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May 6, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
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Condemning Illegal Behavior 00:14:35
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday.
It has been a huge week for us.
Thanks to our audience for tuning in and the amazing guests that we've lined up to discuss the historic leak at the U.S. Supreme Court and the decision that was inside of that leak, the draft opinion on reversing Roe versus Wade.
Today, there are new developments in that story, including strong remarks from Chief Justice John Roberts about the leaker and the White House again refusing to condemn the the leak itself and the planned protests at the conservative justices' homes.
They couldn't care less about what happens to them.
They really don't.
It's very obvious.
We're also going to speak with a coach today, speaking of the Supreme Court, whose personal act of prayer is now a major test of constitutional rights being considered at the court.
They just had an oral argument on this case, and the court's been doing some very interesting things when it comes to religious liberty.
Now that we have six conservatives on the bench, we'll get into what that means.
Plus, we're going to discuss some other hot topics, including the New York Times hit piece on Elon Musk.
My God, did you see this?
And bizarre and disturbing new details from the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial.
Big day, buckle up.
Here we go.
We start with one of our favorites, Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer at National Review.
Charles, welcome back to the show.
Great to have you.
Thanks for having me.
So let's kick it off with the White House's refusal, refusal to condemn the leak, not to mention the protests at the Supreme Court justices' homes.
Peter Ducey of Fox News grilled Jen Saki about it on her outgoing day.
Here it is, Soundbite 1.
Do you think the progressive activists that are now planning protests outside some of the justices' houses are extreme?
Peaceful protest?
No, peaceful protest is not extreme.
Some of these justices have young kids, but their neighbors are not all public figures.
Peter, look, I think our view here is that peaceful protest, there's a long history in the United States and the country of that.
And we certainly encourage people to keep it peaceful and not resort to any level of violence.
These activists posted a map with the home addresses of the Supreme Court justices.
Is that the kind of thing this president wants to help your side make their point?
Look, I think the president's view is that there's a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness.
We obviously want people's privacy to be respected.
We want people to protest peacefully if they want to protest.
That is certainly what the president's view would be.
So he doesn't care if they're protesting outside the Supreme Court or outside someone's private residence.
I don't have an official U.S. government position on where people protest.
She just wouldn't do it.
She doesn't care.
They can go right up to Amy Coney Barrett's house with her young children, including her 10-year-old, who happens to have Down syndrome.
Fine, fine with the White House.
They have no problem with it at all, Charles.
It was interesting to me that she reiterated the uncontroversial part of the premise, which is that there are people out there who are unhappy and sad and worried and scared, which is always the case when we're dealing with unacceptable behavior.
I mean, that's a given.
That was true of the rioters on January 6th.
The question is, what should people who are worried and scared and unhappy and passionate do?
And there is obviously behavior that crosses the line.
And there is an odd facet to this White House when it comes to answering these questions, a facet that actually it shared with the previous White House.
This was a floor of Donald Trump's as well, that it's unwilling or reluctant to say what the vast majority of people would think is obvious.
The leak was a disgrace, should not have happened, should not happen again.
Protesting outside Supreme Court justices' homes, publishing their private addresses is wrong.
And if you remember back a few months ago last year, an activist in Arizona followed Kirsten Sinemar into the bathroom.
And Joe Biden demurred when asked.
He said, well, you know, it's not great, but this is part of the process.
No, it's not.
That wasn't part of the process.
And leaking Supreme Court drafts is not part of the process.
And rioting or protesting outside of Supreme Court justices' houses is not part of the process either.
And it shouldn't be too difficult for the president of the United States or his press secretary to say that.
He was also asked, or sorry, she was also asked about the leak itself.
Don't have this soundbite cut, but she was asked specifically about that.
The question was about the leak itself.
Why wouldn't the White House condemn this?
Why wouldn't the White House condemn this leak?
Are there any concerns about the sort of further politicization of one of the branches of government?
Saki, have you ever reported anything that's been leaked to you?
Question.
You guys have criticized leaks before, as it's been provided.
So I'm asking, why not criticize this leak, Saki?
Again, because I think what's happening here and what we think is happening here is there's an effort to distract from what the actual issue here can't both be true.
Can't both be true, though?
Saki, which is the fundamental rights.
They're not at the same level.
Fair enough, says the questionnaire.
I assume this is Deucey.
My team will let me know.
Saki responds again, they're not at the same level.
Yeah, it's Ducey.
So Ducey says, so they're not at the same level.
But would you agree it's still worthy of condemnation?
Why can't she just say it, Charles, right?
That's what he's trying to say.
Condemn the leak.
She responds, well, look, there's been a call for an investigation by leaders of the Supreme Court.
Decisions on that and how it will be pursued will be made by the DOJ and others.
And that's certainly their space and right to make decision in government.
That's how government is set up.
But at the same time, what we've also seen, Peter, is many Republicans who are trying to overturn a woman's fundamental rights try to make this about the leak.
This is not about the leak.
This is about women's health care and women having access to healthcare and making choices with their doctors.
And that was it.
She wouldn't do it.
That's it.
Yeah.
And she also said that it's unprecedented.
That was about as far as she went.
But of course, unprecedented is a value neutral term.
A lot of things that are unprecedented that are good.
This was not.
The problem with this was not that it hadn't been done before.
The problem with this is that it's disastrously wrong.
And again, it shouldn't be too difficult for the president or his press secretary to say that.
Let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that this was leaked by a conservative clerk.
Now, I don't think that's what happened.
I have no information about this whatsoever.
But just argue endo, let's say that it was.
It wouldn't be too difficult, would it, for me, who wants to see Roe overturned to say that was a disgraceful wrong thing to do.
I don't have to go into the details of the draft opinion.
I don't have to have an opinion of the draft opinion in order to say that it is disastrously wrong to leak private communications between Supreme Court justices.
And I just, I don't understand why she refuses to separate the two.
Well, my feeling is, great.
She seems to like leaks.
Let's do it.
Let's go.
It's their administration right now.
They like this particular one, given the way this is panning out.
But to all those people working in the federal government right now, if you've got information on the new disinformation czar and what she's going to be doing, leak it.
Let's see it.
You're not going to get in trouble.
Gensaki, President Biden, they have no problem with you leaking.
They think it's part of a reporter's duty to actually take the leaks and print the leaks.
So let's have at it.
Then she was asked about the president's abortion stance.
And in particular, there was an interview.
I know I heard this mentioned, I think, on the editors the other day, but Tim Ryan, the guy who's going to be running against JD Vance now in Ohio for the Senate race, a Democrat, he was asked by Brett Baer on Fox.
So where do you stand on abortion?
You know, okay, you're upset about the draft opinion.
Should there be any limits?
And he would not commit to any limits whatsoever in any part of the nine-month pregnancy.
Just it's up to the woman was how he landed.
So Peter Ducey asks Jensaki, what about President Biden?
Does he support any limits?
You know, this is a top guy running for Senate in his party.
Does he agree with Tim Ryan?
Would he say any limits on abortion?
I mean, the weasely dodging and weaving.
He's already spoken to his position.
He's spoken to his position.
He's already made his position clear.
Well, what is it?
Is it nine months on demand or isn't it?
Right.
Like no one on their side of the aisle wants to be pinned down on where to draw the line because that's really what they're asking for.
And most Americans don't want abortion on demand for nine months of pregnancy.
No, and as many other people have pointed out, we're a very long way now from safe, legal, and rare.
Yeah.
So it is true that most Americans support abortion in the first trimester, about 63% of Americans do.
But after that point, it drops off a cliff.
I mean, the second trimester, you drop down to the 30s.
The third trimester, you dropped down to about 12 or 13%.
This has been consistent over 20, 30 years.
If anything, Americans have got a little bit more pro-life.
But where they have been consistent across the last 20 or 30 years is that they broadly favor some access to abortion in the first trimester.
And after that, they strongly oppose it.
Now, this is one reason, of course, that the Democratic Party is so invested in Roe v. Wade, because it allows for, in every state, abortions after a point that most Americans find disgusting.
And if they were given the chance to vote on this, they would not put in place blanket abortion bans in most states of the sort that many pro-lifers would like.
But they would restrict abortion in the way that a lot of other Western nations have.
I'm originally from England.
England, it's 20 weeks.
In France, it's 12 weeks.
You would see some sort of compromise between those two, I imagine.
If Roe does fall, Florida, where I live, will go to 15 weeks.
For the president of the United States to say no restrictions at all, so essentially 40 weeks is an extreme position.
This isn't rhetoric.
It is so far out there at 40 weeks that you're looking at about 5, 6% of the country, believe that.
And I find it remarkable that the press doesn't put that in context for readers and viewers, that 40 weeks, the president's entitled to whatever view he wants, but that is an unfathomably extreme view of abortion.
That's right.
And instead of acknowledging that, right, this is, of course, the Democrats don't want to talk about that.
They want to say that not only is this going to lead to back alley abortions involving coat hangers, right now you've got TikTokers running campaigns to send coat hangers to all of the conservative justices, which, by the way, I didn't know this, but apparently they already did this to Brett Kavanaugh.
Their report was that he was sent something like 3,000 coat hangers when he was going through his confirmation.
I mean, people are sick, right?
