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Nov. 23, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:17:11
20221123_alec-baldwin-rust-movie-set-deadly-shooting-deep-d
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Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show 00:03:21
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
On October 21st, last year, police and EMTs were dispatched to the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The call to 911 relayed that two people had been accidentally shot on the Rust movie set, and they needed help immediately.
Cinematographer Helena Hutchins' injuries would soon after prove to be fatal.
And director Joel Souza, thankfully, only suffered an injured shoulder from the very same bullet that passed through Helena.
More than a year later, no one has faced criminal charges in connection with the accidental death of Hutchins.
But one fact remains clear.
Actor Alec Baldwin was holding the gun that killed this up-and-coming filmmaker.
Shortly after we taped this episode, the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office released a 551-page report into the Rust investigation.
The report did little to answer the crucial questions a year later.
There are still no answers as to how live ammunition made its way to the Rust set, nor did the report make any judgments on whether criminal charges should be filed.
That's in the hands of the DA.
It did, however, release some text messages from Alec Baldwin to Hutchins' husband, insisting that he and the cinematographer believed the gun was empty.
Baldwin also suggested that there may be a sabotage angle and also told an assistant, quote, I have to delete my archive.
By the way, that's never something you should put in writing.
But Baldwin's lawyer says that was in reference to his Twitter account and unrelated to the case.
Lawyer-turned YouTuber David Freiheit, better known to his audience as Viva Fry, has followed this story quite closely.
He joins us to discuss it all in this special episode.
But first, a little background on David because he's fascinating in his own right.
David was on track to make partner at one of the most prominent law firms in Canada when he left to start his own practice.
Shortly after he struck out on his own, he got a GoPro for Christmas, which changed his entire trajectory.
I love this.
He now has over 500,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel where he dissects the latest news through his unique and fair legal perspective.
And somewhere in there, he even found time to run for the Canadian Parliament.
David, welcome to the show.
Megan, thank you for having me on.
Oh, the pleasure's all mine.
So it's amazing to think that this was only a year ago that this happened.
And this was like just to set the stage.
This was a small movie production.
This was not like, you know, big superhero type budget.
It was relatively small.
Alec Baldwin is not as big a star as he used to be.
And he was, in addition to the star, the executive producer, which will become relevant legally.
Oh, yeah.
No, no, it's, well, it feels like a lot more than a year ago.
We celebrated, there was the year anniversary.
I remember where I was when this happened, where the news broke that it has since become a sad internet meme.
Did Alec Baldwin Pull the Trigger 00:15:16
Alec Baldwin killed a woman on a set.
And it hadn't happened in a long time.
And at first, you know, people were jumping on it for the firearm safety aspect of it or the gun control aspect.
But my goodness, has it evolved into something much deeper and, you know, infiltrated by politics, to put it mildly.
There's video of Alec Baldwin right after the shooting.
I want to make sure I don't mischaracterize it, but it was obtained by TMZ.
And you can see him sitting with Dave Halls, the movie's assistant director, associate director.
And Baldwin asks a question about Helena and how she's doing.
Here's just a bit of that moment.
Standby, SOT1.
Short story.
A little bit rougher.
It wasn't shoulder, though.
But Helena, where did it?
So hers appeared to look, it went through her right underarm.
Yeah.
And the exit point was on her back left shoulder blade.
It went the way through.
Yeah, enough to get airflight.
I mean, he seems distraught.
And I don't think there's anybody accusing Alec Baldwin of intentionally hurting Helena Hutchins.
The question is whether there was negligence or recklessness in this case, but not intentionality, right?
Well, there were at the beginning some theories.
You know, the internet is what it is.
People were hypothesizing about sabotage, deliberate, you know, placing live ammunition on set.
People jump down some very deep rabbit holes, make some connections because Hollywood and politics intertwine.
But by and large, no, nobody's suggesting this was deliberate sabotage, an attempt to get someone hurt.
