← The Megyn Kelly Show
The Megyn Kelly Show
Epstein and Ghislaine, Possible Diddy Pardon, and Trump Suing WSJ, with MK True Crime Contributors
02:02:02
Megyn Kelly introduces MK True Crime, a new podcast and YouTube feed featuring your legal favorites, in-depth coverage of ongoing cases, real-time trial coverage, with all your favorite contributors including Arthur Aidala, Mark Eiglarsh, Mark Geragos, Jonna Spilbor, Matt Murphy, Phil Holloway, Ashleigh Merchant, and Dave Aronberg. Today the whole group joins to discuss whether the Ghislaine Maxwell case could end up at the Supreme Court, the possibility prominent people being might be called to testify before Congress about Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump suing the Wall Street Journal for billions over its reporting on the alleged Epstein birthday letter, France First Lady Brigitte Macron’s explosive defamation lawsuit against Candace Owens over the host's claim she's a man, whether a Trump pardon could actually be coming for Diddy, the DOJ’s convening a federal grand jury to investigate Russiagate, how this jury could mean Obama administration figures might actually face charges, a...
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- [00:01]
Megyn Kelly
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show. Today we have got a lot for you. I have spent hours and hours preparing for today's show because it's True Crime day here at the MK show as we prepare for for the launch of the newest member of the MK Media podcast network family, MK True Crime. Our very first channel built around a whole host of contributors and the ones that you will recognize from the nearly five years of the Megyn Kelly Show. And going back even further from my time at Fox News, I mean, when I was just a baby at Fox News and still named Megan Kendall, that was my first husband's last name, we launched Kendall's Court. And some of the folks who are now going to be participating in the MK True Crime Channel would appear regularly with me on that thing. I mean, we're going back to 2004, my friends. We have got eight of our contributors joining me today. There are many more who are going to join us on the channel MK True Crime. It's basically just a podcast feed that you can subscribe to. Okay. So we're calling it a channel, but it's just a podcast. And you'll be getting their commentary on legal matters and hot cases. And when there are, you know, cases that are being tried live that we can watch, they'll have regular updates for you there. It's going to be twice a week feature to start. Okay. But in any event, here's what to expect. A little preview here from our MK True Crime Watch. Coming soon to the MK Media podcast network, MK True Crime. All right, let's get moving. We got to go. The FBI does not want you to be doing this interview. The reason why is for my own safety. Original shows, live trial coverage, in depth investigations, expert legal analysis, and more.
- [01:58]
Mark Garagos
After stab number 16, that apparently wasn't enough for her.
- [02:01]
Megyn Kelly
With all of your Kelly's court favorites for years at the Megyn Kelly Show, Mark Garagos, Arthur Idalla, Mark Eiglarsch, Dave Ehrenberg, Phil Holloway, Ashley Merchant, John Espilbore, and more we're going to be announcing soon. Plus, yours truly, who that knows he's done this, sits willingly for a polygraph and an interview with police. Hello. MK True Crime launches August 6th on YouTube and all podcast platforms. Subscribe now. The truth is the truth. We're going to find it one way or another. Yeah, we are. Okay, so go ahead and subscribe now, all right, so you can go to a couple different places. Wherever you're getting this podcast, just type in MK True Crime and it'll come up and you can subscribe. It's like a new podcast feed that you can follow and it's going to have me and all of our friends doing legal commentary and, and then go to YouTube. And on YouTube, you'll, you'll just type in MK True Crime. It'll come up. Okay, you can, or you can just go to mktrucrime.com and that'll have all the links for you. So we've done three different ways for you to get it. I think you're really going to enjoy it. You're going to love the names and the legal commentators. I this is not hyperbole. There are no better, like, these are the best in the legal commentary business or joining MK True Crime. Everyone sees the potential in this. Everybody knows how much our audience loves true crime and follows these cases and that it's a smarter approach to true crime. It's not just true crime like Kohlberger and Diddy, but we do, as you know, elevated legal analysis on things like Russiagate and Epstein, some of which you're going to get today. This is a panel. We've intentionally chosen people who can do the full gamut. Not everybody can, but as I point out, I've been doing this for 20 years and I know who's great at it. You. And we were very selective in who we offer this opportunity to. And you're going to love them all. You can completely trust them. Okay, so joining me today, two of our OG Kelly's court favorites. Arthur Idalla, who's managing partner of Idalla Bartuna and Caymans PC and host of the Arthur Idalla Power Hour. And also Mark Iglersch, he's criminal defense attorney. You can go find him at speak to mark.com. they were both one time prosecutors. Now they're defense attorneys and do some civil work as as well. But before we bring them in and start talking about the latest cases, I want to bring you just an update on what just broke in the Jeffrey Epstein case in Congress. All right, it just broke. Attorney General Pam Bondi ordering prosecutors to start. Okay, there's a couple of things because there's Epstein and then there's Russiagate. First, Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered prosecutors to start a grand jury probe in the Obama administration's role in the Russiagate hoax. Okay. We've been covering this at length of Matt Taibbi and Aaron Mate And Glenn Greenwald. So she's now officially opening a grand jury proceeding. Who's the target? What does she have in mind? Who's likely to be charged? We don't know exactly. We have some theories and we are going to get to the Russiagate latest when Dave Aronberg joins us second hour. But we're gonna start this hour with the latest on another update that just broke, not from Pam Bondi, but from James Comer who chairs the House Oversight Committee and has just subpoenaed basically every attorney general that ever was that's still living to come testify about Epstein. And and not just them, but Hillary and Bill Clinton. My God. And James Comey and Robert Mueller, both former FBI directors. On the ex attorneys general, we've got everyone from Alberto Gonzalez under George W. To Jeff Sessions, who was Trump's Bill Barr, who was Trump's Eric Holder, who was Obama's Loretta lynch, who was Obama's and Merrick Garland who was Biden's. Omg. Will they show up and testify? This is all about Epstein. What will they say? They Comer has also subpoenaed the Department of Justice for records related to Jeffrey Epstein's case. I mean, he's gone wide with his net and is trying to get everyone and everything that knows anything about Jeffrey Epstein. Joining us now to discuss it, Arthur and Mark, what will the effect of the sparring between President Trump and the Federal Reserve be? Can the Fed take the right action at the right time or are we going to be looking at a potential economic slowdown? And what does this mean for your savings? Consider diversifying with gold through Birchgold Group. For decades, gold has been viewed as a safe haven in times of economic stagnation, global uncertainty and high inflation. And Birch Gold makes it incredibly easy for you to diversify some of your savings into gold. If you have an IRA or old 401k, you can convert that into a tax sheltered IRA and physical gold or just buy some gold to keep it in your safe. First, get educated. Birch Gold will send you a free info kit on gold. Just text MK to the number 989898. Again, text MK to 989898 and consider diversifying a portion of your savings into gold. So if the Fed cannot stay ahead of the curve for the country, at least you can stay ahead for yourself. Arthur, so glad you're here for this because you represent Ghislaine Maxwell, so you have to follow this for your day job. What's happening here? What does this mean to you?
- [07:40]
Arthur Idalla
Okay, so let Me just put it all in perspective. So we have represented Ghislaine for probably better part of two years. We wrote, submitted and argued her case, her trial where she was convicted in the second Circuit Court of Appeals here in Manhattan, of which we lost, not surprisingly. So and then my friend and colleague David Marcus, he did the cert petition for the Supreme Court of the United States and he has handled down in Florida everything that we've heard going on with conversations with Ghislaine and all of that stuff. I'll also tell you this, Megan, and you and I go back 21 years now and I think you'll understand this when I have had the, I don't even know, hundreds of conversations with Ghislaine Maxwell. Like, I don't ask her, like, oh, what happened on the island and who was there. And it's really been all about her trial and how she was mistreated, like where she was sleep deprived during her trial, she was not able to eat food because she. Those kinds of issues. Evidence that was allowed in, evidence that wasn't allowed in all of. And then of course there's this non prosecution agreement. So people who are calling me, my friends in the media and all around the world are just like, what happened? Was Bill Clinton there and did she really have a three.
- [09:02]
Megyn Kelly
We do want to know.
- [09:04]
Arthur Idalla
Like, yeah, I, look, I get it, but I, I know, you know what professionals we all are. Like, those are just not questions you need to ask a client who you're representing them on their appeal. It's more about what happened in the courtroom during the trial. So with that being said, quit holding out, Arthur.
- [09:21]
Mark Garagos
Give us some details.
- [09:22]
Megyn Kelly
Spit it out.
- [09:24]
Arthur Idalla
With that being said, I don't have some magic information. I do know what the legal focus is, whether the United States Supreme Court is going to accept her case or where. Some states in the United States of America say that when a federal person.
- [09:44]
Megyn Kelly
Wait, before you get to that, let me just set it up.
- [09:46]
Arthur Idalla
Okay.
- [09:46]
Megyn Kelly
Her appeal is based on, at least in part, what's going up to the Supreme Court, you hope, because they can take it or reject it. Is she says Jeffrey Epstein, when he struck that plea heart or that sweetheart deal plea deal in 2008, that there was a non prosecution agreement saying you the United States will not prosecute Jeffrey Epstein's associates in connection with these crimes that I'm pleading on. And he named four associates specifically. And Ghislaine, was she one of them? No, she wasn't one of them, but it had a catch. All that seemed to suggest not it was like these four, but not limited to these four, will not be charged. And so now you guys are saying this entire prosecution of Ghislaine in 201819 was inappropriate because Jeffrey Epstein basically covered her with that sweetheart plea deal that he struck back in 08. The other side's disagreeing that that applies to Ghislaine. And they're also arguing the government, federal government. Right now this Attorney General's office is arguing. When we said the United States won't prosecute, we only meant the Southern District of Florida. We did not mean the Southern District of New York or any other U.S. attorney's office. So those are the two big things that are being appealed to. And the Supreme Court's got to decide whether that non prosecution agreement can be interpreted the way you guys are arguing or should be interpreted the way the government is arguing. And there's a split in the underlying circuits on the law.
- [11:16]
Arthur Idalla
Correct. So just so people understand what that means, certain states of the United States of America acknowledge that the lane should be covered under that. And other states say, no, it only pertains to the district where the cooperation agreement is signed. And those are the types of the cases that the Supreme Court of the United States of America is supposed to take. When, you know, the different states or different circuits are contradicting each other, they're supposed to be the tiebreaker. However, to be blunt, all of this notoriety around delay in the last two months, I think I've already said on your show, I think the chances of her being heard in the Supreme Court are diminished by her name recognition and, and now that's even more so. Do you really think, Chief, I agree with Arthur Roberts wants to get in the middle to Jeffrey Epstein thing. They're having enough problems with their reputation. This is not going to help her. This is only going to hurt.
- [12:09]
Mark Garagos
There's that, Arthur. But also the question is, is this a large enough issue that affects that many people that the Supremes want to take on their docket, A very limited docket. I'd like them to. Selfishly, I'm making deals in federal court every day. And when prosecutors say we're not going to do something, I don't think, well, wait a second. Do you work for a different government? Aren't you all under the same employer? You mean somehow, somewhere else they could violate this agreement, this contract that you and I have. But that said, I don't know that the Supremes are going to think that this has that kind of far reaching effect and take it on their docket.
- [12:49]
Megyn Kelly
Just to make clear for the audience listening at home, just, just make clear, there's a split in the underlying circuits right underneath the US Supreme Court on whether when the government agrees that it's not going to prosecute you, like I was saying, it's agreeing for the entire federal government in all jurisdictions or it's only agreeing in your jurisdiction that you currently have this legal issue in. And Ghislaine and Arthur are arguing when it says the United States will not prosecute, it means the United States government, period, in any jurisdiction. And there are some federal district or federal circuit courts of appeal that have agreed with that. But unfortunately for Ghislaine and Arthur, there's another set of federal courts of appeal that have said no, it only means the one limited jurisdiction in which the criminal case at issue was brought. So this is the kind of thing the US Supreme Court might take up because it's its job to resolve splits in the circuits. But it only would take it if it's like a big enough case and the right case. And it depends on how sharp the split is, how recent the split is. And basically it seems like this is not the best vehicle to get the split issue resolved. Arthur. That on top of the publicity of having it be Ghislaine Maxwell, the Supreme Court and John Roberts. Yeah, I agree with you. Probably won't want to touch that with a ten foot pole. Go ahead.
- [14:08]
Arthur Idalla
So just, just so folks understand, when you make this agreement, when they, when they made this agreement down in Florida there and market attested this as well, when you make these big agreements that really matter, they always tell us, the defense attorneys, well, this has to go to Washington to be approved by the Attorney General of the United States of America. So it's.
- [14:32]
Megyn Kelly
And that happened. That happened here.
- [14:34]
Arthur Idalla
Correct, correct. So that it's like just the, you, the, the local prosecutor is saying this and someone can say, how could a guy in Florida handcuff someone in Manhattan? And they can't. But the Attorney General of the United States of America, who they may.
