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April 27, 2022 - Louder with Crowder
46:17
Johnny Depp’s Uphill Battle EXPLAINED by Half-Asian Lawyer Bill Richmond | Louder with Crowder
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Welcome to the latest installment of Ash Wednesday Now, by popular request, my half-Asian lawyer, Bill Richman, is here in studio.
Yeah, he still works with us, but he's been working behind the scenes on legal matters.
I want to let you know this was pre-taped on Friday on the legal matters that, of course, are taking place with Elon Musk and Twitter and Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
We thought it'd be great to have a world-class lawyer in.
If some of this doesn't fully make sense because, well, this has changed, I want you to actually watch this through the lens of, we spoke about this on Friday, and not only is he a brilliant lawyer, but apparently an oracle, because some predictions are made that, in context now, are frighteningly spot-on.
I'm on the road, while you're watching this, taping some super videos that are going to be coming up here in the future that I think you'll be excited about, but for right now, enjoy It's been a while since we've done one of these.
is half-Asian Bill Richmond, this Ash Wednesday.
He never really went anywhere, but we get so many complaints.
We hear you.
We read you in the comments.
He's still working with us, but he's doing all the lawyering.
But we thought now with Elon Musk and Johnny Depp, a lot of legal issues in the news.
It would be a perfect time to bring back on the half-Asian lawyer, Bill Richman.
How are you, sir?
I'm wonderful.
Glad to be here.
Can you tell people that you're still here?
I mean, I get a lot of messages.
I see people and they're always like, what happened?
And I'm like, yo, I'm working.
Like, the half-Asian might be the first part of the name, but the lawyering is the first thing.
And then you trademarked it.
Right, right.
And then I was like, alright, now I'm doing DMCA claims against other fake half-Asians.
Keanu Reeves, get out of here.
Tiger?
Bro, stick with golf.
I don't think he's half-Asian.
He's like Irish and Mexican or something.
Ask all of his girlfriends.
They'd say parts of him.
How much time do you have?
So, HR Tim's always been like, hey, get out here, you know, Tokunawa was like, get out here, and I was like, I got the laws, but hey, we're going to talk about some fun topics today.
No, yeah, I'm really glad to have you here, and it's one of those things where you were, a lot of people don't know, you were pinch-hitting, right?
Because we were like, there was a point where we were kind of rotating third chair before Dave was here, and we were just sort of trying out, and then it was just, we were, you know, short-staffed, and so like, hey, Bill, can you come in, and then you just, you happened to be good at it, and so then I kept asking you, where you were like, I'm going to have to go back to being a lawyer, and I'm like, okay, but for I mean, it helped when I chained myself into the third chair and they were like, well, okay, I guess we'll make this work.
It was half-Asian snake moan.
Yes, and I was glad to.
Oh, by the way, we're smoking today Master's Blend 3 from Oliva, and shout out, you can actually get the Crowder 7 Plus 1 Sampler at Cigars Daily.
A friend of mine over there, Tim Swanson, good guy, has a great channel, and not a sponsor of the show, just the guy's been a solid dude, so you can do the Crowder 7 Plus 1 Sampler, has my favorite cigars there, and he's giving you a good deal.
That's cigarsdaily.com.
So, let's start first, before we get to the salacious stuff with Johnny Depp.
Elon Musk.
Uh, with Twitter.
Yeah.
I'm not a lawyer, and you do, obviously you do a lot of business, uh, law, if I'm correct.
That is correct.
So, seems to me like he really has the board's pecker in a twist.
Yes.
It's been super fun to follow.
Watch.
LawTwitter's been blowing up about it, which is ironic given that Twitter's at the heart of all this, but in the long run, it's a lot of bluff calling.
Elon essentially saying, I'm going to openly try and change the face of something that I don't like, and now the board is stuck between exercising their poison pill, trying to do shareholder rights plans, the fiduciary duties.
Can you explain to people, because the term poison pill is thrown around quite a bit.
I mean, here's the layman's interpretation of it.
Elon Musk basically said, hey, I will buy out Twitter.
I will gladly buy it, and at something like a 20% higher than the market valuation at that point, if I'm not mistaken.
Significantly higher.
He said, I'll buy it outright to own 100%.
And then he said, and if the board doesn't accept my offer, I may have to reconsider my stake in Twitter, which we know would probably cause their stock to take a nosedive, right?
So, those are kind of the options, but then people have talked about how the board instituted a poison pill, and even Jack Dorsey said this is their dysfunction.
What does that even mean?
Most people don't know what the poison pill means.
Sure, so, I mean, a poison pill is a general topic, it's a general concept of something that's going to make the acquirer not excited about acquiring the company, or make it harder to do.
Generally what that means is you've got shareholder rights plans, you've got preferred pricing, the ability for other shareholders to buy at a discounted price, or a cap on what powers you can exercise once you reach a certain threshold.
So normally in these kind of takeovers, you'll get someone who acquires a position, 9.2 in this case, but then they'll go to 10, they'll go to 15, they'll go even higher than that.
And your corporate raters, which is in the 80s and 90s terms when this first came around, The boards had to figure out a way to stop them.
So they would say, well, we'll put together this thing that's going to maybe hurt the company, but maybe not.
We're just trying to slow the process to make sure that everyone ostensibly gets a voice.
So that's what the poison pill is.
It makes it harder for Elon to do what he needs to do.
He's going to have to get more people on his side than just him by himself, which is how you could do it without the poison pill.
