FBI Arrests Meghan Markle’s Father, Plus Crazy Fallout Continues Over Amy Griffin’s Memoir

What this episode is about

Meets report on the legal fallout surrounding Amy Griffin’s memoir The Tell, including allegations of memoryClaims, a defamation and privacy dispute with a woman from a less privileged background, and how these claims challenge the memoir’s accuracy and public portrayal. The segment traces the competing narratives, lawsuits, and reactions to the book’s publication and related media coverage.

Key takeaways

• Celebrity narratives often hinge on memory, money, and myth; truth battles for audience attention and legal leverage.
• When life becomes a courtroom drama, never forget: 'claims' can be as marketable as 'facts' in media cycles.
• New York Times-to-Oscar vibes show how timelines warp; the real plot is who controls the narrative cliff.
• Platforming amplifies danger: appearances by famous names can sediment false memories into public belief.
• Behind-the-screens tech and tabloids, legal battles reveal: credibility is a product, not a passport to truth.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Megan Kelly (Guest) · 1 h 15 min speaking
• Moren Callahan (Guest) · 11 min speaking
• Billy Bush (Guest) · 4 min speaking
• Cash Patel · 3 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 15:00: Amy Griffin, Thomas Markle, Thomas Markle Jr., Philippines
2. 15:00 – 30:00: Russell Brand, London, Donald Trump, Philippines
3. 30:00 – 45:00: Mark Thiessen, Donald Trump, Iran war (concept), J.D. Vance
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00: Amy Griffin, Data center, Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00: Amy Griffin, The New York Times Magazine, Manhattan, Mr. Mason
6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00: Amy Griffin, Palm Springs, Claudia, The Tell
7. 1:30:00 – 1:45:00: Amy Griffin, Billy Bush, Semafor, Manhattan
8. 1:45:00 – 2:00:00: Amy Griffin, Claudia, Manhattan, Nevada
9. 2:00:00 – 2:15:00: Amy Griffin, The Tell, Claudia, Anti-SLAPP
10. 2:15:00 – 2:19:42: Amy Griffin, MDMA, Thomas Markle, Thomas Markle Jr.

Notable quotes from "FBI Arrests Meghan Markle’s Father, Plus Crazy Fallout Continues Over Amy Griffin’s Memoir"

• Published private facts and so on. And Amy with her billions crossclaimed. that's playing out. Then she accused that girl of defamation. And on there they go back and forth.…

  about Amy Griffin memoir controversy · at 1:33

• Circles. and we have mutual friends, but I'll go where the story takes us. so we are doing a deep dive on this in our second hour with the lawyer for Jolene.

  about The Megyn Kelly Show · at 3:32

• Have given us a statement which I will read when we get to that. But here's the story. Amy Griffin, in my view, was not satisfied with being a very, very, very rich person who…

  about Amy Griffin · at 53:54

• Remembered her at the same time. From the Times piece, quote, Some of the descriptions in the tell of Miss Griffin's being assaulted are eerily similar to the abuse she, this Jane Doe, Jolene we now know, herself endured.

  about The Tell · at 1:01:35

• Get rid of them right away. You can only do it in certain types of cases. So, she filed an anti-slap against Jolene, who had filed, I think, a total of seven claims against…

  about Anti-SLAPP · at 1:05:27

• York Times for 10 plus years, I think, then founded BuzzFeed, etc. Ben Smith reports in Semaphore that Katie Rosman, the reporter at the Times who broke the story, has had her daughter threatened by Amy Griffin. Now, keep in mind the.

  about Katie Rossman · at 1:30:28

• Should believe our client because she's credible and because she's telling the truth and that we initiated this lawsuit to tell the truth. And we're confident that discovery…

  about Zach Rosenblatt · at 1:42:26

• A confidential watermarked copy of Miss Griffin's book proposal. The proposal indicated that Claudia had grown up in a children's home, a detail that did not appear in the final draft of the tell.

  about Claudia · at 1:52:20

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Amy Griffin — Person · Central figure (subject of controversy) · 103 mentions · first at 0:11
  Author of the memoir The Tell and defendant/plaintiff in dueling lawsuits alleging appropriation of another woman's abuse story; focus of much of the episode's reporting and analysis.
• Megan Kelly — Person · Host · 3 mentions · first at 0:00
  Host of The Megyn Kelly Show; narrator/interviewer providing overview, commentary, and introducing the guest (Jolene's lawyer) and the Amy Griffin controversy.
  Circles. and we have mutual friends, but I'll go where the story takes us. so we are doing a deep dive on this in our second hour with the lawyer for Jolene.
• Katie Rossman — Person · Investigative reporter (The New York Times) · 4 mentions · first at 1:01:01
  Reporter at The New York Times credited with reporting that identified and located Jolene; also central to allegations that Amy attempted to interfere with the reporter's daughter's college admissions.
• Zach Rosenblatt — Person · Guest (attorney for Joleene Altum) · 2 mentions · first at 1:40:13
  Attorney representing Jolene (plaintiff) who appears on the show to explain why his client should be believed and to describe the legal posture and discovery sought.
• Donald Trump — Person · Referenced political figure · 12 mentions · first at 28:43
  Referenced in political commentary about decisions on the Iran war, midterm election fallout, and reactions from pundits and allies.
  The war. It was the actual war that they didn't want. They didn't want to launch another Middle East war. They had been promised by Donald Trump that he wouldn't do it…
• Thomas Markle — Person · Referenced public figure (Meghan Markle's father) · 8 mentions · first at 5:06
  Discussed in separate segment about FBI arrest and allegations regarding possession of child sexual abuse material; serves as a topical news story in the episode.
  Targets children will have zero safe haven in this country or anywhere they try to hide. Markle has not given a statement in response to the latest developments, but has…
• Thomas Markle Jr. — Person · Referenced news subject (full name variant) · 7 mentions · first at 5:06
  Alternate referenced form of Thomas Markle in discussion of arrest and charges; used interchangeably in transcript.
  Screen now photos from the Daily Mail of Markle being taken into custody by federal agents at the 82-year-old's Maraveda Senior Living Care Home in Lakeland, Florida this morning. He is in a wheelchair. He has got handcuffs on.
• Billy Bush — Person · Journalist / reporter referenced · 6 mentions · first at 2:40
  Named as a reporter who has advanced coverage of the Amy Griffin story and who confrontationally reported on alleged attempts by Amy to threaten or blackball journalists and others.
  Story. I had no idea Billy Bush was this good of an investigative reporter, but he has been. And Billy Bush has been blowing the doors off of this story. as I said, Meen…
• Megan Markle — Person · Referenced relative of news subject · 5 mentions · first at 5:09
  Mentioned in connection to Thomas Markle Sr. story (daughter of the arrested man) and commentary about family reactions and statements.
  The FBI has arrested Thomas Markle Senior, father of Meghan Markle. This is unbelievable. think of it. This couple on the one hand has one fatherfather-in-law who is the king of England and one father on the other side.
• Oprah Winfrey — Person · Referenced celebrity interviewer · 2 mentions · first at 55:29
  Mentioned as one of the high-profile media figures who platformed Amy Griffin's memoir; used to illustrate celebrity endorsement and media amplification.
  Memories while she was using MDMA of childhood sexual abuse that she allegedly suffered. She was platformed by Oprah and Gwennneth and Drew Barrymore, etc. And then it came out…
• Ben Smith — Person · Referenced journalist / Semafor founder · 2 mentions · first at 1:30:23
  Named as the Semafor journalist who reported on alleged attempts by Amy Griffin to interfere with a reporter's daughter's university admission.
  Smith publication. He worked at the New York Times for 10 plus years, I think, then founded BuzzFeed, etc. Ben Smith reports in Semaphore that Katie Rosman, the reporter at the Times who broke the story, has had her daughter threatened by.
• John Griffin — Person · Husband of Amy Griffin (referenced) · 1 mention · first at 52:32
  Identified as Amy Griffin's billionaire husband; his wealth and status contextualize Amy's access and influence in the controversy.
  Book. look, here's the background. She is very rich. She's married to like literally the richest man in New York.
• J.D. Vance — Person · Referenced political actor · 6 mentions · first at 28:47
  Mentioned in connection with a memorandum of understanding and the ceasefire attempt related to the Iran war; part of the political debate about who influenced outcomes and midterm results.
  President Trump and not to talk about it publicly. And there are multiple reports that he gave a heads up at the White House he was going to send that tweet.
• Mark Levin — Person · Referenced pundit/opinion source · 5 mentions · first at 28:23
  Mentioned as part of the neocon punditry criticized for spinning the midterm election results and support for the Iran war; used as an example in the host's political commentary.
  Yesterday we had Mark Levin who literally was on the radio saying it's not my fault. It's not my fault. It is your fault, Mr. Supreme Court. We're going to get two Democrat announce.
• Russell Brand — Person · Referenced news subject · 4 mentions · first at 20:04
  Discussed regarding his guilty verdict and first night in prison; another topical news item in the episode.
  I want to talk to you about Russell Brand.
• Maureen Callahan — Person · Referenced reporter/commentator · 3 mentions · first at 2:43
  Named as an early reporter/commentator who covered the Amy Griffin story and helped bring it to broader attention.
  Was broken by the New York Times. Billy Bush has been doing amazing work on this story. Moren Callahan is the first one to bring it to the screen. And Billy has advanced the…
• Samantha Markle — Person · Referenced family member of Meghan Markle · 1 mention · first at 14:57
  Mentioned regarding differing accounts about where alleged materials were found in the Philippines/storage units in coverage of Thomas Markle Sr. story.
  Home, we now have alleged child sexual abuse material found in Thomas Markle storage units. Well, there's a dispute in the Philippines about whether they were found in his…
• Sam Lansky — Person · Ghostwriter (referenced) · 1 mention · first at 1:29:48
  Named as the ghostwriter who reportedly wrote Amy Griffin's book (the host notes Amy publicly took credit despite him doing the writing).
  Says, Not only did I meet with the real Claudia, but I went with my ghostriter, who, by the way, Amy didn't Amy told everybody she wrote the book. She went on the round. She let people compliment her writing. It wasn't true.
• Robbie Banks — Person · Identified as DO2 in Jolene's complaint (referenced) · 1 mention · first at 1:47:17
  Named in Jolene's filings as an individual (DO2) who allegedly contacted Jolene; part of disputed investigator/talent-agent contact chain.
  In the complaint. In our filings for discovery, we say that DO2 is named Robbie Banks. So there are people that identify themselves as Dominique Price and another individual…
• Benjamin Netanyahu — Person · Referenced foreign leader · 5 mentions · first at 34:27
  Referenced in political commentary about influences that led to U.S. actions in the Middle East; used to criticize how foreign input shaped policy decisions.
  That when it was reported by the New York Times and confirmed in several publications that it was Netanyahu who went into the situation room and talked Trump into launching…
• Donald Trump Jr. — Person · Referenced political commentator (son of former president) · 3 mentions · first at 38:18
  Quoted reacting to midterm results and attributing the losses in part to the Iran war; used as an example of Trump-aligned commentary in the episode.
  Either way, here's what Donald Trump Jr., who I think is pretty loyal to Trump's senior had to say. Watch.
• Drew Barrymore — Person · Referenced celebrity friend/host · 2 mentions · first at 0:29
  Mentioned as one of the celebrity hosts/friends who platformed Amy Griffin's memoir (example of celeb promotion).
  Memories while she was using MDMA of childhood sexual abuse that she allegedly suffered. She was platformed by Oprah and Gwennneth and Drew Barrymore, etc. And then it came out…
• Tucker Carlson — Person · Referenced commentator · 2 mentions · first at 31:27
  Mentioned in the context of pundits being blamed for midterm losses and alleged partisan commentary.
  He had been warned exactly what would happen. Tucker went in there and is on the record as having said I told him he was on this show. He told us all that I it was going to decimate his political base. It was going to cost him mightily.
• Marco Rubio — Person · Referenced political figure · 2 mentions · first at 36:05
  Mentioned in discussion of who influenced/characterized the decision to launch a war and commentary on responsibility.
  And President Trump did. And what happened day one after we launched this war? Marco Rubio came to the microphone and said, We did it because of Israel.
• Lachlan Cartwright — Person · Referenced reporter · 2 mentions · first at 2:12:46
  Referenced as a reporter (Vanity Fair) covering publishing fallout and internal embarrassment at Penguin Random House over The Tell.
  Around it. They're they've skulked away and there are reports out today by Lachlan Cartwright who's a good reporter that u people inside the publishing house are embarrassed by…
• Bill Asalei — Person · Quoted prosecutor (referenced) · 1 mention · first at 11:34
  Quoted (paraphrased) as the First Assistant U.S. Attorney emphasizing seriousness of charges against Thomas Markle Sr.
  If convicted, he would face the statutory maximum of 20 years. I told you that the first assistant United States attorney, Bill Aseli, works for Trump obviously. He's been in the news quite a bit. Says as follows.
• Cash Patel — Person · Quoted prosecutor (referenced) · 1 mention · first at 11:59
  Quoted (paraphrased) praising FBI's use of resources to protect children in the Thomas Markle Sr. prosecution section of the episode.
  Extremely serious and we will prosecute Mr. Markle to the fullest extent of federal law. Cash Patel weighing in as well, saying, quote, This FBI will use every single research…
• Doria Ragland — Person · Referenced family member · 1 mention · first at 17:09
  Mentioned as Meghan Markle's mother in the context of family allegations about Thomas Markle Sr.
  Leg removed in the Philippines. So Megan clearly had been told by that letter from his first wife, her mom Doria Raglin was his second that he not only looked at images of the…
• Blake Lively — Person · Referenced example of anti-SLAPP precedent · 1 mention · first at 1:05:00
  Referenced in comparison to prior anti-SLAPP litigation (Blake Lively/Justin Baldoni case) to explain legal strategy and fee shifting.
  Get them. This happened in the Blake Lively Justin Baldon case. Remember, Justin sued her for defamation. She responded with an anti-Slap motion. The court granted her…
• Learned Hand — Person · Legal precedent reference · 1 mention · first at 2:10:06
  Referenced historically in relation to the concept of subconscious copying (copyright doctrine) to analogize memory contamination/subconscious copying.
  This thing called subconscious copying and it's a concept that actually started with learned hand back in 1924.
• Mark Thiessen — Person · Referenced pundit/opinion writer · 11 mentions · first at 30:11
  Named among pundits criticized for spinning political narratives around the midterms and the war; mentioned in host's critique of revisionist punditry.
  It's absolutely absurd. And Mark Tissson's column in the Washington Post is equally dishonest. It is all about JD Vance and how he struck that memorandum of understanding and how terrible it was.
• Phil Houston — Person · Referenced trainer / deception detection expert · 1 mention · first at 12:41
  Mentioned as someone whose deception detection classes the host has taken — used to analyze Thomas Markle Sr.'s denials.
  Allegations as a bunch of lies and suggested he was being framed. Again, we talked about detection deception a lot on this show just because of my relationship with Phil Houston and having taken his deception detection classes so many.
• Laura Brand — Person · Referenced attendee/spouse context · 1 mention · first at 20:16
  Mentioned as spouse of Russell Brand in context
  Plus t-shirts and sweatshirts and underwear. He was allowed one threeminut phone call behind bars. They presume as do I it was to Laura but that will be his only call for a…
• Jesse Kelly — Person · Referenced commentator · 1 mention · first at 28:31
  Mentioned as a guest from a previous discussion who talked about the Iran war and midterms.
  Mark Levvin is dizzying. it's truly it's head spinning. the new line, I mentioned this with Jesse Kelly yesterday, is it wasn't the war that people were voting against. It was…
• Ben Shapiro — Person · Referenced conservative commentator · 1 mention · first at 30:13
  Mentioned among pundits criticizing the ceasefire and foreign policy; part of broader critique of media/neocon commentary.
  And how dare he it was when he went rogue and struck theou and not Trump's decision-making. This is the same crowd that when it was reported by the New York Times and confirmed…
• Sean Hannity — Person · Referenced commentator · 1 mention · first at 35:12
  Mentioned as a conservative media figure who praises Mark Levin; referenced in the broader media criticism section.
  To trust him over the years as he's called the great one by Sean Hannity over and over. He loves that moniker. He leans in life, liberty, and Levvin. It's more like Levvin and lies. That's what you're getting.
• Dr. Jack Abbott — Person · Referenced public figure · 1 mention · first at 45:44
  Mentioned in passing as an example of an elected official affected by recent election dynamics referenced in the discussion.
  Their community. Nobody. In fact, there's a reason there's a theory that one of the reasons why Greg Abbott lost even though he was a very popular three-term governor down in…
• Laura Loomer — Person · Referenced media figure · 1 mention · first at 48:25
  Mentioned as a controversial figure who pulled her show and used as an example of extreme online behavior; commentary about her mental state.
  You. Look at this. This is obviously a deeply disturbed person. And in the wake of this, she pulled her show. Great.
• Rich Lowry — Person · Referenced commentator/guest on past show · 1 mention · first at 49:44
  Referenced as a conservative commentator who appeared on the program on election night and discussed historical parallels.
  That's it. I just I'm going to highlight one other thing. Rich Lowry was on this show on election night pointing out that in the elections of 94 when Republicans were returned to power, it was such an overwhelming mandate for.
• Sara Blakely — Person · Referenced entrepreneur · 1 mention · first at 52:53
  Mentioned as one of the companies Amy Griffin invested in (Spanx) to illustrate Griffin's investor profile.
  Put all this money into businesses that are already successful like Gwennneth's Goop, Sarah Blakeley's Spanx, Reese Witherspoons, Happy Sunshine. Like they didn't need Amy…

Books & papers

• The Tell — Book · Primary referenced work (memoir) · 21 mentions · first at 0:16
  Amy Griffin's memoir in which she recounts recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse; the book is the core text at issue in the appropriation allegations and media controversy discussed in the episode.