- [14:50]
Megyn Kelly
Justice can.
- [14:52]
Arthur Idalla
Main justice can. And that was our argument to the Second Circuit. And I'll be blunt, they weren't buying it like for a second because in the second Circuit their position is no, you can only handcuff whatever circuit you're in.
- [15:05]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
- [15:05]
Mark Garagos
And the problem is it sounds very fact specific. In other words, Arthur has very unique facts like that it ran up to the highest in that department. And you know, the Supreme Court, they're not going to get involved in something that just has appeal to this particular defendant.
- [15:25]
Megyn Kelly
And, well, and on that front, another unique thing about Ghislaine's appeal is normally it's the guy who signed with the government, it's the guy who got off the hook. Like, this would be a more typical case if it were Jeffrey Epstein saying, you can't prosecute me. You signed a non prosecution agreement with me back in 2008. But this is not Jeffrey Epstein. It's an associate of his. And on top of that, it's an associate who wasn't specifically named in the non prosecution agreement. And so these are all excuses for the Supreme Court to say that this one's not the right one for us to resolve this issue. Because they do. Do they have enough heat coming down on them every day thanks to all these Trump rulings? Now we're going to get Russiagate rulings. We're going to get, does Obama have immunity? All this stuff is about to come to them. They don't want to touch hot button political issues if they don't have to. And this one's about as hot as they come. All right, let me shift gears and ask you guys, as just people who are members of the criminal bar, what's going to happen in response to all these subpoenas? It's the House Oversight Committee. They've issued valid subpoenas. Generally, if you blow off a subpoena that you get from the House of Representatives, they refer you to the DOJ for prosecution if they want to. And if they can prove you're not complying, you could wind up going to jail like Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon.
- [16:52]
Arthur Idalla
So I was going to say my client Steve Bannon wound up. My client Steve Bannon wound up doing some time in jail because he wasn't going to go in there. But, I mean, Mark could explain. There are procedures and they have to have cause. They can't just start issuing subpoenas to Megyn Kelly and Mark Iglosh. There needs to be supporting probable cause. I don't know if that's the correct standard to bring Bill Clinton in. You can't just bring him in for. Because on a whim. Because the New York Post is reporting that Ghislaine may have said, you know.
- [17:23]
Mark Garagos
Ab or yeah, this is going to be challenged. These people are not going to ignore the subpoenas. They're going to get great lawyers like Arthur who will then argue that this is harassment. There's no real purpose for them to come in and try to get that subpoena quashed.
- [17:39]
Megyn Kelly
They'll go into a Federal district court and make those objections?
- [17:44]
Mark Garagos
I think so, Yeah. I think that's the appropriate place. I've never done it, but yeah, because.
- [17:49]
Megyn Kelly
They need somebody to tell to slap Comer's hand. I mean, obviously, if they object to Comer, he's going to say, overruled. Come in here. Mean, we're talking about heavy hitters, you know, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Like, they're definitely gonna fight Lynch.
- [18:01]
Arthur Idalla
Like, why? What does Loretta lynch have to do with any of this? I mean, look, I should see May know a lot.
- [18:06]
Megyn Kelly
She definitely knows a lot about Russiagate and Hillary Clinton. I mean, I. Like when I first saw these names, I was like, I want to talk to all these people about Russiagate. And then I realized, wait, this is an Epstein list. Which makes sense. Like Alberto Gonzalez. That makes sense. He was the AG when they signed that sweetheart plea deal in 2008. So I get that.
- [18:26]
Arthur Idalla
That's the one that would be relevant. He's probably.
- [18:28]
Mark Garagos
But can I. Can I ask you guys something? All of this stuff, all of the effort, the Clinton this and that, all this stuff, don't we really care at the end of the day who was harming children with Epstein? Do you really think that this circus is ever going to get down to that? I feel like we're back to when Geraldo opened up Al Capone's vault and there was nothing in there, and we waited with anticipation. I feel like it's the same damn thing with this subject matter.
- [18:56]
Megyn Kelly
I see what you're saying. I don't think this is the list that you would subpoena if you actually wanted answers in the Epstein case. Like I.
- [19:04]
Mark Garagos
Right. So what are we doing?
- [19:06]
Megyn Kelly
And I actually don't even think it's witness testimony that they need. I think, including your client, Elaine. I think what they need is documents. You know, I mean, what we really need to see is what the hell is an Epstein safe? You know, what. What was found and seen when the FBI conducted the raid of Epstein's properties early on in 2019 because they didn't take the stuff. And then they had to go back. Like, that stuff might actually tell us something. I'm not sure James Comey is going to know what we need to know. And I have even more doubts about, I don't know, Merrick Garland, Jeff Sessions. Jeff Sessions. All these people sound relevant to me on Russiagate. And I wonder if this is some sort of backdoor way of getting testimony on Russia Gay. Anyway. Your thoughts on it, Arthur?
- [19:50]
Arthur Idalla
My thoughts are this the first of all, Mark said what A lot of people are saying children and pedophilia. The charges against Epstein, everything mentioned against Ghislaine, it was never pedophilia. It was never 13, 14, 15. They were all overage. They were old, they were young, they were 18, 19, 20. But every.
- [20:11]
Megyn Kelly
Wait a minute. Because he pleaded guilty about the current solicitation of. Yeah, okay, but let's not, let's not fool the audience. He did like the 14 year olds. That is true. And I know that. And I know that from somebody very close to the case. Now, he would try to find one that looked older, but if given his choice, Jeffrey Epstein would take a 14 year old all day long. There, there is a question about whether he wanted a four year old. And we are still wondering about that because the FBI says it has tens of thousands of videos of him looking at actual child pornography. Like, you know, forgiveness. Of course, Mark's way of saying it.
- [20:45]
Arthur Idalla
Mark's correct. The ultimate goal is to see if any of these people, these names bandied about, were involved in molesting children. But we also know, and I compliment the Department of Justice, we're not just releasing a bunch of names that they've found and are associated just to tarnish people who have, who haven't done anything wrong. And look, Megan, you've covered it extensively. I mean, look what happened to Dershowitz, this woman blamed on their oath and writings all over the place. She had sex with them multiple times in multiple locations and ultimately said, I may have been mistaken. And you know how it has destroyed Alan Dershowitz and his reputation and everything that he worked for for all of those years.
- [21:30]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, with all due respect to Virginia Giuffre, God rest her, she lied about a lot. I mean, she's the number one victim that they put out there as like the Epstein victim. And I believe she was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, but she lied about a lot. And now people want to like resurrect her word. Like it's the word of Mother Teresa. And it really wasn't.
- [21:52]
Arthur Idalla
Megan, she lied so much that she did not testify in Ghislaine Maxwell's trial. She was interviewed by the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI after they spoke to her. He was not a witness. And there's that famous picture of her and Prince Andrew and Ghislaine's right in the picture. So if she had any kind of truth coming out of her mouth, you know, they would have thrown her on the stand and they didn't.
- [22:15]
Mark Garagos
And Megan, to Arthur's point, what I fear is that this inquiry that they're conducting may at best get you to more people who hung around Jeffrey Epstein. So what the inference, however, is going to be that they did nefarious things with children. And we saw what happened at Dershowitz. There's no innocent way of your name being mentioned in this arena.
- [22:39]
Megyn Kelly
And.
- [22:39]
Mark Garagos
And then even when it's found that the person lied, somehow you get your name back in whole. You don't. So my concern is what are we really going to get out of this? Because there's a downside, too.
- [22:51]
Megyn Kelly
Everybody hung out with Epstein. You know, there's a report out today from the New York Times. It's a look inside of Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan lair. And they've gotten pictures of his famous. They call it a townhouse. It's a mansion which is a stone's throw from Central Park. Sold to Epstein in 1998 by Leslie Wexner. I have lots of questions about this guy, Les Wexner, a lot. He owns. Owned. I don't know if he still owns Victoria's Secret, the Limited. He was like this with Jeffrey Epstein pals, like two peas in a pod, and seemed to really take care of Jeffrey financially. Unclear to me. Why? Because Epstein didn't have. Didn't have particular expertise that Wexner would have needed. In any event, in this mansion, I'm going to get to the part about, you know, the people who they point out were in it, but they write. Dozens of framed prosthetic eyeballs lined the entryway. A sculpture of a woman wearing a bridal gown and clutching a rope was suspended in the central atrium. Look at this bizarreness for the listening audience. I don't even know how to describe this. It looks like a mannequin in a wedding gown sliding down like a rope, like a fireman's rope. It's bizarre and creepy and you would really want to turn around and walk out. If you walked into somebody's lobby like this foyer. They show guests sat in leopard print chairs around a large rectangular table. Occasionally, a magician would perform. He preserved a map of Israel drawn on a chalkboard with Mr. Barack signature. That was his good buddy Ehud Barack, who visited Epstein scores of times. Photos show a credenza crowded with framed snapshots flaunting Mr. Epstein's connections to some of the world's most recognizable people. There was Epstein smiling along Pope John Paul ii. I think it's fair to say none of us suspect Pope John Paul, although I recognize the Catholic Church has had some issues. Mick Jagger Elon Musk, Fidel Castro, Larry Summers, President Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, Mr. Trump and Melania Trump. A frame dollar bill signed by Bill Gates, possibly as payment of a bet, because written on the dollar bill is I was wrong. They go on. There was a taxidermied tiger lounging on a lush rug in the office. He showcased a green first edition of Lolita. Ew. Disgusting. We all know why he liked that book. Atop a wooden sideboard were more frame photos, including one of Mr. Epstein with Saudi Arabia's Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Another flight up, up to the third floor, his sanctum, a suite that included his bedroom, the mansion's infamous massage room, and a cluster of bathrooms mounted in a corner above his bed. A surveillance camera. And you can clearly see it on the photos that they're showing. They're. We're showing them here on YouTube.com Megan Kelly. You can see it there in the corner. Let's see. A second camera can be seen in an adjoining room. Several victims have said the mansion was outfitted with a network of hidden video cameras. In the massage room, paintings of naked women, a large silver ball and chain, and shelves stocked with lube, according to photos reviewed by the Times. I mean, it's another Diddy situation. Nothing but lube and baby oil everywhere. No surveillance cameras were visible, however, in the photos of the massage room, which is interesting, and I don't know what that means, but that's. That's just a list of the people, Arthur. Who were on the credenza in photos. Michael Wolfe gave an interview recently saying he walked in. The Dalai Lama was there. I mean, if they really did just start releasing the names of anybody they found, quote, in the Epstein files, it would feel very much like Salem.
- [26:46]
Arthur Idalla
Exactly. And the world we live in now. And what Mark said is, like, it doesn't matter. The truth doesn't matter. All of a sudden, you become from the famous lawyer or the famous actress or the famous politician to be like, oh, yeah, that's. It's a Jeffrey Epstein guy, right? It was. That was hanging out with Epstein. The real question for me, Megan, is this guy Epstein from Coney island, how did he accumulate this wealth at such a relatively young age? He clearly had enormous wealth. That. That was his magnet, Right? Why are they all hanging out with him? I mean, I don't know why Mick Jagger's hanging out with him on one end and the Dalai Lama on the other end. You know, he would invite people, you want to come on my plane? You want to come to my private island? You Know Geraldo, Geraldo used to do that with his island in Puerto Rico. But you know, when you go there, you just drink a lot of rum, not fool around with a bunch of young ladies. But, you know, I mean, when Dershowitz went to the island, he went with his wife and his 12 year old daughter. That's when he was the one time.
- [27:48]
Megyn Kelly
Once you, once you have a couple of connections, like once you say you're hanging out with Prince Andrew or the president of mit, you can get, as the lady said, the mother in Pride and Prejudice, that will open the door to other rich men. I mean, it's just a couple, Mark. And then they all come flocking.
- [28:08]
Mark Garagos
How many people said during the Diddy investigation and then the trial, how many other celebrities were at his parties that that became the question. But that wasn't the right question. Merely because they attended a white party, you know, everybody's wearing white, hanging out, didn't mean that they were lubing it up at the freak offs. And that's what's happening here. Merely because they're on his private plane or even went to his island doesn't mean that they were privy to the freakish criminal acts that he was engaged in.
- [28:39]
Arthur Idalla
Megan, can I ask you the question that Mark touched on?
- [28:43]
Megyn Kelly
Why are the answers to these questions, does anyone in this panel represent such a person who might actually know the answers to these questions? Okay.
- [28:53]
Arthur Idalla
And right. But Megan, here's the ultimate question, really. And Mark, Mark touched on it. There's so much stuff going on in the world. Ukraine and Gaza and 13 million American kids going to start going to sleep starving. Like, why are we so infatuated? The Epstein thing, he's dead, what, five years now, right? It's six years. 2019 is going to be this month. Like, why all of a sudden, is it because of Trump? Is it because of that happy birthday car that we're going to talk about with the lawsuit?