So it's like a legal turd in the punch bowl.
It's a turd in the punchbowl.
100%.
And it's basically one that says you can't even lift the turd out of the punchbowl by yourself.
You've got to get other people to come and help you to do it.
But that's where you see the interesting part about how Elon's been very public.
The polls on Twitter about the features, about what he should do, how he should do it.
He had to disclose of course through the SEC all of the offers that he made, but notice the language that he's
using, right? He's not just playing towards the board, he's playing towards all of the
shareholders of Twitter across the globe to say, who do you want running these things? A couple of folks, a
couple of men and women who have very small interests. But here's the question.
Why would they do it?
Because you're saying they need to take everyone's sort of voice into account.
It seems like the primary voice should be the shareholders.
And I would imagine the shareholders would be very happy to make that much money and to get something that high above market valuation.
So when we say everyone gets a voice, are we talking about people on the board or the shareholders?
So they're claiming that this is on behalf of the shareholders, but you're right.
So they're lying.
I would suspect that they don't actually know that this is in the best interest of the shareholders.
So the way they couch it is, well, we're trying to understand whether this is in the best interest of the shareholders.
Right.
Because you had one of the Saudi princes came out and said, well, I think the intrinsic value of Twitter is much higher than the offer.
And that's ultimately what it comes down to.
He doesn't know how to handle money.
He's a prince.
He was born with money and carpets.
He's got oil everywhere.
Yeah.
There's, you know, oil Derek in his bedroom.
I'm joking.
I hate when you have these people who are basically born into royalty or ill-gotten gain or gain that they just didn't earn by themselves and they try and tell everyone else, I know business.
No, you don't.
You were born into it.
What do you know about it?
I don't know if he was the one who came out and said it was actually worth significantly more at one point.
Yeah, three years ago.
Twitter's been consistently doing this.
This is another sort of how I see it, and I think how the public sees it.
It sounds to me, from what you're saying, they're almost using legal maneuvers that kind of reflect the exact suspicions that we've had.
It's the elites in power, the board, those people, versus the people who actually want to see real change at Twitter, namely in the direction of free speech, and that's even a lot of the shareholders.
It's in the interest of everyone, except for the corporate board who want to maintain control.
So what you haven't seen the board say yet, but what you've seen other people say, particularly on the left, is, oh, he wants more free speech?
That's dangerous.
Yes.
Right?
And that is, while the board isn't saying it, that's what everyone sees they're trying to put forward.
They're trying to say, well, if Elon is going to do what he actually says and make this platform more open, we really want to pump the brakes on that.
And they're using the legal maneuver to say, well, we're investigating it, we're evaluating it, we're trying to understand.
Well, the one part that they do have a leg on is there's not a competing offer, right?
So right now, it's not like someone else has come in and said, other than just the market value of the shares, right?
No one's come in and said, this is what we're willing to offer, or is this ownership group good?
Anyone who's done any investing knows that, you know, you can buy a great horse, but you put a bad jockey on it, no good, right?
Right, they have to be at least four foot five or below.
Yes, exactly.
That's all I know about jockeys.
Tall, you lose.
You're not Oompa Loompa, you're just a small, skinny human being.
Yes, like Danny DeVito would be gargantuan for a jockey.
Right, right.
No good, no good.
That horse is going nowhere.
But here you are going to a person who has successfully built multiple companies and multiple industries, who has successfully leveraged the very company itself through his platform, become one of the biggest voices, and of the top ten, the most active of all of the top ten with follower counts on Twitter, and they're saying, well we're just not sure whether or not He really knows what he's doing and it's in the best interest of the company.
So what we're going to see now, or shortly, is you're going to start seeing shareholders take action.
They're going to start sending demand letters.
Those will become public.
They're going to start sending disclosure requirements if you have a big enough stakeholder, depending on the rights that Twitter has under their stock plan.
You know, hey, what is the evaluation that you're doing?
Why are you doing it this way?
And ultimately people will start suing.
You will find shareholders who will say, Nope, we're going to take the board and try and hold them accountable and really bring a lot of this to light.
It's going to be interesting.
First off, if you have to bet, do you think Elon Musk pulls it off?
Do you think he buys Twitter?
I think he gets it.
You do?
I think one way or the other he's going to get it, but I don't think he's going to get it by himself.
They've already done the poison pill, but what I think Twitter's board is miscalculating, and I think what I would call left Twitter is miscalculating when they get out there and they scream, I don't want free speech, Elon Musk's free speech is dangerous, it's fascist, it's totalitarian, that the average American and the average shareholder is looking at that going, So, if the Twitter board has on its side a Saudi Prince, pretty much everyone else should agree that this is the right thing.
Yeah, tell you what, Saudi Prince, when your women can drive by themselves, we'll start talking about free speech.
Okay, what do you give the over-under if Jack Dorsey gets, sorry, Jack Dorsey, if Elon Musk gets Twitter, how quickly before Donald Trump is reinstated?
Uh, I think it's pretty quick.
Yeah.
I think it's pretty quick.
And then he says, true social, I never loved you anyway.
Well, I mean, we've seen this across the variety of tech platforms, companies, even, you know, kind of behind the scenes.
Amazon, you know, and what they did with Parler, etc.
is the question of who's allowed to use these services or not, and what is unquestionably Downright devious applications of their rules.
You've got an interim Afghani government who are allowed to be on Twitter.