Companies & orgs

• The New York Times Magazine — Company · Investigative reporter / source · 20 mentions · first at 0:36
  Published reporting that identified and located the woman (Jolene) who said she had experienced similar abuse details; their reporting is a key catalyst for the legal and media dispute.
  Didn't jump out to me, but that's what women were saying. Meen took it on and then the New York Times took it on. And not only did the New York Times take it on in a way, and…
• Los Angeles Superior Court — Company · Judicial forum · 2 mentions · first at 1:04:36
  Court where Jolene filed suit against Amy Griffin and where anti-SLAPP rulings were litigated.
  You the first name because it's not unnecessary to go for the full, but her name is Jolene. She filed a lawsuit last March in Los Angeles County Superior Court. All right, this…
• Semafor — Company · News outlet referenced · 4 mentions · first at 2:54
  Referenced for reporting (Ben Smith / Semafor) that Amy Griffin allegedly tried to interfere with a reporter's daughter's college admission — part of reporting about alleged retaliation.
  Billy has advanced the story more than anyone. And now we have a report in Semaphore that Amy Griffin actually tried to ruin the life of the New York Times reporter's child in…
• FBI — Company · Law enforcement actor · 2 mentions · first at 5:06
  Arrested Thomas Markle Sr. and conducted searches of storage units referenced in the investigation discussed at the top of the episode.
  Judicially authorized warrant or two pursuant to judicially authorized warrants, FBI special agents searched two storage units registered to Mark. He has rented both storage…
• Department of Justice — Company · Law enforcement/ prosecutorial authority referenced · 2 mentions · first at 5:43
  Referenced as the U.S. authority announcing charges against Thomas Markle Sr. and describing the alleged evidence found in storage units.
  Child pornography in the Philippines and in Mexico where he's been living for the past 10 plus years. But now the US Department of Justice says he has been keeping what's known…
• Penguin Random House — Company · Publisher (of The Tell) · 2 mentions · first at 2:13:51
  Publisher imprint (Dial Press) associated with The Tell; reported in the episode as facing internal embarrassment and unlikely to publish a paperback edition given the controversy.
  It was under a let's see, hold on. I think it was Penguin Random House is the publishing company. The imprint is called The Dial Press. report by Lachlan Cartwright. He's a Vanity Fair contributing editor now. is that they.
• New York Magazine — Company · Media outlet (attempted rehabilitation/reporting) · 13 mentions · first at 1:17
  Published an article attempting to rehabilitate aspects of Amy Griffin's account or provide additional context; described in episode as offering a 'cleanup' piece.
  And the mystery of this case is playing out in forum after forum. The New York Magazine just did an in-depth thing trying to rehabilitate Amy. Obviously, the big news about Jolene's existence was broken by the New York Times.
• Fox News — Company · Media outlet referenced · 3 mentions · first at 33:02
  Referenced in discussion criticizing pundits (e.g., Mark Levin) and commentary about media personalities tied to the conservative ecosystem.
  The fact that this person is employed by a journalistic outlet like Fox News is a humiliation for Fox. He should be fired immediately.
• Daily Mail — Company · Referenced tabloid/newspaper · 2 mentions · first at 6:35
  Mentioned as having reported on alleged materials found in a storage unit in Mexico/Philippines and published photos of Thomas Markle being taken into custody.
  Bill on, which made it discarded, which made it possible for that facility to allow the Daily Mail to go in there, and searched through the materials, and they reported that…
• Wall Street Journal — Company · Referenced news source · 2 mentions · first at 34:30
  Cited as a source regarding who influenced President Trump's decision on launching a war (reporting that Netanyahu influenced the situation room discussion).
  Read the paper, the paper of record, the Wall Street Journal, which has very good sources inside Fox and inside the admin and the New York Times reporter dovea reporting dovetailed. That's what.
• Dial Press — Company · Publisher imprint referenced · 2 mentions · first at 2:13:54
  Referenced as the imprint at Penguin Random House that published Amy Griffin's memoir The Tell; reported embarrassment and likely decision not to release paperback.
  Guess you know the editor, the person who brought it in. They say that Penguin Random House Insiders have acknowledged that publishing the tell while initially a literary sensation has turned into an embarrassing blunder.
• Kroll — Company · Private investigation firm (referenced) · 1 mention · first at 1:27:12
  Named as a suspected investigative firm Amy may have used; the firm is expected to be subpoenaed in litigation to determine whether investigators contacted Jolene.
  Now, the firm that she's believed to have used, Croll, is going to get a subpoena. They are definitely going to get subpoenaed in the litigation, and they are going to have to answer whether.
• YouTube — Company · Platform referenced · 2 mentions · first at 3:50
  Referenced as a distribution platform for the host's show and other media coverage.
  We went through the likely calculations on the sentencing guidelines on our show yesterday. It's posted on our you YouTube right now. You can check it out. okay. Couple of…
• Facebook — Company · Referenced platform · 2 mentions · first at 3:52
  Referenced as a social platform (Facebook posts referenced by Jolene) and general social media context.
  The other thing is that Jolene just made a post on Facebook on October 30th saying, I'm fully cognizant of the cover covert surveillance activities and have reason to believe that someone has.
• Washington Post — Company · Referenced media outlet · 2 mentions · first at 35:25
  Mentioned as a publication whose columnist has weighed in on post-election analysis.
  It's absolutely absurd. And Mark Tissson's column in the Washington Post is equally dishonest. It is all about JD Vance and how he struck that memorandum of understanding and how terrible it was.
• UK Sun — Company · Referenced media outlet · 1 mention · first at 8:53
  Referenced as an early outlet reporting allegations about Thomas Markle Sr.'s activities abroad.
  It seems the FBI has been considering what the story is with this American citizen since the news broke in the UK Sun paper su and he's been living in Florida now for I think…
• Mail on Sunday — Company · Referenced media outlet · 1 mention · first at 12:25
  Referenced as reporting images and custody photos of Thomas Markle Sr. taken by reporters accessing a Mexican storage facility.
  Senior with prepubescent girls. And they are using the term photographs and girls plural. You can see on your screen now photos from the Daily Mail of Markle being taken into…
• Anthropic — Company · Referenced company · 1 mention · first at 47:00
  Mentioned as one of the AI firms being criticized in the broader discussion about AI, data centers and tech oligarchs.
  Enough. You should donate to other people. Okay. But that guy has got his finger on the pulse. way more than the AI oligarchs over at Anthropic and Chat GBT, OpenAI who are…
• OpenAI — Company · Referenced company · 1 mention · first at 47:00
  Mentioned (with a misspelling) as part of the criticism of large AI companies influencing economy and jobs.
  Enough. You should donate to other people. Okay. But that guy has got his finger on the pulse. way more than the AI oligarchs over at Anthropic and Chat GBT, OpenAI who are…
• University of Michigan — Company · Referenced admissions target (investigative allegation) · 1 mention · first at 1:31:03
  Mentioned as one of the schools Amy allegedly contacted in an attempt to block the reporter's daughter's admission (part of Semafor reporting).
  Next level and I will tell you that we have done our own reporting on that piece of the story and we can confirm that the semaphore reporting is accurate. there's actually more…
• NBC — Company · Referenced media employer · 3 mentions · first at 1:05:41
  Referenced regarding Billy Bush's past employment and his departure after the Trump tape scandal to provide background on his credibility and history.
• Instagram — Company · Referenced platform · 1 mention · first at 3:52
  Referenced as 'Insta' when discussing where to follow the show and related social media.
  Don't miss a moment. Subscribe to this show on YouTube and follow me on Insta, Facebook, and X. If you run a small business, you know that managing daily cash flow is one of your biggest ongoing.
• BuzzFeed — Company · Referenced media outlet · 1 mention · first at 1:30:31
  Referenced as part of Ben Smith's background (founder of BuzzFeed referenced) when discussing Semaphore reporting.
  Smith publication. He worked at the New York Times for 10 plus years, I think, then founded BuzzFeed, etc. Ben Smith reports in Semaphore that Katie Rosman, the reporter at the Times who broke the story, has had her daughter threatened by.
• Target — Company · Referenced company · 1 mention · first at 1:40:35
  Mentioned as an example of a large retailer potentially benefiting from proposed payment routing changes referenced in a sponsor ad read about credit card policy.
  Attack. And that senators Dick Durban and Roger Marshall want to change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate mega stores like Walmart and Target at the expense of…
• Vanity Fair — Company · Referenced publisher · 1 mention · first at 2:13:59
  Cited as the outlet where a reporter (Lachlan Cartwright) is a contributing editor and as part of reporting landscape around the Amy Griffin story.
  They also say it has hurt the career of the once high-flying Frick. when contacted a spokesperson for Amy Griffin, for Dial Press, for RandomHouse, etc., did not respond to.
• Rolling Stone — Company · Referenced media outlet · 1 mention · first at 2:14:47
  Mentioned as another news organization reportedly doing deeper reporting into the Amy Griffin/Jolene controversy.
  In paperback form. we are also told that now Rolling Stone is doing a very deep dive into all of this. And that's not all. We know of at least one other news investigation that may be underway. So, this is not going away.
• Wal-Mart — Company · Referenced company · 1 mention · first at 1:40:35
  Mentioned in the sponsor ad as an example of large retailers who could benefit from proposed payment-routing changes.
  Attack. And that senators Dick Durban and Roger Marshall want to change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate mega stores like Walmart and Target at the expense of…

Concepts & topics

• Anti-SLAPP — Concept · Legal mechanism discussed · 9 mentions · first at 1:05:06
  Referenced as the motion Amy Griffin filed (anti-SLAPP/anti-Slap) to strike or dismiss claims and to seek attorneys' fees; a key procedural element in the litigation described.
• MDMA — Concept · Therapeutic / controversial method referenced · 4 mentions · first at 54:51
  Referenced as the substance allegedly used in Amy Griffin's account to 'recover' repressed memories; central to skepticism around the validity of so-called recovered memories described in the episode.
  She's married to a billionaire in New York City. She claimed she recovered memories while she was using MDMA of childhood sexual abuse that she allegedly suffered. She was platformed by Oprah and Gwennneth and Drew.
• Subconscious copying — Concept · Legal/psychological concept referenced · 1 mention · first at 2:10:02
  Raised in discussion of whether someone can unconsciously reproduce another's story (copyright analogy) or misremember; used to frame defenses/possible explanations.
  Doesn't matter this is in the copyright context. It doesn't matter if your mind plays tricks on you but it's possible to do subconscious copying. Now, is it possible that, and…
• Data center — Concept · Political/economic issue example · 3 mentions · first at 45:23
  Topic discussed as a policy/economic issue
  The reason that the tech stock platform went down is because there were some 40 ballot measures on the ballots on Tuesday across the states about data centers, which are…
• Me Too — Concept · Referenced movement · 3 mentions · first at 50:46
  Referenced as a cultural movement in the context of victims coming forward; referenced indirectly as 'hashtagme too'.
  Her story wasn't even not only did I not steal her story but she's not even Claudia. She's not Claudia. She says there's an actual Claudia. That's not the woman's real name.…

Places & events

• Amy Griffin memoir controversy — Event · Core topic · 1 mention · first at 2:14:57
  Primary controversy discussed across the episode: allegations that Amy Griffin appropriated Jolene's abuse experiences and ensuing legal battles, media reporting, and alleged threats against reporters.
• California — Place · Jurisdiction / litigation location · 10 mentions · first at 2:02
  Multiple legal actions are filed in California (Los Angeles County Superior Court) and the state figures centrally in the Amy Griffin / Jolene litigation and related reporting.
  You the first name because it's not unnecessary to go for the full, but her name is Jolene. She filed a lawsuit last March in Los Angeles County Superior Court. All right, this…
• Palm Springs — Place · Alleged meeting location · 15 mentions · first at 1:58
  Location where Jolene alleges she met Amy Griffin in 2019 — a central contested fact in the litigation and credibility dispute.
  Already out there, so we're just going to go with it. Jolene alleges that these two had a meeting in 2019 in Palm Springs, California, where Amy flew out and met with her at…
• Amarillo — Place · Setting (origin of alleged abuse) · 8 mentions · first at 0:38
  The Texas city where the middle school incidents described in The Tell and Jolene's allegations reportedly occurred; site of local reporting and interviews.
  Middle school with Amy Griffin and remembered her at the same time. From the Times piece, quote, Some of the descriptions in the tell of Miss Griffin's being assaulted are…
• Los Angeles — Place · Jurisdiction / setting · 8 mentions · first at 5:49
  Location of the Los Angeles County Superior Court litigation where Jolene originally sued Amy; also location of alleged storage units in other news items referenced in episode.
  Has rented both storage units since 2008 with his most recent payments on both made last month by autopay. Inside the unit's agent seized approximately 78 items, including…
• Florida — Place · Setting / location of arrest · 4 mentions · first at 5:04
  Location where FBI arrested Thomas Markle Sr. and where he was residing in a care facility at time of arrest.
  Cardiff borrow better. We begin today with the breaking news out of Florida.
• Texas — Place · Setting / origin · 1 mention · first at 2:04:46
  Referenced repeatedly as the state where Amy Griffin and Jolene grew up (Amarillo, Texas) and as relevant context for the alleged school abuses.
  Me, but they took it on and not only did they raise questions about these so-called recovered memories, but they went down to Amarillo, Texas, and in a shocking moment, if…
• Nevada — Place · Jurisdiction (venue for defamation suit) · 10 mentions · first at 1:06:24
  State where Amy Griffin filed a separate defamation action against Jolene; legal geography relevant to litigation strategy and discovery timelines.
  Jo if Jolene is a liar, she should admit that and put us all out of our damn misery. Amy then goes to Nevada where Jolene had since moved and filed her own independent cause of…
• Philippines — Place · Location referenced in separate news segment · 8 mentions · first at 5:35
  Referenced in the Thomas Markle Sr. segment as a location where prior allegations and materials related to child sexual abuse material were reportedly found and where Markle had lived.
  Directly. We've told you before about the allegations that Marl Senior had child pornography in the Philippines and in Mexico where he's been living for the past 10 plus years.…
• Iran war (concept) — Event · Background political topic · 6 mentions · first at 30:25
  Topic of discussion in episode; potential political concept rather than a concrete event
  Truly it's head spinning. the new line, I mentioned this with Jesse Kelly yesterday, is it wasn't the war that people were voting against. It was the ceasefire agreement.…
• 2026 United States midterm elections — Event · Political backdrop · 4 mentions · first at 31:37
  Referenced several times as context for punditry, voter reactions, and commentary about the war and political responsibility.
  Netanyahu talk us into launching a war in Iran that President Trump ran against doing that his base does not want that's going to cost the Republican party massively at the…
• 2026 Midterm Elections — Event · Contextual political event · 1 mention · first at 28:05
  Used as context for discussion of voter reactions, pundit commentary, and the political consequences of the Iran war and other policy decisions.
  It out. okay. Couple of other things before we switch to the Amy Griffin latest. when it comes to the fallout from Tuesday night's election, the amount of spinning that's going on by the neocons who cheered on this war from the start like.
• Mexico — Place · Referenced location of prior allegations/storage · 3 mentions · first at 5:38
  Mentioned as one of the places where alleged child sexual abuse material was reported to have been found in storage units connected to Thomas Markle Sr.
  Directly. We've told you before about the allegations that Marl Senior had child pornography in the Philippines and in Mexico where he's been living for the past 10 plus years.…
• London — Place · Setting (Russell Brand prison context) · 3 mentions · first at 20:48
  Referenced as the city where Russell Brand was processed into custody and where prisons (Wandsworth/Bellmarsh) are located.
  Brand was also handed one toilet paper roll and given two pairs of gray prison issues p prisonisssued jogging bottoms plus t-shirts and sweatshirts and underwear. He was allowed one threeminut.
• New York City, New York — Place · Referenced location · 1 mention · first at 0:17
  Referenced as the city where Amy Griffin's husband is a billionaire and as part of Amy's social world.
  Book. look, here's the background. She is very rich. She's married to like literally the richest man in New York.
• Lakeland — Place · Referenced location · 1 mention · first at 7:42
  Referenced as the Florida care facility location where Thomas Markle Sr. was arrested and taken into custody.
  Are using the term photographs and girls plural. You can see on your screen now photos from the Daily Mail of Markle being taken into custody by federal agents at the…
• University of Virginia — Place · Referenced institution · 1 mention · first at 1:31:07
  Educational institution mentioned in transcript
  Katie Rosman alleges that Amy Griffin went to, we believe it was the University of Michigan, not sure about that yet. She went to UVA. Her husband, I think, went to University of Michigan.
• Manhattan — Place · Referenced location · 31 mentions · first at 0:17
  Location tied to the narrative (townhouse in Manhattan)
  Got a great husband who seems very loving toward her. she's got the world at her feet. their townhouse in Manhattan is basically like an entire square block. It's one of the…
• Sky Valley — Place · Referenced setting · 1 mention · first at 2:04:11
  Named as the area where a group home (Father's Heart Ranch) operated and where an affidavit witness worked with Jolene.
  Scene in the tell, right? And then there is the affidavit of Londa which says that she worked at Father's Heart Ranch Group home in Sky Valley, California around 2013 through 2016 and she worked with Jolene. She recounts the following quote.
• Michael Bolton case — Event · Legal precedent (referenced) · 1 mention · first at 2:09:57
  Mentioned as an analogy concerning subconscious copying in copyright law and its potential application to disputes over claimed memories/stories.
  Mistakenly but earnestly and there was no theft. Oh, there's something called the let me put that aside for a second.