- [29:25]
Mark Garagos
How about that interview where Pam Bondi tempted us? She said the, you know, incorrect words. She meant just the files on my desk. But she led all of us to believe, erroneously maybe that there is a list. And we all wanted that list because we like justice and anybody who harms children should be prosecuted. We should know who those people are. Oh, sorry. It wasn't the list. It was a file that was on my desk. So the pitchforks were up, right? I didn't mean.
- [29:53]
Megyn Kelly
Yes. And, and honestly, and I think most people, you know, the left right now is taking advantage of that ridiculous Wall Street Journal report, like Trump's in. And Elon tweeted, trump's in the Epstein files. And I think Trump's 100% in the Epstein files insofar as the Dalai Lama is in there. And, you know, like, he was a friend of his, so he's. His name is probably in there at some point fashion. That doesn't tell us anything. In what capacity? What did he do? Was he somebody being funneled Barely Legal Girls by Jeffrey Epstein? I've never seen anything to suggest a whiff of that. But I also think there's a genuine, genuine interest in whether there are pedophiles or pedophile adjacent powerful men in this country who are powerful enough that people just keep covering for them. And let's face it, I casually referenced the pedophile scandal of the Catholic Church. It's one of the biggest scandals of the past 50 years. Arthur's Catholic, I'm Catholic. Like, it's a stain on a church we love. And then there's no question that there's been a pedophile behavior in Hollywood for a number of years. And certain powerful people. And like, look at the story that came out this year, last year on Nickelodeon, and what was going on in just one show alone. Like, this does happen at very high levels.
- [31:08]
Arthur Idalla
And.
- [31:09]
Megyn Kelly
And people are horrified by it. And it. They have a feeling that if you have enough money and enough connections, you can get away with it. So that's another, like, very strong driving force that, plus a general distrust of the elites and a demand that someone like Trump bust up these circles as opposed to protect them. So that's the short version. I don't.
- [31:30]
Arthur Idalla
None of those stories you just mentioned, all of those stories put together, all of the Catholic Church and Nickelodeon, all of them put together, have not garnered the publicity that Epstein has gone. I could tell you from my own.
- [31:43]
Megyn Kelly
Phone, you guys know that stays a mystery.
- [31:45]
Arthur Idalla
Profile cases, they're going crazy about Ghislaine. They don't care about Harvey, they don't care about Steve Bannon. They don't care about these other Rudy Giuliani.
- [31:53]
Megyn Kelly
Because it's still a mystery.
- [31:54]
Arthur Idalla
Like, they're out of their minds for.
- [31:57]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, because this one still is a mystery. And if that's why, if there would just be full disclosure and you could redact names for which there was no actual accusation or actual evidence supporting, you know, possible charges. I understand, you know, the Dalai Lama doesn't need to be dragged through this. But. But there is a way of releasing more information, and they haven't done it. And I will say again, I Think it's documents and whatever videotape evidence that could be released. No one wants to see actual kiddie porn, but I don't think it's witness testimony. I just. I don't have a ton of hope about this list. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll wait and find out. Okay, you mentioned it just in passing quickly on this Wall Street Journal lawsuit. Trump has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for publishing that he sent Jeffrey Epstein a letter that was body for Epstein's 50th birthday. And it had like, isn't it great to share secrets? Or some line about that. Trump has totally denied that he wrote it. And it's a kind of an interesting case, you guys, because Trump is saying, I did not write it. He said to the Wall Street Journal when they went to him for comment before they printed it, Mark, it was not me. I didn't write it. That's not mine. Don't print that. That's a lie. And the Journal felt they had it, you know, to the point where they could report it, and they did. And now he's suing them for defamation. So how does the court resolve that? Because I don't know that the Journal can prove that Trump did write this. And Trump's going to go in there and swear under oath that he didn't.
- [33:25]
Mark Garagos
I don't think they need to prove that, as you know, because you're very familiar with this line of law. The issue is not whether it's true or not, because they get it wrong all the time. The issue is whether Trump, probably the most popular man in the land, can prove actual malice. They get it wrong all the time. The question is, did they know that it was wrong or a reckless disregard of the truth. So it starts, the analysis does, with Trump saying, before you publish it, it's not me. You need to realize I didn't do it. That either means that he did do it and he's saying he didn't do it, or he really didn't do it. So they better investigate before they put that out there. And they did, supposedly, and they believe they have a good faith basis to publish it.
- [34:12]
Megyn Kelly
That's the problem for Trump. Signature.
- [34:14]
Arthur Idalla
His hand, his handwriting is easily attainable. Right? I mean, Mark and I involved in cases where there were subpoenas for search warrants, actually for people's handwriting, because they need to compare it. Trump's handwriting is everywhere. It's not hard to do an analysis of, okay, here's the card on one hand, and then we don't know if.
- [34:32]
Megyn Kelly
They have the card.
- [34:33]
Arthur Idalla
We know.
- [34:34]
Megyn Kelly
We don't know.
- [34:35]
Arthur Idalla
They didn't print the card.
- [34:37]
Megyn Kelly
Well, they describe something, but we don't know if it actually exists. Maybe it was just described to their reporters. They did not include the image in their reporting. They did not represent that they had actually laid eyes on it. So we actually don't know.
- [34:52]
Arthur Idalla
Okay, now, you know, that's a case. That's. That's what litigation is all about. I mean, they.
- [34:58]
Mark Garagos
Depends what they got.
- [34:59]
Arthur Idalla
They're not reckless. I mean, the Wall Street Journal, in my opinion, they're not a reckless reporting agency.
- [35:05]
Megyn Kelly
And they know Trump is. Is litigious.
- [35:09]
Arthur Idalla
Litigious, right. I mean, they just got millions from what CBS cost, Colbert's job and abc.
- [35:16]
Mark Garagos
They vetted this, Megan. And again, no one knows with 100% certainty whether something's authentic. No one could ever know that. But that's not the standard, unfortunately. Again, if they do, they believe it's.
- [35:29]
Megyn Kelly
True, or have they recklessly discarded, recklessly disregarded? Whether it's true or false, that's the standard when you're a public figure suing over defamation. And also the problem for Trump is that when you are commenting on a matter of public concern about a public figure, you have the most protection you can get. So this wasn't actually a comment about Trump's personal life. It was more a report about a story that's in the news tied to whether Trump as president might be covering up, you know, the Epstein story. So that is a matter of public concern. And you're making the comment about a public official, which means you, as the. As the journalist, have the greatest amount of protection. However, if you're speaking about a public official and commenting on their private life, you still have more protection than if you're commenting on a private person and their private life. But it's not quite as high as doing public official and public life. And that leads me to the lawsuit by Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron against Candace Owens. So Candace will have a measure of protection. She's being sued for defamation by the first lady and President of France because she has said that Brigitte Macron is actually a man who's posing as a female and posing as, you know, having been a female for years, and that she has a penis, to put it bluntly. And this, I think, would be. I think would be. I could be wrong, but it could. It's definitely a comment on a public figure and more of a measure of private behavior. You could argue it's a big fraud. On the people of France, I don't know. But still, there will be a very, very high standard either way for the McCrones to win on a defamation case against Candace Owens. They say that they sent her a letter in December saying, you better take down those claims, we are warning you. And that they sent her Brigitte Macron's birth certificate, which is attached, it's reprinted in the complaint. It does show a little girl named Brigitte, whatever the maiden name was, I don't have in front of me, was born on such and such date in the 1950s. And it's got like the actual birth announcement and other proof, including pictures of a young Brigitte. Yeah, Brigitte. They say her last name is Trogneau. That's her maiden name. And in French it says that her brothers and sisters welcome their little sister in Amiens, France on looks like 1st of December. Anyway, she's now got to defend this and Candace Owens is saying, I look forward to it. Great. And she's saying for the first time I'll get to sit across from Brigitte Macron at a deposition and hear her asked about her penis. That's what Candace's direct. I think that's a direct quote and it's never happened before. So she's not backing down one bit. And, and it is reckless for the McCrones to sue Candace Owens for defamation if this is true. Right. It's somewhat reckless for them to do it because Candace is not wrong. She will get the chance to ask those questions through her lawyer directly to the first lady of France. Arthur, so what is really going on here? And how do you like the Macron's chances.
- [38:42]
Arthur Idalla
Is nuts, huh?
- [38:45]
Mark Garagos
Pardon the pun.
- [38:46]
Arthur Idalla
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, you know, the truth is an absolute defense. Right. And that's, that's the law. Right. So this is not a hard case to prove or disprove. It's a matter of you can actually get there. In other words, you get a judge to rule at some point, you know, what anatomy is attached to the body. But I would say if there is a birth certificate that was sent to Ms. Owens that shows a girl born, I think on you said on my birthday, December 1st birth announcement, you know, birth announcement. Okay, well, okay, that's a little different. That is a little different. A birth announcement is different than an officially stamped. I mean, I don't know how they do it in France, but you know.
- [39:33]
Megyn Kelly
Maybe she has a birth certificate too that she'll produce. I don't know. But.
- [39:36]
Arthur Idalla
Well, okay, a birth certificate with A race seal with a raised seal. And you're saying, what are you talking about? Here, here's my birthday. I'm, you know, I'm a girl. And Candace is still doing this. She's on notice. She's got. She's not.
- [39:49]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, but wait, wait. Let me ask you something.
- [39:51]
Arthur Idalla
She's not evidence.
- [39:52]
Megyn Kelly
Candace's defense, what she says. I think she said a few different things about this, but what she has alternatively posited that perhaps there was a Brigitte Macron that was born on that date and that she lived and that she may have died. And said, do we have this on tape, Deb? And said, I will allow my brother. Because I think one of her theories is that it's Brigitte's brother posing as Brigitte and that maybe Brigitte died and allowed her brother, who wanted to be a woman, to assume her identity. Here's Candace in. This is after the lawsuit was filed. And so at this point, she's definitely seen the birth announcement. If I said certificate, I misspoke. Here's that. In Sat 6, I do believe that Brigitte Trogno, the real Brigitte Trogno existed. It's plausible that Brigitte Trogno got sick. That the real Brigitte Trogno got sick and perhaps had a dying wish to help her brother, John Michel Trogno, who was living perhaps as Veronique. Right. And knowing that, okay, well, he's never going to be allowed to live his life authentically. He's always going to be. Have to hiding, you know, always going to be hiding and doing these sorts of things because this is just not a time where people are recognizing this transgendered identity. Well, what if she gifted her brother her entity here? You know, that's not a thing yet. You can. You can just become me. Okay, that's. Again, we're surmising. There's no evidence that Brigitte Trogno died. There's no evidence of that. But that's what it feels like to me. It feels like to me that Brigitte Trogno did her brother, the real Brigitte Trogno did her brother a favor and allowed him to become her.
- [41:42]
Dave Aronberg
Wow.
- [41:43]
Mark Garagos
I mean, wow.
- [41:45]
Megyn Kelly
I'm working on it. Working on it.
- [41:48]
Mark Garagos
Good luck with that. She's so close to the line, if not over it. It's one thing to just say someone looks like a man. Okay? That's protected. Offensive, but protected. It's another thing to say, maybe this happened, maybe that happened. She's reporting something and she's coming out with a statement. And then trying to come up with some theory to back it up in one respect. Again, it doesn't have to be true. What she's saying doesn't have to be true. It, it just has to be not a reckless disregard of the truth. So if she's got theories to back it up, then okay. But if that's the best she's got, it seems completely half cocked again, pun intended.
- [42:28]
Megyn Kelly
Well, that's her rebuttal, her case in chief. And I confess, I haven't watched any of this. I have more important things to do than worry about Rajit Macron. But my producers watched it and they did tell me, and they have nothing against Candace, but they did say that it's. There's a. It's thin and it's disjointed and it's hard to follow at times. And it's, you know, it sounds a lot like conspiracy. Some of the conspiracies that we've criticized in the past have come true. That I don't know whether this will be one of them, but I don't, I don't totally get like, she is positing that Brigitte is a man. And if Brigitte is a man, if Brigitte's a man, then she's always been a man. Or she, yes, possibly was a woman who died and gave her identity to somebody. If she's always been a man, why is there a birth announcement, right, showing that a Brigitte was born on such and such a date? There are pictures of Brigitte when she's a child. Candace still claims that that child is not Brigitte, that it's somehow Brigitte's brother who is Brigitte in the photos. And yet the problem for this theory is that the brother is still alive. The brother was at Emmanuel Macron's swearing in ceremonies, both of them, and pictured in at least one picture with Brigitte Macron. So like the brother who she's claiming has assumed Brigitte's identity because he was so dying to be trans, is alive and well. There he is. He's the bald guy back there. He took over the family's chocolate confectioner business. And so that doesn't really jive, but it doesn't. Look, we don't have to fully buy into this or not to do good legal analysis on it. And what they're going to have to prove, Arthur, is that Candace knew it was false or recklessly disregarded, that it. It was, that it appeared to be false. And I will say this in her defense, I believe she's a true believer. I do not believe she. She knows this is false. Reckless disregard is going to be the interesting question.