And it would have been so astronomical to even get that to happen in the first place, because in the ordinary run of things, people are not pulling triggers even if they are on prop guns.
And I'm putting the word prop in quotes because people think prop guns mean fake guns when they just mean real guns, functional guns that happen to be the property of the set.
The idea that this would have been a malicious sabotage at the time, there were some ideas that the crew were upset, people were angry, maybe someone threw in a live live round here to sabotage, but deliberate act, no.
The question does become: is it criminal negligence?
Although I think that question is obviously answered in the affirmative, and to the extent it's answered in the affirmative, who's criminally negligent here under the legal sense to suffer some consequences or get charged with something.
Eventually, there would be a simulation of the shooting death of Helena Hutchins, who was, again, the cinematographer shooting Alec Baldwin with her camera.
And he was using a gun, a prop gun that he did not think was loaded with actual live rounds.
And he'd been told it was a quote cold gun.
But eventually, in support of the lawsuit that they ultimately filed, lawyers for the family of Helena Hutchins' family submitted this video.
It was a simulation of what they believe happened.
I think it's probably helpful.
We show it to the audience now and then we can talk about it.
Here it is.
It's SAT seven.
It's disturbing even to see in a simulation, but it shows him, it shows Helena Hutchins a little bit to the side of the camera, like she's kind of cheating the side of the camera.
He takes out the gun and pulls the trigger.
Now, that is what we believe happened, despite what Alec Baldwin would later tell the world, right?
That he did point the gun in her direction and did pull the trigger.
Baldwin's, one of his bigger curses is the inability to not make public statements at critical junctures.
He's made a lot of conflicting statements, but his initial defense was, I never pulled the trigger.
He did make some subsequent statements that he pulled the hammer back.
I am not a firearm aficionado.
I've learned a fair bit about older guns and guns in this context, but there is the question about whether or not you could pull back the hammer and then release it without pulling the trigger.
But most people agree that with a two-lock system, as was the case with this firearm, you would have to have the trigger compressed in order to release the hammer and have it potentially strike the, I forget what the part is of the gun, of the bullet to release it.
He said he never pulled the trigger, but yet admitted that he pulled the hammer back as per the instructions of Helena Hutchins.
But just with respect to that graphic, that graphic was undoubtedly generated to create the image for, I'm not going to say not shock purpose, but so people can visualize how horrific it was.
But that graphic is effectively what everyone stated occurred from the beginning.
They're doing some scene.
Helena is telling Alec what to do with the gun, how to frame it, and it goes off.
But it would always be Alec's point of defense that he never pulled the trigger to suggest that maybe there was some malfunction.
But that theory, implausible as it was at the very beginning in any event, seems to have been debunked by the FBI investigation, which concluded someone had to have pulled the trigger given the nature of this type of gun.
And even if someone pulled the hammer back and released it and it struck the primer and discharged a live ammunition, the trigger would have had to have been compressed in any event.
In which case, I think we might be getting into a bit of semantics as to whether or not he pulled the trigger versus compressed the trigger, then pulled the hammer back and released the hammer, but separate discussion.
Either way, no, but it was interesting because I think the fact that he lied is going to be very relevant.
So I don't think anybody, and I don't think a jury is ever going to believe him that he did not pull the trigger once they get experts on the stand who testify, as you just said, that this gun, this Colt 45, cannot, like the law enforcement, the FBI looked at it and said, you cannot fire this gun without pulling the trigger.
There's too many fail-safes on it.
And they looked at this gun that he used.
But notwithstanding all that, let me play the soundbite.
He told George Stephanopoulos, among others, that he did not pull the trigger his sought for.
It wasn't in the script for the trigger to be pulled.
Well, the trigger wasn't pulled.
I didn't pull the trigger.
So you never pulled the trigger.
No, I would never point a gun at anyone to pull a trigger at them, never.
Honestly, can I just say, David, that to me is he's a good actor.
He actually is a good actor.
And you can see it in that clip because I do believe he's lying.
I do believe that law enforcement's correct.
