podcast, so you could follow that and
you can always comment on the cases that we discuss
and talk about. So thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Thank you,
Hi, guys, Welcome to another episode of Legally Brunette. I
will be your host today Emily Simpson with my co
host Shane Shane. First of all, so much has been
going on with the Diddy trial, so we are going
to try our best to get into a little bit
of that. Also, so much going on in Blake Lively
(00:22):
and Justin Baldoni, and I appreciate that so many of
you have sent dms to me asking us to break
that down because it is very complex the judge's latest ruling. However,
first let's get into just a little bit with Jared Letto.
Do you know who Jared Letto is?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, you do thirty Seconds to Mars.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I know the name thirty Seconds to Mars. It's a band.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, so he's the lead. I know he's the lead singer,
but he was also he's also an actor. He's been
in things. I know him best because I'm jen X,
but I know him best as Jordan Catalano from my
so called life.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Oh I don't know that either.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, if you are my age and you are a
big fan and you were in love with Jordan Catillano
like I was in the nineties, then you'll know who
he is. Okay, Apparently he has been accused of sexual
misconduct by multiple women who have come forward. So nine
women have accused Jared Letto.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You know how to pick them?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, you know. I was the big I was a
big Sean Combs fan too. So nine women have accused
Jared Letto of impropriety. This was an Aramelse story published.
It was on Friday, June sixth. Some of the allegations
include assaulting a seventeen year old, walking in front of
another seventeen year old completely nude, and engaging in sexually
explicit conversations with a sixteen year old. One woman, a
(01:37):
former model named Laura LaRue, said she met Letto at
an animal rights benefit. I love that he loves animals.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Though, well does he Maybe this is where he picks
up women.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I don't know, so I guess she met him out
of animal rights benefit.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Which she was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
You go, I just said she met him out an
animal rights benefit. This led to email correspondence between them
that eventually resulted in her visiting him in April two
thousand and nine. I remember him teasing me the whole
time I was there, LaRue told airmail. He was flirting
with me. Then when Laru was seventeen, Leto allegedly walked
out of a room completely naked and the model's presence.
He just walked out, dick out like it was normal.
(02:15):
I thought, maybe this is just what adult men do
some in Hollywood. Yeah not you, though, a representative for
Lettos stated their communications contained nothing sexual or inappropriate, and
Miss LaRue later applied to work as a mister Letto's
personal assistant, further underscoring the absence of anything inappropriate in
any of their interactions. LaRue denies ever applying to work
(02:38):
as Leto's personal assistant. You know, it's always the personal
assistant defense.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
But that's what we said last week, wasn't it when
with the chryslies, it was like, oh, it wasn't me.
It's the accountant. Oh yeah, well that's here. It's like,
it's not me, it's the assistant.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well no, he's claiming she wanted to be a personal assistant.
So basically, if she was sexually harassed by him, why
would she apply to work for him? As the argument, but.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Quick touching me, do you have a job application?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Stop walking around naked?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Can I can I come to your house.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Another woman named Ali Teals is a Los Angeles base DJ.
She reposted a twenty twelve Facebook status to her Instagram
story last month. You're not really in La until Jared
Leto tries to force himself on you backstage in a
kilt and a snow hat, she wrote. At the time,
She also referred to him as Hollywood's most persistent predator
and a kilt and a follow.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Up story like there's a cat. There's a bunch of
men in kilts, yeah, in Hollywood that are sexually assaulting,
and he's the worst of them all.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
He is, He's the worst. He's the prolific kilt wearing
sexual predator, a legend.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, my father always told me never trust a man
in a kilt.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Oh yeah, that was one of his us. Yes, he
was like, live and let live, don't let things bother you.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And never never trust a man in a kilt.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Got it? Oh you forgot the snow hat.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
That's indifferent. Oh snowatter not.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Oh that doesn't make a difference. It's really it comes
down to the kilt, all right. In a follow up story,
Teals claimed she was assaulted and traumatized by this creep
when I was seventeen, alleging that he knew my age
and did not care. What he did was predatory, terrifying,
and unacceptable. There's other anonymous claims coming forward. Another woman,
whose name Ahrmel did not publish, said she was an
(04:25):
underage actress when she began texting with Letto, and alleged
that the relationship took a sexual turn when she turned eighteen.
The woman claimed that at one point, Leto began masturbating
in her presence and asked her to quote spit on it. Wow,
this podcast just took a completely different turn, didn't the Yeah,
we might have to call this explicitly legally Brunette. A
(04:48):
fourth woman alleges that she began texting Leto after meeting
him at a cafe when she was only sixteen, and
that the conversation turned sexual. According to the outlet, he'd
asked things like, have you ever had a boyfriend? Have
you ever Alright, this is making me so uncomfortable. Have
you ever had oral sex? A representative for Letto told
Airmail all of the allegations are expressly denied. Of course,
(05:14):
other strange occurrences that are alleged in this article as well.