- [44:32]
Arthur Idalla
I totally agree with you. And my interaction with Candace hasn't been too deep, but deep enough where, I mean, she did a whole thing on Harvey Weinstein, right? So we were involved with that, and I'd spoken to her several times, and she got it all right. I mean, and. And even things that I didn't want her, like, weren't that helpful for Mr. Weinstein, like she still reported on things accurately. So on that limited exposure that I had to her and her reporting, she dug deep and she was very thorough and. And she was very ethical and honest in that particular scenario. I don't know enough about this, but I don't think she's reckless with herself and her family that she's gonna just make the. I mean, she knows. She knows what these laws are. She was put on notice. So if she was really, you know, playing with fire when you're put on notice months ago, like, hey, don't do this, and here's proof. And she still disregarded that. She must have something, as you just said, which that she believes she's holding on to that makes sense that will clear her in any loss.
- [45:35]
Megyn Kelly
Well, here. Here's to that point. The lawyers who are representing the McCrones are like the defamation lawyers. They do plaintiff's defamation cases for a living. Claire Lock. And they're two very well known, very well respected lawyers. And it's a husband wife team. And the husband, Tom. Claire went on with Jake Tapper right after they filed this case against Candace. And here's how that went. Saudi.
- [46:03]
Phil Holloway
How much money do you want and do you want her to apologize?
- [46:07]
Megyn Kelly
Well, we'd love an apology.
- [46:08]
Phil Holloway
Of course, a court can't order her to apologize. And based on her conduct, especially today, we don't expect her to do anything other than double down. We'll put forward forward our damage claim at trial, but if she continues to double down between now and the time of trial, it'll be a substantial award.
- [46:23]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, sorry. That. That was one, but we needed the other one. Sat 7 I don't know what she.
- [46:28]
Phil Holloway
Knows to be true or not. She says a lot of lies. How do you know that she's lying as opposed to a deeply disturbed individual? Could be both, of course. It's one of the reasons why Our complaint is 219 pages long. We wanted to lay out exactly that. We wanted to explain to the court, and we wanted to explain to the people that will see our Lawsuit. How we can prove that she knows it's false. We have put this information directly in front of her. Even if you want to give her.
- [46:53]
Megyn Kelly
A pass for the early crazy stuff.
- [46:54]
Phil Holloway
That she said after we put facts and information in front of her, black and white, multiple times.
- [47:00]
Mark Garagos
What, like her, like the First Lady's birth certificate?
- [47:03]
Phil Holloway
Like, what kind of facts? Yeah. We have laid out extensive evidence in our complaint demonstrating that she was born a woman, she's always been a woman. And the allegations of CIA control conspiracy and the incest and all the other things are demonstrably false.
- [47:20]
Megyn Kelly
This is the complaint. It is huge. And it does have pictures of Brigitte Macron through childhood. And it's got all the things that we've been talking about. And their point is, this was all given to Candace before they filed the lawsuit in this December retraction demand. And she didn't. And I think the reason she didn't. I mean, I think the worst case scenario for Candace is she didn't because she doesn't believe that. Okay, so is that defamation? You know, Mark, like, she did. She rejected it. And let's. Let's go the. Let's go the nastiest, like, possible interpretation of what she's done. She's a conspiracy theorist who got twisted up on this Macron thing, and it's not true. And she refuses to see reason. I. I'm not sure that's reckless disregard. That's the worst case scenario. The best case scenario for Candace is it's true and these people are lying about it because they don't want to be humiliated.
- [48:16]
Mark Garagos
Tepper makes a good point. If she's. And I don't know her like Arthur does, I don't know her at all. Let's say she's a little wacky. Let's say she's a little off. Right. And beats to her own drum. Again, that's gonna help her if she doesn't know it to be false like they're claiming. I mean, the plaintiffs came out there on his show and said, we believe we can prove she knew it to be false.
- [48:38]
Megyn Kelly
Wow.
- [48:39]
Mark Garagos
But let's go to the second tier. A record.
- [48:41]
Megyn Kelly
He's not going to be able to do that.
- [48:43]
Mark Garagos
Well, he claimed. I mean, it's amazing that he. Listen, if I'm an attorney, I don't.
- [48:47]
Megyn Kelly
Go to the highest tier. It'd be an audio tape. You know, it'd have to be an audio tape of her being like, I know it's not true. I'm just doing it for ratings.
- [48:53]
Mark Garagos
But the key is whether it's a reckless disregard and the fact that she's eccentric, a little wacky, whatever that is, I believe can help her.
- [49:01]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, I think that's. I'm saying this is the worst case she's.
- [49:05]
Mark Garagos
That I don't know anything about her.
- [49:07]
Megyn Kelly
But I will say this Delaware federal court is not great for her. Most of the. I've spoken to a bunch of defamation attorneys and most of them say this is not ideal for her. There will be a question about whether the McCrones want to see this thing through to trial. I feel like she probably will. And it's tough. I'll tell you just as a, as a media personality, it's tough to get insurance for defamation.
- [49:31]
Arthur Idalla
Ask you that question I was going to ask you.
- [49:34]
Megyn Kelly
She's got no, she's got skin in this game. No question. And I'm sure she has to consider, you know, the effect this would have on her family. And I just curious, you think these.
- [49:46]
Mark Garagos
Helpers, you think these just curious plaintiffs lawyers, you think they're being paid hourly or they're doing this on a retainer, meaning they have a vested interest in how much money they're going to get out of this or they're being paid hourly? Probably.
- [49:59]
Megyn Kelly
I bet they're getting paid hourly. I get their getting paid hourly. I know, but they're. These, these two are no joke. So you'd have to be a little concerned. All right. We'll continue to follow it fair and balanced as we always do, guys. Thank you. Coming up next.
- [50:09]
Mark Garagos
Thank you, Megan.
- [50:10]
Megyn Kelly
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- [52:38]
Dave Aronberg
Thank you.
- [52:39]
Ashley Merchant
So happy to be here.
- [52:41]
Megyn Kelly
Jonas Bilberry, you are One of those OGs I mentioned at the top of the show where we've been doing this now for 21 years together, my sister. So it's great to be taking our relationship to the next level. It's an honor to have I won't say the old and new, but long term friends and newer friends all on board. Okay, let's kick it off with Diddy. And this is this case was tried for the defense by Mark's daughter, Tenny Garagos, who no matter what you think of Diddy and I, the audience knows I'm not a fan. She crushed it, Mark. I mean there's no question this was a huge defense verdict even though he was convicted on the two lesser charges. But I mean huge victory for the defense. So hats off to your daughter.
- [53:27]
Dave Aronberg
You know what I can tell you is I sat and watched her opening statement and I was in the kind of the back right in the where the family was and all I could think of I'll reminisce Just a minute. Was my father, who was also a homicide prosecutor, formerly, like Matt, recovering when he was in partnership with me. And I was thinking, he was one generation away from his mother escaping the Turks in the Armenian genocide, and here is his granddaughter giving this opening statement. So it was quite a moment to watch it. You're right, she did crush it.
- [54:01]
Megyn Kelly
That's awesome. Honestly. Good for her. I. I'm not one of those loons who can't separate the lawyer from the, you know, the person. It's like. It doesn't mean any defense lawyer is endorsing a person or saying anything whatsoever about whether the person did the thing or didn't do the thing is we need defense lawyers to test this system and make sure guys like Matt have to cross all their T's and dot their I's before they put somebody behind bars. I'm sure Matt agrees. So let's talk about Diddy, because he really, really, really wanted bail, even though he had already been told, you're not getting bail, but now he came back and said, but please, please, I really want bail. And he said, oh, I, I'll. I'll agree to all these extraordinary conditions. 50 million bond. I would do that. He said, I'll do electronic monitoring. I. It's unusually dangerous in this detention center where I'm being held in Brooklyn, and other defendants who are convicted of my type of charges are usually released. I'm being, like, held to a higher standard here and said, you gotta, you gotta, gotta let me out. And the judge said goodbye. No, he said, you. I'm trying to find the exact quote here. Basically what he said was, you have acknowledged that you behaved badly in other ways here. You might have had traction with me in a case that did not involve evidence of violence, coercion or subjugation in connection with the acts of prostitution at issue. But the record here contains evidence of all three. Judge Subramanian said. So, Mark, I'll give you the first crack at whether the judge got that right.
- [55:38]
Dave Aronberg
I don't think he did. And I don't want to put my daughter in an uncomfortable situation, but I, I think from my standpoint, he was charged with counts that had mandatory minimums. He rolled the dice. He beat the RICO. He beat the 2. Sex trafficking, which I think last I looked at the mandatory minimum of 15 to life. Each of them in the RICO would have been, I mean, the old joke, your money or your life, that would have been all of his fortune. He beat both of those and he got convicted of two man acts. And so people understand, the so called victims of the man act are rather strapping young males who crossed state lines. So if, if there was ever a ticky tack foul, to quote the late great Shikurn, that was it. And the judge has said, well, this falls under a chapter of the US Code that makes this violent. Well, that may be the case, but he also, his honor also asked them to do a survey of every case. He wanted to see it prior to sentencing, before they even made this last bail application. And nobody found a case where anybody has been similarly situated, let alone prosecuted and detained. So do I think he got it right? No. Do I think there is too much deference given to the government? Yes, because the government is frankly, and to my mind are a bunch of sore losers. I mean, they came out on the day of the verdict when they had lost spectacularly, said we think it's 41 to 50 months. They now in their response to this bail application are saying, we may ask for double that. I mean, yeah.
- [57:25]
Megyn Kelly
Matt, care to defend the government?
- [57:29]
Phil Holloway
Not really on this one, Megan. I can tell you the only thing I really disagree with on Mark on that is Diddy didn't beat the case. His daughter beat the case and the defense team. And I'm with you on that, Megan. Like, once you separate out the emotion and everything that we saw did he do on that video with Cassie Ventura, he comes off pretty bad as an individual. It was his defense team that saved him. And they, from a purely mercenary point of view, they did an outstanding job. They really did. I think that what Diddy is going to deal with in the sentencing and also for this bail review is one of the things that nobody's talking about, Megan, is we got to go back to when he was using other inmates calling codes to call witnesses in the case supposedly. And if you remember back during one of the very first bail hearings, he was doing that. And that is the type of thing. Mark's familiar with this. I'm sure you are too. There's an old adage you hear in law school. The, the second most powerful thing to God on earth is a federal judge. And that is a lot of judges will take a personal affront at that. And that's, I think, where he really screwed up. I think that the, the, when the, when the prosecution came out and said he's looking at more time so he poses a flight risk, it's just like, it makes me cringe. It's like, come on guys, that's just dumb. Sorry, that's dumb. Where they hung their hat or where they should have hung their hat is danger just based on the fact that he is such a prolific domestic violence dude, you know, and I'm sure he would. I'm sure he could keep it straight for until sentencing, but it also indicates potentially he's looking at a custodial sentence beyond what Mark or I would call CTs or credit time serve. So it looks like the judge is probably planning on dinging him something. But I also. Look, I agree with Mark. In federal sentencing, you can't have gross disparity between one case and another. And so he's there. The government's going to be lucky if they get four or five years, frankly, I think.
- [59:37]
Megyn Kelly
John, what do you think of it?
- [59:39]
Ashley Merchant
I think Diddy is a dirtbag. And because the judge knows that he is paying lip service to the law, I don't think this judge really believes that Diddy is a flight risk. I don't believe any of that with this judge. He's doing one of two things. My opinion, he either is trying to punish Diddy because he knows that he's not really going to be able to throw the sentencing book at him and that Diddy will get what is very close to credit for time served and walk very shortly after sentence. So this judge wants to inflict as much pain as he can beforehand, or it's some sort of foreshadowing that this judge is going to be amenable to departing from the sentencing guidelines upwardly, to really stick it to Diddy, because Diddy is not a likable guy. He's a misogynist. He's a woman beater. He's a horrible person. But, yes, I agree that Mark's daughter did a good job and this was a just verdict. I don't want to get hate mail for that, but it was.
- [60:42]
Megyn Kelly
Well, I like the verdict couldn't be supported. It could be supported. I totally disagreed with it fully and completely. But it's not something you could say. There was no rational basis for the jury to come to this. But here's. He's still like, does he have any remedy between now and the October sentencing, Mark, or is it done now? He's not getting bail. This is the final.
- [61:03]
Dave Aronberg
He doesn't have a remedy with this judge. He does have a remedy with somebody else in the executive branch. So I, I think.
- [61:12]
Megyn Kelly
All right, is it true? Is he trying to persuade Trump to get a pardon?
- [61:17]
Dave Aronberg
Yeah, I think Trump's admitted he's. He just. I just saw an interview in which not one, but twice he's admitted that he's been, the President has been talked to. I actually think if this would be above my pay grade. But politically I, I can see where this resonates with him because remind, you know, let's you lived as and I did many shows with you during the time Trump was being prosecuted both civilly and criminally in New York, which is reminiscent of what is happening with Diddy. He was accused of everything there was. They threw everything, including rico.