You have literal terrorists all over Twitter and we can't have a president of the United States. We couldn't have him
while he was the sitting president of the United States. Right, exactly. Because they want, they
imply that, and of course the most free, fair election ever, just have to be clear because this part
is on YouTube of course, no, there's never been any problem with any type of mail-in
voting whatsoever at any point. Okay, all the caveats. Just for him saying, hey you know what,
let's look into some of these, uh, what he believed to be discrepancies.
That's it.
That's considered a threat to our institutions and he's gone.
The Ayatollah Khomeini is still there.
Like you said, interim governments of Afghanistan, still there.
It's, um, you know, Dinesh D'Souza talked about this with me and I think we've gone over this.
You don't have a country of laws just because you have laws.
You really only have law and order if the law is applied equally.
And I think, especially with this explosion of big tech, it's not really something that we were prepared for.
It's always funny to me when you hear leftists say, like, oh, well, the Second Amendment was back when there were only muskets, which we know is untrue.
There were cannons, there were puckle guns, Girandoni air rifles, there were high-capacity guns.
But this is one of those things where it's very hard to imagine a handful of companies that were more powerful than any national or world government and don't have the kind of regulatory oversight that just Ford Motors does.
Right.
And that's a tough pill to swallow, I think, for people who used to be libertarians.
Like, well, it's a business.
They can do whatever they want.
Yeah, but not when it affects elections and it's a de facto public square.
Right, or just the common concern of, you say you have a policy, you're not applying it equally, you know, this is deceptive, right?
You know, you are telling folks that this is an open platform when it's really not.
And all of the real credible, I mean, some people are, you know, they'll say, well, I don't understand, and I get these all the time.
People will reach out and they'll say, well, I've been, you know, the platforms are messing with me, and I'm like, well, but what you did is very obviously a problem, and these were the rules.
This is highly illegal.
I don't know how to tell you this, but you're going to waste your money giving it to me on this particular instance.
And so I tell them that, and they go, well, I think it's unfair.
And I go, well, that's not the way it works.
They can set out what the rules are.
They just have to apply it fairly.
And what Elon's most credible complaint has been is, how are you deciding who's banned?
How are you deciding the tweets to get on?
Look at Libs with TikTok.
What's going on right there?
Countless accounts that have been manipulated, have been shadow banned, have been dealt with in unfair ways.
And when Elon comes in and says, let's just stop doing that, and the board goes crazy, they start saying, well, I don't like that.
It makes more clear the agenda.
Look, even if he doesn't get it, right?
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe he doesn't pull it off.
The light that has been shed here His offer, his tactics have put a spotlight on what the board is.
And that, of anything, is they can't hide from pushing this agenda.
Yeah, it's often why people, when people ask me, like, why don't you think about running for office?
Because look at what Elon, someone like Elon Musk, and I'm not comparing myself at all to Elon Musk, but look what he was able to do in the private sector versus the politicians who we know, many of whom we've spoken with, have been just having hearing after hearing after hearing and accomplishing nothing.
Right.
He's already accomplished more just in making the offer.
Like you said, that's changed the dynamics.
And if he actually gets Twitter and he starts applying rules fairly, it will force.
And even YouTube, I know people don't think of YouTube as a social platform.
It's more of a media consumption platform.
But even YouTube and certainly Facebook, Instagram, it'll force them to have to follow suit.
Because too many people will feel, they'll feel restrained.
Right.
So it's again, it's the free market is more effective than someone with an R next to their name.
All right.
So I think, and we can talk more about when we go to Mug Club, uh, you know, YouTube and how you, how we met, how a half Asian lawyer, Bill Richman and I met, you can hear the origin story and, um, kind of the changes just that we've seen in, I mean, dramatic changes, uh, that have happened on the platform.
I was just talking about this last week, but we can move.
Okay.
To Johnny Depp.
This is something everyone is talking about.
Law and crime, I think, YouTube channel is one thing that's actually doing really well as far as streaming right now on YouTube, because they've changed that too.
This is a scenario that has people really riled up.
Again, what I see is almost everybody with whom I speak goes, I just can't believe Amber Heard is such a monster because they've listened to the audio with her admitting to hitting Johnny Depp and mocking him and pooping in his bed.
But there was still an article from Variety talking about how this shows the privilege of rich white men.
And again, there's that disconnect.
How do you see this case playing out, and what do you make of some of the lead?
Because this is a defamation case.
Yes.
Right?
So, to be clear, for people who don't know, I don't want to waste, I don't want to, since you're by the hour, I don't want you to have to explain the beginning part.
So, she left Johnny Depp, filed for divorce, claimed that he had assaulted her, okay, then instead settled, right, they settled out of court, she got seven million dollars, and then wrote a veiled article in Washington Post about how she's a survivor of
abuse and of course the direct inference was that it was Johnny Depp.
And then that caused him to lose at least $50 million.
I mean it's Pirates of the Caribbean job.
So he is suing her for defamation because he's saying he never physically assaulted
her.
And as a matter of fact she did to him and committed mental abuse.
Is there anything else that people need to know in there before we kind of get into the sort of details of what a horrible person she is?
Well, I mean, those are long and in-depth and we're going to get into those.
What's important is folks have already kind of forgotten the original, where this originally came from in the legal realm, which was his lawsuit against The Sun.
So under, you know, under British law... They called him a wife-beater.