Cosmopolitan reported on a now deleted twenty fifteen video posted
by the director James Gun accusing Letto of sleeping with
underage girls. The next morning, Gun posted, good morning and
sorry to all of you around the world who saw
my ambient fueled periscope session last night at three am.
(05:36):
So basically he accuses him of sleeping with underage girls,
and then the next morning takes down his posts and
says that it was the result of ambient.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
These people he can't keep up with them.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
In twenty sixteen, Leto made headlines again for reportedly sending
used condoms, anal beads, and dead rats to a suicide
squad co stars Margot Robbie will Smith and Iola Davis.
I got so many weird things, Robbie later said in
an interview with E I can't even begin to tell you.
And then in twenty eighteen, the British tabloid Metro reported
(06:10):
on a Twitter post by the actor Dylan Sprouse that read, Yo,
Jared Letto, now that you've slid into the dms of
every female model age eighteen to twenty five, what would
you say your success rate is so Apparently there are
a lot of instances with Jared Letto of a leg
You still like this, Jared Lettle guy, Well, I didn't
know about any of this before.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I just remember, I bet you all the songs are
all about sex and all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And I don't know what his songs are about.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
But you like him.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
I specified this in the beginning. I liked him as
Jordan Catalano in the nineties on MTV.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
You don't listen to thirty seconds tomorrow now.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I couldn't name a single song, can you.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
No, of course not, but I disagree. I bet you
do listen the.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Let's give an update on Lively versus Baldoni. So on
June ninth, twenty twenty five, Justin Baldoni's lawsuit against Blake
Lively was dismissed by a federal judge. Okay, let's break
it down.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
This is big, right, this is very big.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
First of all, the entire lawsuit wasn't dismissed, but the
majority of it was. So I actually it is a
one hundred and thirty two page decision by the judge,
which I made Shane print out for me, which he
loves to do, and I read through it twice to
break it down and try to break it down into
digestible chunks so that we could all understand what this
(07:38):
decision actually is.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Okay, so what's the decision.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, the majority of this claims are dismissed.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
All right, So then we have ones to talk about
that are dismissed and then the ones that still are
open for litigation.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Right, but I'll tell you the big ones. The main
ones are dismissed.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Okay, Okay, So what are the big ones?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
All right? Lit'sten to a little background. Just to give
you guys a reminder if you haven't followed the case
that closely, I just want to give you a little background.
So back in December thirty, first, the twenty twenty four,
Lively filed a complaint against the Wayfarer Parties, which is
Baldoni and his production company, bringing claims for sexual harassment, retaliation,
breach of contract, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
(08:18):
And if you remember last week, Blake Lively's team actually
dismissed from their lawsuit the intentional and negligent infliction of
emotional distress, and we talked about that in our earlier podcast.
Then Baldoni and Wayfarer, which again is his production company
then filed their claim on January sixteenth, twenty twenty five,
(08:39):
and then by January thirtieth, twenty twenty five, the judge
had ordered that the two cases be consolidated into one.
Now he sued Blake Lively as well as The New
York Times was added and then also her publicist, and
also there's some claim against Ryan Reynolds. But it comes
down to basically it was civil extortion, defamation and false light,
(09:03):
breach of contract, tortuous interference with a contract or prospective
economic advantage, promisory fraud, and breach of implied covenant. I
know those all sound very legal in their they are.
I mean I just met very legalies like they're all
very legal terms. So basically it boils down to two
main broad themes that were dismissed from the case, which
(09:26):
are the two big ones. That is the civil extortion
and the defamation. All right, the elements of civil extortion
under California law are not met. That is what the
judge says. The wayfair parties have not adequately alleged that
Lively's threats were wrongful extortion rather than legally permissible hard
bargaining or renegotiation of working conditions. Additionally, the Wayfair parties
(09:51):
have not shown that some of Lively's alleged extortionate acts
damaged them. So basically they're saying, under California law, her
act of trying to coerce some into giving her the
cut of the movie, giving her a producer's credit, having
her take over the movie using her cut of the
movie do not constitute extortion under California law because the
(10:15):
elements were not met. And basically what they're saying is coercion.
It has to be coercion, and then there has to
be some threat.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, and threat is lacking. Yeah, right, it's mostly okay,
she was a crappy person, right, Okay, so she was naggy, right,
or she was kicking and screaming a little bit in
the way she was behaving, right and not you know,
being civil according to her contract terms contractual terms. But
in this case it's like there was no threat, like
(10:45):
they never Ryan Reynolds, never sent a text or.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Something basically, and then also the where they told Baldoni
that he was the one that had to make Remember
we talked about this in an earlier podcast, where they
basically threatened that if he didn't take responsibility for the
marketing of the movie, Like they wanted him to write
that public statement that said that it was Wayfair and
Baldoni that were the ones that chose to market the
(11:07):
movie the way it was and they wanted him to
take responsibility for it. They were also claiming that that
was a type of extortion. Basically, what the judge said was,
none of that is extortion. It's really just her being
able to hard bargain and real negotiating.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Negotiating tactics are like twisting their their arm behind their
back and forcing them to sign something.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Right. And also, when it comes to extortion, under California law,
there has to be a turning over of money or property.