He had to have pulled the trigger.
And you can see he's a good actor.
He's selling that story pretty well right there.
Well, it's the me thinks he doth protest it too much.
I may be wrong in my body language analysis or behavioral analysis, but I've been a lawyer for long enough, a practicing attorney to have come to certain conclusions that no, And he does it multiple times in that interview.
I think that's a telling, no, That's like sort of trying to deny something that he feels to be true.
Just to give Alec Baldwin the absolute benefit of the doubt and to play devil's advocate, possibly literally, when he says I didn't pull the trigger, in his mind, there could be a difference between pulling the trigger to activate the hammer versus, you know, in a subsequent interview, I'm not sure if you're going to have it, but he talks about feathering the hammer, feathering a gun.
You ever heard of feathering?
He said with his Cuomo interview.
In his mind, there could be a difference between compressing the trigger while pulling the hammer back and then releasing the hammer.
And in his mind, it doesn't feel like he pulled the trigger to cause the hammer to snap back.
That's conceptually possible.
So it might be that he doesn't think he's lying.
I happen to have a very different theory about all of this.
My underlying theory, I put it in the video.
It's my humble opinion.
So let that be known, is that I think he might have pulled the trigger on purpose out of frustration or something, thinking there were only blanks in there.
I put together a whole 15-minute analysis breaking down various interviews he gave.
I think that's probably more plausible.
Just thought there were blanks and didn't mean for any of this to happen.
The question then becomes, how did live rounds get into that gun and onto that set?
But at the end of the day, we're definitely going to get into that.
That's the heart of the whole case.
I mean, how, but, but I'm sort of starting at the beginning, which is the incident, him pulling the trigger.
He's the one we all focused on.
Why did he fire a live gun?
Did he fire a live gun, a gun with a live round in it?
Did he do that?
And I believe, I do.
I believe he pulled the trigger and he fired a gun thinking that there were only blanks in it or dummy rounds and that nobody was going to be in danger.
He now is denying it because a woman died and he accurately foresaw he was going to be the subject of litigation.
But does it matter?
Is he more potentially liable if he actually pulled the trigger?
Because his main defense is: who the hell knew it had a live round in it?
Well, see, that's now again, I'm a civil lawyer in Quebec and not a criminal lawyer, let alone a criminal lawyer in New Mexico.
But there are various charges that can result from this.
Deliberate, deliberate act.
You know, no, negligent homicide, or I think it would be involuntary manslaughter under New Mexico law.
Yeah, I mean, when his reaction was, why the hell was there a live round in it?
And not how the hell did this thing go off?
That's telling to me from an interpretive perspective.
And it's always been, why the hell?
He said it in many interviews.
The question that has to be answered is: why was there a live round in that gun?
Nobody's going to believe he didn't pull the trigger because, from my understanding, from the physics of it, the only way that that could have gone off without the trigger being pulled is if it's in, you know, the hammer's down and something bangs the hammer into the primer to trigger the primer.
Nobody's going to believe he didn't pull the trigger.
And that his point that he keeps bringing up over and over again in every interview, we need to find out the only question that's relevant is: how did live rounds get there?
To me, that confirms the idea that he pulled the trigger.
He might be trying to pretend in his own mind retroactively he didn't, but he did.
And then the question does become: well, he pulled the trigger on purpose, no idea that there was a live round in there.
Although, even pulling the trigger on purpose, thinking it's blanks, or there's another word I'm looking for.
There's different types of dummy rounds.
Even pulling the trigger then still has risk.
There was someone, I forget the name.
A lot of my information, by the way, I get from watching these guys, Eric Hundley and Mark Robert on America's Untold Stories.
Grober has a history of life in Hollywood, and he knows other cases where there was an individual who put a gun to his head as a joke.
It was a dummy.
It was Bruce Lee's son.
Bruce Lee's was different.
Bruce Lees was apparently something got lodged in the actual gun.
I think it was a projectile of some sort.