Like, I mean, it's absurd because I know you've pointed this out.
We talked about it on our show yesterday.
Abortion is not about to become illegal in America.
It's not.
It may be illegal in your particular state, especially if you live in a deep red state as a result of this opinion, if this opinion does what the draft opinion does.
But it's not going to be illegal in all 50 states.
And the only way to make it illegal in all 50 states, realistically, because we're not going to get a constitutional amendment making it legal in all 50 states, there's no, or illegal, either way, there's not going to be an amendment.
The only way of changing that on a national basis now is a national law.
But there's not the power within the Congress to pass a national law.
They don't have the power.
And even if they tried, it would be going down a very fraught road because as soon as the Democrats did it one way, saying it's legal in all 50 states, the GOP would get control and then it would be illegal in all 50s.
And so the pro-choice side should want it to just stay where, A, it is now.
But if Roe gets reversed, let it be a state-by-state issue because you're always going to have New York and California and Vermont and all of Connecticut and all these blue states.
Okay.
So that's my point.
But we're not having backroom hanger abortions anymore.
So that's nonsense.
But the Supreme Court's under enormous pressure right now, under enormous pressure.
And to me, it was interesting that we see the Democrats not wanting to talk about any of that.
What they see, what they just do is catastrophize, Charles.
They don't acknowledge the realities that I just outlaid.
They say they scare people into thinking it will be illegal.
And other rights are about to go, right?
We heard Joe Biden suggest LGBTQ kids aren't going to be able to sit in class anymore.
They're going to get kicked out.
That's possible with this crazy MAGA agenda.
And then we hear good old Hillary Clinton, and there was speculation this week, she's going to run again because of this.
Hillary Clinton weighs in and says the following.
This opinion is dark.
It is incredibly dangerous.
And it is not just about a woman's right to choose.
It is about much more than that.
And I hope people now are fully aware of what we're up against, because the only answer is at the ballot box to elect people who will stand up for every American's rights.
And any American who says, look, I'm not a woman.
This doesn't affect me.
I'm not black.
That doesn't affect me.
I'm not gay.
That doesn't affect me.
Once you allow this kind of extreme power to take hold, you have no idea who they will come for next.
Who they will come for.
Like they're on a campaign, Charles, to start taking people's rights away.
Yeah, well, there's a lot to say about that.
The first thing is that the they in her sentence apparently refers to the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court Limits 00:15:31
And it's just civic ignorance to propose that the Supreme Court is wielding or exercising power.
It is civic ignorance to send coat hangers to Brett Kavanaugh's house, aside from being a bad idea in and of itself.
The Supreme Court is not there to make policy.
It's not there to determine whether or not abortion is good or bad.
The Supreme Court is there to uphold the Constitution, mediate between the Constitution as it's written and any laws that are passed through legislatures and interpret statutes that are disputed by two or more parties.
The Supreme Court erred in 1973 by getting itself into this realm in the first place.
Roe versus Wade is bad law.
It was received as bad law at the time, including by many pro-choice legal scholars.
It is rarely defended on the merits now.
If Hillary Clinton and anyone else wants to be angry with anyone involved in the regulation of abortion, they should be angry with state legislators and governors who take this up in the coming years, as they should have been able to do since 1973.
Now, I have strong views on abortion, but those are separate from the fundamental legal question here, which is, is Roe v. Wade, is Casey v. Planned Parenthood, good law?
And the answer to that is no.
And if the Supreme Court overturns the decision, it will be doing so because after 50 years, it's decided to tell the truth.
And on the second point, I think there's an awful lot of scaremongering around this.
And you heard a little bit of it from Hillary Clinton there.
Dark dangers.
Yeah, well, whatever you think of Alito's draft opinion, which may not be the final opinion, of course, we don't know where that will go.
But suppose that Alito's opinion goes down the line essentially unchanged.
It doesn't have any bearing on, say, interracial marriage.
The holding in it is to do with substantive due process within the 14th Amendment, not the Equal Protection Clause.
It could plausibly have some bearing on Obergefeld, the case that legalized gay marriage in all 50 states.
But of course, there are very different reliance interests there.
And there also doesn't seem to be any appetite, either jurisprudentially or in state legislatures, to reverse gay marriage.
So I think regardless of where people sit on this issue, they ought to be careful not to be taken in by that.
And I would note to finish that it is somewhat interesting that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren and others seem quite quickly to talk about other things than abortion.
Well, look at all these other things that might be threatened.
And I wonder if that speaks to a nervousness on their part that their positions on abortion, and as we've discussed with Joe Biden, is certainly the case, are extreme.
Well, it's a great point because, okay, let's assume the worst, that the U.S. Supreme Court goes on a tear and just starts reversing everything.
Let's just get rid of a Bergafell.
Let's get rid of Griswold versus Connecticut, which is about contraception.
Let's get rid of privacy rights recognized writ large.
They're all going away.
We don't believe in that anymore.
Interracial marriage, no, we don't recognize that anymore.
We're going to reverse everything, Which they would never do.
Never.
They're not insane.
Would the states actually then pass laws saying no more contraception, no more interracial marriage, no more gay marriage?
Like, oh, sure, sure.
The states are going to, that would be political suicide, including on gay marriage in every state in the union.
I mean, Eric Swalwell, two, three days ago, tweeted out that this was the plan.
It was to end interracial marriage.
Now, in order to believe that's true, you not only have to be wholly ignorant of the way that the law works, how the 14th Amendment is written, and pretty much everything that the court has decided on 14th Amendment grounds for a century and a half.
You have to believe that the great Republican plan, as masterminded by Mitch McConnell, who is married to Elaine Chow, and Clarence Thomas, who is married to Ginny Thomas, who is white, is to overturn abortion in order to end interracial marriages in the United States.
It doesn't really make a great deal of sense.
And I think it would be better if as a country, we stayed on topic here, which is, is this decision, if it stands, a good or a bad decision?
And then what do we do about it either way?
There's going to be a great deal of politics involved in this, very difficult politics.
And I say that even as someone who is pro-life, a lot of the questions that are raised here are quite difficult.
But that, of course, is why the court should never have gotten involved in trying to resolve them in the first place.
That's the thing.
When I keep hearing these folks like Hillary Clinton talk about how the court has taken away your right, they haven't done anything yet, but that they're about to take away your right to an abortion, your reproductive rights.
The truth is, legally, what the court is saying is, I'm sorry you were lied to for 50 years about having a constitutional right to an abortion.
But that decision had no foundation, no legal foundation.
And just because you've been lied to for five decades doesn't mean it's in the country's or the court's best interest to continue that lie.
Here's the truth.
It doesn't exist.
It's up to your state legislature and you should get out there and fight for it if it's what you want.
That's the reality, Charles.
Yeah.
And that lie has not only had all sorts of policy implications and made Americans angry with each other and prevented the democratic process from working and corrupted American law, although it has done all of those things.
That lie has for 50 years now put the Supreme Court in a position in American political life that it is not supposed to occupy.
Justice Scillia put this really well in his dissent in Casey, where he said, the reason that we get all the letters, the reason that we get all the protests, the reason that our nomination and confirmation processes have become so fraught is because we took over an area that is not mentioned in the Constitution, that is not even implied in the Constitution.
And as such, we became the targets of the slings and arrows that result from that.
And I think if you want a Supreme Court that is less of a lightning rod, it's always going to be political.
It's always going to be of interest.
But if you want a Supreme Court that is less of a lightning rod, then you want a Supreme Court that limits itself to its constitutional role, which is to superintend only those areas over which it's been given jurisdiction.
And this isn't one of them.
That's true of your pro-life.
It's true of your pro-choice.
Republican, Democrat, whatever your politics, that is the truth.
And I suspect that if the court does get out of this, then it will actually end up better off in the long run, because all of those energies and passions and debates will be aimed at the people they're supposed to be aimed at, governors and state legislatures.
I know that there is a push in Congress at the moment to pass a law to so-called codify Roe.
And I know some Republicans want to use Congress to ban it.
I actually think both of those are unconstitutional.
I don't think there is any power in Congress to regulate abortion in either direction.
But even if it's not, it's much better that this gets resolved by legislators at the federal level and the president at the federal level than by nine unelected justices who really have no power here at all.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And so, by the way, my team clarifying.
Kavanaugh's getting hangers now, but it was Susan Collins apparently who got the 3,000 hangers during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing.
So no one's immune.
You vote for Brett Kavanaugh, you're responsible for the back alley abortions and so on, rather than, you know, this whole 50-year farce being set into place as it was.
I mean, I will say it has occurred to me now, if you're in favor of what we think this decision is going to be, right?
Because the political report said the justices hadn't moved, that there's still five in the majority ready to overturn Roe as of, you know, Monday.
You know, strategy, strategy-wise, as George Bush would say, the McConnell refusal to have a hearing on Merrick Garland turned out to be hugely consequential.
I mean, that's why we have Neil Gorsuch on the court.
Justice Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts, is not with the five from what we've been told.
There's not five votes without Gorsuch to strike down Roe, to overturn Roe.
There might be five votes to change it to a 15-week limit, which is what Mississippi's limit is.
And that's what the court's hearing.