So basically it's you are coercing someone into giving you something.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
So I was saying, like to a complete illegal transactions, right.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
And you're receiving a benefit. So basically what the judge
is saying is there was no turning over of property
or money that gave Blake Lively an advantage or a benefit.
It's basically like she was just using her bargaining power
as an a list actress to say I'm not going
(12:01):
to do that unless this I'm not going to do this.
I'm not going to do that. I don't want to
do that. I don't want him at the premiere. I
want this. And I guess technically what he's saying is
if that's the way she wants to be and that's
the way she wants to bargain her her role, and
that's the way she wants to negotiate things, then that's her.
That's on her. And the judge also explains that there
(12:25):
were so many things that she requested of them or
demanded or however you want to say it, that they
didn't do that.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
They don't be a statement, maybe a threat could have
been more like had she or Ryan Reynolds said if
you don't do this and that, then we will not
show up at the premiere, or you don't do this
and that, and then we will not go on a
tour to promote the movie. And then then he's in
a position where he's like okay, okay, okay, and he
signs whatever document or he gives her some you know,
(12:52):
something that she wants and then now she completes the
terms of the contract. That would have been more like
civil a threat, right.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Maybe. Also the judge also says that there's just no
evidence of actual monetary loss. Like, you can't prove there
has to be damages, so there has to be duress,
and then you have to prove that as the plane
if you suffer damages, and there's just no proof that
there was damages. This is according to the judge. I mean,
you can argue both sides. I would say this guy's
reputation has been damaged his Oh yeah, I mean his
(13:22):
I don't know if he can make movies anymore. He's clearly,
in my opinion, probably lost projects because of all of
this going on. I don't know, but obviously they aren't
showing in their original pleading where they're suing her, they
aren't showing enough damages. Right. But anyway, so the civil
(13:46):
extortion part was dismissed by the judge. He just says
that lively threats were not legally wrongful, that it was
just basically hard bargaining and negotiation. There was no threat
of physical harm to person or property or threaten a
false lawsuit.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Man, do you know how much of a bigger head
those two have now? Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I know, and I keep seeing it.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, they're like, see we were in the right. See
we didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Right, And I tell you, every time I get on
Instagram and I flip through it, it's just ease posting
Blake Lively out and about it some events on a
red carpet, and I don't I personally, I don't want
to see her. I would like to put the no
Blake Lively filter on my phone so that every time
I flip through Instagram, I don't have to see her
on a red carpet. The judge goes on to say
(14:34):
Wayfairer and Baldoni do not show facts that Lively had
a contractual obligation to promote the film or to approve
marketing materials. That is a problem. And I knew this
was going to be an issue when I read the
original complaint by Justin Baldoni and Wayfairer. They do talk
about how Blake Lively never actually signed her contract to
(14:55):
appear in the movie, that there were emails going back
and forth and she took whatever the chunk of money
is to retain her, but that she actually never signed
her contract. So she went through and starred in this
movie and did promotional things and marketing things, but never.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Had an action was intentional to never really lock herself
into something.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
I don't know, but it seems like it's working in
her favor because it's saying, how can you claim that
she has a contractual obligation to promote the movie and
market the movie without for the movie, And then you're
saying there's no contract in place for her to be
in this movie.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So yeah, it's like, she didn't do what we agreed
this she would do what'd she agreed to do? Nothing
signed her contract.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Only bargaining and seeking improved working conditions is basically what
the judge comes down to, saying that she was doing
that she had every right to do what she did
and to do it the way that she did.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Wow, Like, to the next producer that signs her on, right, yeah,
I mean that he's got even a bigger head. She's like,
I'm just negotiating. I mean, get out of here, I'm
just negotiating, right, do it my way or the highway?
Speaker 1 (16:11):
That was just like an all encompassing power trip for her.
And basically like the way you've acted, the things that
you've alleged, the way that you kept him from attending
his own premiere, the way you undercut the movie, made
your own edit took over coerce them into giving you
a PGA.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Talking about this in the beginning, you said that she
was surrounded by yes people. Yes, she surrounded yes judge.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, now she's a yes judge. Well, you know, here's
the thing about the judge, and I don't know you
can you can take away what you want from this,
But his brother is a big director and producer in Hollywood.
The judge's brother, the judge's brother, Doug Lyman. All right,
So that's the civil extortion part of Baldoni's claim that
the judge dismissed. There was also the defamation part of
(16:59):
Baldoni's suit, which those are the two big ones. It
was extortion and the defamation. It was a and defamation
is an injury to reputation by a false, oral or
written communication. And obviously there was a different standard for
public versus private person. We're talking about Blake Lively being
a public person and Justin Valdona being public. So what's
(17:19):
the standard do you know?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, a defamation doesn't include opinions, right, So it can't
be like he's a jerk, Yeah, he's a creep, right,
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It's more like a sexual predator. I think that's defamatory.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Right for private figure. Basically, it just needs to be
a fact that can be disproven, right or something like that. Right,
it has to be a false statement.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, but also you also have to it has to
be negligent, like you were you didn't try to find
the truth.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I was talking about private person. Yeah, the private person
just needs to be a false statement. Is it a
negligent standard, yes, okay, so then a public figure would
probably be more of a malicious Yeah, it's actual malice,
actual malice.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Which actual malice means knowingly you know something is false
or you have a complete disregard to reckless disregard for
the truth. So that's the standard, and there has to
be special damages. That's the legal term of it. So
I always like to give you guys a little legal background.