A projectile from the previous shot.
And then the dummy round or the blank had enough projection to cause the piece that was stuck in the gun to go out and kill with enough force.
But one act put a blank gun to his head, pulled the trigger, and the concussive force of the blank going off caused him to die from the injuries a couple of days later.
So even pulling the trigger thinking it's blanks is a different degree of negligence.
It's not like a cap gun.
But my theory aside, the FBI confirms that gun didn't go off on its own.
Someone had to have pulled the trigger.
And then it's just going to be a question of what types of charges and who bears the responsibility.
How did live rounds get there is one question.
But anybody with Baldwin's experience with guns, and it conflicts with some of his statements earlier, he knew you never pull the trigger of a gun, you never point a gun at a person, and he seems to have done both of these things.
So there might be shared responsibility, but if it doesn't come down at the very least to Alec Baldwin in one way or another, we can probably add something else to the list of what politics ruins.
Yeah, I mean, we can definitely talk about the fact that he was an executive producer on the project and whether he should have been overseeing a safer work site for all involved.
That's definitely one of the theories against him.
But here, we're still debating whether he could be subjected to civil or potentially criminal liability.
Forget the EP role for the guy as the guy who fired the gun and whether he had a greater obligation to make sure it really was a cold gun, because some of his own feller, fellow actors are saying that.
You know, George Clooney came out and said, I never rely on the assistant director to tell me it's a cold gun.
Like, it's fine to have him say that, but I always look myself and make sure.
Now, that's presuming you would be able to tell.
But there are other actors, and it wasn't just Clooney coming out to say, we all check ourselves.
And we would also never fire the gun if the armorer were not on set.
And here, the armorer was not on set, and Alec Baldwin did not check the gun himself.
So even if you don't expand it to he was an executive producer, even if you just keep it at he shot, he fired the weapon, you know, there's some incremental evidence that he may have behaved negligently.
Well, Megan, I've been corrected multiple times in referring to it as a weapon and not a firearm.
So I've been conditioned now to refer, and rightly so, to these things as firearms.
There's a number of things there in what you just said, George Clooney, Will Smith.
First of all, everyone's going to, you know, when something like this happens, come out and show how much smarter they are and how much more responsible they are.
To some extent, I understand Baldwin's position, which is I am not the last line of defense here.
That's why we hire an armorer.
I'm not the one to be relied on to open it back up and say, okay, these are dummy rounds.
I understand that defense.
Baldwin's biggest problem, because he can't stop talking, is that he comes out and says in the George Stephanopoulos interview, I would never point a gun at someone I know better than that, but he did.
I would never pull the trigger, you know, even if it's even if it's empty, because pulling the trigger causes, you know, minute damages to the firing pin.
So you don't do that, but he did.
You know, George Clooney coming out and saying, fine, I like to double check, triple check, and look at it.
That's good for George Clooney.
And I'm probably sufficiently neurotic that I would always do the same thing myself.
Look at the back of the dummy rounds and say, how do I know that this is not a live round?
So I can forgive Alex or at least understand that argument, Alec, that it's not his last line to say, am I the one to decide this versus the armorer?
But can you get over the fact that the reason why the armorer wasn't in the church for that scene was because of COVID restrictions?
I mean, they're shooting a Western using real, real guns, not supposed to be using real ammunition, but because of safety protocols for COVID, the armorer is not in there to inspect for the final say, and she's not allowed to be on scene.
I mean, it's the world's gone mad.
Risk assessment has gone mad.
And this could very well be chalked up as a COVID accident at its core.
But what kind of an insane lunatic did not think that she was an essential worker, that the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was an essential worker to that scene?
I mean, that's the person.
The Insanity of Live Rounds 00:15:18
It's probably this person's been sued.
She's one of the one of the players.
She's probably, I can't remember what her name is, but there was a woman.
Hold on, I'll find it, who is overseeing safety out there.
There's too many names in this, Megan.
Like you got the names of the people suing, the names of the armorer, assistant director.