- [61:56]
Megyn Kelly
Trump. Trump had a RICO case too.
- [61:58]
Dave Aronberg
Exactly. And by the way, Trump did not get, in my humble opinion, ever get a fair trial in New York. I thought that was preordained. I mean he was the worst place in the world for him to have been tried was in New York. And it was an unfair prosecution from the get go by prosecutors who had an agenda. He can see that same thing here. I mean there was, you know, this Emil Bove who was now on the circuit, who was the one who had to trek down to New York to on Mayor Adams case to tell the judge in the Southern District, hey, set that aside and talked about Damian Williams, the previous U.S. attorney who brought the case against Adams and against Diddy. They cited the fact that he put up Diddy and the mayor on his website when he left office and that he was trying to curry favor to become the Attorney General under Kamala. So there are some things that I think resonate with Trump and I think he should commute the sentence, if not pardon him.
- [63:03]
Megyn Kelly
Oh my God, you're such an effective advocate. But I'm so jarred, all of that.
- [63:09]
Dave Aronberg
But why are you so. Look, I agree that there I've known Sean for 15 years and he has.
- [63:18]
Megyn Kelly
You always do this. You love all the worst people. You love the brothers, you love Scott Peterson. You've never seen a client who did it.
- [63:27]
Dave Aronberg
Okay, that's a little ad hominem argument. But let's go back, let's go back to what I say. He has had his troubles, he has had his substance abuse. He is, if you, if you go through all of the violent acts, they're almost always related to his substance abuse almost exclusively. He has been on a cocktail of drugs, which is a story often told in Hollywood, which is where these people get just, they go up, they go down, they're just dispensed all kinds of stuff when he, and he's now been in there for about a year and he's clean and sober and he's a different person when he's clean and sober and he's made some he's made some kind of amends. And, you know, he did get Gina, who was victim number three, to write a letter in support of him being released. So. Stop.
- [64:21]
Megyn Kelly
I know Gina's full of it. Gina needs his money. This is Gina. Here's Gina in 2019 talking about this wonderful man. Here she is giving an interview. He had caught me texting another man. We was in Miami and it got really crazy. That time we were in his closet and he, like, pushed me and I fell to the ground. And. And then he got. He, like, stood over me. So I was like laying on my back and he stood over me and he started, like punching me like this. Like, he avoided my face, but he, like, started punching me, like on the side of my head, and I was just like covering my face. He, like, stomped on my stomach, like, really hard. And I, like, took the wind out of my breath. I couldn't even. I couldn't breathe. And he kept. But he kept hitting me. And I was like pleading to him, like, can you just. Can you stop? I can't breathe. And he, like, stopped for a little bit. He. He like grabbed my hair from the back and, like, was like punching the back of my head because he. He was just avoiding my face when he was like, hitting me. He's a real gentleman. That was on the Tasha K Blogger show In June of 19 years later.
- [65:47]
Dave Aronberg
Six years later, she's writing a letter.
- [65:50]
Megyn Kelly
Hold on. Now she's saying. Now she's saying he's super sweet. He's not. But. But by the way, he was with Jane all the way up to the moment of his arrest. And her testimony was she was being abused up until that moment. It went on all the way. The physical abuse, the freak offs, all of it. Yeah, go ahead.
- [66:09]
Dave Aronberg
Okay, just. But just hold on. Twelve New Yorkers heard all of this. They didn't hear Gina because she didn't.
- [66:17]
Megyn Kelly
Dispute the physical violence. He didn't even dispute it.
- [66:20]
Dave Aronberg
Right. He wasn't charged with it.
- [66:21]
Arthur Idalla
That's.
- [66:22]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, now we're arguing about whether he's an asshole and he is the jury back in. But you're trying to. But you're trying to tell us he's also warm and cuddly now that he's off the drugs. It was just the drug single tier bullshit. Matt, you've heard defense lawyers do this a thousand times or more.
- [66:38]
Phil Holloway
Listen, not only what you just wait as Megan not to cut you off. Mark. This is why. I've known Mark for years. We go back decades together. This is why Mark is The first guy I'd probably call if I got in trouble, especially if I did it. You just witnessed it, America. That's. That is Mark Garrigo said his best. He, he got everything right. The problem is John is exactly right. He is, to use your term, term, Megan, I'd never heard it before. He's an. And he's exposed. And if we'd seen that, if we'd seen that interview just then by itself, without that Cassie Ventura video, we'd all be going, maybe, yes, maybe she's Dr. Money. But it's all true. We know it's true. Any man who had put his hands, or in his case, feet on a woman like we saw in that video is a friggin dirtbag. And that is why in my, and I'm spitballing here like we all are. That's why everything Mark said was right about, I think with Trump and New York and it wasn't fair. And I think that a lot of people believe that. The problem is, is that he's got two parts. Number one, he isn't. He is a total dirtbag. He is an abuser of women in the most bullying kind of way. All that came out. And the second thing is it's not going to take people that work for Trump very long to see that he was an ardent Trump hater. And all that's going to, all that's going to feed in. So Mark, Mark was right, but John is more right, I think on the, on the grand scheme. And I don't.
- [67:59]
Megyn Kelly
That's the thing.
- [68:00]
Phil Holloway
My money is he's not going to do.
- [68:01]
Megyn Kelly
It's too, too complicated on the pardon, John. I mean, I tweeted this out the other day, but that already the GOP is struggling with women. This will not help. Already the GOP base is mad at Trump. The Epstein sort of. The scandal has infuriated the MAGA base because they feel he's covering up for elites, well connected rich people who may be in these files. This will not help. Trump gets zero upside zero from pardoning Diddy.
- [68:29]
Dave Aronberg
Okay.
- [68:30]
Ashley Merchant
And that has to be his consideration, right? I mean, on the one hand you want to pardon somebody if you think they've been really wronged by the system. I get that. But this would hurt Trump more than it would help Diddy. Why? Because Diddy's going to walk pretty damn soon. No matter what happens on sentencing day. He's not gonna be there forever. He's not going to the chair. So why burn a favor, for lack of a better word? Why should this administration do that for him. But look, Donald Trump likes to forgive. He forgives. A lot of people can fight one day and then shake hands with the next. He doesn't need to do that in this case with Diddy. Diddy's not gonna be there for that much longer.
- [69:06]
Megyn Kelly
Well, go ahead, Mark. I'll give you a last word.
- [69:08]
Dave Aronberg
I was just gonna say you can prosecute him by proxy, but I'll go back to what Tenney said in the opening. If he was charged with domestic violence, we wouldn't be here. That isn't what he's charged with. If you want to punish him for something that you couldn't do legally, I guess, then that's okay. And by the way, you can always make that argument. And that's the argument they made about Trump in New York. You can always torture the law into a prosecution. I think it was the.
- [69:40]
Megyn Kelly
He did the thing he was convicted of. He did. He did transport prostitutes.
- [69:45]
Dave Aronberg
And by the way, when I go back to. When I go back to the Burbank Airport on a Friday afternoon, and I'm one of 500 people going to Vegas, and all of the women from Van Nuys are there going to have sex in Vegas. They all.
- [69:57]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, Mark Garagos is having different flights than I am. Okay, interesting. Standby. We'll put. We'll put a pin in that.
- [70:04]
Dave Aronberg
You don't fly southwest anymore.
- [70:07]
Megyn Kelly
When you fly out of the Northeast, you're not surrounded by that kind of crowd, Mark. That's all I can tell you. All right, let's do Goldberger in the time we have left, because there is some news there. He just got transferred to solitary. Brian Kohlberger, convicted of this. These four quadruple murders in Idaho. Can I tell you something? So Matt's put how many serial killers on death row? Eight. 12.
- [70:29]
Phil Holloway
I've done eight death penalty trials.
- [70:32]
Megyn Kelly
Yep. So, yeah, I just want to say this. When I covered this case, I hadn't yet read this book that Maureen Callahan recommended to me, the Stranger Beside Me, which was written by a woman who was friends with Ted Bundy, and she was a crime reporter reporting on crimes being committed in the Seattle area, having no idea it was her friend Ted Bundy who was doing it. It's a crazy great read. And for days, I walked around with my AirPods and listening to it on audio, and, like, people come up and pat me on the shoulder. I'd be like, oh, my God. You know? But. So I was neck deep in the Ted Bundy stories, which are very creepy, but interesting. And I'm now convinced, because we did see in the. In the materials released that he had an obsession with Ted Bundy. And he took the selfie with the. The hood, the hoodie on. He had reportedly been Googling Ted Bundy. And there was speculation that he was. May have also potentially obsessed with this Elliot Roger serial killer or just multiple murderer, I should say, when, like at a murdering spree on a college campus, I think he was more obsessed with Ted Bundy. Now, having listened to the story, because there's so many, so many similarities. And what they, what, what Ann, the writer of this book, posits, knowing Ted, is that he, Ted Bundy, was re. Killing the same girl over and over and over and over and over, and that he may have committed any place between 30 and 130 murders. Ted Bundy all, for the most part, looked exactly the same. Between the heights of maybe 5 foot 1 and 5 foot 6, dark hair parted in the center, almost always wearing jeans or slacks, and oftentimes, when not in that outfit, asleep in their beds. And one of his most infamous crime days was when he walked into. In Tallahassee, the Florida university there, and murdered. Attacked. It was six. Six, I think Florida sorority sisters, and three died. I'm trying to get my facts straight. There were so many murders, but he definitely attacked with a knife and with a. He used a bludgeon just like a piece of wood to bludgeon them. And there are just so many things. Now we've learned that he knocked out the teeth of Kaylee Gonzalez. That's something Ted Bundy did too. There's a report that Brian Kohlberger couldn't have this one high school girl that he apparently really liked. She didn't have the time of day for him. She was like a popular cheerleader who was blonde. She looked a little similar to Kaylee and to Maddie. In any event, this is a long way of saying Ted Bundy was a big fan of going to homes in the middle of the night and accosting his victims while sleeping. That's what he did to those sorority sisters, is what Brian Kohlberger did here. And now we're hearing from Kaylee's dad. This happened right after it was the week of the sentencing where he's talking about some more details on the cases here. Sat 12.
- [73:21]
Arthur Idalla
Investigator called me and said, yeah, he not only did he have searches related to drunk girls, he also had really related to gagging.
- [73:31]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
- [73:31]
Arthur Idalla
And some of the damage to Kaylee could have basically seemed like he was trying to quiet her he was trying to silence her. Which if he's searching for gags, choke porn, then in that, that, that murder scene he had drunk girls and choked Pool literally. So for, for a prosecutor to say that there's no sexual motivation at all, we know there's no assault, okay. We know this person was interrupted, literally interrupted. So who knows what his intentions were. But for you to go there and say that it wasn't motivated really insulted so many people that my phone started ringing.
- [74:17]
Megyn Kelly
Very interesting, Matt, because we were critical of the prosecutor for saying that. And now here's one of the victim's fathers saying that they did find so called choke porn on his phone.
- [74:26]
Phil Holloway
Well, you and I called that, Megan, if you remember the last time I guaranteed to you that we were going to find pornography or that word was going to come out about that. And lo and behold, if that's accurate and it's a little bit of a telephone game here because you got the detective to the dad saying that he found that, but he hasn't seen it, but of course he did. And that, that aligns with every case like this that Mark and I have ever done. Certainly there's almost always porn on the, on the computer. So. And yeah, the prosecutor, I've got a lot of problems. I got a problem with his, with his media tour right now where he's talking about how, what was the quote? Sorry, I got notes here. We had the opportunity to do it in a way. Yeah, to really give some, some immediate finality. We're pleased and relieved that the community and the victims families aren't going to have to live through this. You know, that's pretty tone deaf. The families never get over this. And you know, it's like that applies to every single murder case. So it's like what is the, you know, do we just give everybody a deal now so you don't put the family through the case? And by the way, having watched Olivia Gonzalez, that woman when she ripped into Coburger, I guarantee was not afraid of the process or facing Coburger in court in the penalty phase. And it's like I, and this is crass. So I hate to say this, but if I, if I'm allowed to swear, I keep thinking of Dave Chappelle's quote, you know, yeah, we, we could do it that way, Mr. Prosecutor. We could just give everybody a frigging deal. Or you could shut the fuck up because you are undermining the, I think the integrity of a lot of death penalty cases in the 27 states and the federal system that still have it by essentially, you've got this example that everybody's heard of. If the death penalty does not apply to Bryan Coburger, who does it apply to? And you and I also talked about how. What changed? I wanted to know what changed after he made his announcement. And the answer was, nothing changed other than Coburger wanting to come in and plead guilty. And in my view, that's not a reason to come off the decision to seek death. And I know a couple of the families supported it, the Gonzalez.
- [76:34]
Megyn Kelly
Then they reverse themselves.