So if you're having a conversation with your friends, you
can just pull out, you know, your defamation. You can
tell them that it's a public figure.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
So which is because the actually don't journalists do a
lot of times they'll be like, oh, well I had
an anonymous source that told me this, so therefore, like
that was my research. Yeah, yeah, didn't Tom Cruise used
to go around Sue and everybody. I don't know Tom
Cruise and Nichols you do.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Other than movies. I don't know about him suing people looking.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I don't know anything about him.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
And he's short.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I know that's short tempered. No, he's short. Yeah, yes,
I think.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
He's maybe shorter than you.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Maybe.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I think he's like five six. I think you have
an inch on him.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
He's got nothing on me. No, but it's Tom cruisey
Nicole Kidman needs to go around Sue and all the
tabloids and stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Oh yeah, all right. Well, basically, the judge denies the
defamation suit against Blake Lively, saying that the litigation privilege applies.
Basically that everything she wrote in her original CRD complaint,
which was a civil rights and that she filed, and
then that New York Times used that complaint to then
(19:28):
write their article is basically called a litigation privilege, which
means that you can feel safe writing space. It's a
safe space, this piece of papers a safe space, a
safe space for you to write whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Anyone, no standards here, just write whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Anything you want. You can accuse anyone of anything. You
can call them anything you want. You can say whatever,
you can collude with the New York Times, and then
they can write an article accompanying it and taking all
the information that you put in your complaint, and then
you are covered on litigation.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So someone photo copies it and shares it, which is
essentially what the New York Times did. That's okay because
where it came from, it was allowed to be written
as it was.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Right, and the New York Times also falls under the
fair reporting privilege, which basically is very broad. You know
that under the Constitution, the First Amendment, there's the free press,
and they have a very broad range of being able.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
To So is that more like you can report this
what is it called a CRD.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Well, the original complaint before she.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Filed a federal civil rights it's.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The Civil Rights Department.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Okay, So she files something with the Civil Rights Department,
and then they're saying it's fair for the press to
review it and report on it.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Right, Yeah, So that's and they're saying she also due
to privileged communications, everything within her CRD complaint is privileged.
Therefore everything that she alleges about him or says about
him is privileged. So it's not defamation. So basically what
we have all learned from you can say whatever you
(21:04):
want about someone else as long as you put it
on pleating paper, file it, and then you're protected under
the litigation privilege. So and basically, also because Jessin Baldoni
alleged that even the things that she put in her
original CRD complaint where it was like she was manipulating texts,
not showing full contexts, you know, leaving emojis out, that
(21:26):
had that set a tone to what she was, you know,
implying in her and her complaints. And the judge goes
on to say she's permitted to martial the facts to
tell her side of a contested story. She doesn't have
to provide a balanced account of what happened, and the
litigation privilege still applies. It's so basically, you can just
marshal the facts, man.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
She really, yeah, I'd be careful if I was producing
her next movie that there might be some colliints with
the CRD department, because now she knows like, well she
does want to be complaining about I'll just make I'll just
put in it with the CRD.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Well, basically, what she's done is laid out the exact
steps that you need to do to take to a
store campaign someone's livelihood and reputation with zero consequences on
your part. Also, there was the false light, which is
also a form of invasion of privacy under California law,
(22:21):
the invasion of privacy by placing a planet and a
false light in the public eye. False light must be
highly offensive to a reasonable person. So this was a
claim that Justin Baldoni made in his claim against Blake
Lively that she placed him in a false light by
her litigation. The judge dismisses the slight claim because of
(22:41):
the same reasons as the defamation.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Anytime you get sued, it's a negative look on your image.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Right all right. So basically, just to break it down,
just to give a simple summary of what happened, the
judge throughout the extortion claim, which was the big one,
which was the way she went about trying to coerce
herself into taking over the movie, taking over the editing,
producing the movie, getting producer credits, and the judge basically said,
(23:14):
you know what, that's just her being an A list
actress and negotiating her way through the system.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
And just it's more like an a whole actress.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Then the second big one that got thrown out, which
we just talked about, was the defamation suits. And that's
because the judge is stating that everything she put in
her filings was privileged. And also the New York Times
has no culpability because of the fairer reporting.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Those are all legal standards. It's not like she did anything.
More like, it's not like, oh, she's a great person.