Media & podcasts

• The Megyn Kelly Show — Media · Program / broadcast · 6 mentions · first at 33:54
  The episode/program in which the host discusses the Amy Griffin controversy and interviews Jolene's lawyer; the source of the transcript.
• Claudia — Character · Character in The Tell (alleged other victim) · 24 mentions · first at 1:07:47
  Named in Amy Griffin's book as a person she suspected had been abused; Claudia's identity and whether she corresponds to Jolene is a contested point in reporting and litigation.
• Mr. Mason — Character · Alleged abuser figure in The Tell (pseudonym) · 8 mentions · first at 54:30
  Pseudonym used in The Tell for the teacher Amy Griffin alleges abused her; the real identity and culpability are central to the memoir and questions about corroboration.
  And sexually assaulted by a teacher back in Amarillo, Texas when she was in middle school, whom she calls Mr. Mason, which is a pseudonym.
• Hot Mics with Billy Bush — Media · Referenced media program · 1 mention · first at 1:34:02
  Cited as the program where Billy Bush reported on Amy Griffin confronting him and other investigatory reporting about the Griffin controversy.
  Well, it was star-studded. Leah Leonardo was out there and Deme Moore and you know I think Bezos was there and Billy Bush was there and you know this is his world. He's…
• Access Hollywood — Media · Referenced program · 1 mention · first at 1:33:47
  Referenced as part of Billy Bush's past (he worked at Access Hollywood) to contextualize his entertainment reporting background.
  Know I think Bezos was there and Billy Bush was there and you know this is his world. He's obviously a Bush so he's got political connections but he's been you know at Access…
• Treasure Island — Media · Referenced show · 2 mentions · first at 1:24:54
  Referenced because a reality-TV participant (Dominique Price) is said to have starred on 'Treasure Island' and was implicated in outreach to Jolene.
  Person named Dominique Price who starred on Treasure Island who was a reality TV star. And this person is saying, I have nothing to do with Jolene, Amy Griffin, or anybody…

Sponsors

• Gwyneth Paltrow — Person · Celebrity referenced (supporter / promoter circle) · 9 mentions · first at 0:29
  Named among celebrities who platformed Amy Griffin (appeared to support or interview her) and part of the social circle that helped promote The Tell.
  Is so integral according to her to all these successful businesses and literally best friends with Reese Witherspoon and Gwennneth Paltra and the like who's living you know the…
• SiriusXM — Company · Broadcast sponsor / distribution mention · 3 mentions · first at 0:00
  Referenced in episode context/description as the live broadcast platform for The Megyn Kelly Show.
• Cardiff — Sponsor · Sponsor (advertiser) in episode · 2 mentions · first at 4:19
  Read as an ad read early in the episode promoting Cardiff's working capital lending for small businesses.
  Tape, legacy lenders can easily stall your momentum when you need capital most. That's why you need to check out Cardiff. They deliver high-speed working capital directly to…
• Birch Gold — Sponsor · Sponsor (advertiser) in episode · 2 mentions · first at 1:41:05
  Advertising sponsor mentioned in the episode
  And consider telling Congress to guard your card. Good news. Birch Gold has extended the Veterans Day silver offer through November 11th. So act now to get a free 1oz silver coin for every $10,000 purchased. This silver coin features the.
• Reese Witherspoon — Person · Celebrity referenced (supporter / promoter circle) · 5 mentions · first at 52:53
  Referenced as part of the celebrity circle that elevated Amy Griffin and her memoir via platforms and publicity.
  Is so integral according to her to all these successful businesses and literally best friends with Reese Witherspoon and Gwennneth Paltra and the like who's living you know the…
• Relief Factor — Product · Sponsor (advertised product) · 2 mentions · first at 51:30
  Sponsor mentioned in episode ad read promoting a pain-relief supplement and a 3-week quick start offer — commercial content within the episode.
  That's what makes real pain relief matter. Relief Factor is designed to support your body's natural response to inflammation. It doesn't just mask the pain. It deals with it at the source. I know because Relief Factor worked for.
• Electronic Payments Coalition — Sponsor · Sponsor (ad read) · 2 mentions · first at 1:40:18
  Mentioned as a sponsor warning about proposed legislation affecting credit card routing and urging listeners to act.
  Our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition, says Washington politicians are always getting in your wallet and that now they're messing with your credit card. They say your credit card.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly show. Happy Friday on a stunningly busy news day. We have got an in-depth report on the latest in this controversy over Amy Griffin and her book later in the program. This woman was out there. It's called The Tell. She's married to a billionaire in New York City. She claimed she recovered memories while she was using MDMA of childhood sexual abuse that she allegedly suffered. She was platformed by Oprah and Gwennneth and Drew Barrymore, etc. And then it came out via the New York Times that there was another girl who grew up with Amy in Amarillo, Texas. Amy was from a well-off family and was very popular and so on.

0:46 This other girl was from the wrong side of the tracks and had been in a foster home and um did not come from a family like that who had all of the experiences in Amy's book and basically was suggesting she's the only one who had them. that that Amy uh had conveniently seemed to have quote remembered what had happened to this woman in her book, not something that had actually happened to Amy. Or so the New York Times report seemed to intimate. They found this other girl and kind of left the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Well, then that other gal from the wrong side of the tracks, who's now all grown up, filed a lawsuit against Amy, claiming her story had been appropriated, that she published private facts and so on. And Amy with her billions crossclaimed. Um, that's playing out. Then she accused that girl of defamation. And on and on there they go back and forth. The girl from the wrong side of the tracks

1:49 claims, forgive me, she's going by Jane Doe, her name is Jolene. It's just it's already out there, so we're just going to go with it. Jolene alleges that um these two had a meeting in 2019 in Palm Springs, California, where Amy flew out and met with her at Amy's request, and that this is all sort of a setup before Amy published the tell. Amy says that's entirely made up. She did not go out to Palm Springs in 2019. She did not meet with Jolene. That this is a madeup lie. One of these two women is a psychopath liar.

2:24 And the mystery of this case is playing out in forum after forum. The New York Magazine just did an in-depth thing trying to rehabilitate Amy. Obviously, um the big news about Jolene's existence was broken by the New York Times. Um Billy Bush has been doing amazing work on this story. Moren Callahan is the first one to bring it to the screen. And um Billy has advanced the story more than anyone. And now we have a report in Semaphore that Amy Griffin actually tried to ruin the life of the New York Times reporter's child in retribution for the New York Times piece that she tried to stop the New York Times reporter's daughter from getting into a university. I mean, this has gotten so crazy. A charge Amy denies.

3:18 This has gotten so crazy. We've brought you the story before in its initial iteration and we've talked about it with Moren on this program. I know Amy Griffin a little. Full disclosure, we're not friends. I just, you know, we've seen each other in some of the same circles. Um, and we have mutual friends, but you know, I I'll go where the story takes us. Um, so we are doing a deep dive on this in our second hour with the lawyer for Jolene. So, get ready. It's going to get very interesting. Don't miss a moment. Subscribe to this show on YouTube and follow me on Insta, Facebook, and X. If you run a small business, you know that managing daily cash flow is one of your biggest ongoing hurdles. Whether you are handling unexpected equipment repairs, purchasing bulk inventory, or waiting on unpaid invoices, timing is everything. And traditional banks simply move too slowly. Between weeks of tedious

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5:01 Cardiff borrow better. We begin today with the breaking news out of Florida. The FBI has arrested Thomas Markle Senior, father of Meghan Markle. This is unbelievable. I mean, think of it. This couple on on the one hand has one fatherfather-in-law who is the king of England and one father on the other side or father-in-law who is now under arrest for hoarding troves of child pornography and potentially abusing children directly. We've told you before about the allegations that Marl Senior had child pornography in the Philippines and in Mexico where he's been living for the past 10 plus years. But now the US Department of Justice says he has been keeping what's known as child sexual abuse material in two Los Angeles area storage units that he's had for nearly 20 years. We told you about this yesterday. We told you that his son Thomas Jr. had made clear that his father also has storage facilities in

6:06 the United States in and around Los Angeles that they have been on an autopay for $700 a month for years now. He knows because he sees the automated receipts, he said to his email and he had made that clear uh clearly to the FBI and and the the press. And indeed, unlike the facility in Mexico, which the father had apparently failed to pay the bill on, which made it discarded, which made it possible for that facility to allow the Daily Mail to go in there, and searched through the materials, and they reported that they saw and found hordes of child sexual abuse material, including Thomas Markle with underageed naked girls.

6:49 um that he had photos of underage naked girls and that there and that he was in some of at least one of these photos. Um this facility was locked up and not abandoned, so it needed to be searched if at all by warrant which the FBI promptly obtained. They had clearly done it yesterday or maybe by the time we had our discussion um or they'd been processing it and today this morning he was arrested. According to the Department of Justice, the photographs found include sexually explicit photographs of Thomas Markle Senior with prepubescent girls. And they are using the term photographs and girls plural. You can see on your screen now photos from the Daily Mail of Markle being taken into custody by federal agents at the 82-year-old's Maraveda Senior Living Care Home in Lakeland, Florida this morning. He is in a wheelchair. He has got handcuffs on.

7:50 He is charged with one count of possession of child pornography. If convicted, he would face a statutory minimum, sorry, maximum of 20 years in federal prison. Again, he's 82 years old. He He is also reportedly there in this facility getting dementia care, which of course the authorities will soon be probing whether that is real or feigned given the the trouble that he is in. There's no doubt that if in fact the feds have what they say they have, um we will be getting more charges. one count to me seems like just a placeholder so that the American FBI could establish dibs on him as opposed to the authorities in the Philippines who had made an announcement yesterday that they were close to making an arrest and obviously we would work with them. We're we're allies with the Philippines and we do extradite to the Philippines and vice versa.

8:46 Um, it seems the FBI has been considering what the story is with this American citizen since the news broke in the UK Sun paper su and um he's been living in Florida now for I think the better part of the last year. He had his leg removed in December of 25 in the Philippines due to some problem. And a as of December, you know, the following year, well, we're almost there. As of October, November 2026, he's been living in the United States. He had come back to Pennsylvania, we are told, and then had moved into this facility down in Florida. And the FBI went to this facility in Los Angeles where he'd lived for the majority of his life and where he raised Meghan Markle and clearly got a warrant for those two storage facilities.

9:38 I'll give you the report on what we know. According to an affidavit filed with the complaint against him uh in October 2026, law enforcement learned that an individual signed an affidavit regarding their discovery of suspected child sexual abuse material among his possessions in the Philippines. Law enforcement also interviewed another individual who disclosed that Markle rented a storage unit in the Los Angeles area. This is clearly a reference to Thomas Markle Jr. information from the first individual later led agents to a second unit. Um, pursuant to a judicially authorized warrant or two pursuant to judicially authorized warrants, FBI special agents searched two storage units registered to Mark. He has rented both storage units since 2008 with his most recent payments on both made last month by autopay. Inside the unit's agent seized approximately 78 items, including slides, film negatives,

10:34 and books that contained suspected CESAM, meaning child sexual abuse material. The affidavit describes three of those images. They just they don't need to go into more detail. They just need to get their arrest warrant. So, you keep it bare bones. You get the guy under arrest. You can obviously always add charges and allegations, which I'm sure they will do. The first bullet is uh two images they say depict an adult man whom a witness identified as Thomas Markle Senior with a nude prepubescent girl. The third image depicts a nude prepubescent girl in a room that appears to be part of a motel chain in the Philippines. The affidavit also describes additional photographs that appear to show Markle with children in various stages of undress. This is dark man.

11:30 If convicted, he would face the statutory maximum of 20 years. I told you that the first assistant United States attorney, Bill uh Aseli, works for Trump obviously. He's been in the news quite a bit. Says as follows. Quote, "Mr. Markle is accused of possessing child sexual abuse material, including photographs depicting himself with minor girls. These allegations are extremely serious and we will prosecute Mr. Markle to the fullest extent of federal law. Cash Patel weighing in as well, saying, quote, "This FBI will use every single research at our disposal to protect innocent kids. Any predator who targets children will have zero safe haven in this country or anywhere they try to hide. Markle has not given a statement in response to the latest developments, but has previously strenuously denied any wrongdoing, specifically in relation to the possession of any child sexual abuse material. Speaking to the Mail on

12:27 Sunday, declaring, quote, "I'm not a pedophile. I've never done anything bad to a child. Never." He dismissed the allegations as a bunch of lies and suggested he was being framed. Again, you know, we talked about detection deception a lot on this show just because of my relationship with Phil Phil Houston and having taken his deception detection classes so many times. And this is classic non-denial denial. I'm not a pedoph. If I say to you, I went through four boxes of your materials in a storage unit that I found and I found tons of images of prepubescent children naked in your things. Would you respond, I am not a pedophile?

13:06 Would you respond, I've never done anything bad to a child? Never. No. Think about it. You if if you truly were innocent and that was not your stuff, you would say that is not mine. I have no idea what that's doing in there. That's not mine. You might go on to add after that. I've never seen images like that. Nor would I. But to go to I'm not a pedophile. Okay. Cuz it's almost like a way of telling the truth while you're not telling the truth for for some people because who knows how his sick mind works. Maybe he actually thinks he's not a pedophile if he's guilty of this. And we have to go with the if since he's denying it. Um, but maybe he's like, "Oh, you know, a pedophile is a person who does the following 10 things and I only do nine of them." You know, it gives them wiggle room where they're more comfortable. But a truth teller, what do they do? They go right to the allegations because they're very

14:02 comfortable with the allegations and their denial of them. No, I have never never looked at an an image of a child being abused, of a child naked in a sexual act. Ever. Ever. Never seen one, never downloaded one, never paid for one, and never had one in my possession. And you will never find such a thing in my possession because of the fact that I've never seen or downloaded or or looked at one. Right? Like, ask me as many questions as you want. Let's go. Like, now just for the people playing at home, we now have alleged child sexual abuse material found in Thomas Markle storage units. Well, there's a dispute in the Philippines about whether they were found in his home, as his son claimed, or in a storage unit, as daughter Samantha Markle later tried to clarify.

15:01 but in facilities that are his in the Philippines in storage units in Mexico. Rosarto where he lived 10 miles south of the border. Why does an American go to live 10 miles south of the southern border? Is California not beautiful enough for you? Are things better with Mexican laws somehow? Um and now in Los Angeles in a Los Angeles storage facility. This is very dark and I'm sure we'll be getting reaction from the royal family at some point. Right now, what we're being told is Meghan Markle's team, she through a spokesperson is declining to comment, "Good move. You've finally learned that, huh?" It was two weeks ago today that she rushed to put out her paper statement saying, "I've known all along."

15:53 So desperate was she to rehabilitate the accusations that she was cold-hearted for not seeing and keeping her children away from Thomas Markle for the past eight years that she rushed to tell us all she had committed a far more grievous sin. She sat oddly by for eight years while he was obviously still participating in this behavior. I don't think someone who gets off to child sexual abuse material magically is cured of it at age 74, which is what he would have been when that letter went from his first wife, Roslin Loveless, to allegedly the Metropolitan Police. And now it was in the paper that she sent one directly to Megan as well. Either way, Megan knew for eight years that her father was accused not only of looking at child sexual abuse material, which does make you a child abuser, but of actually abusing little girls like physically because Megan made sure through her leaks to the press that we

16:56 knew she had accused him of that, of that second piece of it when she sent him the letter breaking up with him in December 2025 when he was getting the leg removed in the Philippines. So Megan clearly had been told by that letter from his first wife, her mom Doria Raglin was his second that he not only looked at images of the children but actually abu physically himself was abusing them and she sat by doing nothing. How do I know that? From her from her. Um that's where things stand today. It's disgusting. It's stomach turning and there's really no good outcome here for anyone other than future children.

17:41 Because look, you you know as well as I do if you you know why do we have why do we have pornography? Forget child pornography. Why do we have pornography in this country? Because there's a market for it. Hello. Because there's a market for it. Because people want to pay to watch that. Same's true for child pornography. If you got rid of the market, you would get rid of the acts of the behavior um when it comes to child sexual abuse material. And the the So my the point I'm trying to make is looking at these images is clearly not a victimless crime. Like, oh well, it would have been made anyway or you know, there are perverts out there who do this. No, he was part of the market for it at a bare minimum if these allegations are true and drove the need for more of it to be produced. And now we're learning from our own FBI that he allegedly is on camera abusing little girls, prepubescent little girls, which

18:39 is the definition of a pedophile. Um, it's just there's no excuse. And I don't let Harry off the hook either. He said nothing either. He knew just the same as she did. They said absolutely nothing this entire time. This father is sick. If any of these allegations are true, absolutely disgusting and sick. And I don't care if he has dementia, if he's missing a leg, if he's old, too effing bad. He should spend whatever years he has left behind bars rotting. rotting. For the moment, he is denying all of it. We'll see. And we'll see what the Philippines authorities say, too, because as I said, they reported yesterday that that they were very close to issuing an arrest warrant of their own. Um, you know, the FBI moves a little faster and clearly did not want this guy, they didn't want the Philippines going first. That's my guess. And I agree with him. They'd rather see him tried here in an American

19:43 courtroom. Who the hell knows what the standards are over there? I I can't imagine they're great. One of the reasons why people move there who like to abuse children there in Thailand, another place he loved to frequent. You know it and I know it. That's the latest on Marle. I want to talk to you about Russell Brand. Um there is a report now on his first night behind bars because he was not behind bars pending trial. He was free. He was with his wife Laura and their children. But now there's a report via the son UK son. Bran had to hand over his clothes in reception at the jail before being strip searched and scanned. He was then taken to an induction wing and given a first night pack which consists of toiletries including a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a food pack including cereal, tea, milk, and sugar. The packs also contain treats including polos, juice sticks, and digestive biscuits.