But it is, I mean, you got to admit, hugely consequential to when, you know, to look back at how Gorsuch got in the court and how it could have been Merrick Garland, a liberal.
Yeah.
And of course, you just said maybe there would be five votes for a 15-week limit.
That underscores the silliness of this whole debate.
The idea that the constitution might have changed overnight to move from an undue burden standard to 15 weeks is just silly.
It's either.
After it moved from a viability standard, right?
At first it was a viability standard and then it was an undue burden.
It was for legislatures.
You know, legislatures can move from 20 weeks to 15 weeks or to 40 weeks or to no weeks at all.
But the court shouldn't be.
Yeah, Mitch McConnell has been extraordinarily influential in American politics.
In my view, he's the most significant Republican politician since Ronald Reagan.
The courts are a great passion of his.
There is nothing wrong whatsoever with the Senate taking its role in this area seriously and determining who will be and who will not be on the Supreme Court.
There's nothing written in the stars that says that presidents have to get the nominees that they want.
And there is nothing superior about elections for president over elections for senators.
And McConnell said, you know, we have this majority.
We've been sent here recently, the 2014 elections were the most recent plebiscite.
And they used their power.
And that is the constitutional process.
It's not a violation of it or a circumvention of it.
That was the constitutional process and it's borne fruit.
He said in an election year, it's not our duty to provide a hearing for the outgoing president's chosen nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy.
Yeah, by the way, that was all part of his evil plan.
He hatched it back then to somehow separate himself from his wife, not by divorce, but by Supreme Court ruling that would start with the overturning of Roe, thanks to Gorsuch, and then evolve eventually into the ban on interracial marriages.
Let's talk about the leaker.
Chief Justice Roberts speaking out.
Alito canceled his appearance at a conference with the lower court of appeals, the Fifth Circuit that he oversees.
Each justice oversees a certain area of courts of appeal.
But Chief Justice Roberts went to his 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, a judicial conference in Atlanta and spoke out about the leaker in part, saying a leak of this stature is, quote, absolutely appalling.
Goes on, quote, if the person behind it thinks it will affect our work, that's just foolish.
He praised the Supreme Court's workforce from the clerks serving the nine justices all the way to the employees who empty the wastebaskets at night, saying, I would hate for one bad apple to change the perception of that.
They will have their next closed door conference on May 12th.
But it's interesting.
He is speaking out.
He doesn't comment on whether they've gotten the person, as some believe they may have already done, but saying how appalling it is.
So do you believe that they will catch the leaker?
And what do you think should happen to him or her?
I don't know if they'll catch the leaker.
This is an extraordinary development.
And one would imagine that anyone engaged in such an extraordinary act would cover his tracks or her tracks well.
And of course, I have no idea who this is.
And I think some of the speculation has been really unfair, especially speculation that's included names.
That's not how we should do things in America.
I think if they do find who it is, then they should suffer professional consequences forever.
It's not as if this was a childish indiscretion, and it's not as if this was a crime committed out of ignorance.
This was done deliberately, presumably by someone who just thought that the issue was too important to follow the rules.
And whether that person is on the right or on the left or is pro-abortion or anti-abortion or pro or anti-road, it doesn't matter.
This has damaged the court and it's going to damage the court going forward.
It's going to change the court going forward.
It's going to make it less trusting.
It's probably going to limit, not end, but limit the practice of sharing drafts and briefs and ideas.
And it's going to hurt one of the few institutions in American life that still worked very well internally and externally.
So I think if they catch the person who did it, if that person is a lawyer or a clerk, they need to be disbarred and blacklisted.
If that person is a justice, which is extremely unlikely, but I did say a couple of pieces suggesting that, then that justice would need to be impeached.
And if it's anyone else, then they need to be fired and probably prosecuted.
I'm not an expert in the law around this area, and there are some complexities here.
I think what the court should have done is to make everyone sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury and possibly submit to an investigation by the FBI under penalty of perjury.
So that there would have been serious consequences for the person who did it if they were caught and proven to have done so.
This is very serious.
It has to be treated as such.
It could be happening that they're being forced to sign statements under oath.
I mean, the high court of all places understands what a declaration or affirmation is, how you get somebody to sign something under oath, which can be enforced against them under penalties of perjury.
And the thing is, like, okay, yes, these are very smart law clerks.
I mean, we believe it's a law clerk.
If it's a justice, it's an even smarter person.
They, yes, I'm sure they got into Yale or Harvard or one of these schools, but they're not experienced criminals and they don't know how to maintain a lie on cross-examine.
These are not like double agents at the CIA.
These are moronic law school students who are like, I am the law.
And then you're going to get cross-examined with all the really tough questions.
Criminal Prosecution Noted 00:04:10
I mean, I could do it myself.
I bet I could find the leaker.
I really do.
I think if you let me have access to all the clerks, I could find out who it was.
And there are people much more talented than I am in this department who are going to get their hands on these clerks at some point.
And I'm telling you, they're going to fold like cheap tents.
Somebody's going to fold.
May not be the leaker, him or herself, but they're probably going to do interviews with people around them.
They're going to have all their electronic documents, and he or she, who won't give it up, is going to be chief suspect.
But they didn't cover every track because there are phone numbers.
And I mean, maybe somebody went so far as to buy a burner phone to call the political reporter, but in all likelihood, they weren't thinking that far ahead.
There's going to be a record of a phone call.
It's just in today's day and age, everything we do is caught.
It's caught on camera.
It's caught on tape.
It's caught on text messaging.
It's in the cloud.
So my prediction is very strong.
They're going to catch the leaker and it's going to be soon.
The person should be disbarred.
I'm still kicking around the notion of criminal prosecution.
I'm not sure I'm on board that.
But you sign a statement lying, you're dead.
Go for it, especially as a lawyer.
You know the consequences of that.
That's why Bill Clinton was impeached, by the way.
It was because he lied under oath.
If it can happen to the president, it can happen to a dumbass Supreme Court law, a Supreme Court law clerk who thought his or her mission was more important than that of the third branch.
All right, I stole the last word, Charles.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
Choks in.
Up next, the coach who was fired for praying after the game on his own time on the 50-yard line.
This Supreme Court took up that case.
How it's looking for him when he joins us live right after this break.
Speaking of the U.S. Supreme Court, they have other important matters on their docket right now.
Roe versus Wade is not the only major case getting its attention and getting national attention for that matter.
This case involves religious rights, religious freedom.
And there's a few cases before the Supreme Court right now on this.
Seven years ago, Coach Joseph Kennedy was terminated from a job he loved out of Washington State.
After returning home from military service in 2008, he became the assistant coach for the Bremerton High School varsity football team.
After every game, the Marine turned coach took a knee to pray for his team.
He did it for every game until 2015 when the school district fired him for doing so.
He's been fighting back ever since.
He wants his job back and he wants to get back to that 50-yard line.
His case was just argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Coach Kennedy is here with us, along with his attorney, Jeremy Dice.
Welcome, Joe.
Welcome, Jeremy.
Thanks for being here.
Hey, it's great to be back with you.
Oh, it's a pleasure.
Thanks for having us.
All right.
So I'm fascinated in this whole thing.
Coach, let me start with your lawyer because I want to find out just a little bit about the argument.
Jeremy, when was the argument and how do you feel it went?
It was April 25, so just over a week or two ago now.
And I think it went very well.
Look, I think the justices did their best to get to the actual facts in this case.
The Ninth Circuit had clouded those facts.
And I think they bought into the narrative of the other side.
But the Supreme Court justices weren't having that.
They understood that this is a case about one thing, and that's about whether Coach Kennedy can, by himself, go to the 50-yard line and engage in 15 to 30 seconds of prayer or what the school district called demonstrative religious activity.
And they understood, it was clear from that argument, the justices understood the incredible implications that that decision by the Ninth Circuit is going to have, really forcing our public school teachers and coaches around the country to shed their constitutional rights when they walk through the schoolhouse gates, which is something that they've already said the First Amendment prohibits.
Yeah, because, well, there's a question too about whether he was there on the 50-yard line praying in his official capacity as a coach or as a private citizen having a moment with God, having a moment of prayer.
And, you know, it can be the latter, even though you've just finished a football game and you're still the football team's coach.
Coach, let me ask you, because you came to this place where you felt you needed to pray through a lot of hard knocks.
Coerced Religious Participation 00:13:12
You had a tough childhood.
Life wasn't easy for you.
And then you sort of came to this realization that this is something you needed to do to express your relationship with God.
Can you give us a little background on you and why this became so important to you?
Sure.
Growing up, I was in and out of foster homes and group homes, also a boys' home over in Eastern Washington.
And I kind of grew up kind of on the streets of Bremerton, Washington.
So I know exactly what it's like what these kids are going through today.
And I, you know, how did that happen?
Let me start to jump in, but how did that happen that you wound up in all the foster homes and so on?
Right.
So my parents, they were a good Catholic family and they couldn't have kids.
So they adopted a girl.
And then a year later, they adopted myself.
And they, I don't know, a couple years later, they started popping out kids left and right, miracle of science or, you know, or by the miracle of God, either one.
And they didn't really need us anymore.
So we kind of got thrown by the wayside.
And to their defense, I was a terrible, terrible kid.