Calm down. No, it's like, no, legally, legally, you have
no recourse.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Legally, you have no recourse. However, I do feel, and
I'm sure people would agree with me, that she definitely
lost in the court of public opinion and she has.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
No But I mean, is this not Is this going
to change people's opinions. Are they going to be like, oh,
so it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I don't know. I feel like if you look at
social media and anytime there's anything of her, if you
read the comments, it is just NonStop like she's a
horrible person. Get her off my page. I don't want
to see her. Why are you posting her? Why are
you giving her? It's it's bad. It looks like the
backlash is pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
But and here we are talking about her.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, all right. The judge did allow for two causes
of action to be amended and refiled, but these have
to do with contractual issues, not the bigger, overlying things
like defamation and extortion, which have been thrown out.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
It's not the juicy stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
It's not the juicy stuff. It's boring contracting, contractual stuff.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
They're going to amend and refile because they can't just
walk away.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Oh no, They'll definitely amend and refile it. I don't
know if it will be successful, but they will. One
is breach of implied covenant of good faith. The judge
said that they're able to amend this and refile it.
It means that there's the existence of some specific contractual
obligations and that she interfered with plainous performance of the
contract or failure to cooperate with the plaintiff. So basically,
(25:12):
there's no relevant contract in place. That's what we talked about,
and the judge talks about this, how there isn't a
contract because Baldoni claimed several times that Lively did not
sign her employment contract. But he's giving them the opportunity
to prove that there is some type of contract and
that she didn't fulfill her duties under that contract. And
then also they're allowing Baldoni's team to refile, to re amend,
(25:37):
refile the tortous interference with contractual relations or perspective or
perspective economic advantage. This I had to read this a
couple times to understand this because this gets down into
just like logistics and legalies, and it was difficult. But
this has to do with the accusation that Ryan Reynolds
interfered with Justin Baldoni's talent management team. You know how
(26:01):
he was dropped from WME, which is the talent company
after all these allegations came out, and Justin Baldoni claims
that they dropped him because Ryan Reynolds was like, that
guy's a sexual predator. I don't want him, you know,
I don't want to be in the same talent agency
as him, and they dropped him. So basically they're saying,
(26:23):
if you can, if you can prove that you know
you're a part of this talent agency. He's a part
of this talent agency, he forced them to drop you,
which interfered with your contract with them, and that you
suffer damages from that. Then Okay, re amend, refile, and
we'll hear that. But again, like Shane said, which makes sense.
(26:43):
All the juicy, all the juicy stuff is gone. And
this was a huge way. I hate to say this
because I don't even want to say it, but this
was a huge win.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
In the public courts.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yes, no, and yes, not in the public eye, but
in the public courts, in the court.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
System, civil court system.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
This was a no. It's a federal court.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
In the federal civil court system.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
What do you say.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
I'm just ready to move on. These people are annoying me.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
All right, let me just I just want to do
one more thing. I just on this. I like to
give Brian Friedman's response to all of this.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Oh yeah, what is it?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
So? Brian Friedman said, while the court dismissed the defamation
related claims, the court has invited us to amend four
out of seven claims against Miss Lively. I don't understand
the math there because I read the judges ruling twice
and I only see two claims that he allows them
to amend. But maybe there's some smaller claims underneath those
(27:41):
big broad claims. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I'm going to go off of what Freeman said versus
what you said.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I know whatever. He has invited us to amend four
out of the seven claims against miss Lively, which will
showcase additional evidence and refined allegations. Most importantly, miss Lively's
own claims are no truer today than they were yesterday.
And with the facts on our side, we march forward
with the same confidence that we had when miss Lively
and her cohorts initiated this battle. And I look forward
(28:08):
to her forthcoming deposition, which I will be taking. He
loves to remind her that he's taking her deposition because
you know, if you remember when we did earlier podcasts,
she was trying to do everything possible to get it
and to not have Brian Friedman be the one that
deposes her.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
So if anything that we're going to get it, hopefully
a video depots.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Hopefully we just hopefully will get a comeback. It will
be Brian Friedman deposing Blake Lively, and that will feed
our souls.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, and that you want to see on Instagram that
I want to see.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
We are grateful for the organic show of support from
the public and for the dedication of the Internet sleuth
community who continues to cover this case with discernment and integrity.
All right, So there we are on Lively and Baldoni.
That was a big one for Blake Lively. Boo hoo,
womp womp. And Reynolds and Ryan Reynolds. If you did
not think that their heads could be any bigger, I
(29:00):
feel like they have.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
They're going to have to inflated. They're going to have
to move into a new place, a bigger place. Yeah,
fit their heads.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
All right, all right, let's move on to the Diddy trial.
Have you been following Diddy? Do you know anything?
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, he's still in jail.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
He's still in chail, Yes he is. He's still in jail.
I did think I just want to talk about this.
It's on the run, Dawn, but we'll just talk about
it first because I want to know your reaction to this.
But he did get admonished, I think it was yesterday
by the judge because he continues to make faces at
the jurors.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, what kind of faces?