Right the wife beater and you know they're ultimately in a British law they had to prove it and in what Johnny Depp's lawyers described of the trial result there that it was a perverse and bewildering ignorance of the evidence, right? I mean, they literally,
the judge in there, the way that they described it was just ignored
testimony, evidence, written evidence, oral testimony, recordings, etc. about what Amber Heard was doing and her
litany of wrongful acts. I mean, the
demonstrating that she was neither afraid of being abused, had not been abused, was more clearly the person who was
engaging in the abuse. You think when you say that, I didn't, I have been looking high and low. I
I haven't seen any evidence that she's presented of abuse.
Beyond her claiming so, and at one point claiming that this mark came from him.
I mean, she's got a lot of circumstantial, inferential, right?
Well, this is, you know, the marks, the conversations, taking certain contexts, you know, what she's done is to go out there in this instance and say, look at all of the crazy things that he's done, which anyone who's lived a life has done crazy things where, in a photo, taken out of context, a snippet, you know, you always say, Take a snippet, look at the first 30 seconds before, look at the 30 seconds afterwards, and then you'll more likely know what is the truth.
Yeah, like last week I said, I want more women who are raped to come forward and, you know, bring their accuser to justice or to carry a firearm so they're not a victim of rape.
And some people just took, I want more women to be raped.
Cutting the sentence off.
You know, I mean, you see this example all the time, right?
The lion who's holding the cub by the neck, and you're like, yeah, no, no, no, that's the cub of that mother lion, and she's dragging him to come with the other cubs because there's an alligator over here, right?
And so the context is what matters.
And so in that son lawsuit, he lost.
And they were able to prove in the opinion of that judge and the judgment that abuse
did occur, though that judge did say that there were a number of instances that she
alleged abuse occurred and they were like, nope, didn't happen.
So already in that original lawsuit, her claims were found to not be entirely credible.
Now he went and tried to appeal that to the British court to the next level.
And they said, no, it's not enough.
And I got to tell you, some of that is, you know, I haven't read all the pleadings and
all the evidence, but it seemed strange that they weren't able to, even under that other
legal system, to be able to challenge it.
But now let's fast forward to this lawsuit.
Right.
You know, we're not all the way through.
We've got, you know, different evidence is still going to come out in testimony.
But you're right.
There's a paucity of evidence on her side.
There's a lot of evidence on his side to say that what she was talking about, I mean, first of all, the fact that she's even trying to say, well, it could have been about anyone.
I'm sorry, what?
Yeah, the article.
Right, not specific enough.
During that time when she was married to Johnny Depp, and in subsequent interviews, she's given commentary that again makes the inference.
Oh, you had a guy on the side and he was abusing?
Is that the guessing game?
Could have been Elon Musk, that's also one of the things that Johnny Depp said.
Not one month into her marriage, she was stooping Elon Musk.
That wasn't the exact words, but something like that.
I mean, I think right next to the shit on his side of the bed that he found was a Cybertruck key.
So, you know, it was very... Although he was very happy to be the first person to get one.
Yeah, it was a welcome gift.
I haven't seen any evidence from her side, and I want to get to... Okay, it's a defamation case here in the United States.
Um, correct me if I'm wrong, and then I want to get into sort of, um, the importance, you know, we talked about this last week, marriage and marriage laws in the country, and how it now is discouraging people from getting married because it's just a risk that men don't want to take, and it's one of the only contracts that I can think of in the United States where if one person makes significantly more money, uh, one side is financially incentivized to break it in certain no-fault divorce states.
Sure.
In other words, there are women, let's say a woman is not wealthy, a woman has never worked a day in her life.
Her best bet to get rich in certain states is just to marry a rich guy.
There is.
That does exist.
I know it's cynical, but the truth is... But I would say that that's, you know, this might cut against it a little bit.
It's kind of a tale as old as time, right?
It's not quite as old as the world's oldest profession.
Right.
But, you know, the MRS hasn't been a joke for, you know, a hundred years because... It's not all that different from the world's oldest profession.
Well, at times, and that would be part of the question, right?
Like, what was the purpose here?
Look at Anna Nicole Smith and her situation, right?
Yeah.
Ended up, you know, with a big goose egg.
No, she just liked 90-year-old wrinkly turtle look-alikes.
I mean, don't tell my wife, but, oh yeah.
No, I'm kidding.
So, when it comes to that situation, there's a couple different aspects, right?
There's the marital aspect.
People have also asked a lot of questions.
I've got messages from folks who are asking about the criminal side, right?
Like, where are the police?
To do the investigations on both sides, right?
Who's done what, what's happening there, and that appears to be a very little part of what's going on here.
I think it's a little part because she admitted to her physician. She admitted that she punched him,
right? And he admitted to his physician when he was cut and beat, you know, he cut his finger
that she threw a bottle at him. Right. And people said, why did you lie? Well,
he lied to people who weren't the doctor because he was embarrassed. And he told the doctor what
she told her physician. So in other words, everything that will be on the record,
would there be consequences? It's pretty consistent. But before we get to the marriage
thing, let's start with the defamation issue, because I think a lot of people may not fully
understand this. And they just go, I like Johnny Depp. I like Amber Heard. Defamation is one of
of those things.
A third party, let's say a newspaper, and it kind of needs to be where they need to reserve the right to be incorrect.
Not be malicious, you know, and knowingly lie, but people get things wrong all the time.
Sure.
It's a little different when you're a public figure and this is the person in relationship with you.