So I have no fault with them.
I do.
That is not a defense to getting rid of a child that you took into your home and agreed to parent and love.
So you had a rough time.
It was not an easy childhood.
And then when did you come?
I'll let you complete your first part now.
So when did you come to this relationship with God and the promise that you made to him?
It wasn't until after I got out of the Marine Corps.
I met up with my childhood sweetheart and we got married.
I proposed, well, we both were nine years old and I proposed to her when we were nine.
The first time I met her, first time I laid eyes on her, I asked her if she'd marry me, but she thought I was kind of creepy back then.
So I pursued her for 31 years.
We kind of went in different directions throughout our life, but we've been in contact the whole entire time.
And right when I retired from the Marine Corps, we met back and it was, you know, nothing never changed.
Everything was still the same.
I still had the same love for her.
So we got married and she invited me to go to church every Sunday, just one time and said, hey, you want to go to church with us?
Most of the time, well, every time I said no.
But then one of our kids came around and said, well, if he doesn't have to go, do I have to go?
So, yeah, that was, you know, kind of, I'm there.
So we started having problems in our marriage.
She went through a lot when she was a kid.
She dealt with, you know, abuse when she was a child and also in her relationship or her marriage.
So she had a lot of barriers and I knew I couldn't reach her.
And it came to the point where I had no other place to turn.
And I, you know, ran to the altar, fell on my knees and said, God, I need help.
I can't do this myself.
And I was like, if you work this out with me and my wife, you know, I'm yours forever.
And I completely submitted and been with them ever since.
Yeah.
And so you decided to start praying.
And it began initially as just you going out to the 50-yard line after the games and saying a prayer, which is, do we agree, Jeremy?
Like originally, even under the school's argument, that was okay.
Yeah, going out to the prayer by himself.
Look, this was eight years that he did that.
And over time, look, it did evolve into students coming by and saying, what are you doing?
He said, I'm praying for you.
And can we join you?
Sure, it's a free country.
He says.
But, you know, eight years go by and they ask him to stop that practice of praying with the students.
And he says, sure, you know, my commitment to God didn't involve anybody else.
It just involved me talking to him.
And so we thought that a coach thought that was kind of the end of it, that he'd just go back to his initial practice of taking a knee by himself at the 50-yard line.
And that'd be the end of it.
But here we are now.
What we thought was going to be a three-week case has turned into almost seven years of litigation.
So just so the audience understands, Jeremy, the teacher showing up in the morning school session and saying, let's all bow our heads and pray together.
No, no, not okay.
Right.
Okay, no, that's not a case we would take at all.
I mean, look, and let me just finish up because on the opposite side is coach, let's say even better circumstances, just quietly bowing his head on the sidelines.
Nobody even sees it and saying a prayer.
There's no way they could outlaw that.
This is one step above that initially.
It's him going to the 50-yard line and taking a knee and saying private prayer.
I still think that's okay.
I think the school thought it was okay for eight years.
And then kids voluntarily joining him is where the school started to get upset because their argument in court is it was coercive to the other players.
Like other players started to feel like, and they only, as far as I could tell, had one alleged example of this, like they had to.
Like it, because if it's coercive, that's why the teacher's not allowed to do it in the beginning of the school day.
If it's coercive, I better do it or coach is not going to play me.
Then we cross a legal line.
Am I correct in my analysis?
You're pretty darn close.
Look, the problem with the analysis here is that the school district has continued to move the goalposts on the coach.
And so initially they said, look, praying at the kids is a problem.
I said, fine, no problem.
I don't need to do that.
I just wanted to pray by myself.
They said, well, no, no, no, no, it's going to take away from your job responsibilities to take 15 seconds to get on a knee and pray.
Like you'd be tying your shoes.
It's the same posture.
We want you to instead go into the school building, you know, way across the field, across a practice field, into the school building, down the hallway into the janitor's office.
I mean, that certainly takes more than 15 seconds.
But even then, that was exposed because they said, look, if you can engage in any demonstrative religious activity in the sight of any student, that could be coercive.
That could be an establishment of religion, an endorsement of religion, a violation of the Constitution.
And it was very clear at the argument on April 25th that the school district now maintains that if any student can see an authority figure engaged in religious activity, demonstrative religious activity is what they said in their initial letter back in 2015.
That's enough to terminate somebody.
So what does that mean?
Well, that means if even your analysis of that, that far right side, what you think would be protected of a coach on the sidelines, maybe the kicker is going to kick the game-winning field goal and he bows his head or crosses himself to hope that that ball goes through the uprights.
That demonstrative religious activity could be sufficient to terminate that coach.
What about the teacher praying in the cafeteria over her lunch and students happen to see her?
Well, that could be demonstrative religious activity that could terminate that student.
And most remarkably of all, they actually argued at the Supreme Court that no state activity is necessary for this to happen.
And so the coach or the teacher could be wearing the shirt kind of like what coach is wearing right now, that Bremerton t-shirt at the local pancake house or even that church engaged in prayer.
And that alone could be enough to show endorsement.
So this coercion by sight is something that the First Amendment has never countenanced.
And it should not countenance it now.
And frankly, I don't think it will.
I think the Supreme Court's going to recognize that no one should be put to the choice of having to choose between their job that they love and their faith.
Coach Kennedy does not have to shed his constitutional rights when he walks through the schoolhouse gates, but that's exactly what the school district is demanding that he do.
It's crazy because you think about, you know, how many times, especially watching a sporting game, do you find yourself doing this, you know, with the hands crossed, like, please, God, please, God.
And it's a genuine prayer, whether you're a religious person or not.
You believe in those moments.
Like, please, please, please.
I have it.
I see it happen with my kids.
I see teachers doing it.
It's like a sporting event or even a play.
You know, just today, my daughter was in a little talent show and she's up there and you're like, please, God, let it go.
Okay.
And, you know, you can see the teachers feel the same.
It's absurd to say that there can never be a connection with prayer or God in the school setting.
That's to say humanity needs to change in every setting.
So the question is whether you cross some lines.
So, Coach, did you ever have somebody come to you and say, Hey, Coach, my kid feels coerced?
Or did the school come to you and say, This kid went on record with us saying he feels coerced to do it.
Otherwise, you're not going to play him in Saturday Night's game.
Yeah, it's really absurd to me to think that I would use authority like that.
You know, I was an assistant coach.
There's no way I even make the lineups for the varsity games.
So that whole thing is crazy.
And it isn't any kids.
I challenge everybody in the media and school.
They did a complete investigation.
I said, find one kid that felt coerced or felt pressured or anything.
And they couldn't do it.
Even to today, it's just not a thing that we did at our school.
Me telling a kid he had to pray is as bad as me telling him that he can't pray.
So, and I really went with the school district and said, Hey, I, you know, I don't want to cause any problems for the school.
I would just want to coach football.
So it really only came down to was me praying by myself.
And I thought we were good when I agreed with them.
I said, Hey, you don't want me to pray with the kids?
Fine.
I'm not going to do it anymore.
And I never prayed with them again.
So they're talking about a practice that didn't even exist anymore of me praying with kids or kids joining me.
It just wasn't happening anymore.
At the oral arguments, Jeremy, the liberal justices and even Brett Kavanaugh tried to zero in on this coercion question, trying to figure out whether, you know, because there's the explicit complaint, hey, I feel coerced.
And then there's the, well, how do you know?
You know, maybe the ones who feel coerced might not say anything because they're, again, they're trying to stay in the good graces.
Here's a little soundbite of how that went.
What about the player who thinks Brett Kavanaugh?
If I don't participate in this, I won't start next week.
Or the player who thinks if I do participate in this, I will start next week.
And the players wants to start.
So that's where I think making a clear message that that's inappropriate, that this doesn't matter for those purposes, that's how you deal with those problems.
And if there is a coach, how you ferret that out, because every player is trying to get on the good side of the coach, and every parent is worried about the coach exercising favoritism in terms of the starting lineup, playing time, recommendations for colleges, et cetera.
But if you look at our prayer case, Elena Kagan, the idea of why the school can discipline him is that that puts a kind of undue pressure, a kind of coercion on students to participate in religious activities when they may not wish to, when their religion is different or when they have no religion.
All right.
So what of that, Jeremy?
Well, look, the First Amendment still protects Coach Kennedy's free exercise rights as well.
And that's the tension that we're feeling in the air right now when we listen to those hard questions asked of Paul Clement at the argument here.
But the First Amendment has already struck that balance for us.
I mean, the same thing could be said in reverse, couldn't it?
That if a coach does not engage in religious activity, does that coerce religious students to have to abandon their religious rights?
The better aspect of this is to follow what we've followed for 200 plus years in this country, which is to allow people of faith to be, you know, people of faith, that they don't have to hide who they are.
They don't have to run off into the janitor's closet in order to pray.
They don't have to run up at the press box and hide on the floor in order to engage in a religious activity.
Instead, we welcome them into the public square, including within our public schools.
The question of whether or not this is government speech has just already been answered.
This is private speech.
It's Coach Kennedy's private prayer out there on the 50-yard line that it takes place after the game is really of no incident whatsoever.
If the school district can't use this as an opportunity to teach its students that they're going to run into people of faith in the public square, then I got to wonder if they can teach anything at all ever again.