- [76:36]
Phil Holloway
I want that guy, that guy to go away, Megan. I want him to retire. He keeps talking about retiring. I want him to comb his beard or ride his horses or wherever he does in Idaho and shut the F up because he's undermining, in my view, the integrity of murder cases throughout the United States. And it, it's.
- [76:53]
Dave Aronberg
It's very frustrating question for you. I thought about you, Matt, on this, and I didn't understand. I still don't understand. Almost always in cases you and I see, there is, okay, if you want a deal, you have to sit and you either give a proffer or you answer questions or you do something in which you get closer to some kind of. You know, I hate the word closure because as you say, you never get there. But I don't understand. That wasn't done here. There was absolutely nothing that was done to at least get some information so that people could have some answers.
- [77:35]
Megyn Kelly
Right?
- [77:35]
Phil Holloway
Isn't that astounding, Mark? I mean, and again, Megan, Mark and I have been doing this for decades with each other. We've been doing. It means the prosecutor, Mark, is the defense lawyer. You can absolutely do that. And the thing is, in Idaho, they got less than 10 people on death row. It's a state where he might actually have been executed. I know John probably agrees here, too. If they had gone to him and his defense lawyers and said, look, we're going to come off death, but he has to actually explain what he was doing. We're going to do it, as Mark said, a proffer where you can't use the statement against him, but you can answer those questions. They can structure that any way they want. And all this guy Thompson did, he just rolled over and let him plead. And then also remember, Megan, when they did that, we were live when he came in and he said, there's no sexual component. Where I just about jumped through my computer when he said that. But also he went to lengths to say, we don't know if he was looking at the House. And there's other cell phone. He qualified it 18 different ways. Mark is 100% right. They could have structured that any way they wanted, in my view. Yeah, he did the job. I used to rake my grandmother's leaves. I did that job and I did it horribly every single time. You can do the job and then you can do the job in a way where you still kind of suck at it. And sorry, it's a. I don't want to be too harsh on him. It's a very difficult position. I've been there totally.
- [78:48]
Megyn Kelly
Just stand by because I want to bring in Johnna, but I want to tell the audience what I'm going to show them while she's talking. Among the other pieces of evidence that we've just gotten our hands on are photos, a photo of Kohlberger. The More the. In the wee hours of the morning that they arrested him in his parents house in the Poconos when of course they burst in and he was stuffing little Ziploc baggies full of his trash, which we know from the investigators he was then discarding in the neighbor's trash can. Here he is moments after realizing his world was changed forever. They also reported that he had scrubbed many of his searches off of his phone. He was using a VPN to avoid detection. They also talked about how they briefly suspected that he had attacked a different woman in 2021 in the Pullman area. Pullman, Washington. Somebody went into her bedroom holding a knife, wearing a ski mask, a burgundy ski mask. His was black. She kicked him and he ran. Then police ultimately determined he didn't live in the area at the time. I don't know. I still got questions about that one, to be honest. He might have been out there visiting. But your thoughts on where we are now as he gets moved to solitary confinement for the rest of his life and we're supposed to, I guess, go along with his prosecutor's revisionist history of. We're pleased, we're relieved the community, the victims families aren't going to have to go through. They're going to have to continue to live through this.
- [80:08]
Ashley Merchant
I'm professionally offended by the way that this plea went down for the reason we were talking about. He didn't have to allocate, he didn't have to admit to shit. And that is a slap in the face to all the families. And not only that, either I have the premise for a novel or I have a premonition. Because what I think this prick is going to do in the future. Future, he's Going to wait maybe till his parents are dead so he doesn't have to admit anything in front of them. He's going to wait.
- [80:36]
Megyn Kelly
And he.
- [80:36]
Ashley Merchant
At five years, ten years down the road, he's going to say, hey, you want to know why I did it? You want to know why I picked that house? You want to know what my motivation is? I'll tell you, but you got to shave, I don't know, a little time off my sentence or you got to give me something for this information that you allowed me to go to prison for the rest of my life. Hanging on to. I'm professionally offended by that. But the second thing, quickly, that I'm professionally offended by is right before prosecutors decided to accept this deal, defense attorneys decided to do this deal. Remember, the defense tried to float a motion requesting that they be permitted to present evidence of a third party culpability. They did that knowing full freaking well that that was gonna be a wild goose chase and a rabbit hole. That professionally offends me, too. That's sand in my soapbox on that.
- [81:25]
Megyn Kelly
Now. Now Kohlberger is going to be in solitary, and the policies of this prison require that he is confined alone for up to 23 hours a day with limited human interaction. He will receive meals in his cell. He will only be allowed to shower three times a week, which I guess he's going to be upset about because one of his other cellmates said he loved to shower for an hour at a time. He. He may. He may take advantage of the step down program that gradually transitions inmates from solitary confinement to a more open environment. Though if you were Brian Kohlberger, would you really want that? That will probably be the end of him.
- [82:02]
Dave Aronberg
That's a death sentence if he does that.
- [82:05]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. Again, single tier. You guys are great. I can't wait to watch you on MK True Crime. Thanks so much for being here and being there too. Thank you.
- [82:14]
Phil Holloway
Thank you so much, Megan.
- [82:15]
Megyn Kelly
Looking forward. And these guys are going to have more on Diddy on the premiere of MK True Crime. It comes out tomorrow morning. Go now while we take this break to your podcast feed and just type in MK True Crime. It'll come up and go ahead and subscribe or go and I should say, and go to YouTube.comk true crime and you can follow there for the all these great true crime discussions. We have the best in the business. And coming up next, three more of them. Phil Holloway, Dave Aronberg, and Ashley Merchant. The woman who brought down Fanny Willis. The American dream has changed. Forget the white picket fence for most Americans, the real dream is getting out of debt. If you are feeling the pressure from rising prices, mounting credit card debt, and just trying to stay afloat, I want you to know there could be a way out. With Done With Debt, they've got one goal to break you free from debt permanently. They're not pushing loans or bankruptcy. Instead, their tough negotiators go straight to your creditors, slashing what you owe, wiping out interest, and eliminating penalties. And the best part? Most clients see more money in their pocket. Month one. You've worked too hard to let debt steal your future. With Done With Debt, your dream of being debt free could be possible. Visit donewithdebt.com and speak with one of their experts. It's completely free, but some of their solutions are time sensitive, so do not wait. Go to donewithdebt.com that's donewithdebt.com More and more Americans are prioritizing their health and getting back in shape. But diet and cardio alone are not enough. If you really want to build muscle and burn fat, you have to do strength training. That's why I want to tell you about Don and the team at Jacked Up Fitness. Their all in one home gyms are already best in class, and their all new X series elevates home fitness to a whole new level. The Jacked Up Power Rack X Treme lets you do hundreds of exercises, basically everything you used to do at the gym, all from the comfort of your own spare room or garage. It features a completely upgraded cable crossover system. And if you're new to strength training, they offer a free Get Jacked up program that is Full body video workouts. Simply press play and follow along. So no more excuses. It's time to take control of your fitness. Go to getjackedup.com and sign up for their free training program. And when you're ready to purchase your own Jacked Up Power Rack Xtreme, use my promo code MK to save yourself 10% at checkout. That's getjackedup.com code MK at checkout. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show on Sirius xm. It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM XM app. It has ad free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk, podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.
- [85:26]
Johnna
Go to SiriusXM.com MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months free.
- [85:38]
Megyn Kelly
Offer details apply. Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. We've got three more huge stars joining the MK True Crime show and podcast. They are Phil Holloway. You can follow him on X at Phil Holloway, ESQ For Esquire. Ashley Merchant, who's a criminal defense attorney, who is the woman who brought down the Fanny Willis case and Fanny Willis herself. Let's face it, Donald Trump would still be dealing with that nonsense if it weren't for Ashley. And our friend Dave Aronberg, author of Fighting the Florida Shuffle, he's former Palm beach county attorney. They're all contributors to MK True Crime. So excited to have them go. Subscribe now mk true crime.com for all the links. Welcome back, Ashley. Great to see you again. Great to see you.
- [86:25]
Charlie Kirk
How have you been?
- [86:26]
Megyn Kelly
I've been so good. I'm so glad that you are doing this. You are such a wonderful commentator during the whole Fanny Willis thing and such a talented attorney. So it's awesome that you're going to be part.
- [86:35]
Charlie Kirk
Thank you. I'm so excited.
- [86:37]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. And you two guys, this is like, you know, your family now. So it's awesome to have you as part of it. We couldn't launch this without you. I'm only sorry that you won't be able to argue with Mike Davis on MK True Crime yet. Yet, Dave, I might just get yet.
- [86:51]
Johnna
You know what, I find myself agreeing with him more and more on social media, which is scary. I don't know what the worlds are colliding that my head's blowing up, but that's what happens when it comes to Middle east politics. But that's another matter.
- [87:03]
Jussie Smollett
Oh, it's even more fun with Mike in person, too. I mean, my word, he's something else.
- [87:09]
Megyn Kelly
I love when every people are like, you're an. And he's like, yes. Like, he never just feuds any of the attacks that get leveled against him. Okay, let's just start with Russiagate because that's the harder news. And then we've got to get to Jussie Smollett. What a weird segment. But we've got to do it. Russia Gate. Okay. The DOJ is launching a grand Jury investigation now into the Russiagate conspiracy allegations. Per Fox News, they've seen a letter from Bondi that they say she has directed her staff, she did this yet late yesterday to act on the criminal referral from Dni Gabbard related to the alleged conspiracy by the Obama administration to tie in Hillary to, to tie President Trump to Russia. They have, we're told, convened a federal grand jury and we don't know exactly who they're looking at or for what. But I'll just tell you this. CIA Director John Ratcliffe did mention in his last Sunday news interview with Maria Bartiromo the following dates. And keep in mind, virtually every federal crime is like a five year statute of limitations. And perjury definitely has a five year statute of limitations. Brennan, John Brennan, former head of the CIA under Obama, testified in private to John Durham, who was the special counsel who investigated some of these Russiagate allegations during Trump 1.0. Brennan testified in private to John Durham August 21, 2020. Today's August 4th. So what, we got a couple weeks until that one expires. Hillary Clinton testified in private to John Durham in May 2022. So a little bit more time there. Brennan also testified behind closed doors to House Judiciary in May of 2023. Comey. Last time we can see him testifying publicly or privately is December 2018. But if any of these acts, if they're part of an ongoing conspiracy, that would be the claim can be resurrected and used to keep the statute of limitations from, from expiring. So what does it say to you? I'll start with you, Ashley Merchant, as you are clearly the biggest star here amongst our legal panel. You're very sweet.
- [89:16]
Charlie Kirk
I don't know if that's true, but immediately as you're talking about this, I'm like, oh, it sounds like rico. It sounds like some conspiracy, a RICO conspiracy, you know, the prosecutor's darling that you can make anything, whether it's past the statute of limitations, you know, a crime or not, and you can make it into a RICO case. As we learned through the, the Fani.
- [89:34]
Megyn Kelly
Willis saga, the Democrats taught us that. So.
- [89:37]
Charlie Kirk
Exactly.
- [89:37]
Megyn Kelly
And so you know what's good for the goose.
- [89:40]
Charlie Kirk
Exactly. And so I, you know, I think why not have a grand jury investigate this? I mean, why not look at it? I know there's a lot of unanswered questions. And so, you know, put people under oath, put them on the stand, have them actually testify. I know we're going to have them testify in front of the House as well, see if their stories all match and see what happens. Because as we've seen from live tv, a lot of times when you have people on the stands, stories don't match, things change. And so, you know, why not do this at this point? Why not at least give the American people some more information?
- [90:10]
Megyn Kelly
What about it, Dave? Because it's one thing. Comer is subpoenaing a bunch of people in the Epstein investigation. We started the show with that. This is different. It's. I'd much rather get a subpoena from James Comer than to get a grand jury subpoena, which is not to be trifled with. Right, like that. Now you're talking about, okay, actual criminal liability potentially. And probably most of these people will plead the fifth. No.
- [90:35]
Johnna
Well, it depends. You know, there's the lesson of the John Durham investigation. We saw this before where John Durham investigated and brought charges for perjury and then it blew up in his face as the two trials led to acquittals and so didn't go so well. DOJ doesn't want that. Yeah, it doesn't go so well. So that's the built in protection. There are guardrails. So if the prosecutors go down the road and start trumping up charges, to use a phrase, it's gonna come back to bite them. So they need to be careful. Now I can't say about the perjury because I don't know what Hillary Clinton and Comey said to investigators. I don't know that. But I gotta say, just like Andrew McCarthy, I am skeptical of this whole Russiagate thing because a lot of this stuff stems from these emails that really were seems like Russian disinformation. I mean, that's why the report, John Durham put those emails in the annex of his report rather than the main part because he didn't believe him either. There's also that John Brennan memo. Now that's the other thing people are.
- [91:37]
Megyn Kelly
Focused on, which explain what you're talking about. Sure.