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Well, I don't know because there's no cameras in the courthouse,
so it's not like I've seen the pains.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
There's paintings.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
There are paintings, but they're not. I haven't seen any
artwork that shows me the faces that he's making.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
But he's doing that.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
He he became like when someone's testifying, he shakes his
head or he nods his head or and he looks
at the jury and I think he's I mean really,
the interpretation is that he's trying to influence them. I
agreeing disagreeing with testimony, which you you cannot do. So
he got in trouble for that.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
What kind of trouble.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Well, I don't know that. Just like spoken to judge
said that she was gonna kick him out of the
courtroom if he continued to do it. So we'll see
what happens with that. Hopefully he keeps his.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
He would probably be a video presence. He could, like
video be able to see her accusers.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Right, But I guess the problem is is that the
jury's over here to the side, and he just completely
turns to the side address.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
He slit his throat. He's like scratching his throat. I
know where you live. Yeah, well anyway, yeah, but you
were pointing like like in the manner of a gun
fingers and you pulled a trigger. What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Okay, so we have Jane, who's been testifying for the
last couple of days. It is a former girlfriend and
she's using the pseudonym Jane. We know that there was
an earlier a woman who testified under the pseudonym Mia,
So now we're to Jane, Jane.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
To take that name. Who gets to pick your pseudonym?
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
I wonder the same thing, And why Mia? And why
what would your pseudonym be?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I don't know, Frank, I don't know what it would
be John Jansen and everyone would just flood over to him.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah. So Jane dated Sean Combs from early twenty twenty
one until his arrest in September of twenty twenty four.
So this is a recent girlfriend, which is interesting. She
met Combs in twenty twenty. She's a single mother and
an OnlyFans model. Jane began testifying on June fifth, and
her cross examination begins on June tenth. What is today? Oh,
(31:46):
that's today, So she's getting cross examined today, all right,
So let's just go through some key points from her testimony.
She talks about the emotional impact. So from around May
of twenty twenty one, Combs introduced her to voyeuristic group
sex events. He called hotel nights parallel to the freak
offs that Cassie Ventura described. So here's what I'm thinking.
(32:08):
Every time he has a new girlfriend, he.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Has to change the name, change the name of his because.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
With Cassie Ventura he called him freak offs, but with
this girl he calls him hotel nights.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
It's like a new chapter in my life. I need
to rebrand my freak offs.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, so what with the next the next? Wait, so
this one is called hotel hotel nights, Hotel nights, the
hotel hotel. The first encounter involved a male escort and
a hotel room.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Set up by the next next one will be called
in my cell alone, sad with gray hair. That's what
it will be.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Nights. Yes, the first encounter involved a male escort and
a hotel room set up by Combe's assistance. Jane testified
that she was super nervous and found herself participating in
a multi man event that opened up Pandora's box. First
(33:00):
of all, you do understand, and let's just talk about
this briefly, that the fact that she's testifying that the
assistance set it up is very important because that is
going to proving rico, which is that this is a
criminal enterprise and that he has employees who are working
(33:20):
underneath them who are setting up these freak golfs, hotel
nights and criminal activity, criminal activity, and that these sex
workers are being paid and are traveling from state to state,
which then goes to the sex trafficking. Though initially exhilarated,
she regretted it, and the events became the centerpiece of
their relationship. Okay, so we have to get down to
(33:43):
coercion control and the abuse part of it. She repeatedly
told Comb she did not want to participate, texting to him,
I'm not a porn star. I'm not an animal.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
I'm an only fans star.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I'm an only fan.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
What is your problem?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
It's loveless for me. I mean, I feel like when
there's lights and people setting it up, it's IMPI apply
that is loveless, but there's like stage and baby oil
and ring lights. Combs responded dismissively, calling her crazy and
urging her to continue on. Starting in March of twenty
(34:18):
twenty three, Combs paid her ten thousand month rent, a
benefit she feared losing if she refused to comply. Basically,
this is how he leverages these women. He coerces them
by taking financial control, and then they get their self
in a position where they have to go along with
what he wants because he's controlling their finances.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Oh it sound about right.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
He also controlled her appearance, requiring veneers and regular grooming.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Then okay, can I say something? Yes?
Speaker 1 (34:48):
No, you can't?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, go I can or cannot? You can go ahead,
thank you. If he has all this money, they uses
right to control people and have these large party and
all that. So money's not an issue for him. He's
got plenty of it. Why doesn't he just find the
women that fit his criteria instead of finding someone that
needs veneers? Now I think about it, Maybe it's because
(35:10):
he wants someone that he can he can say, I'll
give you this, I'll do this, and you need this.
You you look ugly, you're.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
So you're saying. He targets like a six, seven or eight,
so that he can make them a ten and then
they or he.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Could just make them feel inferior by saying, your teeth
are nasty. You need me to help you. You need
me to make you look good. You're you're nothing without me.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Yeah, you're saying that's a way of controlling and breaking them.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Down's funny because when we got married, you got veneers.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I was just gonna say, well we got married. You
were like, I think you.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And then you were like, he come, you didn't just
marry a ten Wow, I'm just kidding. And I said,
I did marry it. Oh yeah, I like you.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
You just got yourself out of trouble. Even after an
FBI rate on his homes in March of twenty twenty four,
the sexual encounters continued in cities like Miami and la
I did not know that though, but that's very interesting.