20:48 Obviously, they're in London. Biscuit is a cookie. Brand was also handed one toilet paper roll and given two pairs of gray prison issues p prisonisssued jogging bottoms plus t-shirts and sweatshirts and underwear. He was allowed one threeminut phone call behind bars. They presume as do I it was to Laura but that will be his only call for a week as all phone numbers have to be approved and assigned a pin. Brand understood to have uh been whisked to either Wsworth or Bellm Marsh, those are two London prisons, was monitored around the clock and blocked from socializing with other inmates. His first night meal was I don't even know what they're trying to say here, was an inedible microwave offering in reception. It's in quotes inedible. Who? Somebody says it's inedible. It's disgusting. Staff conducted a first night interview in which they asked him about his state of mind and checked that he was not a

21:43 danger to himself. New inmates are also asked about their religious beliefs. He was offered a Bible. He was also offered a vape pack. Tomorrow, meaning today, he will be assessed by a nurse and a well-being specialist. Now, there was something very interesting that happened yesterday online uh as many people were horrified at the guilty verdict in this case. And this is this is one of the posts that caught my attention. Um, it was it was really hold on a second. I'm trying to find it here. Stand by because I've got a lot of texts and I've got a lot of Okay. Yeah, here it is. Here it is. This woman who is uh an entertainer in her own right according to her profile. Her name is Samantha Prey and uh I at least I believe she's an entertainer. She's she's got a screen grab of herself on TV and uh she had the following post in in defense of Russell Brand.

23:02 Good gracious. Come on. Let's see. In 2006, she writes, "I refused to have sex with Russell Brand. I was in his London flat. There was a lot of heavy petting and we were both down to our pants. I think she means underwear. He didn't pressure me when I said no. He wasn't angry or abusive. Everything that happened was consensual. I stayed the night in his flat and felt safe." This is right smack dab during the middle of the time when they said he was like a crazed animal, unable to control his behavior between 99 and 2009. This is 2006. I stayed the night in his flat and felt safe. I have had countless nonsexual and respectful encounters with him since. I only heard about the so-called open secret about, you know, what a dog he was when a comic mentioned it on stage at this year's Edinburg film Fringe Festival.

23:52 I have been in the comedy industry for almost 10 years and worked as an actress, dancer, and model before that. I had a friend who was invited over to his flat around 20145. She also refused sex. She did not have a problem with him. So based on my own experience and I am a sexual assault survivor, she writes unrelated. I find these rumors hard to believe. The entertainment industry is a cesspit of spiteful, manipulative, envious, and opportunistic people. These women apparently only came forward after being approached by journalists. I went straight to the police after my own unrelated sexual assault. Admittedly, that got me nowhere. And based on that experience, I have not bothered to press ahead legally with other unrelated sexual assaults. But I didn't go to the press either innocent until proven guilty.

24:41 Well, and here a jury said he was that he was guilty. Some of us have a very hard time agreeing with that and just don't agree. It's just this just looked like a setup frankly by an activist journalist who was determined to bring him down who has very different politics from Russell. And this person was very instrumental both in putting together that so-called documentary and by the testimony we heard at trial of getting women to participate in the police investigation. And they were not the same. None of the same women uh that was in the documentary was willing or was useful in some whatever way. I don't know why they didn't wind up participating in the criminal case.

25:26 Either they said they didn't want to or the police said that they weren't interested. Now we have two more additional criminal claims that may be brought. And for what purpose is that? Just to make sure Russell spends the rest of his life in prison. Is that necessary? He's going to get sentenced some Monday. He's probably looking at 5 to 10. And um we we don't what is that not enough to keep him away from his children on 22year-old charges. I mean the the the anal rape claim is the the biggest joke of the charges that were brought against Russell. That's the only rape claim he was found guilty on. The other three are sexual assaults. The one complainant alleged he grabbed her boobs at a bar and then dragged her into a bathroom stall and forced himself into her mouth. That it was an oral rape. The jury said, "We don't believe the second part, but we believe the bit about the boobs." What the hell kind of a verdict

26:17 is that? We believe you were telling us the truth that he grabbed your boobs, but that you were lying about dragging you into the stall and forcing himself on you orally. What a bizarre verdict. The other woman, her allegation was like he sniffed her crotch. That that that's a sexual assault. We're going to talk jail time. 6 to 18 months for a sniff. That's where we are. It's really this ridiculous allegation of anal rape that's going to send Russell um potentially to jail. And this is I mean and not and not for an insignificant amount of time. I mean, again, this is just just so you know, this woman when first contacted by the media by a reporter about Russell Brand, the one who alleged the anal rape that's now been he's been found guilty on, said, and I quote, "I'm not sure my story has much in it. I was an idiot, young and stupid, probably as much to blame.

27:14 That's the woman whose story is going to send Russell away to jail." That and sniffed the genitals, grabbed the boobs, that's not a lie, but forced his penis in my mouth. that is. And another woman who said he aggressively kissed her. He aggressively kissed and grabbed my bum. She said, uh, then she told him to off and he laughed and that was the end of it. He's going to go to prison for that now. Okay. Like, I'm sorry, but this is absurd. The the the Lord, that's what they call their judges, saying that Russell will be facing a significant custodial term.

27:48 We went through the likely calculations on the sentencing guidelines on our show yesterday. It's posted on our you YouTube right now. You can you can check it out. Um, okay. Couple of other things before we switch to the Amy Griffin latest. Um, when it comes to the fallout from Tuesday night's election, the amount of spinning that's going on by the neocons who cheered on this war from the start like Mark Levvin is dizzying. I mean, it's truly it it's head spinning. the the new line, I mentioned this with Jesse Kelly yesterday, is it wasn't the war that people were voting against. It was the ceasefire agreement. That's that's what they were voting against. That's what caused the anger against President Trump. And you see, that's so convenient because that's JD Vance. JD Vance was the person behind the ceasefire, not Trump. JD Vans went rogue, went to the Iranians, and without Trump's blessing,

28:59 negotiated a potential ceasefire. And oh, innocent Trumpy had no idea that his vice president was doing that to try to call an end to this war. Who are they kidding? This is so absurd. The whole narrative is so absurd. No, I have to tell you, I got news for you. It was the war. It was the actual war that they didn't want. They didn't want to launch another Middle East war. They had been promised by Donald Trump that he wouldn't do it, especially in the Middle East, anywhere at all, but especially in the Middle East. He did it. He didn't explain it. He didn't ask for permission. He didn't get Congress, our representatives involved or ask for their permission or their participation.

29:33 Then he refused to explain it to us. And we were mad. Many of us, millions of Americans, saw it as an enormous betrayal. And then on top of that, the gas prices doubled. And we got mad at that, too. especially people who are living paycheck to paycheck. That's what happened. It had nothing to do with the memorandum of understanding. Trump's approval rating went back up like a hockey stick when news that there was a memor memorandum of understanding broke. It spiked. People didn't give a what was in it. They didn't care what the terms were. They just wanted it to end. That's all they wanted. And it was the Mark Leven and the Mark Tissson's and the Ben Shapiro of the world who were saying it's terrible. It's terrible. We can't do it. This is absolutely insane. We need to finish the job. And of course, the Iranians did their job for them because they didn't live up to it. The roar the war renewed

30:28 and we've been stuck in it ever since. But at least JD tried. And to his credit, at least Trump tried back in the spring of this past year of 2026. Like the revisionist history is laughable. It's so pathetic. Yesterday we had Mark Levin who literally was on the radio saying it it's not my fault. It's not my fault. It is your fault, Mr. Supreme Court. We're going to get two Democrat announce appointments to the US Supreme Court most likely because of you. Because of you, because you put Israel first over your own country, which he does every day.

31:07 That it's a day ending in Y for Mark Levin. and he took to the airwaves with a similar message. But he's very very mad not not only at JD Vance, but of course at the at the podcasters, the evil podcasters who were unhappy with Trump's war. Take a listen.

31:27 It's very interesting when you read Traitor Katarlson now who's pointing fingers about why we lost the midterms. Now, ladies and gentlemen, he announced before the midterms that he wanted the Republicans to lose and lose badly. And the bot community heard what he said and they regurgitated it such as they are. He got what he wanted. And he's not the only one. Little Adolf Pedro Fuentes. He demanded that his gropers go out and vote Democrat. I'm getting to a point here. Vote Democrat. We have Megan Kelly who is out there trashing the Republican party left and right. Trashing Donald Trump left and right. Trashing our war effort left and right.

32:23 She claims to be upset about the midterm elections. What did any of them do to help turn out the vote? Any of them. They did absolutely nothing. They did the opposite. They were there to dispirit the base. They basically were regurgitating the talking points from the Iran war that the Democrats use. In fact, that the that the enemy uses, the Islamazi regime, these people are so buffoonish and so imbecillic, they're effectively giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The fact that this person is employed by a journalistic outlet like Fox News is a humiliation for Fox. He should be fired immediately.

33:14 What what kind of a person connected to any sort of journalistic outfit would be talking about a a journalist's or pundits obligation to get out the vote to to to make sure the Republicans win. off, sir. I'm in a different business. My business is honest commentary, not to be anybody's jock sniffer like you. All right? Don't get me started. Row, we're going to have to go again. You want to go again? Let's do it. Cuz our country's in ruins today because of you. Because of you. All I want to hear from you is you're sorry. That's it. I want your sorry ass to say you are sorry to the rest of us for what you helped do.

34:07 The absurdity. It it's it's not the president's disastrous decisions, you see. It is the criticisms of those decisions that led to Tuesday night's debacle. It's not the president. The president must be absolved of all decision-making around Iran because Mark Leavvin supported it and helped make it happen. He and BB Netanyahu and Mark Tissson, it was in the Wall Street Journal. It was Tissson, Jack Keane. Obviously Mark Leven's Twitter and show made very clear he was one of the chief adviserss etc. Okay. So it's not but it's not it can't be Donald Trump himself. He no it's not Donald Trump. It is the criticism of his decisions. The decisions must be treated as inviot and only celebrated. Mr.

34:55 Pravda that's what he wants us to be. It's a no. It's a no. Uh, it's unbelievable the dishonesty that he is shoveling down the throats of the poor Fox News viewers who have come to trust him over the years as he's called the great one by Sean Hannity over and over. He loves that moniker. He leans in life, liberty, and Levvin. It's more like Levvin and lies. That's what you're getting. Uh, it's absolutely absurd. And Mark Tissson's column in the Washington Post is equally dishonest. It is all about JD Vance and how he struck that memorandum of understanding and how terrible it was and how dare he it was when he went rogue and struck theou and not Trump's decision-making. This is the same crowd that when it was reported by the New York Times and confirmed in several publications that it was Netanyahu who went into the situation room and talked Trump into launching this war. his was Israeli intel that found out the

36:00 Ayatollah was going to be above ground for this critical meeting. We could bomb him. We could get in, we could get out. And that it was Marco Rubio who wasn't he was not super in favor of this. He was one of the ones reportedly who said, "Uh, I wouldn't believe BB." JD Vance who said, "Let's not do it at all. This makes absolutely no sense. It would be a mistake." And others who were in the situation room, his American adviserss who said, "Do not trust him. Do not." And President Trump did. And what happened day one after we launched this war? Marco Rubio came to the microphone and said, "We did it because of Israel."

36:33 He said that it was obvious. Anyway, that didn't deprive President Trump of his of his agency. Obviously, he made the call. But we're talking about based on what what information was in front of him, who talked him into doing it. And the answer was BB Netanyahu with an assist from the Mark Leven of the world and the Mark Tissson's and the General Jack Kees. read the paper, the paper of record, the Wall Street Journal, which has very good sources inside Fox and inside the admin and the New York Times reporter dovea reporting dovetailed. That's what happened. And all the same crowd when the punditry class came out and said, "Why the hell are we letting BB Netanyahu talk us into launching a war in Iran that President Trump ran against doing that his base does not want that's going to cost the Republican party massively at the midterm elections. All of which was predicted on this show and many others." Wh Why are we listening to

37:32 him? The answer from this crowd was, "The president makes his own decisions. How dare you try to try to take that away from him. The pre the the president isn't told what to do by anyone. That's what they said. Don't Don't you dare try to put this on BB. We all have to run cover for a foreign government's leader. No, we don't. We don't actually. Oh, no. It was all President Trump. Okay. But then when we got to him trying to settle the war with thisou, he had no agency. Help me keep up. I'm really having trouble following the logic. And as a lawyer, I love logical reasoning. I love linear thinking. Walk me through it. I'm wide open-minded.

38:16 These are lies, people. You know it. I know it. And Donald Trump Jr. knows it, too. Mark Tissson's out there calling JD Vance disloyal. This was an act of disloyalty for JD Vance to put out that tweet saying, "We all know why we lost on Tuesday night. It was the war that the people who were Trump Vance voters in 2024 were asked by the pollsters what could they have done differently to have changed your vote. What could they do in the future to change your vote? They said, "End the war in Iran, put America first, fight inflation, and focus on the cost of living and change the relationship to Israel." That's exactly what his tweet said. He said, "We lost because of the war." And Mark Tissson is out there calling him disloyal, trying to create a wedge between the president and JD. Why didn't he say this is the most courageous and greatest decision a president has ever made in modern American history? Because it wasn't.

39:10 Because he's not an idiot hack who's only out there to do the bidding of the neocons. More war. Well, how about their sons go do it? Tell it to the grieving family members of the 20 dead American service personnel. That's why he disagrees with it. He has an honest disagreement which he expressed to his boss, the president. And the president understood that he wasn't fired. He wasn't turned out. We haven't seen a year of the President Trump trashing JD Vance. He understood there was a difference of opinion. And JD Vance went on to be loyal to President Trump and not to talk about it publicly. And there are multiple reports that he gave a heads up at the White House he was going to send that tweet.

39:50 There's conflicting reporting on it. Either way, here's what Donald Trump Jr., who I think is pretty loyal to Trump's senior had to say. Watch.

40:00 Why did so many independents and even previous Trump voters decide to vote for them anyway. Well, for one, remember the Trump coalition is made up of millions of disaffected Democrats, right? These are people that, you know, think for themselves. The wins of this administration have been substantial with, you know, record low poverty rate, record low violent crime, a secure border. Those are all big deals, but there are ultimately downstream effects of things like the Iran war that pushed voters in a different direction. And according to a chart going around on X, the approval number graph was basically identical to the price of gas. Okay. Uh, I've seen a few talking heads, guys like, you know, Mark Thson out there trying to claim that the Iran war had nothing to do with Republicans losing, right? There's no downside to the Iran war.

40:55 Disgusting, actually. And, you know, whether you think it was the right decision or not, the Iran war is largely what sifted voter sentiment and caused this wave, right? It jacked up the price of gas. We also campaigned on not getting into these things, and we don't have to debate whether it was the right thing or the wrong thing. I don't have any of the details. I'm not privy to any of that uh in terms of the intelligence, but it was definitely something after Afghanistan and Iraq that we probably didn't want to be into.

41:25 Just in case you missed it, that was the president's son calling Mark Tissson's statements disgusting. I think he's pretty loyal to his dad. He's just giving sober, sound, real analysis about what happened on Tuesday night. And God bless him for it. That was actually a courageous move. He retweeted JD's editorial, too. His little tweet saying 100% every word of this. This is just these people are the ones who caused what happened on Tuesday and they'd like to cause it again. It's no accident. This was the same crowd that hated Trump all along. They never wanted him. They didn't think he was neoconi enough. They didn't like his anti-war rhetoric. And then as soon as they realized they could potentially turn him, they could get him to do the bidding of Israel, of BB Netanyahu, they loved him. That's when Mark Levin put his arm around Donald Trump and held him in almost like he was giving him a noogie in a in a way that

42:23 was emasculating of the president of the United States. Yeah, you're my boy. You'll do what I tell you or else. And Trump did. Trump did it in a in an act that nobody fully understands to this moment. He never took the time to explain it. It was a complete reversal. He had been warned exactly what would happen. Tucker went in there and is on the record as having said I I told him he was on this show. He told us all that I it was going to decimate his political base. It was going to cost him mightily at the midterms. It could launch World War II. All of our allies in the region would get hit as proxies of the United States. He told him all of this and he reported that President Trump understood. It wasn't that President Trump rejected all of that, saying, "No, no, no." He understood, he heard him, and he did it anyway.

43:09 And nobody understands fully why what happened there. But this is absurd revisionist history to now say that decision had nothing to do with the election on Tuesday night. It was just the memorandum of understanding that people were reacting to. You see, because that's when we w we waved the white flag and we could never recover from the white flag. It gave the IRGC a leg up and we've been suffering ever since because of that moment where we tried to end it. These people want endless war, my friends. They h they think nothing of sending your boys or mine off to fight these pointless wars in the Middle East.