This should be a great opportunity to remind our up-and-coming students that they live in a pluralistic society with a lot of ideological backgrounds and viewpoints that they should welcome and see throughout the public square rather than force someone into hiding or to censor their speech because someone might somewhere see it and feel coerced.
Seeing and feeling things is not the standard that we've upheld under the First Amendment for 200 plus years now.
You don't have a right to be free from seeing someone express their religious appreciation or their religious views.
That's not in there.
It was great because Justice Thomas asked the question: Would your school district be so upset if you'd seen the coach take a knee in response to like BLM protests?
Would you be that upset then?
I mean, this is obviously political.
It's Seattle.
It's ideological.
And I think you guys are in a great position right now.
You and the other religious rights cases that are going before the Supreme Court are in a better position than you've been in for years.
So, Coach, got only about 20 seconds left, but what's your final message to the folks who are still skeptical?
You know, I just hope they actually look at the facts of the case and, you know, just really, yeah, look at the facts.
The Abuser Impression 00:14:49
I mean, they speak for themselves.
If you don't like religion, you don't have to participate in, but you don't want to take it away from everybody else.
Amen.
Great to see you.
Thanks for coming on.
Appreciate seeing you again as well, Jeremy.
All the best to you guys.
And we should have an answer within the next 30 days or so.
Okay, we're going to be right back with the latest on Amber Heard and Johnny Depp.
Boy, did that trial take a turn this week?
Now it's time for Kelly's court.
This week, Amber Heard took to the stand and, as expected, accused Johnny Depp of repeatedly assaulting her, including violent sexual assaults, multiple assaults.
Legendary attorney Mark Garagos has been watching the trial closely.
He's the managing partner of Garragos and Garagos, and he co-hosts his own podcast called Reasonable Doubt with our pal Adam Carolla.
He joins me now.
Mark, wow.
So we talked on Monday about what to expect.
It seems like it was a week ago, doesn't it?
Right?
It'll be a week before they go back to trial.
So I have been thinking about you every day this week because you made the point on Monday.
This case should never have been brought by him.
He should not have filed this case.
And I said, well, I can see why he did it because she painted him as an abuser in the British court.
And it wasn't directly those two in that court.
He was claiming that a British tabloid had defamed him by suggesting he abused her.
And the British court found in favor of the magazine, saying there was enough evidence to support our claim.
I mean, our report, that report.
So I was saying it was a good move because people were just left with this impression he was an abuser.
And she writes in the Washington Post, I'm an abused woman.
And she didn't offer all the other stuff that we heard in his case in chief about how she abused him too, and how he was turning the public sentiment, you know, showing people that he was an abused guy and claiming he never laid a hand on her.
So it was sort of his side of the story getting more airtime.
I feel differently.
I am starting to feel differently, Mark.
Have you come around?
Well, I have to say, I understand she was very dramatic in her testimony and people thought she offered too much detail, such that maybe she seemed like she was lying.
I've interviewed so many abuse victims.
Like to me, her testimony seemed very credible and very disturbing.
Well, this is what I, as you've mentioned already, and thank you for, you know, people tend to forget in 96 hours, which tends to be kind of the public's lasting memory.
But those who actually had paid any attention to what had transpired in the UK knew that this was coming, number one.
Number two, this idea, which we often have, and you've been around it, Megan, now for almost 20 years, in these cases where you get either the prosecution or the plaintiff's case first, depending on if it's criminal or civil, and you hear that, and that's the prison through which you kind of digest this.
The problem is there's always going to be another side of the story.
And in this case, the other side of the story, as you just said, is not pretty number one.
And number two, you can, you know, I've seen a meme and another video about an actress who's critiquing her acting abilities.
Trust me, I've been in enough courtrooms, both representing victims and cross-examining to know that there is an explanation for any reaction that any victim has when they're on the witness stand.
And this has got to be the dumbest move by him, even if you get a judgment at what cost.
And by the way, the fact remains, as you and I discussed on Monday, there's seven young males on this jury.
And I just think you can't ignore that fact.
That's a salient feature of this trial.
You think seven women on the jury would be bad for Amber.
Seven men on the jury, especially young men, would be bad for Johnny Depp.
As a general rule, any trial lawyer will tell you that women, and I know I'm going out on a limb because I'm just making binary gender statements, but the women are hardest on women.
I mean, talk to anybody who has ever tried a jury trial, and you will see.
I at one point had four women.
I was defending four separate women on murder charges.
And I learned after the first case, the last thing you want is are women on your jury or at least women who are going to drive the verdict.
And I'm telling you, seven young males here makes this a heavier lift for Johnny Depp, number one.
Number two, why?
Why does he want all of this out here?
How does this vindicate him?
And who in their right mind, I don't care if you're team Depp.
I don't care if you're completely bedazzled by Johnny Depp.
His kids and his family are going to be able to Google these things.
And there's nobody who can convince me that this is not exponentially worse than the Washington Post editorial.
No, right.
Because my feeling when we last talked and during the first two weeks or a few weeks of the trial was he's going to lose.
I said that repeatedly.
He's not going to win his defamation case because there's going to be enough evidence to sustain her statement in the Washington Post.
I am an abuse victim.
And we talked about maybe you could argue defamation by omission because the full story is under his version.
Well, he says, I never abused her and she abused me.
Then there's option two, which is mutual abuse.
And certainly there's a record of that.
But even under mutual abuse, I think he loses because her saying I've been abused would be true.
And then there's option three, which is she was the abuse victim and she didn't abuse him back.
That's her version.
So, but I felt PR-wise, it was worthwhile to bring the case to get her abuse, her alleged abuse of him into the record because she was sort of smelling like a rose.
She was still having her movie career.
She's starring in Aquaman 3.
Now there's a petition by 3 million people to make that stop.
He'd been canceled from Pirates of the Caribbean.
And his position is like, look, there's a lot more to this story.
You know, she was terrible.
She cut off my finger.
She, you know, and I've been abused in a way that men don't normally come forward and talk about.
Well, she's talking this week.
It's her chance to present her defense.
And as you said, you also predicted this, that the psychological experts pretty much cancel each other out.
He had one come on and say, she's a lunatic, histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder.
That woman only examined her for 12 hours.
Now she puts somebody on the air on the stand.
Well, that one's got 18 hours, whatever.
It's still de minimis.
They don't really know her.
And that expert says all the opposite things.
So it's like, okay, cancel.
The jury should do that.
Just as, and just as convincingly.
I mean, you could watch one and you could go, yeah, I'm there.
And then you watch the other and you go, hey, maybe, and then what is a jury?
What is human nature?
Human nature is you cancel each other out.
It's a it was, it's predictable.
It happens all the time.
And what I, you know, I understand, and I will go back to what I said before.
I would be shocked if the lawyers representing him are working on a contingency.
And if they're working on an hourly basis, then part of what they should have done, maybe they did and they just decided to stay on, is tell them, look, this may seem cathartic for you.
This may seem like this is therapy.
You may have that urge because you've gone through a divorce and you paid the money.
I understand all of that, but this is not going to end well.
And so far, it has, we're not in front of the jury yet, but remember, here's another point.
They ended with her direct testimony, and now they've got a week off.
That's what the jurors are going to come back.
And they've just, there's been no cross.
There's been nothing to undercut her.
And you've got, what, 10 days off?
Eight days off?
Why are they taking next week off?
They've got some prearranged week off.
And yeah, give for all of the grief her lawyers have been getting, they perfectly timed this to have her be the last moment and the last thing that those jurors heard going into a long break.
Primacy and recency.
That's what they teach us.
Primacy and recency.
That's what the jury will remember.
The first thing you say and the last thing you say.
And she got that last thing said.
So let's get into it and show the audience what we're talking about, what she looked like and sounded like on the stand.
She outlined, we talked about on Monday what happened in the UK court.
She outlined some 15 incidents of abuse.
The alleged, the court found at least 13 of them, I think it was, were credible and that they were backed up by eyewitnesses, friends, contemporaneous text messages, and so on.
I will say one thing in the bad column for her this week has been testimony by, I think it was his driver.
It's either his driver or security guard in pretty much every instance, who said they saw her punch him in the face.
They saw her punch Johnny Depp in the face.
And then that tape that says, I didn't punch you in the face, I hit you, and kind of trying to put a fine distinction on it.
The fact remains, though, anybody who has ever seen or tried a domestic violence case, what we call a DV case, knows that there's always issues.
There's always issues surrounding the accusation.
There's always going to be people who don't present perfectly well.
And there are experts who will testify to that.
I can't tell you the number of times that I've sat in a courtroom with an expert who said, you can't believe this.
You can't discount because of this.
There's a psychological reason for this.
And just explain away any of this.
And I can't, I don't understand why somebody didn't explain to him, this is what's going to happen.
This is a coming attraction.
And by the way, even if she's not telling the truth, all right?
And I believed her testimony, I have to say, but even if she's not telling the truth, his disadvantage is he's up against a Hollywood actress who's good enough to make it on the huge screen and all these multi-million dollars.
Like she's not some community theater star.
Like she knows how to spin a tail.
And you can tell that on the stand.