- [91:41]
Johnna
So a lot of this is focused on a note, a memoir that John Brennan wrote from a meeting he had with Obama and others where he allegedly talked about the so called Clinton plan, which is what Tulsi Gabbard is saying.
- [91:56]
Megyn Kelly
Aha.
- [91:57]
Johnna
That's the plan where Hillary Clinton is creating this whole Russia hoax and that's the way to win the election. That is.
- [92:06]
Megyn Kelly
Let me just read it. I'll just read it and then I'll let you resume. Sure. This is just a recap on his note. He made handwritten notes after an August 3, 2016 meeting. At the White House, where he briefed Barack Obama and other U.S. officials, including the attorney General at the time, Loretta lynch, and the FBI director, James Comey, about the Clinton plan. The notes claim he alerted them to the, quote, alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services. And the contention is that this was Brennan's CYA memo. Like I told them that this is all a Hillary operation. And every denial that's gonna come from these Obama officials thereafter saying we really believe Trump was a Russian asset is this puts the lie to it because they were told In August of 16 this is all a Hillary plan. Go ahead, Dave.
- [93:05]
Johnna
Okay, well, the Russia investigation, the whole crossfire hurricane, the whole thing into Russia election interference that began before there was this Russian intelligence report that's the subject of all this. So the Russian intelligence came up with this report that Hillary Clinton had a plan and then that was later discussed by John Brennan. That is the whole source of this controversy. But see, when John Brennan discussed this.
- [93:31]
Megyn Kelly
So called the whole source, we know she was behind this deal dossier and that she was potentially behind this crowdstrike group as well. That is believed that that is the one that said Russia hacked the DNC and she, that's she funded them too. So it's not all just, oh, some Russian email said she did this shit. She, her campaign was 100% behind that Steele dossier.
- [93:58]
Johnna
Well, remember, the Steele dossier didn't originally come from Hillary Clinton, it came from the Republicans. They're the ones who funded it and created it. And then Hillary Clinton DNC adopted it. So yeah, just to let that be clear and also keep in mind Marco Rubio, Senate Intelligence Committee came out and said, yes, there was Russian meddling in the election. They were doing it to help Donald Trump.
- [94:17]
Megyn Kelly
We think it was a rubber stamp, but I got it.
- [94:19]
Johnna
All right, but just to finish my point about Brennan, he did not endorse this as credible intelligence. In fact, the context of his note shows that intelligence officials were skeptical of the authenticity of this so called Clinton plan because it came from what they believe was Russian intelligence trying to create this disinformation campaign. So if they want to do a grand jury to look at stuff.
- [94:46]
Megyn Kelly
Where it really came from Hillary emails that had been unearthed by the Russians that they were discussing, from Hillary's top emissaries discussing the plan, and they named the person on her team that came up with the plan that actually was a Russian hack.
- [95:00]
Johnna
No, but, but the person who allegedly sent the email and the person who received the email both said they've never seen this before. And if you look at the emails, and I've read both of them, they certainly weren't totally disavowed emails from Russian disinformation. Yeah, that's why John Durham didn't put it in his main report. He put it in the annex. Don't you think that if this was a real email that John Durham would have put it on page one? Because that's the point of his investigation. Is instead he, he put it in the annex of his report because he didn't believe them either.
- [95:26]
Megyn Kelly
But that's the. Why did the annex happen to the grand jury? Why did the annex go to the CIA safe at Langley and where it was buried to the point where even the archivist didn't get a copy. Nobody got a copy of it. Why? That, that just stinks to high heaven. Because there was something in there that they didn't want us to see. But Ashley, your point is the grand jury will help bring some of this to light. Phil, let me get you to weigh in your thoughts.
- [95:44]
Arthur Idalla
Yep.
- [95:45]
Jussie Smollett
So look, I mean, there's a lot going on here, a lot to unpack. Let me go back to the statute of limitations. Yes, it's true there's a five year general federal statute of limitations. But see, the crime that I'm thinking about, if I'm a grand jury or I'm a prosecutor presenting this case to a grand jury is seditious conspiracy, which by definition involves a conspiracy. Right. So any acts that are taken at any point, you know, during the conspiracy, before it's over. And who knows, the conspiracy could actually still be going on today if there are members of the conspiracy that are trying to cover up the conspiracy. So conspiracies can last a very long time, in which case there really would be no statute of limitations issue for things of that nature. But see, the thing is with, with Durham, he went and he briefed the President of the United States and he said, look, we know this is Hillary Clinton. We know that she's coming up with a scam to blame Trump for being a Russian agent. And then. I'm sorry, yeah, Brennan. So then, so then he briefed the President, President Obama and the US Intelligence services are skeptical that any of this is true. But then he takes it and he ramrods it down the throats of the intelligence community, makes them come up with a new assessment at the direction of the President of the United States, and then they just drop this, this bomb, basically, that explodes and tears up American society and they all leave office. And so after they leave office, are we to believe that they didn't communicate with each other? Are we to believe they didn't go and testify contrary to the facts? Are we to believe that they didn't go on television and say things in furtherance of the conspiracy? So if they, if they find the conspiracy and it's a criminal one, I don't think we're going to have one bit of a problem with the statute of limitations. I'm glad a grand jury is looking at this because this is the kind of thing that, you know, it can't be done on the spot, it can't be done quickly. It needs to have a very thorough grand jury investigation. And with all due respect to my friend Dave, I think there's more there than he thinks is there. He thinks there's no there there. I think there is definitely something there. Whether they can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, we'll just have to wait and see. But I definitely think there's something they're worth a grand jury taking a look at. And I think seditious conspiracy is probably the way to go.
- [98:09]
Megyn Kelly
Let me ask you this, Ashley, as somebody who just was in the middle of a RICO case, and I'm not saying this would be rico, but my point is simply RICO cases, as this case are complicated. They are really complicated. And I think this is a problem that the Trump side, this doj, is going to have. I mean, I have been. I can't even tell you the number of hours I've spent reading materials on this over the past two weeks. And I'm a lawyer, I'm a journalist. You know, I do this kind of thing for a living. I'm still confused. So they're going to try to explain this to a grand jury in a way that's really simple and they can understand what they're indicting and why, like, good luck.
- [98:52]
Charlie Kirk
I say that all the time. I mean, I say lawyers can't figure out rico, you know, how do we expect jurors to? But I think that's going to come down to where they decide to do this jury. Are they going to do it in D.C. or are they going to do it in Florida? And that is where it really matters when you analyze your jury pool. Because a RICO case, a lot of times you just throw a lot of stuff up and hope something sticks. And if you have a jury pool that is very politically Motivated one way versus a jury pool, politically motivated another way. You're likely to get a conviction, you're likely to get an indictment based on that. And so I think it's going to be really vital if they want to pursue this, to determine, do you want to hear it in D.C. where you probably have a jury pool that's not going to be as receptive to it, or do you want to hear it in Florida?
- [99:33]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, so this is, I thought was very interesting, Dave Aronberg, that, that there's speculation that eventually that this people are wondering where the grand jury is, where do they convene it? Did they convene it in D.C. which would be a terrible jury pool for anybody named Trump or related to Trump and much more favorable to Obama, Clinton, Brennan, et cetera. Or did they go to South Florida? And now I've heard multiple people who are close to Trump on air, podcasts and TV and so on, continuing to mention the raid at Mar A Lago. The rate at Mar A Lago was key. They were actually looking for the House intelligence report. That's really what the FBI was doing there. And look, they may have been on a fishing expedition for Russiagate documents, because that was still the left's pet project. But I think that's going to be the key. That's they're going to use that to make this a South Florida grand jury. Right. Your hometown. That's where they're going to go. What do you think? Because there's no way they prefer D.C. over Florida.
- [100:31]
Johnna
Oh, my goodness. D.C. i think, voted 5% for Donald Trump. I don't think they want to go to D.C. they definitely want to go to the red state of Florida. And now Dade county in Miami has turned. Has turned red. So, yeah, I think you're right. But as far as the connection to the raid on Mar A Lago, there was a search warrant that said that evidence exists of a crime at Mar A Lago relating to the retention of documents. That's why they searched Mar A Lago had nothing to do with trying to get the House intelligence report. I don't even understand where they're coming from with that conspiracy theory.
- [101:04]
Megyn Kelly
Caught me by surprise, too.
- [101:06]
Johnna
Yeah, like that's the only place.
- [101:07]
Megyn Kelly
But then when I thought about grand jury jurisdiction, it started to make some more sense. And potential criminal case liability.
- [101:13]
Johnna
Well, I think it's clear that they want to have that grand jury in South Florida, and it's because they don't want it in D.C. and South Florida is becoming redder and redder. It is still not easy, I think, to get an indictment through a grand jury on this matter, because you see the arguments that I've been making it. You've got to show enough where you're going to move ahead with a criminal prosecution. And although it only takes probable cause, we saw this backfire when it came to Andrew McCabe. Apparently, when the administration, Trump administration, was and wanted to prosecute Andrew McKay from the FBI, they couldn't do so. They couldn't get a grand jury to vote that way. So it's not automatic. Even if you do get an indictment, a judge can throw it out later or you can meet the same fate as John Durham, where a jury quickly acquits. So you gotta be careful before you go down this road.
- [102:04]
Megyn Kelly
I think they're interested in making them pay, even if the process is the payment. Go ahead, Phil.
- [102:10]
Jussie Smollett
Yeah, and I was gonna just to dovetail on that. I think Florida does make more sense, but I don't understand how Florida, the nexus. I don't see how the nexus to Florida could be the raid on Mar A Lago maybe. There's obviously things that I don't know. But when you have a judge that authorizes a judicial search warrant, the judge says, look, there's probable cause to believe there's fruits or instrumentalities of a crime. And I authorize you to go search this specific place, I think to a large degree that might insulate any purported defendants that are part of some conspiracy from that piece of it being some act that's in furtherance of the conspiracy. There's certainly a Florida nexus because that's obviously the home now of President Trump when he's not in Washington, of course. But you could really make the case that any federal district in the United States would be proper because this is something that had sort of national consequences. But I'm a little bit dubious of using the raid on Mar A Lago as being some act in furtherance of this potential conspiracy that would give rise to the prosecution being there. I think they're going to have to find something else. Certainly, we're going to learn a lot more about the raid on Mar A Lago. But in my opinion, that search warrant probably insulates these defendants from a lot of that. But speaking of these defendants, let me just say.
- [103:28]
Megyn Kelly
Let me just say this. I've. I heard it now. I heard it from Devin Nunes and I heard it from John Solomon. Not directly. I'm saying, well, maybe they're going to. And those are two people who are very close to the allegations around this issue. So it was no accident that they're both now suggesting that that Mar A Lago raid was about Russiagate and not just recovering documents. And I don't know whether that's an attempt to get a grand jury to justify a Florida grand jury, but it did jump out at me as like, why are they raising that? There's so much more to talk about. They both raised it. And so it could be this. Go ahead, Phil.
- [104:02]
Jussie Smollett
I think they have to have evidence that the whoever swore out that warrant with a judge, that maybe they lied to the judge or that it was somehow a pretext.
- [104:10]
Megyn Kelly
There could be your stated reason and your real reason.
- [104:13]
Jussie Smollett
Yeah, they're going to have to have something to call that into question because the, the warrant, the existence of the warrant, I think does provide some insulation. But you got a lot of people that are potential defendants right now that I think are lawyering up. People who have testified previously might get called to testify before this grand jury. They might be immunized, who knows? But they're going to have to go through and they're going to have, have to memorize almost verbatim every word of everything they've ever said on television, radio, podcast, streaming, or under oath anywhere, because they, they can't stray from that one iota. They've got a lot of work to do to make sure they don't run into some problems with respect to perjury and false statements.