43:48 The time to remain silent and say nothing and trust the machine and that surely government's got our best interests at heart is so over. The electorate gets it because that's what they were saying on Tuesday. It's over. It's over. Military-industrial complex ruling our lives is over. We thought we were saying that when we put Trump back in office back in 2024, but now we really mean it. And it's deeply disturbing because I'll tell you what had to happen. The Democrats had to be returned to power to teach a lesson to the Republicans who violated all of their campaign promises when they ran Trump and his coalition. All of them. Um, obviously not all of them. I mean, he closed the border, which was great. He done he's done a lot of good things on the trans agenda, as you know, and I've given him credit for that. But these were some big ones. Not starting a new Middle East war. the transparency on

44:45 Epstein and so on. And now today the president is out there tweeting about the stock market because the NASDAQ um which is dependent in large part on tech stocks uh had a correction yesterday went down about 10% which is a technically a correction which is a bad thing. And the president tweeted out it's all your fault. You're you're to blame. You, you, the American people, you have only yourselves to blame. That's unbelievable. The reason that the tech stock platform went down is because there were some 40 ballot measures on the ballots on Tuesday across the states about data centers, which are necessary for the AI revolution we're having that nobody voted in favor of either. And at last count, virtually all of them had passed to ban the data centers. No one wants this in their community. Nobody. In fact, there's a reason there there's a theory that one of the reasons why Greg Abbott lost even though he was a very popular

45:48 three-term governor down in Texas is because of this issue. Because his opponent kept highlighting the problem with the data centers and he kept defending them. But be that as it may, the voters voted against data centers. No one wants this in their town or their community. It's creepy. People worried about getting surveiled. They use up all the energy, the the the dangers to the water supply, all of it. They don't want it. They don't want it. And they don't want to facilitate the takeover of AI bots of all American jobs.

46:15 They don't want it. They were never asked. What they were told once again by President Trump, who failed to sell it, was shut up and love it. Shut up. Whoever wins AI wins. That's it. This is we see the AI oligarchs ticking up toward trillionaire status. Trillionaire status. Okay. Then there's Walt Z, the Red Baron guy. Not Not a trillionaire. Can't pay the mortgage. At least not before the good people of America donated $5 and $10 and $100 to him. And now his GoFundMe was up to almost $800,000. And sweet Walt Z finally said, "Shut it down. I have enough. You should donate to other people." Okay. But that guy has got his finger on the pulse. way more than the AI oligarchs over at Anthropic and Chat GBT, OpenAI who are racing us toward employment extinction without getting our buy in. People are stressed about this and choose not to even think about it. It's like I I don't want to know, but while it's on a ballot initiative,

47:18 hell yes, I'm voting against it. I don't want a data center coming to my town. That's why the tech stocks went down because all the people who are invested in these stocks that oh I guess we're there's going to be a slow roll on us. Yes, there is. And the president says, "You have only yourself to blame." It's your fault. Maybe it's your fault because like the Iran war, you failed to even try to sell it to anybody. You failed to explain. You failed to address our fears. You failed to help us understand why we shouldn't be fearful of this. what's going to happen on the inter the long-term employment for our children.

47:52 Why don't you walk us through something? Stop telling us Epstein. Who cares about Epstein? The Iran war. Of course, you have to have it. Period. And AI centers. Whoever wins AI wins. Stop. Why don't you reason with us? Why don't you treat us like what we are? Your boss. We are your you work for us, not the other way around. Start acting like it. It's infuriating. The whole thing is just damn infuriating. There is some good news coming out of the past couple of days. Like um Laura Loomer is giving up her show. Thank god she's a lunatic. She Let me show you a screen grab of the number of tweets posts on X that she has posted over the past 48 hours. Look at this.

48:41 This is clearly a mentally unstable person. Use your eyes. You don't need me to tell you. Look at this. This is obviously a deeply disturbed person. And in the wake of this, she pulled her show. Great. Good. Step away from the microphone, touch grass, and get yourself the help you obviously so deeply need. Mark Leven is not much better. Look at his. It's also I mean it's like it's crazy like the number of tweets. Look at this crazy crazy mad tweets. He can't stop himself. so angry. You need to spend some time in front of the mirror as you have that finger pointing, sir. That's where you belong right now.

49:23 So, it's great. It's great that these people are are recognizing how deeply problematic they are, whether they'll say it explicitly or not. That's why they're spiraling quite obviously. Um, that's it. I I just I'm going to highlight one other thing. Rich Lowry was on this show on election night pointing out that in the elections of 94 when Republicans were returned to power, it was such an overwhelming mandate for them that they actually elected a guy who Rich had lunch with along with another friend of his who invited him and Rich found out that the guy we had just elected, you know, to Congress was a homeless man within the last year. My god, we're not really screening. Guess what? It happened again. There's another person who just got elected in this Democrat wave who was homeless within the last year or two. Not to mention the guy who withdrew saying, "I have health problems. I don't want to do it." He got

50:19 elected. There's a report that some 19-year-old got elected in one jurisdiction. That's such was the wave of Tuesday night. And like JD Van said, we all know the reason why. All right, up next, our deep dive on Amy Griffin. Hey, thanks for watching today's full episode. If you're new here, throw us a subscribe. See what you think. Stay in touch. There's plenty more goodness where this one came from. As always, we really do value your feedback. So, email me, too. Megan megnancell.com or just leave a comment down below. I do read them. I meander over and I scroll through and I find them very entertaining and really appreciate the feedback. But in any event, join the community by becoming a subscriber so you miss nothing. We value your support.

51:03 We may not always agree on positions, but as you know, I'm very open-minded to people who disagree with me. That's how I learn. So, thanks and thanks for trusting us to always talk about it openly, honestly, and with provocative conversations. The best part of the holidays, the traditions we share, preparing that family meal, decorating the tree together. But when everyday aches and pains get in the way, even the things we love can feel like work. That's what makes real pain relief matter. Relief Factor is designed to support your body's natural response to inflammation. It doesn't just mask the pain. It deals with it at the source. I know because Relief Factor worked for me, too. Getting out of pain is just the beginning. The real gift is what comes next. More of the moments and people you do not want to miss. This holiday season, take the first step. Visit relieffactor.com for your 3-week quick

51:56 start for just $17.76. Or call 18004 relief. They will do everything they can to help you enjoy your holidays the way you want to remember pain-free relief factor. Take your holidays back, take your life back. We have now got to update you on this unbelievable Amy Griffin controversy. I realize nobody knows who Amy Griffin is. That's apparently one of her objections. Um I I think that's why she wrote this book. I mean, look, here's the background. She is uh very very rich. She's married to like literally the richest man in New York.

52:35 Um hedge fund manager John Griffin. And um he's got some $6 billion. She she's I'm just going to be honest. She she gives Megan Markle vibes. She's a founder, you know, she's like she she's put all this money into businesses that are already successful like Gwennneth's Goop, Sarah Blakeley's Spanx, Reese Witherspoons, Happy Sunshine. Like they they didn't need Amy Griffin. None of those women needed Amy Griffin in order to succeed in their businesses. But she's taken her husband's money and she's invested in these things and now she's found her founder and an, you know, an investor in her own right.

53:13 Okay. I mean, sure. It's fine. Um, she's got four children. As I said, I've known her loosely and I never had any problem with her. She's very nice to me. Um, however, this whole mess around this book is absolutely unbelievable. Um, and I don't know, I'll tell you up front, I don't know who's telling the truth. The the lawyer for the one gal, Jolene, is going to be here in a minute. We invited Amy's lawyer. Actually, we were going to have both lawyer teams come on this show and have a debate not long ago and then they had a court hearing and they said they couldn't and then Amy's team went dark on us. Um Jolene's lawyer's still here. He's coming. Amy's lawyer is not, but they have given us a statement which I will read when we get to that. But here's the story. Amy Griffin, in my view, was not satisfied with being a very, very, very rich person who was on the board of the Met and all the other fancy things she

54:07 had and all the celebrity, you know, friends she had. She, I believe, wanted celebrity for herself. She wanted to feel special herself. And so, she wrote this book called The Tell in March of 2025, which was allegedly a memoir. In the book, she claims that she was raped and sexually assaulted by a teacher back in Amarillo, Texas when she was in middle school, whom she calls Mr. Mason, which is a pseudonym. Now, the the catch, the twist in this book is that Amy claimed for the entirety of her life since it happened at age 12, she had no memory of it. She did not recall the rapes and sexual assaults. That is until she underwent MDMA assisted therapy. MDMA is ecstasy.

54:55 In other words, she didn't quote recover these hidden memories until she was under the influence of an illegal drug and in the hands of God knows whom administering it to her and walking her through this so-called process, or so her book claimed. Um, the thing is that book was not met with skepticism from America's celebrity elite at all. And the problem is when Hollywood stars masquerade as quote journalists, they always fall down on the job and humiliate themselves. Of course, I speak of Oprah, but also Gwennneth and Ree. I mean, it's just you should stick to your Elaine's sweetheart because you're all very good actresses. I mean, Oprah, who could who could criticize her acting?

55:44 What what in her interview with Megan Markle? Okay, let's be honest. She's lost a step or two, but Gwennneth is a good actress. Reese Witherspoon is a good actress. And the pass that these women gave Amy Griffin, who I mean, it was truly it was like a mutual star that happened when she went on their programs and reason the reason she got this book to be published because when you pitch a book, you have to say, "Here's how I know I'm going to get publicity because no book can make it anymore unless they get some publicity."

56:15 And of course, Amy Griffin was like, "I know Gwennneth. She's one of my best friends. Reese Witherspoon calls this woman her best friend. Drew Barrymore and I, Oprah and I, we're all in the same circles. And these women, it's a very dangerous game because when you interview your friend, your quote best friend, and when you're not even a journalist, the audience needs to be told, "This is not an objective interview. This is not even an attempt to bring you truth. This is going to be an ass kissing. I am going to pucker up my lips, smear them with lip gloss, and affix them to the ass of this billionaire's wife. That's what you're about to see. That's what they should really disclose as opposed to leading people to think they're going to see a journalistic enterprise. Um, and especially especially in the case of a woman alleging recovered memories about sexual assault. You know what? Maybe a

57:07 hefty dose of skepticism would be in order. Can we rely on so-called recovered memories? Should we be providing a platform for this woman to come out and smear this unnamed man whose identity everyone has figured out from the clues in her book. Like literally everybody. Interestingly, that man hasn't said anything about Amy's book, which has many of us wondering whether that man may have received some sort of a settlement agreement or an NDA. We don't know. We have no idea. It's one of the many things I'm sure will come out in the course of this lawsuit if Amy ever lets it get to the actual discovery phase, which so far she is fighting.

57:50 But let me take you back to when the book launched, March of 2025, and give you a feel for how it was treated by these faux journalists. And then one night, her young daughter tells her, "Mom, you're really nice. You're here with us, but you're actually not here." And then she starts to embark on this incredible journey that leads to the discovery of a childhood secret. That's how deeply the secret was buried that she didn't even remember the secret. And as she struggles to find out what's true and not true, she discovers how silence and shame fueled her obsessive need to always be perfect. I was just floored when I read Amy's story. what she discovered about herself, about her past, made me recognize how powerful the desire to forget is, and also how powerful the desire to remember is, and how your life can change when you reconcile the two.

58:51 Okay, so Amy not only allegedly quote forgot the repeated rapes over a couple year period when she was in middle school, she also allegedly forgot a rape that happened four years after that when she was older, when she was like 19 or 20 from some guy named James, which Billy Bush has been reporting is also untrue. He that's that's a separate allegation that he also has reason to believe is is not true. She claims it is. But there's a lot of forgetting a lot of forgetting. This is strange. Um so here's the story. That book thanks to those celebrities became an instant hit.

59:34 It sold over 100,000 copies by September of last year, one year ago. And that is also when doubts about Amy's story became a national story. Moren Callahan on the nerve went out and started kicking the tires on this because if there's one thing Moren does, you know, she's very funny and she's snarky and she's fun, but if there's one thing she takes deadly seriously, it's abuse stories. If you've watched any of her coverage, she does not f around on that subject. and she had been seeing all these Amazon comments on Amy's book page on on Amazon and all these regular women who said they were actual survivors were calling on her book saying I don't believe this. It doesn't have the ring of truth. The stories as she's telling them are hollow. It she this lacks a certain shame and level of detail.

1:00:33 um and retelling just the the the the art of retelling it that an actual sexual uh abuse survivor will have in her story. And that was interesting. I remember seeing that. I thought that that is interesting. I thank God I don't have that experience in my past and so that didn't jump out to me, but that's what women were saying. Meen took it on and then the New York Times took it on. And not only did the New York Times um take it on in a way, and by the way, it was a woman named uh Katie Rosman and her partner whose name I don't her reporting partner name I don't have in front of me, but they took it on and not only did they raise questions about these so-called recovered memories, but they went down to Amarillo, Texas, and in a shocking moment, if you're following the story, they revealed that they found a woman who said she had been abused by a teacher in Amarillo, Texas. She went to middle school with Amy Griffin and

1:01:35 remembered her at the same time. From the Times piece, quote, "Some of the descriptions in the tell of Miss Griffin's being assaulted are eerily similar to the abuse she, this Jane Doe, Jolene we now know, herself endured." She said she has since retained a lawyer." unquote. Well, that woman, again, her name is out there. It's everywhere. It's I'm just going to give you the first name because it's not unnecessary to go for the full, but her name is Jolene. She filed a lawsuit last March in Los Angeles County Superior Court. All right, this is already like a bombshell that the New York Times dropped. There is a person who had this happen to her and her name is Jane Doe/Jolene.

1:02:17 Tongues were wagging. No one could believe. I was like, "Wait a minute. Did Amy steal this story? Did she steal the story?" And that's the word she really can't stand. She doesn't want anybody saying she stole it. And I'll get to that later. But that's that became the question. Did she steal the story of this woman who actually was from the other side of the tracks? Well, not only did the New York Times drop this story, but then Jolene filed a lawsuit against Amy, saying she did steal Jolene's story and that the abuse actually happened to Jolene, not Amy.

1:02:51 that the stories in Amy's book are Jolene's, not Amy's. Well, Amy Griffin unleashed the full force of a billionaire against this Jolene who has no money and and was living in foster care for most of her childhood and did have an independent rape story at the hands of a teacher, though it wasn't Mr. Mason. It was another teacher at the middle school who promptly left the school after Jolene's alleged abuse. this teacher left and so there wasn't a litany of girls coming forward about him because he pieced out of there. Don't know what happened to him. But Mr. Mason stayed at the school, went on to go into school management and never had another accuser ever come forward ever against him. Not a one. In fact, when the New York Times did its story, they interviewed the sheriff who Amy did go talk to Amarillo about Mr.

1:03:44 Mason, only giving the real name, but conveniently didn't have that meeting until statute of limitations on that claim had just run out. Damn. So close to extracting justice for the crimes against you. If only you had known when the statute of limitations ran. If only somebody like an Amy Griffin had a lawyer who could have advised her on things like statute of limitations before she sat down with a sheriff and told her story. Oh, come on. All right. Look, I obviously I have a healthy dose of skepticism. Perhaps I'm making up for the lack of it from yeah, Jenna Bush Hager and Oprah and Gwennneth.

1:04:23 There is reason to be skeptical. I don't know who's telling the truth. I will reiterate that. But Amy Griffin unleashed the full weight of her billionaire bank account on Jolene. She Jolene sued Amy in California, Los Angeles Superior Court, which is where Jolene had been living. And Amy counters sued with what's called an antislap motion where you basically go in and say, "This is such These claims against me. I want this dismissed right away. And if you do dismiss them, I want my attorney's fees and I should get them." This happened in the Blake Lively Justin Baldon case. Remember, Justin sued her for defamation. She responded with an anti-Slap motion. The court granted her anti-slap motion and that's what led to Blake Lively saying he should pay all of our attorneys fees and they should be, you know, I don't know, eight figures ultimately. I think it was like 400,000 bucks that happened there. It was an anti-slap

1:05:21 motion where you step in and you say, "This is such You know, these claims that are being filed, you got to get rid of them right away. You can only do it in certain types of cases." So, she filed an anti-slap against Jolene, who had filed, I think, a total of seven claims against Amy. The judge upheld five claims and dismissed two. Amy tried to pin this as paint this as a massive win. It wasn't. Jolene's case survived. Five out of I mean, trust me, I've filed and been on the receiving end of dozens and scores of legal claims when I was practicing law for 10 years. And that's a win. If you maintain five out of your seven claims, it's a win for you as the claimant. But Amy painted it as a huge victory. it it okay and not only and and now she's saying we want $400,000 in fees or something like that for our motion and she says it's it's not about the money. All I really want is for Jolene to admit she's a liar. Okay, if

1:06:20 Jo if Jolene is a liar, she should admit that and put us all out of our damn misery. Um Amy then goes to Nevada where Jolene had since moved and filed her own independent cause of action against Jolene for defamation saying you are defaming me with the these by saying I stole your story. F off you stole my story. And she is focused Amy in this lawsuit against Jolene in federal court in Nevada. She is focused on saying basically the theory of her case is Jolene allegedly knew nothing about anything in Amarillo until the New York Times reporter went to her and said, "Have you read the tell?" And Jolie said, Jolene said, "No, what's the tell?" Oh, this is memoir that Amy Griffin, who he went to school with, wrote. Why don't you read it? And Amy's theory of the case is that Jolene read this book and said, "Aha, opportunity. This is a billionaire.