So even after his homes got raided, he's still continued
with his hotel night So he's like, not even the
FBI is going to stop this.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Wow. That means he really thought he wasn't doing anything
wrong or he had some Indea.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
I don't know if he didn't think he was doing
anything wrong, or he just thought he was above the
law and that he.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I guess that's what I meant, Like he thought he
was untouchable.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
During her twenty twenty third birthday, and this is we're
talking about, Jane Combs orchestrated me who went.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
To the freak offs after he was raided. That's interesting.
Oh yeah, I also thought they could go like why
people kept showing up?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
I don't know, that's an interesting question. Okay. So during Jane,
we're still talking about Jane. This is her testimony. During
her twenty twenty third birthday, Combs orchestrated a multi escort
event at a hotel, which she said her feeling invaded.
Can you imagine, though, it's her birthday and he's like,
for your birthday, You're going to have sex with a
(37:09):
bunch of escorts for your birthday, and I'm going to
watch for your birthday.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Right, Well, it didn't matter even if it was Combe's birthday.
That's still wrong. You act like she got you know,
screwed out of a birthday presenter. No, I'm just saying
it didn't matter if it was a birthday or Memorial day.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I was saying the whole point of it being like
her birthday.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
That's how disgusting.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah. So, apparently in a recorded phone call that she had,
Combs is asking her is this coercion? They played this
in court, and this is after he hit her and
forced her to take ecstasy at a June twenty twenty
four dinner. He would threaten to expose sex tapes or
stop paying rent if she pushed back. You know, he
did the same thing with Cassie, And this is her
corroborating a lot of Cassie's testimony because if you remember
(37:55):
when Cassie testified that she also remember her momfied that
he said he would release sex tapes of Cassie venturay
twenty grand and then she had to take a mortgage
out on her house and pay him the twenty grand
and then like two days later he gave her the
twenty grand back. It was basically just like just to
mess with her. That's like a cat messing with a mouse.
You know, they're just playing with them.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yeah, they grab it, they go chase it again and.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Grab it exactly Like that's the kind of sick and
twisted behavior. You know that he has a lot of
her testimony had a lot of parallels with Cassie Ventura,
which is good because the prosecution has her testifying, which
helps to corroborate everything that Cassie had testified about earlier.
Jane noticed striking similarities between her experiences with Cassie Ventura's lawsuit,
(38:41):
so much so that she almost fainted when she was
reading it. During a recorded call, Comb's dismissed both experiences
as some kinky shit that we both enjoyed, which she
firmly rejected. It's interesting that when she read Cassie's lawsuit
and all of the facts and in all the details
she puts in there about her time with Sean comes
and then this this girlfriend, Jane reads it and says
(39:04):
that she like, she almost fainted because it was basically
the same thing. It just goes to show you that
it's just repeated behavior of control over these women. And
I think that he would He probably is so advanced
in how he does it and how he goes about it.
It's almost systematic, like I'm sure he looks for a
certain type of girl and then he makes them better.
(39:25):
He gives them money, he pays their rent. Then he
slowly introduces them into this voyeuristic lifestyle with the assigns.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
And I'm sure some of the things he's exposing into
him is you know, glamorous, right, big parties. You know,
he might shower them with you know, I don't know,
they go clothes shopping or whatever it is to make
them feel like this is like an upscale lifestyle and
I'm living it, and then you know, bam, he hits
(39:54):
them with a bunch of other crap.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Right. There was evidence presented which for text messages Jane
stating doescome like I'm not a sex robot, and Comb's
dismissing her objections. Recordings, there were dialogues where Combs exhibits
physical force and defensiveness, and photos. There were fifteen images
showing encounters with escorts that were displayed for the jury.
The prosecution stance is that Jane's testimony aligns closely with
(40:18):
venturas showing coercion via violence, drugs, threat of eviction, and blackmail,
fitting federal definitions of sex trafficking. So we know what
the prosecution is doing. They're just laying out this criminal
enterprise by having all of these people testify over and
over again, corroborating the way he systematically goes about setting
(40:40):
it up, about how the employees worked for him, about
how they set things up about the sex workers. And
the defense's argument is obviously that they assert that all
acts were consensual and part of a swinger lifestyle. They
also claim Comb's aggression was isolated domestic abuse, not trafficking,
(41:04):
all right, So another thing that happened was Ditty. His
defense team seeks a mistrial over alleged false testimony. This
is actually very interesting. So there was a woman named
Brianna Bongolan who testified. She's a fashion designer and a
friend of Cassie Ventura. She testified about a confrontation with
Sean Dittycomb's at Cassie's apartment. Bongolan stated that while she
(41:25):
was on the balcony, she said she was either out
there smoking or about to smoke. Diddy allegedly ran out
onto the balcony, grabbed her and held her over the
balcony railing. She said that he shouted, quote, you know
what the f you did, before pulling her back inside
and forcefully pushing her into furniture. Bongolan testified that she
sustained injuries to her leg and neck as a result,
(41:47):
and the prosecution presented photos showing large bruises on her leg,
along with marks on her neck and back.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
It's a very hip hop artist thing.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Yeah, it really is. The isn't that Suge Knight? Didn't
he hang Vanilla Ice over a balcony too?