I will say, having interviewed so many DV victims myself, what she says, and this could have been coached, it could have been, but what she says about, I fell madly in love with him.
He swept me off my feet.
This is Johnny Depp.
There's a 30-year age difference almost.
He made me feel beautiful.
He made me feel special.
He showered me and my family members with gifts.
And then I started to see this other side, this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde piece of him.
And she talked about the first time he allegedly hit her and how she couldn't believe it and how she went through the bargaining that every abuse victim goes through of like, I can, you know, it was a one-time thing.
I can change him.
This, he didn't mean it.
You know, it's like, it always starts the same way.
Here's her describing the first alleged attack.
And this is the one that our audience may have heard reference to, where he had a tattoo on him that used to say Winona forever when he was with Winona Ryder.
And then upon breaking up, he changed it to Wino forever.
And here's Amber Heard talking about that.
Sound by five.
And I just, you know, he's drinking and we're talking and it's, there's music playing and he's smoking cigarettes and we're sitting next to each other on the couch.
And I ask him about the tattoo he has on his arm.
And to me, it just looked like black marks.
Like I didn't know, I didn't know what it said.
It just looked like muddled, faded tattoo that was hard to read.
And I said, what does it, what does it say?
And he said it says, wino, says why no.
And I, um, I didn't see that.
I thought he was joking because it didn't look like it said that at all.
And I laughed.
It was that simple.
I just laughed because I thought he was joking and slapped me across the face.
And he slaps me one more time.
Hard.
I lose my balance.
I wish so much he had said he was joking because it didn't hurt.
Didn't physically hurt me.
And before I know it, he starts crying.
And he's crying.
Tears, I mean, just falling out of his eyes.
He gets down on his knees and he grabs my hands and he's touching my hands and he's saying to me, I will never do that again.
I'm so sorry, baby.
I put the fucker away.
I thought I killed it.
And it's done.
I thought I put the monster away.
Do you know why that's so compelling?
Because the jury has also heard from one of his witnesses about the fact that he had put away some of these things or had been, had dealt with it for decades.
And that fits right into that testimony.
Also, another thing that you can take a look at, it looks phony, if you will, because of the camera angle.
But if you see what she's doing, somebody has either coached her or she understands intuitively.
She's talking to the jury.
She knows what the audience is.
You can see when she turns.
And I know I've seen a lot of people say, oh, that's so fake.
They're this or that.
No, I, every witness I've ever talked to, I tell them, you've only got one audience.
It isn't me who's asking questions.
It's not the person who's cross-examining you.
It's that jury.
Talk to that jury, and she's doing it masterfully.
She is, and he didn't.
He looked mostly straight ahead at his lawyer.
Exactly.
And a little bit mugging for the cameras.
And I understand that part of this is a public relations floy, but at the same time, how's that public relations going to do if you don't win and if you and if she wins?
So, well, that's the thing.
So, it's like I know people who love Johnny Depp and who are just in love with celebrity.
And he's, we talked about this, a much bigger star than she is, are just like, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.
But when I listened to the testimonial offered during his case in chief, about how, remember, there was the scene where they were in a hotel room and the maid came in and they were like housekeeping or something like that.
Remembering Broken Bones 00:03:52
And they were like, not right now.
And he's like, there's sperm on the pillow.
There's sperm on the pillow.
Like, I think this is an asshole.
Like, this guy is disgusting.
He's gross.
Who would speak like that to the housekeeping staff?
Like, it just, there's been a lot of moments like that, apart from the abuse allegations that reveal his character in a very unflattering way.
And of course, same on her side.
Let's not go back into poop gate, though.
There's sort of a poop gate developing against him as well, which we will get to.
So here's part two.
This is the, I don't know, I can't do them all sequentially, but this is the next big attack she spoke of, where she's claiming now she was sexually assaulted in Australia by him with a vodka bottle.
And this is the same trip on which he lost part of his finger.
He claims she attacked him with a broken vodka bottle.
She's got a much different story about what happened with broken vodka bottles on the trip to Australia.
Here it is in part.
It's about two minutes and 30 seconds.
So stand by and listen.
I'm looking at it in his eyes and I don't see him anymore.
I don't see him anymore.
It wasn't him.
It was black.
I've never been so scared in my life.
My head was bashing against the back of the bar and I couldn't breathe.
And I remember trying to get up and I was slipping on the glass.
My feet were slipping.
My arms were slipping on the countertops.
And I remember just trying to get up so I could breathe so I could tell him that he was really hurting me.
I didn't think he knew what he was doing.
I don't want to do this.
I don't want to do this.
The next thing I remember I always been over backwards on the bar, meaning my chest was up.
I was staring at the blue lights and my chest was on this.
My back was on the countertops.
And I thought he was punching me.
I thought he was.
I was felt this pressure.
I felt this pressure.
You know, my pubic bone.
He said he was punching me.
And I remember this just not wanting to move because I didn't know if it was broken.
I didn't know if the bottle that he had inside me was broken.
I couldn't feel it.
I couldn't feel it.
I didn't feel pain.
I didn't feel pain.
I didn't feel anything.
I just didn't want it.
I didn't, I looked around and I saw so much broken glass that I didn't know if he would know.
If he would know, I didn't know if he would know if it was broken or not.
And I just remember thinking, please, God, please, I hope it's not broken.
I just remember being in the bathroom.
I remember retching.
I remember the sound my voice is making.
I remember I lost control of my bladder.
I remember just reting.
I remember there was some blood on the floor.
Forgive me to the audience members because I know that can be traumatizing for, especially for people who have been through it.
I should have given you a warning.
Waiting for Cross-Examination 00:04:07
But, you know, Mark, I for people who are going to say she's a world-class actress, she knows what she's doing, this or that.
It's really hard in a case where it's, you know, clear and convincing or preponderance, where you're basically just 51%.
This is civil, not criminal.
It's really hard to just discount that.
And it's really hard to say, oh, I think she's faked all of that.
I mean, there is something that resonates there, you know, that is compelling.
And for people who think otherwise and want to diminish it, you know, shame on you.
I feel like if she's making all of this up, because let's keep in mind, to be, quote, a victim of abuse, she'd only have to come up with one or two, right?
I mean, if you, if she's a liar who needs to not pay $50 million in a defamation judgment, all you needed to come up with is like one or two.
And she's been telling this story for a long time, right?
Because they already went through this in England and she listed, as I said, 13 alleged incidents with text messages and friends and so on.
And we'll get to all of that in this trial.
We'll analyze it fairly to see whether they're persuasive or they just got a friend's back.
But she really went into detail and she's got a lot of incidents.
And it seems to me, you know, she shouldn't have to go that far.
She didn't have to, like, if she's a lunatic making up 13 instances that are this detailed and this traumatic, how could she have been functioning at so high a level?
And why aren't we seeing witness after witness in his case in chief, other than the one lady who was paid for the 12 hours with her, come in and say, she's a lunatic.
This woman's insane.
I will tell you, one of the things that I think those jurors are probably thinking is, and I assume they're going to do this in the closing summation, is they're going to talk about his witness, his expert, and they're going to say, yeah, that expert was right to a point.
But look how his expert supported many of the things she said.
Now, mind you, I'm the first one to say, let's wait for cross-examination.
Yes, that's important.
Yeah, wait for cross-examination because it could be devastating.
And she could come off.
I've seen people who, and I'm sitting in Santa Clara, I've actually done a trial here where somebody came off spectacularly on direct and then unfolded on cross.
But remember, they going by tying back to our previous point, they saw that, they being the jury, and then that's the last thing they heard and they digested for eight days.
But the cross-examination will be closer to the verdict than the direct was.
And yeah, you're right.
It's not like he's got a bunch of losers representing him.
He's got very skilled lawyers who knew this was coming.
This is maybe new to us in a way of like, we've never seen her sit and testify to this ever.
But they knew what was coming.
And it's going, they're going to, they're going to, they are going to try to dismantle her.
I mean, they're not going to just let this go by.
I can, there's another argument.
I mean, if I'm representing him, if you're the lawyer, Megan, for him, you're saying, okay, that's the last thing that they heard for eight days.
But guess what?
I've got eight days to come at her loaded for bear.
And that's what I'm going to do.
But be careful because the last thing you want to do is bully her.
I think what you want to do is kind of bring this back to center and then start picking away or chipping away if you can at the story and where it doesn't make sense and where it doesn't hang together.
The problem you've got, the big challenge, if you're a Johnny Depp lawyer, is: hey, she, so many of the things she says, exactly what you pinpointed, Megan, is there is, it resonates because it adopts some of the things that her, his own expert said, and it comes on the heels of her own expert.
Conducting Cavity Searches 00:02:52
And it all fits together fairly nicely.
Well, the monster, and I'll get to that and the drugs and so on in one second, because if nothing else, we established that Johnny Depp has severe substance abuse problems and has for the majority of his professional life.
It's incredibly dark and it's multifaceted.
It's not just alcohol.
It's not just pills.
It's just, it's everything, which I have to say on a personal level dovetails with what I've been told by people who have dealt with him professionally, who I know and trust.
He can't function.
He can't make it through the day without getting increasingly intoxified in a way that's alarming.
Okay, facts outside of the presence of the jury.