1:07:22 I'm gonna say she stole my memories. That these are my memories and that she stole them. Now, how did the New York Times find Jolene? How did they find her? Well, my guess is they had not only the tell, they had Amy's book proposal that she had sent out to publishing houses when she was trying to get this book published. And in the book proposal, she offers a few more details about a character she calls Claudia in the book. And she mentions Claudia because she suspects in the book that Claudia also got abused. And part of her search in the book is to get Claudia to confess that she too has been abused, Amy believes, by Mr. Mason.

1:08:08 and she writes about Claudia as this girl from the wrong side of the tracks who lived in a group foster home who had blunt cut bangs and blonde hair. Well, that matches Jolene to a tea. Those details were in the book proposal. Clearly, the New York Times reporter saw them and it didn't take much to figure out who that was, who was in the middle school with Amy at the time with blunt cut bangs and blonde hair, who was living in a group home for foster kids. I mean, come on. How many could there be? They tracked down Jolene and that's how they broke the story of, "Holy there's another woman who says these memory memories are hers." So, but Amy's theory in her lawsuit is that this Jolene has nothing to do with Amy's story whatsoever, that she's actually not Claudia.

1:08:58 I guess there were allegedly two girls with the blunt cut blonde bangs who were both in foster care. I don't think so. There weren't. it was just Jolene. So, it's weird that she's now saying there was a different girl who was Claudia um who who we we believe did not live in foster care and did not have this hair and so on. Um but her theory is that Jolene saw an opportunity because Amy was a billionaire and she said, "You know what? The New York Times is here. I'm going to go with this. I'm going to say Amy stole the story from me. I'm the real Claudia. I am from the wrong side of the tracks. This did happen to me.

1:09:38 And so she kind of created a character based on me without my my permission. And she stole my memories of this Mr. Mason. Only my abuser was not the Mr. Mason. It was this other guy uh who's at the school. And here is a bit from Amy Griffin's audio book of the tell recounting her quote recovered memories of one of the alleged rapes in a bathroom by Mr. Mason 50.

1:10:08 It wasn't until I got into the car with John that the pieces of the memory suddenly fused together. I saw myself on my knees in the middle school bathroom. Mr. Mason's bandana, keeping my hands tied behind my back as he shoved his penis into my mouth. Then in my memory, he was washing my mouth out with a bar of soap. You come from one of the nicest families in town, he said. No one will believe you. No wonder I had hurled that bar of soap across the room a few days earlier. The solidness of it, feeling its weight in my hand, had made it real.

1:10:47 The floodgates had opened. An electricity surged through me from the top of my head down to my toes. "Why didn't anyone save me?" I screamed. "Why didn't anyone protect me?" I thrashed wildly, tearing at the seat belt. "I can't handle this." My body jerked and convulsed involuntarily, my muscles seizing. There was so much rage pulsing through me. I could have shredded the seat belt into ribbons.

1:11:21 I'm going to give you one more description from the tell where Amy alleges she went to the Satie Hawkins dance. That's the one where you know the girls invite the boys. She invited a boy who she really wanted to date. She went to the dance with this boy and she claims something awful happened at the Satie Hawkins dance. Saw 51.

1:11:45 It was a Satie Hawkins style dance where the girls asked the boys. I was wearing a poofy dress with shoulder pads in a bold floral pattern made of fabric so thick it felt like wearing a curtain. I had borrowed it from a family friend. It was the first time I'd put on a fancy dress and I loved the way I felt. Ceremonial, important. But then I was in Mr. Mason's classroom. It was early evening and still light outside. The frilly dress was pulled up over my head and I was bent over a desk while he was raping me from behind.

1:12:23 I could feel the weight of the dress over my head blotting out the light. This doesn't make sense, I said. When would I have been alone at the dance? Next, I was in the girl's locker room with my hands on the metal locker bent over at the waist. He was behind me. I felt the cold metal under my hands as he moved back and forth. I stared at the horizontal slats in the locker door. "Could I be making it up?" I asked. But I knew that I wasn't. I was just trying to build a trap door in the scene, looking for an out. The fact of these memories was almost leen as if it were weighing down my body. I felt it in my chest cavity, the certainty of this deep truth.

1:13:14 And I sighed heavily. Amy alleged that at one point Mr. Mason put a boot on her back and said, "If you tell anyone, I will rip your teeth out." the thing with the bandana tying the hands and so on. All of that Jolene says happened to her. Those are her memories. And Jolene says Amy knew about that because the two girls were part of the same Sunday school church group and that Jolene told the story in the church group. She also says that it was she, Jolene, who borrowed a dress for that dance and she borrowed it from Amy Griffin.

1:14:06 She says she was wearing it when she Jolene was raped by a teacher that it was the buzz of the dance. People knew because she then returned to the dance. She was taken off the dance floor by her rapist teacher. Then then she returned sometime later and that she looked disheveled. Her hair was everywhere and her dress was soiled. She says she returned the dress the dress to Amy. It was Amy's dress that she had borrowed and she returned the dress to her later and then told the story at their church group of what had happened to her when they were both 12 or 13 years old. So, she alleges Amy knew. Amy knew from the dress and that that was Jolene who had her dress over her head thanks to a teacher who was raping her and blocking out the light and making threats to her. Specifically, if you tell anyone, I'll rip your teeth out.

1:15:01 Amy says that's not true at all. She says this is a grifter who saw these details in the tell, decided to claim they were hers and to do a money grab against a woman who's very rich. But here's the problem among many. Jolene alleges much more than just that Amy stole her story. Jolene alleges, don't forget the tell came out in 2025, but Amy had written uh an article about it prior to that and I think 2023 and had been allegedly starting to write in even earlier than that, sometime early as 2020 possibly. I can't remember the date of the MDMA, um but it was prior to the publication of the book obviously. And Jolene alleges that in 2019, Amy Griffin called her and said, "I want to come see you." And that Amy Griffin did come see her in Palm Springs, California, where Jolene was living. And that at that meeting, Amy Griffin said, "I'm a girl boss, and I know you are too." To Jolene, who I believe was

1:16:10 volunteering at a sexual assault center, you know, sexual assault healing center. and started listing to her some of the big companies that she's involved in and said to Jolene, "Oh, wouldn't it be fun if we exchanged postcards here? There's postcards in this coffee shop. I'll write my address on one and give it to you. You write your address on one and give it to me and then we can mail them to each other." And Jolene said, "Okay, fine." She says, "We did not discuss any sexual assault assaults at this meeting, but this meeting happened in 2019." And Jolene says, "I did send her sort of an Anna dying postcard. Said nothing after the fact, and Amy never sent me one, but clearly Amy had her address." Um, and clearly had her phone number because it was Amy who reached out to Jolene to begin with and asked for the meeting.

1:16:59 And Jolene didn't really much seem to understand why they had a meeting, but they had a meeting, she says. Well, here's where the rubber meets the road. Amy says that never happened. She was not in Palm Springs in 2018, 19 or 20. She has never met with Jolene, you know, as adults. That that is a complete fabrication. Okay. So now here, here it one of these women is a psychopath liar. I mean truly that this is where we are. Either Jolene has stolen Amy's story, claiming it was hers and Amy stole it from her and for some reason made up extraneous shocking shockingly risky details like they had a in-person meeting in Palm Springs in 2019 that didn't happen, which would be a huge risk.

1:17:57 If Jolene is making this up, walk through it with me. She has no idea what Amy Griffin was doing in 2019. She has no idea. Amy Griffin could have been traveling the world with her billionaire husband. She could have been living in India. She How does she know what Amy was doing? She's not going to be able to sustain this. That's a huge and may I say unnecessary risk if her only goal is to do a money grab and say she stole this story. I was sexually assaulted. Why does she need to say they met at a coffee shop in 2019?

1:18:30 What's the point of that? It's not necessary and it's very risky. on the other hand is Amy Griffin. This person who is on the board of the Met and all these other companies and so integrate is so integral according to her to all these successful businesses and literally best friends with Reese Witherspoon and Gwennneth Paltra and the like who's living you know the most jet setting life a person can live. The husband's extremely successful obviously he's no ncase. Is it possible this woman is such a pathological liar that she is telling us she didn't go to Palm Springs when she did?

1:19:11 What an extraordinary lie that would be. She's saying we have a private jet. They do. They have a sick one. Look, it didn't go there. I can produce the records. Now, she's she's resisting discovery. She hasn't actually produced records in this case, but she claims the jet didn't take her out there. Now, that doesn't mean she didn't take a first class flight out there. And there is a question about whether Amy possibly attended some sort of an art show out around the Palm Springs area around this time and may have had some follow-up correspondence with an artist after the fact. That's a question not yet proven. But there's no because Let me tell you what happened in this case.

1:19:54 Recently in September, New York Magazine tried to write a cleanup article for Amy. It was obviously a cleanup article saying they could both be true. Maybe both women were sexually assaulted. And you know, maybe there's some crossover of memories, etc. But like it both it happened to both of them. And they um they cited a gym teacher who was like, "Oh, I I believe everyone, you know, that kind of thing." A female. That's that that cannot be right. One of them is lying because either that Palm Springs meeting happened or it didn't.

1:20:30 There there's no two ways about it. Amy knows whether she went to Palm Springs in 2019 and Jolene knows whether Amy Griffin came to see her in 2019. I And this is where you get confused, right? And here's another point. Okay, so so now we know one of them is lying for sure. So if they're lying about that, then they're lying about the rest. I don't buy it happened to both of them. No. No. One of them is lying. One of them did steal it from the other. And whoever's telling the truth about the meeting in Palm Springs is the one who was sexually assaulted. And whoever is lying about that meeting is the theft, the thief. That's how I see it.

1:21:10 So, here's more additional crazy details. Um, now Amy loses the anti-slap motion. She only gets two claims dismissed, but five more will proceed against her in Los Angeles. Now it's time for to produce discovery documents, sworn interrogatories where you have to answer questions like, "Did you go to Palm Springs in 2019?" Under oath, though, under oath. Um, and so on. So things are going to start to get tricky. Does Amy produce any documents? Does she go forward with discovery in this case? No. She files an appeal on the loss of those five claims. You know, she didn't get Jolene's five claims stand. So Amy's decided to appeal, which stays discovery. Okay, that's you're allowed to do that. That's not nefarious in and of itself, but she knows damn well it's going to stay discovery, which is stayed right now in that litigation. Now, she's still got the Nevada lawsuit that she filed against Jolene for defamation that is

1:22:09 going forward. And I'm going to ask the lawyer in a minute, but I believe Jolene's going to start to get discovery in that case. So, it'll be very interesting to see what Amy does about that. I think that case will get to discovery before the one in LA. And, you know, you sue somebody for defamation. Truth is an absolute defense to a claim of defamation against you. So, Jolene is absolutely going to try to prove that what she alleges in her complaint, which is that Amy stole her story, is true. But here's a complication on the Jolene side. These are facts that are potentially good for Amy.

1:22:46 Jolene alleged that in 2022 or 2023, forgive me, I don't have it all in my head. Someone going by the name of Dominic Dominique Price contacted her. This is part of this is part of Jolene's story about how Amy stole her story. She's got the church meeting back when they were 12 when she says Amy learned all about it. But she's also got this. She says after that Anadine 2019 meeting they had out in Palm Springs, California, which Amy denies that Jolene was contacted by someone going by the name of Dominique Price who said, "I'd love to meet I'm a Hollywood producer and I've heard about you and I'd love to learn more about your story." that she met with this Dominique Price, that she gave him the whole story, all the details, the bandana, the boot on the back, I'll rip your teeth out, all of it, and that they had a meeting or a couple of meetings, and that it was progressing along to where he was clearly going to ask her to

1:23:44 sign the rights to her story over to him. And a friend of hers who was a lawyer told Jolene, "You should get the contract in writing before your in-person meeting, and I will review it before you go out there." So that Jolene alleges she said to Dominique Price, "I would like to see the contract before I come." And that Dominique and some female underling of his who with whom she was also dealing like got defensive and shut down and she never heard from them again. As soon as she brought a lawyer, a legal document into it, they disappeared. and she has Dominique Price's phone number and and Jolene in one of her complaints included this fact about Dominique Price contacting her. She gave the life story.

1:24:31 I mean, query how any legitimate Hollywood agent would ever have heard of Joelle's sorry, Jolene's story and like reached out and knew how to find her. And this is all very sketchy. And Amy's team responded by saying, "The number that she's listing here leads to an actual person named Dominique Price who starred on Treasure Island who was a reality TV star. And this person is saying, "I have nothing to do with Jolene, Amy Griffin, or anybody else. I don't know why the hell you're dragging me into this. I don't know her. I never called her. I didn't offer money for her life story. I don't know the Amy Griffin team. I have no idea who any of you people are.

1:25:21 So ask yourself this. Is Jolene pathological enough to make up some guy give his phone number? It does link back to an actual person named Dominique Price who is an actual reality star who is going to tell the world he has no idea who the hell this woman is. What's happening here? What's happening? Wh Why would Jolene take a risk like that? Why would she even have the phone number of a reality TV star who starred in Treasure Island if if in fact that person had not contacted her? Why? Again, if you just want a money grab, why the hell make up extraneous details like this? But if you're pathological, maybe you do this. And if you're pathological on the Amy Griffin side, maybe you say things like, "I I it all happened to me and I didn't go to Palm Springs when I did." One of these two women has a serious problem with the truth.

1:26:20 So that that's a point on Amy's side that this Dominique Price says, "I I I got nothing. I did not contact her." But Jolene's team is pointing out that Amy's book reveals, and it's true, that she did hire private investigators to quote, "Help her investigate her quote recovered memories." Was this a private investigator hired by Amy posing as Dominique Price giving a phone number, going so far as to give a phone number that would link back to a real person named Dominic Price that would potentially embarrass Jolene if she were ever to come forward with it?

1:27:01 Amy says no. She says, "I have not been in contact with Jolene, nor has anybody on my behalf." Um, but she admits to the use of private detectives. Now, the firm that she's believed to have used, Croll, is going to get a subpoena. They are definitely going to get subpoenaed in the litigation, and they are going to have to answer whether they or anyone connected with them had a meeting with Jolene, reached out to Jolene in any way under a pseudonym or not. And that'll all be known, okay? like any and all investigators who work for Amy are going to be subpoenaed and going to have to give testimony under oath as will Jolene.

1:27:45 Couple of other other iterations and I'm going to bring in the lawyer. Just stay with me. That's where things stood. The dueling lawsuits, the weirdness on each side, the bold lies by one or the other. Who the hell knows? Then we had the New York Magazine piece hit, which was an attempted rehab of Amy. Maybe they're both telling the truth and Amy made a woman Amy's claiming is the real Claudia. Remember the tell has Amy's alleged stories of abuse and then a character named Claudia who Amy suspects may also be a victim. There's a scene in the book where she like goes to Claudia's house and she's going to like the she can't remember if it's the book or the proposal, but she's she's going to like say to Claudia like it it happened to you too, right? And Claudia instead of saying hashtagme too says no nothing happened to me. But then in the book Amy gets a postcard later from Claudia with a more suggestive message

1:28:41 about maybe it did. And Amy says this nutcase who's suing me claiming I stole her story wasn't even not only did I not steal her story but she's not even Claudia. She's not Claudia. She says there's an actual Claudia. That's not the woman's real name. But there's another person who is Claudia and she made this other person available to the New York Magazine reporter. And the New York Magazine reporter said she had a Zoom with her and uh I don't know this woman, she doesn't vouch that this woman had a story like Jolene's where she lived on the wrong side of the tracks and was at a group foster home and had the blunt cut, you know, blonde bangs or any of that.

1:29:21 Um, but she does say that she had coffee with Amy at a coffee shop where Amy told her about her sexual assault experience. And so a couple of the details matched what did wind up in the book. And Amy says, "Not only did I meet with the real Claudia, but I went with my ghostriter, who, by the way, Amy didn't Amy told everybody she wrote the book. She she went on the round. She she let people compliment her writing. It wasn't true. She she did not write the book. She had a ghostriter named Sam Lansky who wrote it. And this guy says he was at the meeting with Claudia, too. So, that's another wrinkle and if true, potentially a good fact for Amy. Although Claudia's details did not match what Amy had said about this character in Amy's book proposal, those details matched Jolene.

1:30:12 So, we have the New York Magazine piece, the attempted rehab. Okay, fine. The next thing we know, the next and current chapter is a report in Semaphore, which is a Ben Smith publication. He worked at the New York Times for 10 plus years, I think, then founded BuzzFeed, etc. Ben Smith reports in Semaphore that Katie Rosman, the reporter at the Times who broke the story, um has had her daughter threatened by Amy Griffin. Now, keep in mind the connection. Ben Smith was at the New York Times for 10 years. Who do you think gave him that story?