From what I understand with defamation, it's a pretty high bar to clear.
And if you're not a public figure, right, you need to prove that you lied, That you lied negligently, when it's a public figure, that you lied with malice of forethought, so even more, that you lied to a third party, which in this case obviously had taken place, and then that there are significant reputational damages that you need to prove.
Is there something else that I'm missing, or is that kind of the bar?
I mean, that's, in broad strokes, yes.
I mean, there's, you know, for example, there's a limited purpose public figure, which is between a private citizen and a true public figure.
Then there's, I mean, there's endless case law about how someone crosses in that threshold of being a general public figure, and whether or not They have to get to this malice standard, you know, that you knew what you were saying was wrong, right?
Yeah.
And this has always been the tension of the First Amendment.
We did that, you know, changed my mind down in front of Google in Austin, where Mr. Jones... They couldn't not answer us fast enough.
Right, right.
The security guards loved us, but yeah, I don't think the employees were super thrilled.
That's the untold story.
No one knows that the security guards usually could have been dicks.
I'm like, get the hell out of here.
But they were like, I like what you're doing.
You know what's so funny?
It's like Shades of Fight Club, right?
Where they're like, we're everywhere, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We cook your food.
We guard your homes, right?
And it's like, yeah, no, there are real Americans everywhere.
And so in your ivory towers, you know, just realize you're talking shit about Americans.
Yeah, for people who haven't seen it, by the way, you can go and we'll have a link in the description.
Half-Asian Bill did come with us to Austin.
We did a Change My Mind out in front of the Google headquarters in Austin.
This was the one where you almost got shaked.
Oh yeah, they tried to throw a milkshake.
There was something else in that milkshake that I won't tell, but yeah.
It was a Kiefer Sutherland lookalike from Lost Boys, right?
Yes.
Yeah, I remember that.
That was a good one.
But we talk about this tension, right, which is people to be able to say things, to be able to say them, and in certain instances, you know, whether through comedy or news or otherwise, you know, for the public good, there's a lot of kind of exceptions to it.
Of course.
You can make statements that you may not know are 100% true, but you have a good faith reason to believe they're true, or you're doing it for the public good and there are exceptions there.
Here, this is not the case, right?
This is someone who is in the relationship with the guy.
Right, not only is she in the relationship, not only did they have a resolution, not only did she do the op-ed, not only did she try and skirt around what her agreement had been, but then it's very clearly intended to be wrong.
Like, there's no way to be like, well, you know, I heard from Amber that's what happened, and I interpreted her words, and so I said something about it.
This is her saying, first person, I was there, these horrible, horrible things happened to me consistently, and You know, don't listen to my phone calls, don't look at anything I've written, don't look at any of the facts.
My admission of pooping out of bed.
Right.
And none of those things are relevant.
I just was horribly, horribly abused by Johnny Depp, right?
And so we have to allow, and what I think really makes people frustrated on the left is that they have this ideal
that we can just solve all these problems. That there can be no offensiveness, no
uncomfortableness, no...
you know, that we can shut down speech that we don't like and here... Just start by hashtag believe all women. It's
like, well that's the end of that.
Right!
It's like, we're just gonna believe no matter what.
Whatever's gonna happen, we're not gonna take any thought to evaluate it.
And here, the argument is the same, right?
It's the other side of the coin of saying, we're just gonna go say what it is and it needs to be believed and, you know, we're just gonna let it happen.
But what are we doing about false accusations?
Yeah.
False accusations in a marriage, false accusations in the workplace, false accusations in public, right?
I mean, you've got Terrence Howard, right?
Did a thing, caught on video, it is what it is, right?
You've got other folks who have been wrongly accused and everyone just remembers the accusation, they don't remember the back end.
Brett Kavanaugh.
Yeah, I mean we've got a ton of situations like that.
And people still run with it.
People still run with things that after the investigation, which was conducted, was proven to be false.
For example, that party didn't happen on that night, and it couldn't have happened in that house because it didn't exist, and those people couldn't have possibly been there.
And people still run with that.
And they just remember that accusation, and those in the media, unfortunately, because there's such a lack of fear of any retribution or even accountability, they just go with it.
And that's also what I see with Amber Heard in this.
This is someone, if you listen to the calls, the taunting, the, you're not a man, you're a pussy, you know, these kind of things.
See who they believe.
This is not a woman who is afraid of being abused.
And this is a woman who also admits on the call to abusing him.
And it doesn't seem like it's a woman who fears any accountability in a legal system.
And I will say I get a lot of messages from young men, as someone who has been, you know, an open advocate for the institution of marriage.
But I am conflicted, because there's the biblical view of marriage in a holy institution, and then the government really has screwed it up in a lot of ways with divorce laws, where it is kind of, no fault is not no fault.
So what is that?
What are the consequences, for example?
All I keep hearing about defamation is it's such an incredible hurdle to clear.
It is.
Yep.
I mean, shouldn't it be, we're talking about civil, but if she actually lied about something, it's provable.
Shouldn't there be criminal penalties for perjury?
Well, so, there are.
It's the question of whether they're enforced.
It's that prosecutorial discretion.
I mean, people were, you know, our juicy small-a situation, right?
People were frankly shocked that it got even as far as a trial, much less a conviction,
you know, because it just rarely happens.
Now, it doesn't not ever happen.
It happens...
It is very rare, and it comes in very extreme public situations, or it comes in situations where it's a slam dunk and they're willing to just do it.