I know.
Then you got the investigators.
It's nuts.
I'll get it.
She is one of the people who's been sued in like the most recent round of lawsuits.
So I'll find it.
But in any event, okay, so that's Alec Baldwin.
I don't think he's going to do very well on a civil lawsuit against him.
Already, Matt Hutchins, the widower of Helena, has filed and settled a lawsuit against Baldwin and the production company, which we can talk about more later.
But he's on the receiving end of others.
There was a woman who I think she, did she write the scripts or she brought the scripts in, who's represented by Gloria Allred, Mayor.
What's her name?
Mamie Mamie.
Mamie Mitchell, script supervisor.
She's suing the producers, including Baldwin, alleging assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
She's the one who called 911 after it happened and sounded absolutely distraught.
And she's suing him.
So other people are going to be suing him and trying to sort of pin it on him.
And he has already brought in in that case, filed a motion to dismiss.
It got denied.
He's brought in to that case the armorer and the assistant director who yelled cold gun.
Cold gun.
And I understand that.
And the armorer, meanwhile, is pointing at that, I think, at their boss, who I think she's alleging did not run a safe set.
This is the woman who I was trying to get to before who, if you didn't let the armorer on the set during COVID because of COVID restrictions, you're an idiot.
There shouldn't have been a scene with a gun without the armorer, period.
But secondly, I think it's very interesting because the armorer is blaming the ammo guy, Seth Kenney, right?
That's his name.
And his company, PDC.
I mean, well, everybody's going to go after everybody.
But the armorer versus Seth Kenney is where the game is at, in my legal opinion.
Yes.
And I mean, I say yes.
Not yes and no, because if the armorer, not the armorer, sorry.
If the if Seth Kenney and PDC actually provided live ammunition to the set when they were not supposed to, it's conceivable that Seth Kenney and PDC provided live ammunition for a totally legitimate reason.
I mean, you could use live ammunition for firing range offset.
But if they were mixed in with dummy rounds.
Well, that's that's, I mean, that's where you get to like negligence per se.
That is the definition of negligence.
That's why at the end of the day, there's going to have to be a criminal trial for this.
And then the only question is going to be who, you know, how do they, how do they apportion the responsibility?
And what does the evidence bear out?
And there's a concept at least in Canadian law.
I don't know if it's going to be the same under the U.S. law, but actus novis.
Like even if someone had done something negligent, did someone else do something further down the line that severed any responsibility that could have ever been attributed to the initial actor?
I'm imagining people are going to say that.
Like, okay, Seth Kenny says, look, I sold you live rounds.
Maybe he has a defense that it wasn't for the set.
It should never have been there.
If indeed it comes out that live ammunition was mixed with dummy rounds that were sold and delivered by PDC Seth Kenney.
Okay, well, then I definitely see a connection in law and fact.
Then the issue is going to be, well, if nobody pulls the trigger, this never happens.
Or if the armorer does their job properly, this never happens.
Why didn't you spot it?
So let's, I want to get to that.
Let's say, yes, because everybody's doing one of these.
Like it was, it was her.
It was him.
It's a Spider-Man meme on the interwebs.
Everybody's fault.
I'm not responsible.
And if I'm responsible, I'm the least responsible.
Only give me 10% of it.
So here's what she's going to say.
Seth Kenney gave her a box or boxes of ammo that had both dummy rounds and live rounds in them, something she never expected and would never expect.
And just for the audience, I've had this explained to me, the difference between a dummy round and a blank is a blank actually produces smoke and makes a sound.
And it's sort of like an imitation bullet with like imitation things about it, like the smoke and so on.
A dummy round is just like it's just a lookalike.
It's just a pretty little lookalike.
It doesn't do any of those fancy things.
And these were supposed to be dummy rounds because you can see them in a Colt 45.
All you needed to do was see the bullets in the gun so that you would believe this was a real loaded gun.
Yeah, well, that's it.
The blanks have reduced projectile capacity.