1:30:57 Katie Rosman alleges that Amy Griffin went to, we believe it was the University of Michigan, not sure about that yet. She went to UVA. Her husband, I think, went to University of Michigan and told them that Katie's daughter, 17-year-old minor daughter, was applying to the university and that she should be black ballalled, that she should not be offered admission to the university. This is unbelievable. I mean, this is stunning. If if she did that, then there's something seriously wrong with her. I can't say for sure it means she's the liar in this dispute, but there's something very seriously deranged about her that is threatening and trying to harm a reporter's child because you don't like what the reporter wrote about you. I mean that is truly next level and I will tell you that we have done our own reporting on that piece of the story and we can confirm that the semaphore reporting is

1:32:05 accurate. Um there's actually more to it. There's more to it. We've been able to confirm one school at which Amy tried to stop Katie's daughter from getting in. And there could be more. there could be more actions taken by Amy to harm Katie's children. This is beyond up. Um, she denies it. We We confirm the report. Our reporting is that it's true. She denies it. Um, on top of that, enter Billy Bush, who has been, I mean, like a dog with a bone in this story. I had no idea Billy Bush was this good of an investigative reporter, but he has been. And Billy Bush has been blowing the doors off of this story. I mean, you know, as I said, Meen covered it, we covered it here, the Times took it up, New York Magazine did its thing, and Semaphore Billy Bush has been owning this story.

1:33:11 And Billy Bush was at a wedding recently. Ron Meyer used to be the head of a of CIA, this big Hollywood talent agency. His daughter, Jennifer Meyer, was married to Toby Maguire. They got a divorce. She just remarried to somebody else. You may have seen it in the papers. Toby Magcguire performed the ceremony. She and he remained on such good terms. Well, it was star-studded. Leah Leonardo was out there and um Deme Moore and you know I think Bezos was there and Billy Bush was there and you know this is his world. He's obviously a Bush so he's got political connections but he's been you know at Access Hollywood for all these years and you know he was obviously um a part of that Trump tape and wound up losing his job with NBC all the stuff.

1:33:55 But Billy's been around. He's a great reporter and a great guy. He goes out there and because he's been like a dog with a bone with this thing, he goes on to his show called Hot Mics with Billy Bush and reported that Amy Griffin was at the wedding along with her husband, the billionaire John, and that he had heard she went to the wedding with the intention of confronting him. And she did confront him. And here is Billy reporting on how that went in stop 52. It was uh awkward the runin. If putting me in my place or embarrassing me in front of 350 guests was Amy's plan, it backfired spectacularly. That Amy Griffin came at me at the reception.

1:34:39 This is true. A woman who has become unhinged, tearing down innocent people, trying to ruin lives and careers, all to keep her house of cards from tumbling down. But it's down. She has attempted to blackball people from schools. She's threatened to bankrupt media publications and individuals including me. I've spoken to many of her friends and they're sickened by the behavior. And then she is pulls up in my face and she says she's shaking. She's shaking like sweating and shaking. And she says, "You don't know me. How could you accuse me of stealing the cover art for my book?" She said, "Why don't you believe me?" And she goes, "You're you're abusive?" She says, "I'm like, abusive?

1:35:24 What are you talking about? This is all happening right after this beautiful wedding, but you know, I was calm and cool the whole time. Everyone kept coming up to me, you know, later, "Holy what just went down? Oh my god, are you okay? You handled that beautifully." Other well-corroborated allegations, Amy tried to blackball another person's kid from a nice all girls private school. got that direct to sources, it backfired. It got immediately back to me and she told people with whom she had lunch the day before the wedding that she was going to ruin me. Uh she said she was going to sue me into oblivion, bankrupt me, and make me homeless. These are from the people sitting at the table. Okay, it all got back. Instead of owning any of this, she's trying to overpower everyone with her money and it turns people off.

1:36:28 Now, here's the piece where he suggests she came to confront him. Stop 53. But there's definitely knew I was there and in my opinion I it felt to me like came to the wedding because I was there. I think actually came to see me to view me like an animal in a cage at a zoo like

1:36:48 be around me. I I I honestly I think that is the case that now he interviews this content creator called Katie and KC who's been reportedly the darling of all women interested in this case in particular women. Uh she's a blogger. She's from the Midwest and this is what she told Billy in an interview he did with her in SAP 54.

1:37:14 This person, you know, as anonymous as it was, um they did end up threatening my children and saying, you know, um you know, I and I'll say too, I don't take private conversations lightly, making things public like this. Like there was a reason I opened up the signal to get people to have some sort of layer of anonymity. Um, but you know, they they escalated it to involve my children. Um, and it's just unacceptable. It's absolutely unacceptable. I don't know who this person is and I don't know if they have any connection, but what I do know is that they were in defense of Amy Griffin and they had a problem with my reporting and they thought that it was appropriate for them to threaten my children because they disliked what I was reporting on. It's definitely I mean in my opinion IMO it's a friend of hers and whether she knows about it or not.

1:38:12 So we don't know whether that was Amy Griffin or her friend threatening this other reporter's children. But what we seem to be gleaning here is that this is a woman who is out of control with her anger. That's my opinion. I believe that she tried to stop Katie Rosman's daughter from getting into a university. Uh Billy reported that she was threatening him as well, saying she was going to destroy him. Now we have another blogger saying she's been threatened by somebody, maybe just a supporter of Amy's, her children.

1:38:49 And think of like the way Billy described Amy's confrontation of him at this wedding was she was shaking with anger that she went over to him and did the you don't know me that she came she spilled her purse out everywhere. Deme is like you can do this Amy. He's fine. Don't be so so afraid of Billy. He's a nice guy. Um you can do this whatever. And was seething with anger at him. And he said, "Look, this is not the time or the place." But she was determined to have her confrontation and was reportedly telling others she was going to get him. Like, there is something going very wrong here. Her lawyer, Jolene's lawyer, is here. Before we end this hour though, I want to read you the following from Amy's legal team. They say, "Jolene accused Amy of selling of stealing her story and passing it off as her own. That accusation is false. Amy has never met with Jolene, nor did she hire Dominique Price or anyone else to

1:39:46 extract Jolene's account of abuse. Amy did not pick this fight. She was defamed and dragged into California court to answer against outlandish accusations. Amy has every right to defend her integrity. Amy has never taken a position on whether Jolene was herself abused. That's not what these cases are about. All of this ends as soon as Jolene admits Amy did not steal her story. Steal, I think, is the operative word here, folks. Jolene's lawyer joins us next. Our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition, says Washington politicians are always getting in your wallet and that now they're messing with your credit card. They say your credit card and the security it offers are under attack. And that senators Dick Durban and Roger Marshall want to change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate mega stores like Walmart and Target at the expense of everyday Americans. Credit cards can keep your

1:40:42 payments secure and provide rewards to families that they use to help make everyday purchases more affordable. The Electronic Payments Coalition says the Durban Marshall mandates would let corporate mega stores cut corners on credit card processing, routing transactions over cheaper, untested networks with weaker security and fewer protections. Find out more at guardyoucard.com. And consider telling Congress to guard your card. Good news. Birch Gold has extended the Veterans Day silver offer through November 11th. So act now to get a free 1oz silver coin for every $10,000 purchased. This silver coin features the American flag and the Gadson flag and is a reminder that you saw the writing on the wall and did something about it. You realized we cannot afford the interest payments on our national debt. You realized inflation is still a challenge and it's time to diversify into gold and silver. Text MK to the number 989898

1:41:34 today and speak with a Birch Gold precious metals specialist. They will help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold and silver. and then you will receive a free 1o ounce silver commemorative coin for every $10,000 you spend. But this offer ends on November 11th. Diversify into gold and silver and get free silver. Text MK to the number 989898. That's MK to 989898 today. Joining me now, the lawyer for Jolene, Zack Rosenlat. Zach, welcome to the program. My goodness, this is like this is so tangled and difficult to follow.

1:42:12 Um, let me just start with this. Why should we believe Jolene over Amy Griffin?

1:42:20 Well, you should believe Jolene. Well, first of all, Megan, good to see you. Thanks for having us. But, uh, you should believe our client because she's credible and because she's telling the truth and that we initiated this lawsuit to tell the truth. And we're confident that discovery and ultimately trial will reveal the truth and our client has nothing to hide.

1:42:45 Does she stand by the allegation that the two women met in Palm Springs in 2019?

1:42:52 So in this lawsuit, there's kind of two big dueling declarations. One of them has to do with the 2019 meeting. The second one has to do with the dress. Amy in her declaration says the meetings never happened. She never lent our client the dress. Our client says the meeting happened and that she did lend us the dress. We believe our client. Plain and simple. It happened in 2019. We have uh already in our filing saying that we don't have direct evidence of it, but we have earned the right to discovery through the anti-slap process and we are confident that discovery will reveal evidence and and also this is a a question for the jury. Like you said, it either happened or it didn't happen and we think that's a perfect issue for the jury to decide.

1:43:48 So, she's standing by the allegation that there was a meeting. Can I ask you about was there a postcard a postcard from an artist named Gary Winterrad to Amy Griffin in this case?

1:44:03 You know, the the exact detail of the postcard is not on the record yet. What we do know is that after what we do allege is after the meeting, our client sent a postcard. The postcard is described as a black and white picture of two children playing. The exact author of the photograph is not on the file yet, but I I think I understand what your question is. I mean, is there reason to believe that Amy was out there and attending an exhibit by an artist named Gary Winrad, who is rather wellknown,

1:44:48 you know, there I think it's it's in the public record. I can't speak for Amy, right? But if she if the meeting happened, then it has implications that that she was in Palm Springs. Uh if she was there for another reason and happened to that's stuff that we'll find out in discovery.

1:45:12 She has not submitted any sworn testimony yet. Amy Griffin, is that true? No, she submitted a declaration, two declarations, uh, in the California anti-SLAP and in the Nevada anti-slap.

1:45:29 Okay. So, that is foreign. I mean, that's under penalties of Yeah. So, so in both of those declarations, she says the meeting didn't happen and that she didn't lend our our client the dress. Our client and her declarations says the reverse. So, so those are dueling. Those are dueling. we will get to the bottom of those and we want the truth to come out.

1:45:48 Mhm. Here's one of the things that they say. They as as you know, but I'm just going to walk through with the with the audience. They say that there are four indisputable facts that prove that Amy's telling the truth and Jolene is lying. First, the meeting at the beginning of Jolene's story never happened. They say Miss Miss Griffin was not in Palm Springs in 2019, 2018, 2020, and she has never called Jolene. Um, that's number one. Sec, we've covered that. Second, they say this Dominique Price, the so-called talent agent that Amy supposedly deployed to extract Jolene's story, has sworn under penalty of perjury that he has never spoken with Jolene, communicated with Amy Griffin, or posed as a talent agent. So, help us understand why this Dominique Price, who Jolene says came to extract her story, said he was a Hollywood talent agent, and then went missing, is a real person with a real number. you guys listed in

1:46:49 your complaint that leads to the real person who is a reality TV star who is saying I have no idea who this person is and I don't know Amy Griffin either.

1:46:57 Right. So, so we're following the facts. Lawyers are like journalists in that sense. We're following the facts and what we allege we don't allege. We don't sue Dominique Price. There was a man who we call do one in the complaint and there's a man named or a woman named Do2 in the complaint. In our filings for discovery, we say that DO2 is named Robbie Banks. So there are people that identify themselves as Dominique Price and another individual that identified herself as Robbie Banks called our client. These calls happened around the same time that Amy Griffin admittedly launched an investigation in order to corroborate her memories. And when we brought all those facts together in in the anti-SLAP find filing, the judge said that we had sufficient circumstantial evidence to have a merited claim. Now, we are in the infancy of this case. We have earned the right to discovery. And the big questions here are

1:48:04 there's an investigation. Who called who? When did they call who? And how did that investigation proceed? Those are the main questions that we intend to pursue in in discovery.

1:48:17 And is it just Croll? Is that the only investigative firm she used? K R O L I can't confirm that. So there, you know, there a lot of the investigation stuff is in the exclusive knowledge of Amy Griffin. From our position right right now, we can't have that. That's why we have discovery. That's why we have the subpoena power. That's the information that we want to get as well. Those people are going to get subpoenaed though if you if you get to proceed with discovery.

1:48:44 I mean, we fully intend in discovering everything that had to do with the investigation. That's a large part of the book.

1:48:54 Um, okay. Yes. So, we will at some point be able to get to the bottom of what investigators did on behalf of Amy, exactly who they contacted and under what names. I guess what you're saying is Jolene doesn't know for sure that these people worked for Amy. All she can say is she was contacted by these two people supposedly wanting to buy her story. Hollywood talent agents. She has no idea who in fact they were or why in fact they were contacting her. Just that they suddenly disappeared when she wanted it in writing in a legal document,

1:49:24 which is exactly why we allege them as do one and do two in the complaint. Mhm. I mean, it would be an extraordinary coincidence if just two randos using pseudonyms came into her life, tried to extract her story, they had nothing to do with Amy Griffin's book at the same time Amy Griffin was writing a book that had details Jolene says are very much her own. That would be pretty pretty extraordinary. Okay, so that was number one and number two.

1:49:51 And and there's also kind of one other point that I want to make with that. So, in our discovery that we saw, there's a portion of the book that has a transcript of Claudia. So, in our initial motion to compel, we were like, "Oh, well, can we have the investigator transcript of Claudia?" And we're still yet to receive that transcript of Claudia as well.

1:50:15 That's the other, you know, that's the person who Jolene thinks is really her. And Amy is indignant, saying, "Get over yourself, Jolene. There's a real Claudia. It's not a real name and she's not you. And that is another point that's potentially in Amy's favor because she supposedly put the real Claudia in contact with the New York Magazine reporter. And the New York Magazine reporter says that this person, you know, confirmed she did meet with Amy at a coffee shop. She did send her a postcard and some of the details that Amy wrote about Claudia in the in the book seem to have been verified by this woman who is supposedly the real Claudia. So, what did you make of the reporting by the New York Magazine reporter that they met with the real Claudia and she's not Jolene?

1:51:11 We want to meet the real Cla. We want to meet who she claims is Claudia. We have discovery requests. We say, "Okay, if you're saying our client is not Claudia, then please disclose to us who Claudia is so we can test that assertion." That's simple. We don't think it's proper to her to say, "Um, on the one hand, your client's not Claudia, but on the other hand, we're not going to tell you who Claudia is." And we have sought very, very vehemently the identity of that person, and it will not be disclosed to us. It has not been disclosed to us yet. And you know, near the time our motion to compel that very issue was pending, that's when the appeal came.

1:51:58 Mhm. Right. Which which stayed discovery. Two points on Claudia that Amy's team says prove that Jolene is the faker. Okay. They say number one, they they have an issue as you know with the New York Times report and they say the following. Dead set on finding Claudia, the reporters, this is when they went down to Amarillo. The reporters obtained a confidential watermarked copy of Miss Griffin's book proposal. The proposal indicated that Claudia had grown up in a children's home, a detail that did not appear in the final draft of the tell.

1:52:31 Presumably, the reporters believed that this detail had been cut from the final draft to obscure Claudia's identity. What they did not know is that it was cut from the book because after the proposal was circulated, Mrs. Griffin met with the real Claudia and learned she had not grown up in a children's home. This red herring led the reporters to Jolene, the only member of Amy Griffin's class who grew up in a children's home. So, they're saying that the identifying information that led the Times to think that Jolene was relevant here was from the book proposal. Amy changed it later when she realized the real Claudia, this person she suspected might also have been abused, did not grow up in a children's home, and that it's just unfortunate for Amy that the New York Times sicked itself upon this woman, Jolene, told her to read the tell and she decided to insert herself in this story as Claudia when she never

1:53:25 was. Yeah, that's their theory of the case in Nevada. and and in addition to Katie Rossman was jealous of um Amy Griffin and that's how this whole thing kind of came together.

1:53:39 Amy's theory is that the New York Times reporter was jealous of Amy's memoir and the sales. Katie wrote a book too similar I mean a memoir. It had come out 10 years earlier I think. So it's that's the theory is that she had a personal grudge. So bottom line when it comes to getting to the bottom of this, right, is we need to test the assertion of who is Claudia, which we asked for in discovery. And in our other filing in discovery, we asked for all the drafts of the book. We want every draft of the book. We want to see how the book came together.

1:54:08 And we haven't got those yet. She should want you to see that. She should want I would think I would think what we did get was heavily heavily redacted versions of the book. And that's what shows up in our anti-SLAP filing. We we gave an example of just one example of 200 pages or so of fully redacted pages.

1:54:30 The what on what basis are they purportedly redacting tons of pages from the drafts?

1:54:35 You know, in in Discovery, there's things to be expected. You're going to object on privacy. You're going to object on broadness. You're going to object on certain things. That's to be expected. and you know, we want to then we'll file a motion to compel and then we'll find out. But but to to get to the bottom of what you're asking, those are the pieces of evidence that we sought that we intend to seek and that we intend to use.

1:55:02 Because they shared Claudia's real identity with the New York Magazine reporter, but they have not shared it with you. Correct. In our motion to compel, we said that that is a kind of glaring contradiction that that what she alleged was she was protecting who she claims is Claudia's privacy. And we were like, "Okay, well, we can have a protective order. We're we're fine with that. We don't get the name, but then the New York magazine gets the name." So, you know, the fact that we don't know who she's claiming as Claudia, the judge doesn't know who who she's claiming as Claudia now, but New York Magazine does, I think is an odd circumstance.

1:55:45 That's That's not going to be allowed to stand. Are you in the middle of discovery in the Nevada defamation lawsuit that she filed against Jolene? Like, is that proceeding? I know the California one has stayed pending appeal, but what's happening in Nevada on discovery? We have recently filed a discovery plan. So, we intend to move forward with discovery in Nevada.

1:56:05 And do you think she's actually going to provide it or is that about when she's going to settle this case?