But a lot of the times, you know, the way our criminal system is set up, overworked prosecutors who have long, long, long, long dockets, longer than you can imagine.
You go into any DA's office around the country, they've got long lists of products, and when they have to choose between murders, Embezzlers, you know, those types of things.
And then going and prosecuting someone for making a false claim, it tends to fall to the bottom, regardless of the harm of the true victim, which is the person who was falsely accused.
Right.
So then it's incumbent upon people to go out and prove, you know, through the civil system what's going on.
But then that puts the full burden on that individual.
How many people would be able to mount a lawsuit like Johnny Depp without his resources?
You know, which her accusations are actively hurting.
Right?
And it makes the average person very concerned.
I get the same messages, right?
I mean, about folks who say, well, what can I do in this situation?
How can I have an open conversation?
You know, whether in the employment context, whether in the school context.
Hey, I want to have an open discussion in a classroom.
Well, now you've got to start.
Biting your tongue more.
You've got to start... Unless you're teaching second graders about fisting.
Correct.
If you are doing some of those public library conversations... Yes.
You know, where we have... Drag queen story hour.
Right, right.
Yes, exactly.
Also school assemblies.
We showed that last week.
A drag queen school assembly.
I'm like, if this were just a woman effectively stripping at an assembly, it would be pornography.
But because it's a drag queen, it's like... I wasn't stripping.
But that's the question.
Are we going to enforce these laws?
The end all be all is if you do not take action against false accusations, you create an environment where people don't feel like they have any protection from the system.
I'll tell you what it feels like for a lot of people watching.
A lot of people watching think, this woman was, and your cigar went out, if you need to relight it, that's fine, I can take the torch for a little, I can take the mantle for a little bit.
Do you have your lighter?
I do.
Okay.
You know, I showed you how to do the purge fireball trick, right?
No.
That's where you toast it, you light it, and then you blow out, and it'll create a fireball, and that'll purge that sort of ashy taste that happens when a cigar goes out.
No, I like, I like, I like ashy melons.
Okay, alright, well that's fine.
A little Zoolander.
You like your cigars like you like your women, old and ashy.
Oh my gosh, my wife is gonna fight you.
Yeah, no, your wife is far from it.
As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever seen a woman with more porcelain-like skin than your wife.
That was the first thing I noticed.
It's that whole, I gotta tell you, it's that whole mix.
It's an old mixed race thing.
Mm-hmm.
It's like, you know, you mix the colors.
Mutts are taking over the world.
Look, when the Chinese armies, you know, breach the California border, I will designate you as one of the... Thank you.
I'm going to have to say you're an indentured servant.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, they'll kill me last.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'll be like, no, no, no, I need that guy.
She digs the ditches.
All right, you need one more puff on that.
It's going to drive me nuts if you don't do it.
So I will tell you what it looks like and what I think and what I think most Americans think.
As they look at this Johnny Depp scenario, they go, all right, seems pretty damn clear that she at least abused him.
Doesn't seem clear that he physically assaulted her.
It's pretty undeniable that she physically assaulted him because she admitted it to him on a phone call.
She admitted it to third parties.
There's evidence of it.
She doesn't even really deny it.
Now it's the question of did he physically assault her?
I haven't seen any evidence.
So most people are watching this going, okay, at best this was a tumultuous relationship between two parties.
At most likely, this was an abusive relationship from a woman to a man, which we talked about last week.
It's actually far more common than male-to-female, the domestic abuse incidents.
Same thing with single mothers versus single fathers.
It's like 200-something thousand, 230-something thousand mothers abuse their children physically versus only 130-something thousand fathers per year.
A lot of people don't know this because the story doesn't get told, and that ultimately harms children.
But most people watching are saying, this is a woman who was abusive.
Emotionally, physically to Johnny Depp and did undoubtedly cause him to lose his job through what she said.
But I don't think anything's going to happen anyway because the hurdle is too high to clear.
That's how most people watch this.
They go, this is a guy, and I don't even like Johnny Depp.
I'm not a fan at all.
I always thought he was kind of an affected prick, but my heart goes out to him.
I feel like most people who are watching this, this is when people lose faith in their institutions where they go, this seems really clear, but we have no hope.
I'm with you.
I don't like Pirates.
I don't like Caribbean.
I didn't like the movies either.
I don't like Black Pearls.
Mr. Sparrow, no.
Not my favorite.
I hate birds.
Ultimately, you've got to envision yourself being one of the parties here and feeling like, is justice going to happen?
Do I have the ability to believe that it won't be motivated by politics or because of a personal animus?
Is the system going to work?
And look, the system is going to play itself out and we're going to find out.
And people are always going to say, you know, I hear this from clients, I hear this from folks who are just commenting on the system, they go, Well, you know, the trial court got it wrong.
And I was like, guys, we've had appellate courts to review trial courts since the beginning of courts.
So we've already known that there are going to be times when your trial courts are going to get things wrong, and that's why you have the appeal system.
Right.
But that being said, it doesn't remove the frustration of knowing that to get there is going to be a problem.
I tell people all the time, they come in and they say, oh, I want justice.
And I say, well, let me just let me just stop you right there.
If it was justice, you wouldn't even have to be talking to a lawyer.
Someone would just, you know, Just decide, and the decision would be done correctly, and you wouldn't have to go spend money, or relive the pain, or have to deal with the accusations.