Dummies are pure prop.
There's a number of distinctions which are not necessarily, you know, you don't need to flesh them out in detail.
And The gun aficionados definitely know the difference in detail.
But if it turns out that live ammunition was mixed in with blanks, dummies.
Blanks with dummies.
There's still, apparently it's not all that easy to tell the difference.
Either you have to look at the back of the bullets to see what colours are.
You have to shake them.
Even trust me, I have this from a very good source.
This armorer was placed in the position in that truck of trying to decide whether these were, you know, putting, loading up these firearms, this firearm.
And she's claiming that she was given a box that had both in it.
And the way that you would tell is you shake it and it makes a noise.
This, I can't remember.
Either I can imagine.
The fake one makes a noise or the real one makes a noise, but that's how you check.
And you have to make sure everything going in there does what the dummy does, which is either they all made the noise or none of them made the noise.
Forgive me for not knowing the difference.
The aficionados are going to be yelling at their screens for both of us here.
I can understand if they have reduced projectile capacity, there's going to be a less gunpowder.
So it will shake.
Okay, either.
There's a way to tell the difference.
If that's going to be the defense, however, there should never have been live rounds on set to begin with.
But then the question is, whose fault is that?
Seth Kenney for delivering it?
Armorers for accepting it?
Producers for allowing it to happen.
Everyone will share responsibility in this at the end of the day.
The only question is apportionment and whether or not people can say, this is where the buck stops in terms of my responsibility.
But no, I mean, Baldwin's lawsuit makes some allegations, which they're allegations, but look, you know, pretty damning in terms of what was delivered to the set.
But you have to see defenses.
There could be the defense that someone ordered the live rounds for offset shooting.
And so then Seth Kenny's off the hook.
I mean, in theory.
But the reports are that what was in the gun was a mixture.
You had the live round, and I think the rest of them were dummy.
So it's not like she loaded a gun with all live rounds from the wrong box that was on set for a legitimate purpose of some sort.
You know, that's not possible.
She loaded one dummy round and I think, I'm sorry, one live round and the rest of them dummy rounds.
And they said that they retrieved the boxes from the armorer's truck and they did find more of this combination.
And so, and that's why she's pointing the finger at the at the uh the ammo guy, Seth Kenny, saying, you gave me those boxes like that.
You put me in a position to endanger everybody.
And he's going to say, A, no, I didn't.
And B, if I did, it's literally your job to tell the difference.
That's why you're there to be a fail-safe, just in case an accident like that happens.
Or something fell over and they, in a haste, put all the bullets back together in a box and mixed them up.
I mean, that would be an actus notice.
They were separate at the beginning.
Something happened and then they just put them all together in a box.
There's conceivable defenses there.
But true, at the end of the day, it's the armorer who's supposed to know the difference.
Apparently, from Baldwin's lawsuit, there was also a live round in the rifle.
So, but bottom line, what the hell is going on on that set?
And then bottom line, how the heck do you make a movie where you have a scene like this, but because of COVID protocol in the middle of the New Mexico desert, you don't allow the armorer to go in?
Can you get policymakers involved in this?
I mean, this is a question of policy that's having real life impact.
But end of the day, and most people are of this opinion, the buck stops with the person who pulled the trigger of a prop gun pointed at a human.
Now, before we get back to him, back to Alex, Alec, you got the ammo guy, Kenny.
You got Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer, who is the dodge.
Young, but she's the daughter of like, the most respected armorer in all of Hollywood um, and so presumably was well trained, though though she's very young, so we don't know for sure.
Um, and then from her it goes to David Halls, the assistant director, who's the one who handed the weapon to Baldwin and yelled cold gun, indicating that it did not contain live rounds.
Now this guy, he's also being sued in the chain.
So far, to me, he's the least culpable.
This guy doesn't.
He doesn't know squat had the.
The assistant director doesn't know.
How is the armorer gonna make a mistake of not knowing the difference between the dummy round and the live round?