1:56:10 I have no idea. I can you know, you you hope for the best and plan for the worst, but there it has been a fight at every juncture of this litigation. So, um

1:56:23 which she started she started the one in Nevada. She claims to want to proceed in that one. So we there should be no problem in doing what you do in every litigation, which is engage in discovery. That's how you prove or disprove a case.

1:56:34 She's the plaintiff in Nevada. We're the plaintiff in Los Angeles. And we want to proceed in discovery in both.

1:56:42 Yeah, there there should be absolutely no problem with this. Now, one more fact that she alleges about Jolene that she says undermines Jolene's claims here. She says many other details of Jolene's story are easily disproven such that she could not have believed they were true. For instance, Jolene told the New York Times that she borrowed a floral patterned dress from Mrs. Griffin for an eighth grade dance. I can't remember if I told the audience that, but Jolene is alleging that this dress that was soiled. Yeah, I did tell you that she she says she borrowed it from Amy.

1:57:14 Um, but the dress the real Claudia borrowed was pink. It was pink. It was not floral patterned. It was pink. Uh Jolene claimed it was floral patterned because the tell said it was. But that detail had been deliberately changed during the editing process to protect Claudia's identity as proven by extensive documentation of the book's editorial process. So, this is one of their pieces of evidence that Jolene made it up that she said, "Oh, I was wearing a floral pattern dress I got I borrowed from Amy that wound up soiled after I was the one who was allegedly raped." And Amy saying, "You don't know what you're talking about. The dress was never actually floral patterned that I loaned the real Claudia. It was pink, which you would know if you were the real Claudia. I just changed it to floral colored or floral patterned in the book to protect the identity of the woman who actually is Claudia. Aha,

1:58:12 you're the fraudster. In in our Nevada filing to that, we allege that a that's a false dichotomy. I don't think that address is either pink or floral. But that aside, in the California filings, we brought forth a lot of evidence regarding the dress. Jolene attests to to the dress and then her uh fellow sister at the children's home recounts a story of the dress. So whether the change of one detail as they claim uh blows up our entire case, I I don't see that as the case either. I really really don't. So we will get to to the bottom of what the exact appearance of that dress was.

1:59:09 And uh yeah, go ahead. Is there is there an affidavit? Forgive me because I don't know all the affidavit that have been submitted. You're telling me there was Can you Can you get specific on what affidavit you're referring to that references the dress?

1:59:22 Sure. Sure. Uh the the woman's name is Tanya and I I I don't want to butcher her her her last name. It's like Fran, but

1:59:32 Okay. She was a fellow sister at the children's home. And in her affidavit, she says, "The children's home didn't allow you to borrow dresses." So when I noticed that our client Jane Doe had this dress, I knew that the dress had not come from the kind of downstairs basement of the children's home. Later, that same person helped our client try to remove the stain from the dress before our client returned it to Miss Griffin.

2:00:10 Okay. So, she's got an independent witness who says whatever the color of the dress, it was on Jolene, it was soiled and it was it had been borrowed from Amy Griffin and then was returned to her.

2:00:25 Yeah. And and and she remembers the moment, you know, because it happened right after the dance. So,

2:00:33 there's another affidavit which I do feel the need to mention by Londa Nicole Barnett. And this one's this one's very interesting because Amy alleges there is no way she stole Jolene's story from Jolene for among other reasons. Uh because she didn't know Jolene's story. Um, even by Jolene's telling, Amy alleges, until Dominique Price went out there and extracted it from Jolene, which was 2022, April of 2022. And Amy says, "I had already told the story publicly. It was already written in draft form. It was um and I had told it to the Amarillo sheriff prior to that date. So, my story did not come from Jolene, who didn't tell anybody who you're even alleging is affiliated with me, and I deny he's affiliated with me until April of 2022.

2:01:37 Right. Do do we agree that that's Amy's claim? Yeah. During the anti-SLAP proceedings, that was a big a big point. So,

2:01:48 and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Jolene's response is multiaceted. The first defense, as I understand it, is you learned the story from me when we were 12. Is that correct?

2:02:00 Correct. That's Yeah. Because you allege in in the complaint that they were part of the same Sunday church group and that Jolene told the church group about what had happened to her from her abuser with the dress over the head and I'll rip your teeth out and all the details that Amy recounts in the tell. Jolene alleges Jolene said them at the church meeting.

2:02:23 We we also alleged, not only that, we also alleged that our client went to the same dance that they were at the same Satie Hawkins dance that she borrowed we allege that she borrowed the dress from Miss Griffin. And we allege that she returned the dress to Miss Griffin with the stain in the same manner that's described in the tell of how Claudia returns the dress to Amy, which is another thread in the book. Well, and and New York Magazine reports that their Claudia says she did borrow a dress from Amy Griffin for what's called Catilian, which is a different kind of dance than Satie Hawkins. There's no allegations, as far as I can tell, of that dress being stained or Claudia being sexually abused. Um, but it seems like Amy may have loaned out more than one dress to more than one person.

2:03:20 perhaps, you know, like I'm I'm not Amy, right? Like I don't know what she did, but and I'm not and I want to speak to Claudia. I want to know who who Claudia is. I want to test all of these assertions. So, you know what we what we allege is that they knew each other. They were in the same grade in middle school. They went to the same Satie Hawkins dance. Our client was loaned a dress by Amy Griffin. That's what we allege. And then we allege after our client returned the dress in a plastic bag that is akin to a scene in the tell,

2:04:02 right? And then there then there is the affidavit of Londa which says that she worked at Father's Heart Ranch Group home in Sky Valley, California around 2013 through 2016 and she worked with Jolene. She recounts the following quote while working at this group home which helped children who had been victims of sexual abuse um in or around 2016. I personally heard Jolene, she's calling her Jane Doe, tell a story about her being sexually assaulted on at least two occasions. I remember that her story involved being sexually assaulted in a bathroom by a teacher in the school she went to while she was growing up in Texas. Some of the specific details I remember from what she talked about in 2016 was that she was assaulted at a school dance, that the teacher involved put his boot on her back, threw her against a wall, and stuffed a bandana in her mouth. I remember those details because they were so specific and

2:05:07 disturbing, and they have stuck with me to this day. She says it is not uncommon working at a place like this to for some a grown-up to tell minors an experience of their own that they've had in order to get them talking or make them feel safe like they're not the only ones this has happened to. I mean, that's I have to say pretty good, Zach, because that this woman's affidavit proves that at a minimum, Jolene was telling a story of her own sexual assault with details that would later appear in the tell long before the tell was conceived, the MDMA kicked in any before any of that took place.

2:05:51 and and she did so and it sheds light a little bit on the character of our client as well. She did so in an atmosphere in order to help somebody else that was going through the same thing. Someone else was having a crisis. You share your truth in order to let them know that there's light beyond the tunnel that this doesn't have to define you. And it's taking something tragic and using it as a means to help somebody else. The other thing is that um Jolene just made a post on Facebook on October 30th saying, "I'm fully cognizant of the cover covert surveillance activities and have reason to believe that someone has surreptitiously deployed an air tag to monitor my whereabouts without my knowledge or consent." On October 21st, she posted, "I'm asking for prayer more than ever. I'm in the midst of an incredibly difficult battle right now, one that weighs heavily on my heart and mind, and what I can't share much about

2:06:51 publicly. What I can say is that it feels like a battle of truth against money and power. Um, does your client believe that Amy Griffin or her people are surveilling her?

2:07:02 I can't comment on that because it's not on the public record. I I'm I'm limited to it. But what I can say is that if our client or any client is harassed or followed and we have sufficient evidence of that, we would file a protective order and try to help her. But yeah, I I can't

2:07:23 Has that happened? I can't go not yet. Not Not yet. But I can't go into it further, but I think the uh post kind of speaks for itself. Um to those who feel skeptical about this whole thing, Zach, who say, you know, on the one side, I know Jolene, um she she's worked as a as an assistant, a counselor to children who are survivors of sexual abuse. Um but on the other hand, you have this jet setting woman who is a founder, an investor in some of the biggest, most successful corporations in America. her life is spectacular by any measure. You know, when trying to determine who's got the motive to lie, why shouldn't people believe it's Jolene who has no money as opposed to Amy who has everything and one might argue no reason to lie?

2:08:18 This is the bottom line that we give in our anti-SLAP and in our Nevada case, and it's this. Our client never forgot, never took drugs, and has come forward with contemporaneous witnesses, including classmates in Amarillo. On the other hand, Amy admittedly, forgot, took drugs, and has no independent corroborating evidence to support that her memories actually happened. So

2:08:55 to her to to her. So uh her her lawyers said to us Jolene accuses Amy of selling her story. Sorry, stealing her story and passing it off as her own. That accusation is false. Amy has never met with Jolene, nor did she hire Dominic Price or anyone else to extract Jolene's account of abuse. They go on to say Amy has never taken a position on whether Jolene was herself abused. That's not what these cases are about. All of this ends as soon as Jolene admits Amy did not steal her story.

2:09:31 Yeah. Is that a possibility, Zach, that she could say Amy didn't steal it and get rid of this case

2:09:40 amicably somehow by saying maybe maybe Amy recovered Jolene's memories mistakenly but earnestly and there was no theft. Oh, there's something called the let me put that aside for a second. There there's something called the Michael Bolton case and it talks about this thing called subconscious copying and it's a concept that actually started with learned hand back in 1924. And learned hand first of all says it doesn't matter this is in the copyright context. It doesn't matter if your mind plays tricks on you but it's possible to do subconscious copying. Now, is it possible that, and I'm speaking generally here, that someone on drugs can misremember something? I think that's obviously a possibility.

2:10:40 Well, yes, it is. But it's not possible that you flew to Palm Springs and don't remember doing that or conversely received never received a visit from Amy Griffin and are misremembering like what I could go with somebody's misremembering but someone's lying about that 2019 meeting and whoever that person is is the person making up the lie about the childhood in Emir. That's my own take on I mean what what you're correct about is that facts are binary. They either happened or they didn't happen. It is a she said she said situation and we want the truth to come out. As our response to their kind of like Nevada claim, we say that she's never confirmed her own memories.

2:11:31 She has never confirmed her own memories with any independent corroborating evidence. And now she's alleging in Nevada that all the stories are hers alone. And we say that that's a contradiction in itself. You can't on the one hand say uh I can't confirm if what happened to me happened and then on the other hand say these are my stories and they're mine alone.

2:11:55 Last question because I know you've got to run. Um what would it take for Jolene to settle this case?

2:12:05 She wants her experience validated. She wants the truth to come out and we'll start there. But that's the basic thing that needs to happen. So,

2:12:21 this is this is a standoff. Um I I predict Amy's going to fold. I do. I think Amy's not going to want to give this discovery. She's got a lot to lose here. She's already lost a lot. Um they're not going to be putting out her book in paperback form already. Uh the publishing house has decided reportedly not to do that given the controversy around it. They're they've skulked away and there are reports out today uh by Lachlan Cartwright who's a good reporter that u people inside the publishing house are embarrassed by this whole thing. So she's she's losing she's losing a lot. These reports about her threatening a reporter's child trying to stop her from getting into university.

2:13:00 This is all very very bad stuff irrespective of what the truth is around this controversy in this case. So, my prediction, for what it's worth, may may not be much, is that she will settle it and uh hopefully we'll have you back on, Zach, when when and if it resolves.

2:13:14 Megan, it was great great speaking to you and thanks for having me. Yeah. All the best to you. Wow. This is the crazy case, is it not? I mean, this is truly like this is nuts. The reports about the the the paperback are, you know, they're they're embarrassing. They're embarrassing for Amy. Um, you don't want people running around your publishing house saying, "Oh my gosh, we're we're humiliated that we put this out and nobody wants to talk about the tell and our role in it." Um, I'm reading here. It was under a um, uh, let's see, hold on. I think it was Penguin Penguin Random House is the publishing company. The imprint is called The Dial Press. Uh, report by Lachlan Cartwright. He's a Vanity Fair contributing editor now. is that they uh they it is highly unlikely that they will go ahead with the paperback.

2:14:07 According to people familiar with the situation, um the actual person at Dial Press is named Whitney Frick, who I guess you know the editor, the person who brought it in. They say that um Penguin Random House Insiders have acknowledged that publishing the tell while initially a literary sensation has turned into an embarrassing blunder. They also say it has hurt the career of the once high-flying Frick. um when contacted a spokesperson for Amy Griffin, for Dial Press, for RandomHouse, etc., did not respond to requests for comment about the publication not releasing being released in paperback form. Uh we are also told that now Rolling Stone is doing a very deep dive into all of this. And that's not all. We know of at least one other um news investigation that may be underway. So, this is not going away.

2:15:00 It's not going to stop. Um, and it doesn't sound like Amy Griffin is handling the questions about this story very well, but she should be. I mean, I will say this, if she made this up, because again, it's tough to get to it was an honest mistake since if she went to the 2019 meeting and is lying about it, then there's an intentionality here. But maybe there's some innocent explanation for that. Maybe Amy was also on drugs back then and didn't doesn't remember. I have no idea what happened at the 2019 meeting. But if Amy had genuinely recovered memory memories that weren't hers and made a mistake here, there is an off-ramp for her in just owning it.

2:15:44 She has a great life. She actually, you know, notwithstanding all the threatening, I always thought she was a very nice person. Um, and she seemed like a very happy person. How could you not be? She's got four great kids. She's got a great husband who seems very loving toward her. Um, she's got the world at her feet. You know, their their townhouse in Manhattan is basically like an entire square block. It's one of the nicest things you've ever seen in your life. She's got it all. They've got a huge private plane. They've got the best private schools. Like, enjoy your life. Enjoy your life. this the need if that's what this is about to be relevant because you've got a disorder or you had abuse or you know you're you're hanging around with Reese and Gwennneth and Savannah Guthrie who's a friend of hers and you know all these stars and you need to feel special too is something that you should discuss

2:16:37 with your therapist not a drug person who's giving you MDMA I mean like an actual therapist who can help you heal the thing inside of you that makes you have to say founder and girl boss allegedly as I I've got news for you. Those of us who actually have founded our companies and created entities that we genuinely run from scratch, don't talk about ourselves like that. Just stop that. That's embarrassing. That's that weakens you. Um, right now at this moment, even with this embarrassment, you have a great life. Walk away.

2:17:16 Say, "Litigation is extremely stressful. It was worse than I knew. And I stand by my story." Whatever you want to say, and get back to leading your great life. Leave Jolene alone. If I were you, I'd be cutting her a check like ASAP to make her go away and because you may have stolen her story. Um, but even if you didn't steal her story, even if she's stealing your story, this is not worth it. It's not worth it. You have more money than God. If you cut her a million dollar check, it would be a rounding error. You You would never feel it.

2:17:48 She'll go away. Sounds like she had a tough life and that she's a good person. She's been helping kids. You've been abused as children. So maybe you just take the high road. You cut her a check. You say, "I would like to avoid the stress of litigation, which by all accounts is causing you to pull your own hair out." that there were reports that she's like literally pulling her hair out. She can't she's been in like the fetal position so upset with Billy and so on. Like this is not worth it. We only get one goround. And honestly, if you're involved in any sort of a litigation, that's my same advice having done these cases for 10 years. Like it's very stressful. If you can get out of it amicably, well, do it. Unless you think it'll set a precedent. you know, in my business, we don't like to set precedents, which is why I have Brian Freriedman to go after anybody who messes with me, which is lovely. But my point is simply, she's

2:18:38 not in that position. She's not going to have repeat litigation over this book. So, that's my thought. And you, you know, maybe privately, you don't have to admit it publicly. If you stole this woman's story, you should apologize to her. Give her a check. Help make her life better. And putting an end to this will make your life better, too. It's going to be amazing. People in a year will forget about this whole thing. You know, you can just say, "Oh, whatever. I It's a confusing time. MDMA, you should be careful. Be careful when you go through this. It can it can cause some bad things to happen. It can cause you to get very confused." I think people would throw you that bone. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. What a week. Thank you all so much for being here with us. A lot of emotional swings.

2:19:20 Um, but geez, the news is crazy, right? Right. We went from the election to the Thomas Markle arrest, Russell Bran being found guilty, this wacky story, which 100% is going to be made into some sort of a movie, is it not? Like, my good god. Um, stay tuned and have a great great weekend. We'll see you Monday.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "FBI Arrests Meghan Markle’s Father, Plus Crazy Fallout Continues Over Amy Griffin’s Memoir"?

Megan Kelly (Guest), Moren Callahan (Guest), Billy Bush (Guest), Cash Patel.

What is "FBI Arrests Meghan Markle’s Father, Plus Crazy Fallout Continues Over Amy Griffin’s Memoir" about?

Meets report on the legal fallout surrounding Amy Griffin’s memoir The Tell, including allegations of memoryClaims, a defamation and privacy dispute with a woman from a less privileged background, and how these claims challenge the memoir’s accuracy and public portrayal. The segment traces the competing narratives, lawsuits, and reactions to the book’s publication and related media coverage.

What is mentioned in this Megyn Kelly episode?

118 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Amy Griffin, The Tell, The Megyn Kelly Show, Megan Kelly, Amy Griffin memoir controversy, The New York Times Magazine. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "FBI Arrests Meghan Markle’s Father, Plus Crazy Fallout Continues Over Amy Griffin’s Memoir"?

The episode runs 2 h 20 min; the transcript is about 23,076 words in 198 timestamped sections.

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