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (42:01):
There must be like a like a wrap handbooks.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Too, how to deal I don't know, negotiate effectively the
opposing party over a balcony by their ankles, yes, while
screaming at this.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
However, the defense challenged the prosecution's evidence, which was bongole
and testifying to this alleged balcony incident, pointing out that
the metadata on the photos shows that they were taken
on September twenty six, twenty sixteen, when Diddy was reportedly
on the East Coast for the Bad Boy Family Reunion tour,
(42:38):
making it highly unlikely that he was in Los Angeles
at the time. I do know that they had They
had hotel receipts from him staying in the in the
hotel in New York City. So the point is clearly
he cannot be physically in New York City a concert, yeah,
and in La hanging someone over a balcony. If she
(42:58):
claims that those bruce, this is where the result of
an incident that happened hours before or the day before
or whatever. But he's in New York City.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I don't know. Again, that's for the jury to decide, right.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Cassie Ventura recounted the violence during her own testimony at
Comb's trials, So Cassie when she was testifying, talked about
this incident on the balcony. However, Ditty's defense argued that
a series of texts from Cassie to Christina Korum, who
if you remember we talked about her before, was one
of Ditty's employees, indicated she hadn't witnessed the incident herself.
(43:31):
TMZ reported this. The text, which said I just found
out some crazy shit indicated to the defense that she
had heard of the alleged incident through another source and
had not seen it firsthand like she claimed. So just
to break that down to make that make sense, Cassie
testified on the stand that she witnessed the balcony incident
happen first person. She was there, she saw it. That's
(43:53):
what she testified to. The defense offers texts that she
has with Ditty's assistant, sating oh I heard about that.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
So basically like she did you see it or did
you hear about it?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Right, So basically her text message is saying, oh, yeah,
I heard about that crazy Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
That's there's gonna be questioning around that, and then the
jury's you have to decide which version of the story
is the truth exactly, or at least they see is the truth.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
All right, So that's where we're at, Diddy, Do you
have any final thoughts on this criminal enterprise and the
sex trafficking charges.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I don't. At the end of the day, it's as
long as he's in jail for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
You don't care what he's doing. As long as he
just never gets out of.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Project Cares, tax fraud, whatever, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
No, No, you just want him.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah, he should never be with public again, with like
people again. Yeah, because he's terrible. I mean, look what
he did. I mean, assuming all this is true. Obviously
we weren't there, but look at how he reacted to
the jury, you know, giving him you know, threatening, you know,
facial expressions or intimidating facial expressions.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Well, I don't know if his facial expressions or whatever
we intimidating or.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
It was enough for the judge to slap them and
tell him to stop doing that.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Well, it's I think his expressions and his nodding or
to influence them as to what he when he agrees
with something that's being testified to or when he disagreed.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Okay, so you're saying, not intimidate, influence, that's the same thing.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Well no, yeah, exactly, But in this.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
I'm saying dangling them over the balcony by their ankles
is just influencing tactics. No, it's intimidation.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
No, I'm saying that there were there was alleged incidents
of actual intimidation in the beginning. That's why he wasn't
allowed to be on house arrest, right, and jury tampering,
and that's why they were worried about being able to
get a jury of twelve people of his peers because
there was rumblings or I don't know if there was
(45:47):
actual evidence, but I think there was.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Well, there was a lot of concerns.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Concern, right, that's the word I was looking for, concern
with jury intimidation and people not wanting to sit on
his jury. So here he is in court actually addressing
the jury, looking at them and giving them nods or whatever.
So you're right, I mean, you can call it whatever
you want, influence, intimidation, whatever. What he's doing is wrong.
(46:12):
And so anyway, all right, Well, so we went through
a lot today, Yeah, and we tried to break it
down into digestible chunks because it was a lot of information.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, especially the Baldoni stuff that was that could be
very complicated and it is complicated, kind of boring depending
on how you go over it, or you can just
pull up the basics and yeah, you know, know the
status of the case as it is today.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
All right, Well, thank you guys for listening. We appreciate it,
and as always, I appreciate all the feedback. A lot
of you send me so many dms telling me that
you enjoy the podcast or asking about other cases that
you would like us to talk about and touch on.
So I appreciate that, so continue to do that, and
if you have any questions or comments, feel free to
DM me as well. And also we do have an
(46:58):
Instagram legally Brune Podcast, so you could follow that and
you can always comment on the cases that we discuss
and talk about. So thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Thank you,
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Teddi Mellencamp
Tamra Judge
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