Right.
But that's where our system is, and you're right.
People are losing the faith to believe that we're going to look and apply the law fairly.
Whether it's policies at a big tech company, whether it's the laws on defamation, whether it's, what I would say is, really a Hypocritical application of the idea of equality.
So many folks on the left will say, well, you have to believe all women.
I'm sorry, I thought all people were equal.
Shouldn't we believe men and women?
Have you met many women?
Or men?
Or Zs?
Like, generally speaking, I don't believe all of anything.
I believe less than the plurality.
Right.
Because most people lie.
And when you have folks who come in and go, well, you know, it's a guy versus a woman, so I'm just going to believe the woman.
Or folks go, well, you know, look, that guy made some really bad movies, he must be a liar.
That's a little more facetious, but folks would say, look, this guy, he drinks.
He sometimes gets a little wild.
Sometimes he does things that are deplorable or immoral.
That doesn't mean he did the things she's accusing him of.
And you have to let You have to let the system play out, and then on top... Here, take this one.
Yeah, this thing just went out.
And then you gotta get people to back up and enforce it!
Because someone like Amber Heard, who, again, like you've been saying, like we've been seeing, lack of evidence on her side, lots of evidence on his side.
How do you do that?
I can't even get that to do that right.
It tastes good now.
Dammit.
Alright.
No, I think you're right.
And I think the problem is, and I think that a lot of people are frustrated with, is the believe all women is a hashtag.
Right?
Most people say that's unreasonable.
Believe women.
Hear all women, for sure.
Hear all women, and then innocent until proven guilty.
That's most people, right?
Again, with the subtext that many men are scumbags.
We kind of all know that.
I think the problem is, that's a hashtag, but it's also sort of a foundational stone of our current legal system as it relates to a lot of marital law.
Oh, there's no question.
As it relates to custody, as it relates to... There's no question.
Yeah, and that's...
That's what is unfortunately eroding, far more than this idea of same-sex marriage.
It's eroding marriage because states are basically saying, well, if you're a man and you're a provider, you really have, ultimately it's what the woman says goes.
And that's, and you have to prove that it's not true.
And like you said, if someone doesn't have the resources of Johnny Depp, well, they lose their kids or they lose their shirt.
Right.
Well, there's like a big distinction, right?
Like, you know, your mom, for example, stand-up woman, honest, hard, Great.
Has her opinions.
Hilarious accent.
Everything about her is great.
My mom and I have had a lot of disagreements.
I've talked about it before on other Ask Wednesdays.
We had times where we disagreed.
I felt like her upbringing made it hard for her to raise.
kids in a different country than the one she grew up with and other things like that.
And those prejudices and insecurities came into her relationship and then I had my own
as we came into our relationship.
But the idea of saying, well, you know what, my mother was great, my sister was great,
my grandmother's great, so I'm going to believe all women because there's an idea that the
majority of women are oppressed or assaulted or harmed is going against the grain of what
our legal system is founded on is that we are going to take these accusers with these
accusations and judge them on their behalf.
Well, I mean, even just so in the divorce side of that.
Okay, maternally, that means they're better off.
Statistically, it is undeniable that single mothers commit abuse against children more than men.
That's undeniable by a large margin.
But the legal system says, well, they should automatically go to the mother because a mother automatically loves them more than a father.
And there are so many dads out there who, when I get emails, I say, I don't care about alimony.
They go, what I don't want to lose is my shirt on child support because I know it's not going to go to the kids.
I'd rather put it in a trust fund.
I'd rather give it directly to the kids.
We have a court system that says, basically, you give this money to the mom, and the mom's going to look out for the best interest of the kids.
I think that's where a lot of people see themselves, even though they didn't parent children together.
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were so many voiceless men, or women who were the daughters of men treated that way, or sisters, go, this is the problem with our court system.
been seen in numerous cases where you know one parent says you know let's say for example oh i'm a i'm a doctor so i can take care of my kids better this this woman doesn't know anything you should give them to me well are you a good father that's the question flip it to the other side well i'm the mother i i'm definitely going to take care of them okay but you We're going to apply all the good things that these other women did to this situation, and we're going to institutionalize that bias when we need to evaluate the situation.
And the number of dads that go into these situations, into divorces, into disputes, or even after they're divorced, right?
The alimony situation, the child support situation.
The system is built in, in almost every single state and every court, that the dad comes in one or five steps behind.
And it's unfortunate.
Or the husband, even if there aren't kids.
And that's kind of what we're seeing with Johnny Depp.
I guess, how do you see this going, and then we'll go to Muggler, how do you see this going with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard?
Because the evidence seems overwhelming with recorded phone calls, with the testimony of people whose testimony would actually matter.
I don't just mean James Franco, but I mean doctors, physicians were like, actually this night, this is what she told me.
Actually this night, this is what he told me.
And then the recordings of her saying, yes I hit you.
There's no recording of him saying, yes I hit you.
There are medical records of him dealing with the injuries from her throwing a bottle at him.
Um, how do you see this playing out?
Because again, it's not, it's not a case, it's not a criminal case regarding battery.
It's a case regarding defamation.
Is it too high of a bar to clear?
And if that is the case, is there any kind of hope for reform to a legal system that, you know, puts people on an equal footing?
Well, the first thing I'm going to say is this, and this is not for you because you get the terms right, but for all you people out there saying, is he, is he going to go to, is she going to go to jail, or is he going to go to jail at the end of this civil lawsuit?