And the assistant director, whose job encompasses way more than the guns, he's supposed to know.
This is and this.
This is not to point fingers or try to get people in trouble.
Just conceptually if if if, Hall is not expected to know the difference and in fact does not know the difference, it could be argued he then has no business declaring a gun a cold gun, a safe gun, a prop gun okay um, and so by we don't know what the standard is, what the industry standard.
Well I I, I don't know what the industry standard is, but I can tell you, the legal standard is, if he's, if he's reassuring some someone of something that he has no business reassuring them of, there's definitely going to be some blame game in the attribution of responsibility.
But for that's true if, if the industry standard is, the armorer gives you the gun and and we all rely on the armorer, and really the armorer is the last line of defense and that's what every movie set accepts, then I don't think this guy's gonna.
He would, he wouldn't be found liable for not knowing himself independently.
Well, on the set now, as it goes, where the armorer is not allowed there, and then the obligation is passed on to the uh assistant director uh, who then makes an affirmative action to say cold gun and gives it to Alec.
You know, at the bottom, at the end of the day, it's none of this should be happening.
But uh, they're all, they're all contributing through in one way or another to, and ultimately uh, the death of a human.
But I mean, what?
What can you say of that?
He he, he had an action that he proactively did, declared it a cold gun and then handed it to Alec.
And then Alec uh, thinking it's a cold gun because the ad says it is uh, should still be treating it like an actual firearm and obviously wasn't.
So.
Paul's gonna say, look, I didn't know, so why did I say what I said?
I don't know, but at the end of the day, Alec should have treated it like a real gun, as is the protocol ended.
Yeah, here's one thing.
Um, now he I think this is from i'm not sure where we got this, I think maybe La Times, maybe.
Uh, Santa Fa County sheriff.
Um, Dave Halls, the guy we're talking about assistant director, told an investigator that he had not checked all of the rounds in the gun, so he did not open it.
He did not check all.
Or, if he did open it, he didn't check each round and they, he says, as he should have according to an affidavit.
He said the film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, had opened the gun for him to inspect.
He advised that he should have checked all of them, but he didn't and couldn't recall if she spun the drum.
I mean, this is people who are a second amendment.
Um, you know uh, supporters are going Say, this is exactly what happens when people are totally ignorant as relates to the functioning of firearms.
Like, okay, fine.
I should have done it.
But these are people treating guns like toys, like props on a set without fully appreciating that they are tools that can cause death if they're intended to do certain damage by their essence.
And they're just willy-nilly, flippantly, oh, yeah, cold gun here.
I flipped it.
Now I hand it off to you.
And now Alex, like, oh, yeah, I got to got a cold gun.
Let's, oh, the director's telling me to point it at her.
I mean, I have become much more sensitive to Second Amendment arguments.
And even with my own, you know, my own family, I think, whatever, if it's a Nerf gun, you don't point it at someone, let alone a real functional firearm, even on set.
And it's not because someone says point it at me because I want to know if I got the shot that you do it.
Everything about this was dangerous A to Z.
But how did Live?
That's a good point.
I like this point because you're right.
Maybe I'm giving this assistant director too much of a pass.
It's like, if I, if I were placed in charge as the AD, if I were the last person to touch the gun before it goes to the guy who is going to be handling it and pointing it at people, which is another question about whether he should have done that, I would, I'd take a bunch of classes.
I'd make sure I got whatever certification was necessary.
I would make myself as knowledgeable, if not more, than the armorer if I accepted that huge responsibility.
So I take your point.
That's a good point about him.
But that also brings into, yeah, go ahead.
Just one other thing.
Like, I'm known to be somewhat neurotic.
If I'm Adam, if I'm Hull and I'm taking this gun, I go outside and a chain of custody.
I say, Hannah, look at the back.
I don't know a dummy round from a live round.
Look at this one last time.
And I, after getting the okay, carry it myself and then give it to Baldwin.
And the idea that this gun was actually the chain of custody of this prop, there were big gaps in it.