Here is another disturbing soundbite where she talks about how he believed that she may have smuggled drugs in, or I can't remember what the exact setup was on this, but it was about an alleged cavity search that she says he performed on her.
This is soundbite seven.
And he's like grabbing my breasts.
He's touching my thighs.
He rips my underwear off.
And then he proceeds to do a cavity search.
He was looking, he said he was looking for his drugs, his cocaine, his Coke.
I was wondering how I, somebody who didn't do cocaine and was against it, that was in and of itself causing problems in our relationship.
How could I hide?
Why would I hide his drugs from, like, like he was insinuating that I was doing it or something?
It made no sense.
He was telling me we're doing, we're going to, we're going to conduct a cavity search, shall we?
Like, just chucked his fingers inside me.
Just stood there staring at the stupid light.
You know, I didn't know what to do.
I just stood, I stood there.
Well, he did that.
He twisted his fingers around.
I didn't say like stop or anything.
So that's interesting, Mark, right?
Even that you would add, I didn't say stop.
Tapping Into Anger 00:05:56
Now, if I were making this up, if I wanted just to convince a jury, I think I would embellish the other way.
I think I'd say, I told him stop and he wouldn't stop, right?
There's a lot in these little remarks that I think lead to the overall impression that I'm having, and I think you're having, which is she's telling the truth.
Now, we could be dissuaded on cross, but right now feels like a truth teller.
And you, once again, hit some of the things that I think are important that her people should and probably will argue.
Look, if this was a script, she certainly wasn't reading off of one.
It didn't appear to be kind of a rote recitation.
There was stuttering.
There were pauses.
There was emotion that permeated the thing.
Like I said, I don't want to keep repeating it, but there is a detail here that does not help, yet also, as you mentioned, tends to make you feel like it is a varnish truth.
And that's important.
I mean, that's one of the things you get as a juror is an instruction that tells you to focus on the witnesses and their demeanor and their testimony and the way that they approach testifying.
And all of those factors are things that I think somebody is going to argue in summation.
You saw her.
You saw the kind of pain and the quality of the testimony.
When I say quality, the way it tended to hang together and it fits in with the other experts and what they've said.
And all together, you can put a very reasonable, plausible explanation for what really happened here.
And by the way, that's all you have to do for her to prevail in this case.
That's right.
I mean, the thing is, people are ripping on her for giving too much detail.
You know, and I just looked at the blue light and then in other testimony, she goes on, like, I sat in the car and I just looked at the window.
And in my experience, women or men who have been through massive traumas often remember those details.
In fact, they often remember the details like that, the extraneous ones, better than the actual trauma that was happening to them.
Who knows how the mind protects itself in those severe danger moments?
Again, it's not to say it's true.
It's just another way of looking at some of the things that are catching attention against her online.
Before we bring in Harmee, because she's here too, Harmee Dylan, we're looking forward to a little bit more legal analysis on some other cases.
I got to ask you about to your point about like, she's kind of tapping into some stuff the jury's already heard, his anger, his extreme anger, like we saw with banging the cabinets.
Oh, I assaulted the cabinets and a couch and some furniture, but I didn't assault her.
And she talks about the monster and so on and the constant drugs.
And all of that rings very true.
Here's a little bit about it and how bad it was.
And you think about this person this messed up this often.
And one wonders whether it's such a stretch to think maybe he doesn't quite remember all of his behavior.
This is Sound by Eight.
Pass out in his own vomit.
He'd lose control of his body.
His, you know, he'd lose control and everyone clean up after him.
I cleaned up after him.
I mean, this man lost control of his bowels and I cleaned up after him.
His security cleaned up after him, changed his pants in front of me.
He would pass out in his own sick.
Johnny on speed is very different from Johnny on opiates.
Johnny on opiates, very different from Adderall and cocaine, Johnny, which is very different from Koilut's Johnny.
But I had to get good at paying attention to the different versions of him.
Mark, Johnny is a severe drug abuser and addict is not going to be tough for the jury to buy, and it will factor in to some extent.
And by the way, you gave the coming attractions with your poop gate, but there is something that makes, you know, people kept talking about Amber is crazy.
She defecated on the bed.
Remember all of that?
There was a chorus on the internet.
Well, you know, if you're somebody who has had to clean up after him in a drug-induced kind of release of bodily fluids, boy, that starts to make some sense, doesn't it?
There starts to be especially when you factor in that she didn't admit to the driver that she did it.
Apparently she admitted to the driver that it was a terrible practical joke.
And there's still hanging in the air the question of whether it was Amber or her friend.
And I have to say, I like, it's not something I could ever countence, but I could see a best friend being told the stories that Amber's telling here and saying, you know, after a few drinks, you know what?
This is what I'm going to do.
I could see a friend doing it for an abuse victim even more than the victim herself.
If she is a victim, again, make room for cross-examination and the openness of minds in a case like this.
Mark's staying with us.
Next up, Harmeet Dylan joins us as well for some other crazy cases in Kelly's court, including that computer guy who had the Hunter Biden laptop filing lawsuits against CNN and many others.
Mark Garrigos is back with us, and we're also joined now by Harmeet Dylan, attorney and managing partner of Dylan Law Group.
Great to have you, Harmeet.
Great to see you again.
Thanks for having me.
Okay, so there's a few interesting cases going on right now.
Adam Schiff Context 00:15:08
We find them in the news and we text them to each other when we're not, you know, on the air saying, this is a good one.
This is a good one.
And I have to say, of the three we're going to get into, the lottery one is my favorite, but we'll get to that in just a minute.
Let's start on a more serious note.
The guy who had the Hunter Biden laptop, the guy, the legally blind guy who owns a computer repair shop, which again, it remains a mystery to me.
He's fighting back against the media and against Adam Schiff for the Russian disinformation lie.
It's very interesting to me.
This is like the only guy to really fight back and finally say, like, this was a bunch of nonsense and you swept me up in your nonsense because you were basically telling all the world that I was peddling Russian disinformation and it ruined my life and my business.
All right, we're going to get to exactly how it ruined his life and his business in a minute.
But first, let's listen to, he sued Adam Schiff, CNN, Politico, and the Daily Beast in Montgomery County, Maryland.
And here's interview number one.
This is his example of how Adam Schiff went on CNN and defamed him from, I don't know if I have the date in front of me, but it was right after the laptop came out in October of 2020.
Listen.
Does it surprise you at all that this information Rudy Giuliani is peddling very well could be connected to some sort of Russian government disinformation campaign?
Well, we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.
The president, that the White House counsel and others were made aware that Giuliani was being used by Russian intelligence and using Russian intelligence in the sense of meeting with an agent of the Kremlin and pushing out this Kremlin false narrative.
But clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin.
been formally briefed on what the Russians are up to right now and trying to peddle this kind of information.
We haven't gotten much from the intelligence community, but we do know this.
The Russians are once again actively involved in trying to denigrate the vice president.
Harmeet, the proprietor of that store, John Paul Mac Isaac, goes by Mac, says this ruined his life.
People started throwing eggs at his door, vegetables, dog feces hit his door.
He had to shut down his store and that he had to go into exile in Colorado for a year.
So does he have any case?
I think he does.
And so this is difficult because defamation is a practice area of my firm and we handle a lot of it.
And it's very hard to make out a case of defamation in many jurisdictions because of anti-slap law.
A lot of members of Congress hide behind the legislative privilege that allows them to say the most vicious and horrible things about people within the building of the Capitol and they can get away with it.
But that's not what happened here.
And so Adam Schiff, who is privy to all of the intelligence at issue here, and he's not being candid on that interview, he's not only has he had it, but I would say confidently that he is a good suspect for having leaked it to the press.
So he knows exactly what it is.
And he very confidently stated without cavil or exception that this definitely was a smear, meaning false, against the president's family, and it was Russian propaganda and that he knows it and that Rudy Giuliani was peddling it.
So I think all of those things are false.
And the malice aspect that you have to prove in defamation is proven by the fact that Adam Schiff is in the best position of anybody in Congress to know the actual facts.
And today we know that even the New York Times and other major publications have acknowledged that this is an actual thing.
It is not Russian propaganda.
It is Hunter Biden's laptop.
And there's also an investigation of the DOJ.
So if ever there were a case and if ever there were a person who deserved to be sued for vicious lies, it would be Adam Schiff in this situation.
Well, that's separate from whether this lawsuit.
I've known Adam since he was a U.S. attorney and he made his career actually on convicting a FBI agent who had turned as was turned by a Russian spy.
And he never got it out of his head.
Yeah.
So the interesting thing about this and on Harmit's comment, and Harmeet and I did not talk about this, but she's absolutely spot on.
The legislative privilege is where they are going to go in this case.
And the interesting thing is, I don't know if I were him and if he had to do a redo it, I probably would not have said we haven't gotten much from the intelligence community because you also, besides having the legislative privilege, could also say, well, I wish I could tell you what I know, but it's top class, it's top secret, it's classified, and invoke a national security privilege on top of it.
The problem with all of this, though, is that, as Harmit also mentioned, it's a heavy, heavy lift.
And it's a heavy lift when it's core political speech and kind of the denigration of the opposite side.