- [104:52]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, okay, let's, let's shift gears now because I know Ashley short on time, you guys can stick around, but we have got to talk about Jussie Smollett. He's back. Amazingly, he's back at it again. Netflix is about to drop a so called documentary. And I'm telling you, Netflix uses that term. It's like Princess Bride. I do not think you know what that term means. They don't do documentaries. They're, they're sometimes mockumentaries. Yeah, shockumentary. They are not always fact based. And this one is called the Truth about Jussie Smollett with a question mark. Okay, so like even they know they're about to pedal a bunch of bullshit. From the sound of it, we don't have a trailer. They haven't dropped one yet. But here's what they say. The doc tells, quote, the shocking true story of an allegedly fake story that some now say might just be a true story. They are prepared, it sounds like, to come out here and suggest that he might have been telling the truth. And Smollett is definitely pushing that We've got the following tour from him. He's. He was touring local organizations to whom he donated in the civil settlement of his lie case. The Chicago PD sued his ass for wasting all their time in chasing down a fake race hoax allegation. Just for listening audience, I'm sure you remember this, but he was an actor on the show Entourage. He claimed during Trump 1.0 that in the middle of the Chicago vortex, which was like minus 4 degrees in the middle of the night, 2am on a Friday or Saturday, he was walking through Chicago innocently when two guys wearing MAGA hats on South Chicago jumped him. They just happened to have a bottle of bleach and a rope, a noose, which they placed around his neck and said something like, this is MAGA country. And left for Jussie sitting there. Wasted everybody's time. He went on Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, who could not have been more sympathetic, as was most of the media that wanted to believe this is a racist country. And there's random MAGA racists on every corner waiting with nooses for any innocent black man who walks by. It was all fucking bullshit. He got arrested. He was actually then released by a woke prosecutor in Chicago. And then the outrage was so great, they re arrested him. And this special prosecutor, Dan Webb, was appointed. He was found guilty. And then he appealed, saying, I shouldn't have been tried because the first prosecutor already let me go. And he won that argument in front of the appellate court, the Illinois Supreme Court, who found Dan Webb's decision to retry him violated that earlier agreement. So in any event, he then had to face a civil suit from the city of Chicago. And he wound up paying $130,000, or they sued 430,000. And he wound up settling for some smaller amount. And so he is walking around touring the organizations that received the benefit of his settlement like he's some, you know, benevolent caretaker, just did it out of the goodness of his heart and says the following. It'll make sense when y' all watch it, okay? Because he says there's unreleased footage coming that's going to prove he did not stage this attack. It'll make sense when y' all watch it. They found the actual footage of the people that jumped me. And it just corroborates every single thing that I've said for the last almost seven years. Ashley Merchant, do we believe one word of any of that? No.
- [108:36]
Charlie Kirk
Because if he had that footage, that footage would be everywhere. There is no way he's going to be holding onto that footage. And there is no way to believe what he said is that his lawyers decided strategy not to use this footage, that they had it, but they decided not to use it. Are you trying to tell me that there's a defense lawyer that's going to have footage that exonerates their client and they're going to decide for strategy not to use it at trial?
- [108:59]
Megyn Kelly
That's what he said. The quote is, well, the footage was brought to my lawyers a couple days before we started trial. And they were like, yeah, we already got our defense, so it's too late to bring that in. We can't do anything about it. They did not go with the truth. They went with defending against the lies.
- [109:18]
Charlie Kirk
Ashley, that's insane. There's no defense attorney that's going to do that. You're going to jump up and down. I would be as loud as I possibly could. That footage would be everywhere the judge would be. I would be begging for continuance, playing the foot footage over and over again. No way.
- [109:31]
Megyn Kelly
No way. At a minimum, you'd release it to the media. All right, I know you gotta run. We will see you over on MK True Crime. Go ahead now, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and go to YouTube.comk truecrime and watch all these superstars, including Ashley tomorrow and then again on Friday. For now, we're starting with two days a week, as something tells me it's going to get a lot more popular. Okay, Phil and Dave, let us not forget that the two men, the two black men, by the way, they were not white. We were told that they were white men. The two black men who he hired to conduct this fake crime against him are already on record as saying that's what happened. There hasn't been like, it's not like, oh, we never found the guys, but we believe he was a race hoaxer. We just don't believe the claims. No, they found the guys. He paid. He actually had this kind of done to him. It was done to him. It's just he was in on it. He asked for it to be done to him. And not only do we have to, like, wonder whether these guys exist and really did tell their story to cops, they reenacted it for Fox News for a documentary on Fox Nation like, two years ago. Here's a clip. Wait, stand by. Standby. Here is a clip. So we waited here for about what, four minutes? It was about four minutes, but it felt like forever because it was cold as balls as we crossed the street.
- [110:58]
Jussie Smollett
We said, hey, to get his attention hey, Nick. Hey. He turned around, looked at us, and that's when we started yelling the famous slurs.
- [111:10]
Megyn Kelly
He wanted us to yell, hey, aren't you that Empire?
- [111:14]
Arthur Idalla
It's MAGA country.
- [111:15]
Megyn Kelly
He wanted it to look like he fought back. That was very important for him. Cause he said, hey, don't just beat.
- [111:22]
Jussie Smollett
My ass, make it look like I'm.
- [111:23]
Dave Aronberg
Fighting back and whatnot.
- [111:25]
Megyn Kelly
After I threw him to the ground.
- [111:26]
Arthur Idalla
I used my knuckle and gave him a noogie.
- [111:29]
Jussie Smollett
I finally put the rope around his face. I did not put it around his neck. I just placed it on his face.
- [111:34]
Megyn Kelly
And that's when we took off. Like the greatest documentary ever on Fox Nation. Those are the Osundario brothers who reenacted their attack, their hoax then. Phil. So how do you like the chances of this Netflix documentary rehabilitating Jussie Smollett?
- [111:53]
Jussie Smollett
Well, look, I'm disappointed in Netflix, but look, this is what you're going to expect from, from Smollett. In my opinion, this is a continuation of the grift that he tried to get going, to get some traction, you know, some time ago, many years ago. Now, at this point, this is all about attention. I'm sure there's some way he's going to try to profit and make money off of it, in my view. I think there's. That. That's really the best explanation for all this. Look, are we supposed to believe that there are two people in South Chicago back then that actually owned and much like would wear a MAGA hat out in. Out in public? Absolutely not.
- [112:33]
Megyn Kelly
With their bleach and their noose. Phil. In addition to. In addition to the two guys he hired to do that, now he wants to believe there are real perps who are doing the exact same thing.
- [112:45]
Jussie Smollett
Yeah, it's just. It's. It's just a grift. And look, this whole thing goes back to the prosecutor's office in the very beginning. Was it Kim Fox? I guess was her name, right?
- [112:53]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
- [112:53]
Jussie Smollett
She's the one that started this whole pretrial diversion thing, which she should never have done in the first place. But of course, she put him in this pretrial diversion agreement. And, you know, the courts later said that, you know, you couldn't go back and re prosecute him after you ran him through pretrial divorce diversion. And to me, as a lawyer, that actually kind of makes sense. But it doesn't make sense to give him pretrial diversion in the first place, considering how many resources were expended, how much money it cost. And things of that nature. But she of course, leaves office and just drops this, you know what, in the, in the punch bowl, right, and leaves it there for other people to have to clean up for years and years to come. And guess who the big losers are? It's this taxpayers of Chicago. Because now this civil settlement, the taxpayers don't even get their money back. It goes to some non profit and it has nothing to do with repaying the police or repay the taxpayers of Chicago.
- [113:47]
Megyn Kelly
They are the losers. I agree. Unfair losers. But you know what? Like, not that anybody believed it on the right half of the country, but the left, a lot of people believed it, that these MAGA cretins beat this poor black man. And so Mago got hurt like he's paid nothing to maga. And the smears that he made of them, like this is all made up to, to demean Maga, to demean Trump, to demean our country. Look at this. Look at him with Robin Roberts telling these lies. Watch.
- [114:20]
Arthur Idalla
As I was crossing the intersection, I heard Empire. And I don't answer to Empire. My name ain't Empire. And I didn't answer. I kept walking. And then I heard Empire. So I turned around and I said the did you just say to me? And I see the attacker, masked, and he said, this MAGA country punches me right in the face. So I punched his ass back. And then we started tuscaloos, you know, it was very icy. And we ended up tussling by the stairs, fighting, fighting, fighting. There was a second person involved who was kicking me in my back. And then it just stopped. And then I looked down and I see that there's a rope around my neck, which I hadn't.
- [115:13]
Megyn Kelly
You hadn't noticed it before because it was so fast.
- [115:16]
Arthur Idalla
You know what I'm saying? It was so fast.
- [115:20]
Megyn Kelly
It's like high drama, Dave, except it was all lies. And now, and now, hold on, I've got to put my glasses at the smallest type. So now he posted this on Instagram right after the settlement news hit over six years ago. After it was reported I had been. After it was reported I had been jumped. How did that get reported, Jesse? Oh, wait, you lied publicly. City officials in Chicago set out to convince the public that I willfully set an assault against myself. See, he's holding onto the lie. He says the this false narrative has left a stain. A stain, Dave, on my character that will not soon disappear. These officials wanted my money and wanted my confession for something I did not do. Today it should be clear they have received Neither this decision to settle was, was difficult, but it wasn't the hardest thing. Blah, blah, blah. And on a good. He's maintaining a lie. This. How dare Netflix give this loser a platform to repeat this nonsense.
- [116:28]
Johnna
I'm with you. I mean, this guy's a liar. He's living in a fantasy world and he thinks we're all stupid. I mean, he's the one who's stupid. He actually paid these two brothers 3, $500 in a check. He wrote a check, so it's easy to trace. When it came to the prosecutor, it was Kim Fox. So I was a state attorney at the time when this was going on. And I was surprised because when the prosecutor, the state's attorney there acknowledged a conflict, instead of bringing on a special prosecutor, she appointed her top deputy as the prosecutor. That's not like a conflict of interest where you're having independent prosecutor when you put your number one deputy, your second person in charge, in charge of the case. And so the National District Attorneys association, this national organization I'm a part of, chastisers, said that when you recuse yourself from a case, you don't appoint your deputy because that's a conflict of interest. So one more thing about this is that I rarely get a chance to correct Megyn Kelly, but the show is Empire, not Entourage, so there's a first for everything. I actually get to correct something.
- [117:35]
Megyn Kelly
You're totally right about that. Yes. And like, just hearing him retell it right brings home how obviously false it was. Phil. Like, oh, Empire N word in the middle of it. Like, these two MAGA guys were just wait, lying in wait, and they just happen to run into this no name actor who literally nobody knew and recognized him as starring in Empire. Okay, and. And were ready with their tools. And yet here he's going to say, and Netflix is apparently going to say, that there's previously unreleased footage that may prove he did not stage this. That, like, I what? I don't have any idea how they could because they say they're inviting audiences to decide for themselves who's telling the truth about Jussie Smollett. And here's one more. Gagan Rehill, he's the director, says as follows, this story is a thrilling ride and we were lucky enough to have access to the key players. I wanted this film to speak to the particular moment of rapid cultural change when this takes place in 2019, when as a society we were becoming more combative, more polarized, more divergent over our shared reality, when we began to lack a common, singular Truth. What?
- [118:54]
Jussie Smollett
So I don't understand a lot of things, starting with why, when he gives that interview, why she doesn't ask any, you know, follow up questions, right? It's like, okay, where did you find guys in, in South Chicago with MAGA hats? How does that even happen? That's like the first question I would want to know. But look, if these lawyers supposedly had evidence that squarely contradicts the claims made by prosecutors against him, it would be malpractice and almost criminal negligence. Almost to the point of just sitting on that, not bringing it as part of a defense. And if I'm just wondering if I'm that lawyer, these lawyers who he's now, in my opinion, defaming by saying, look, I had clear proof that I was innocent and my lawyers refused to use it. My word, that's quite the claim to be making against your criminal lawyers who have professional reputations and saying things like that. You know, I'm just wondering if that might not give rise to some kind of claim by them now against Smollett or perhaps against Netflix for even, you know, bringing such a ridiculous claim forward. Because there's just no way any responsible lawyer would sit on evidence that squarely contradicts, you know, the prosecutor's claim, not only at the time, but to have it, you know, be locked away under some locking key in a secret vault or whatever for five years. It just doesn't pass the smell test. Much like his initial claims don't even pass the smell test. No reasonable person would be amazing.
- [120:29]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, I can't wait to see how this filmmaker incorporates the Osundario brothers and their reenactment. I look forward to seeing how he handles that piece of the show. And as soon as it hits, we will all get back together. We'll discuss it here. And I know you guys will talk about it over on MK True Crime, the new podcast. It drops every Wednesday and Friday. It's got all these smart legal contributors that you saw today, guys. Thank you, Phil. Thank you. You too, Dave.
- [120:57]
Jussie Smollett
Always happy to be here. Thank you.
- [120:59]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, so that mean that's just a sampling of the all star cast that we have who's going to be hosting these discussions and participating in these discussions. So it'll be a rotating cast over there. Of all your faves, this. I'm really excited for this because I think people love the legal segments on the Megyn Kelly show, which will continue, but this is an expanded version where these guys will be oftentimes without me, sometimes with me and on their own, discussing in the same way they do here, all these great legal cases. More is more in this particular case. So I hope you enjoy it. Go ahead. You can just go to truecrime mktrucrime.com mktruecrime.com that'll tell you how to subscribe to everything. But as I point out, you can easily just go to podcasts, type in MK True Crime and subscribe. Or go to YouTube.comk true crime. All right, we'll see you tomorrow with Charlie Kirk. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.
- [122:03]
Arthur Idalla
Hey, everybody, Conan o' Brien here with an ad about my podcast. Conan o' Brien needs a friend. I've had so many fantastic conversations with.
- [122:11]
Megyn Kelly
People I truly admire.
- [122:12]
Arthur Idalla
People like Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Maya Rudolph, Tom Hanks.
- [122:17]
Johnna
New episodes are out every Monday and.
- [122:19]
Arthur Idalla
We have a really good time. So subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.