Y'all, that's not what this is about.
This is monetary damages.
Get it right before you start tweeting about it.
We still got more evidence to go.
We still got things to go in the trial.
We still got rulings for the court, even after the evidence is in, to determine whether certain things are still in, whether they can be considered, what weight they're going to give.
But, you know, it's looking as though the evidence that really needs to matter gets in.
So many people will go to a court and they'll say, well, I heard everything.
I watched every minute of the trial.
I heard every bit of evidence that came in.
I heard everything the jury heard, you know, if there's a jury in the case, right?
And I came to a conclusion.
But what you forget is that the judge can make decisions about what evidence come in, right?
In the criminal case, motions to suppress.
Evidence that never comes in or evidence that's never given by the prosecution to help the person in the defense.
Similarly, in a civil case, evidentiary rulings that were made in the beginning that will impact what evidence is even shown in the first place.
But here, you're getting to see so much more of the evidence that, in my mind, it's painting more of the real story than what happened in the Sun case before.
Right.
But then it comes down to... And that's good.
That is going to bear more in Johnny Depp's favor to be able to clear that high hurdle.
It seems to me like maybe the likelihood is they say, okay, sure, this was, you know, defamation, but we're not going to give you the money.
They could.
They could go and say, this was a false statement, it was never true, but, you know, everyone thought you were a bad actor anyways, or you weren't going to get those movies, that Fantastic Beasts spinoff, you know, nobody wanted, you were a has-been anyway, so he's going to have hurdles there too, right?
He's still going to have to jump over all those hurdles because someone decided to make false accusations against him, and he's going to fight every part of that.
As the plaintiff, he's going to fight every part of that.
How can people hope to see change?
Like you just mentioned, this is civil.
How can people be hopeful that the system is reformed so that there are criminal charges brought against people who make false accusations that destroy people's lives?
Because destroying someone's livelihood is a much bigger deal than people give it credit for.
Like, oh, well, you know what?
You're still free to do it.
It's like, yeah, but the person can't make a living.
The least sexy thing is the most effective thing.
Get active.
If you're in a state that has elected judges, look at the judges.
Look at what their backgrounds are.
The number of judges who are being elected into positions at the trial courts, the appellate courts, with not only no experience, but actually maybe even worse is folks who have detrimental experience who don't know what they're doing.
They're the ones that are hamstringing the parties from really being able to get any semblance of justice or even being heard to tell the real story and let the chips fall where they may with the true story.
You've got to get active in those elections.
But even talking about your political positions, your appointed positions, the people who are appointing the folks who decide what the rules are, your legislature who decides what are the rules of evidence.
Oh, you can go ahead and bring these kinds of claims.
There's no way to just deal with it early on like an anti-SLAPP lawsuit right at the beginning.
It's very unsexy.
I know people are already shooting out over it.
With legal issues, it's very local.
I mean, you can have one county over, and it's an entirely different legal protocol.
I mean, that's why some people were saying it was a big deal that this is in Virginia, as opposed to California, because that's where, I think it was the Washington Post, where the article was posted.
And the laws are different, where you may have a better chance.
That's how big of a difference it can make.
And that is also how much of a difference you can make being involved locally.
More so than I know it's tough with politicians when you're thinking about presidents and
senators like well how much can they really do they have one vote.
A judge can make a huge difference and your local legislature can make a huge difference
as it relates to what is allowed in your courts.
And maybe an unpopular opinion but I'm going to say it anyways.
There are you've got to look past the R or the D or the L or the I next to the name on
If you're in a state that votes, or if you're in a state that does retention voting or that kind of thing.
Because there are judges who are dedicated to following the laws in both parties.
You've got to look past it.
Just like you're going to look past the fact that a mom happens to be a mom, and that they're going to be good for the kids.
You've got to look to the substance of these candidates, these judges, these elected officials, and really dig in.
Tweeting's one thing.
You gotta get the words out.
People gotta do that.
I'm encouraging you to still tweet.
That's important.
But you've gotta take other action if you're gonna see change.
Otherwise, we're gonna go the way of people who don't trust their government and believe that anything the government is doing is probably wrong.
And that's not what America is.
We gotta fight for the core of America, which is a legal system that actually works.
Right.
I don't think it's entirely misguided to think that there's a lot wrong with America's institutions right now, but you've got to do more than just bitch about it.
Okay, speaking of which, you guys let me know who else you would like to see in the next Ash Wednesday.
I know we kind of do these intermittently because a lot of people, it's not like Tim Pool, by the way Tim, hello, love you buddy, where everyone has to come out in studio, but when we do the Ash Wednesdays, we do, since it's a sit-down, a long sit-down, we want them to come in studio, let us, let me know, comment below who you'd like to see.
Should we, should we stop swatting Tim?
Is that, is that, no.
It's, well, Yeah, it's not... I mean, it's still funny.
Poor guy!
It's still funny.
It is funny, but poor guy!
Sorry, Tim.
Next time we'll just send pizzas.
Swat pizzas.
Yeah.
We'll send jets.
Fighter jets.
So, also, Cigars Daily.
You guys can go get the Crowder 7 Plus 1 Sampler.
Again, they're not an official sponsor of the show, but Tim over there is a great guy, and he has a great YouTube channel if you want to learn about cigars.
We are going to actually discuss some of the origin stories and what's been going on with Big Tech on Mug Club YouTube.
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