So I think he's got a tough kind of let the crack here, but who knows?
CNN ended up writing a check to Nicholas Sandman.
So weirder things have happened.
Okay, but Leah, as much as I would like to see that.
Well, let me ask you, Harme, because as much as I would love to see CNN and The Daily Beast and all these others have to pay for what happened to this man, to me, it seems like they were saying stuff that wasn't true, but I'm not sure they were defaming him.
Like they're not, I don't hear anybody accusing him of putting Russian disinformation on the laptop, right?
They're just wrong about how it got there or like whether we should believe in the information from the get-go.
Like maybe the Russians put the disinformation on there before it ever got into the hands of the repairman.
No, I think I disagree with that.
So I think that the whole context here is: if you look at the larger context, I'm sure other comments Adam Schipp has made, and certainly those publications have made would include that this guy wasn't really a bona fide holder of this piece of equipment.
And so I think the implication is that at a minimum, he's a dupe.
At worst, he's an active participant in a foreign conspiracy to subvert the United States.
That is per quad, defamation per fraud by implication.
And he isn't a public figure.
I mean, certainly one could argue, and I'm sure that these publications, and Adam Schiff will argue in defense of this if it gets to that, that he is a, at a minimum, he's a limited purpose public figure for purposes of this.
But I think that's a real stretch.
And so absolutely, if I were he, I would definitely feel like I had been defamed by these statements.
That was interesting too, Harvey.
What about the idea with him that the Rudy Giuliani factor, because I remember at the time, one of the reasons that I had kind of my doubts about all of this is of all the people in the world, he's going to give it either Rudy or Rudy's lawyer.
I think that's something that they're going to bring up.
I think that's something that they're going to say is what gave them the or negates the malice element.
Yeah, but that, but that's kind of silly, though.
It's like saying that somehow evidence that is otherwise sound is tainted by having Rudy Giuliani hold it for five minutes.
That's really silly.
Adam Schiff knows that's not the case, having been a former federal prosecutor like Rudy Giuliani.
So you may agree or disagree with some things that Rudy Giuliani has said or not, but today we know, and back then Adam had no reason to say this was Russian propaganda for sure because Rudy Giuliani received it.
It doesn't even follow logically.
And not only that, he may have known Giuliani, whatever, but he also knew Hunter Biden was a hot mess and that this was all totally believable, right?
So it's like, on the other hand, well, this is going to be an interesting one to watch.
You guys are giving it, well, you, Harmead are giving it more legitimacy than I expected, which has piqued my curiosity.
All right.
So I will continue to follow it and see where it goes.
All right.
Next up, we're going to discuss somebody I try never to discuss in this program.
There's certain people who I try not to discuss.
I try to stay away from Madison Cawthorne.
I try to stay away from Eric Swalwell.
I just, there's certain people I'm like, they're going to run their time in the U.S. Congress or wherever they are, and then hopefully we won't have to deal with them anymore.
This guy's just, he's been a mess from the beginning, this Cawthorne.
And in the beginning, in the very beginning, we were excited.
We were like, oh, you know, he's like disabled guy, you know, proven you can have this great life and run for Congress and like more diversity in that way.
That's nice.
Okay.
He's like, since he got there, he's been causing trouble.
Every story's about him.
To me, he seems like kind of like AOC.
He wants to be a star as opposed to be a legislator.
Whatever.
That's my own opinion.
But now I feel for him a little because he's being blackmailed, I guess, by some group that's gotten a picture, all these pictures of him behaving like a moron, or one could argue, behaving like a normal 20-year-old, 20-something-year-old.
He's young.
He's in his what?
He's 26.
Represents for FYI, Congressman North Carolina's 11th district, was raised in conservative Baptist community in Henderson, North Carolina, paralyzed from the waist down as a passenger in a car accident in Florida in 2014.
And he's running for reelection.
So day by day, we get another picture of him in a compromised position, another video of him in a compromising position.
And the latest is of him, I don't know, like a nude appearing to fool around with somebody that may or may not have been his cousin.
It wasn't.
I don't know if it was.
He says we were just having fun.
I don't know what's happening here, Harme.
And I don't want to defame the guy, but this is an extended blackmail campaign by somebody that wants to see him defeated.
I guess we know who's putting it out.
Our video released this week was from the American Muckrackers PAC, an opposition group that does not want him to win.
So you tell me whether he's got any legal recourse to all this stuff coming out.
Well, first of all, it's very interesting and amusing at one level, but of course, this is a human being's life.
But look, from my perspective, what I see here is probably some of this oppo may be coming from what we call inside the building.
I think that Madison Cawthorne has said some things about Republican leadership, you know, the cocaine-fueled orgies, et cetera, which they did not like.
Calling leadership rhinos, you know, is a common phrase in our party right now.
And I wouldn't be surprised if this oppo is coming from Republican sources.
I do not disagree at all.
You can almost draw a straight line to when this is getting.
I mean, they're trying to take him out.
They're trying to take him out because he's embarrassing for the party.
I would put Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I've represented in court, as in that same bucket of people who are new in Congress.
They're not beholden to the regime, old establishment of the party, and they don't like him.
So he's embarrassing.
Between the two of them, though, I think you may agree with it.
She is a prolific fundraiser.
Yeah.
They're very different in many ways, but on the defamation, you can't defame somebody by showing their own stuff.
I mean, unless it's doctored.
If it's doctored, then you would have a defamation.
But, you know, part of it.
Otherwise, it's just like a young guy fooling around being an idiot.
That's the perspective I see him wearing drag on a cruise.
I mean, so what?
It doesn't like offend me.
Whatever.
What about someone released the tapes of him with the sexual acts?
Like, that's, you know, I'm sure none of our audience members has ever done that.
But if you've ever decided to engage in some fun on camera and then you break up, you know, they call it revenge porn if your ex releases that on you.
But let's say it wasn't revenge porn.
Let's say, because clearly in one of them, he's having this relationship or whatever on the bed and somebody seems to be actively filming it because the camera follows them around.
I mean, it's not just like stationary camera that they set.
So my question was, whose tape is that and who released it?
And is there any recourse if somebody gets their hands on your venge porn under the laws of certain states, California being one?
And that's a fairly new statute too, which I've litigated in the case of Katie Hill and her REPL picture.
So, you know, we litigated that.
Katie Hill sued for revenge porn, sued journalists for that.
I represented them and we want an anti-slap verdict because she owes me over 100 grand right now.
So, you know, you have, yeah, and so which I haven't been able to collect yet because she's hard to find, a little bit hard to serve.
Check MSF.
If she is, call me.
But anyway, Harmeet might cut you in on that.
Yeah, we have a finders, you know, within the bounds of ethical rules.
But seriously, but with respect to who filmed it and all of that, I mean, certainly he could bring a claim.
The way he's been handling it so far is toughing it out in the vein that I just said, hey, I'm a young dude and, you know, like you're just jealous that I've got so many hot chicks around me.
I mean, that's a way to go.
And I don't know what else he can do.
He has to brazen it through unless he can claim that it's fair to get him claimed.
Let's get on to the fun one.
Lottery.
I love lottery cases.
They're so interesting.
There's a guy, Mark, named Philip Sotsis up in Canada.
He's suing his quote friends, claiming they betrayed him after they hit a multi-million dollar lottery win and they didn't cut him in.
16 members of a group won a $1 million prize, not bad, on a Lotto Max ticket up in Ontario.
And this guy says, he's a pizza delivery driver.
He's like, every week I'm in.
And now this week, you say I'm not in the one week you won.
And they're claiming, well, you didn't pay the 10 bucks.
that you owed us, you know, and so therefore you're out.
You know, he's, I, I don't know, I'll be the first to confess the Canadian ins and outs of the legal system.
I will tell you, had cases, and I've had associates who've handled cases in California and have prevailed.
And if there is a common practice where we're always in, we're in every week, I pay you either before or whatever, or there's a round robin of who pays, somebody at some point is going to write a check in this case.
That's what I think too, Harmy.
He says he knew he was behind, but he texted that he would pay this Friday.
And the guy running it said, haha, okay, yeah, no problem.
I charge interest, though, a high interest rate.
I have kids to feed.
And that they had this fun exchange.
It was very understood that he was behind, but he was still in.
Settling the Debt 00:01:09
Absolutely.
So he's got promissory estoppel.
He's got implied contract.
He's got, you know, course of dealing between the parties.
And so I think that what should have happened here, the amount of money we're talking about is relatively marginal from the share of each of the winners.
This is a case that should definitely settle.
Yes.
Each guy got about $62,000.
They excluded him, even though on the day of the win, without knowing that they had won, he bought them free pizza.
He brought them free pizza.
And then he found out later that they won and didn't tell him.
These guys better pray it never goes in front of a jury.
Even a Canadian jury would know what to do.
Yes, it's not great.
Guys, thank you both so much.
Really appreciate the discussion.
Always fun talking to you both.
Thanks, Megan.
Well, it's been a huge week for us here at the Megan Kelly Show.
I want to thank all of you for being with us and for all the nice comments that you left on our social media, on Apple and so on.
We read them.
We really do and we appreciate them.
Don't miss Monday where we have Piers Morgan and Dennis Prager.
And in the meantime, happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
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