I think there was an issue of them going to lunch.
And another issue, which we might want to remember to touch on, is Hannah Guterres Reed saying that one of the bullets, she was having trouble fitting it in and she cleaned it off to make it fit.
The idea that there's open windows of the chain of custody of this thing is a big issue.
But if I'm Hull and hindsight is 2020, but neuroses is 2020 going forward, I take this out.
Armorer can't come in.
I go out, make sure that she sees it, gives the okay, and uninterrupted, bring it to Alec.
But that's not a question of saying what you should have done.
It's a horrible tragedy.
Hindsight is 2020, but sometimes foresight is as well.
The other person that we haven't yet talked about is the person who oversaw safety on the set, props on the set.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's direct report.
Who Is Truly Responsible Here 00:15:09
What kind of environment was this person maintaining?
What kind of environment were her bosses, the producers of the whole show, maintaining?
Because there were reports of at least two accidental discharges with the guns prior to this.
There was a guy, I think it was a cameraman, who complained that this is not a safe set prior to this.
It was more of like a union complaint, but still, he was saying this is not a safe set.
And if there's any evidence at all of this person not providing, let's say, the actors with appropriate training on how to use the gun and what's expected of you because of budget constraints, because of COVID restraints, because of time constraints, that person too could very well be on the hook.
Absolutely.
And this is why also Baldwin in his interview with Cuomo is trying to draw, I think, a legal distinction that won't actually be recognized in law between the producers.
There's line, well, there's various types of producers.
And Alec Baldwin was only an artistic, creative type producer, didn't have any say in hiring, firing, production, et cetera, was there maybe by name only, et cetera.
At the end of the day, they're all producers and responsible for safety on set, whether or not... within the industry, one only takes care of artistic direction and not hiring and firing.
The idea though, hold on, I just, I lost my thought there.
Oh, but they're going to go after this.
Safety issues.
Yeah.
No, the safety issues.
Apparently they were known.
And, you know, even according to, I think Alec Baldwin said it in one of the interviews.
I didn't hear about any safety issues until someone mentioned it in passing, but it was mostly about the hotel accommodations.
And before I could fix the hotel accommodations, they all walked off set the day before this happened.
To say that there were no warnings, I don't think anyone's going to believe when an accidental discharge occurs twice of a blank, not of live ammunition, a live round.
Everybody knows.
And if we're going back to, you know, not to make theories more solid, but the idea that it might have been known to some people that there were two accidental discharges and it's no more serious than that, people's ears ring for a few seconds.
You might get into the sort of behavior where it's not that big of a deal if there's another accidental discharge or maybe even a deliberate discharge of a blank for whatever the reason.
So it's, yeah, the past is prologue in a sense.
And they knew that there were issues.
There were complaints, whether or not Alec was fully aware, fully in the thick of it.
I think even by his own subsequent statements, he was made aware of it shortly before the incident and people walked off set the day of.
And then you continue to do this.
It's just, it's schlock, schlock business, schlock safety control from beginning to end.
And unfortunately, one person has bored the brunt of that negligence.
Well, obviously, Helena Hutchins, but I will say watching this from the outside, I feel bad.
I feel bad for everyone.
Honestly, I even feel bad for Baldwin.
It's such a terrible tragedy.
And I do believe while they behaved negligently, this was an accident.
I mean, it was not intended by any of them.
I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.
But I also really feel bad for this young armorer because I see Alec Baldwin with his multi-million dollar lawyers and PR teams hanging her out to dry.
And she has no money and she's very young.
And I can just, you can see what's happening.
His PR machine has decided she's to blame and not him.
And what does this girl have to defend herself?
Nothing, right?
She's got nothing.
Well, I'll second one thought.
I feel bad for everybody involved as well.
And genuinely, even Alec Baldwin, he might be a loathsome human.
He might be a political, you know, he might be a detestable political person as well.
I don't think, well, I don't think anybody intended this to happen, period.
And it's devastating and disastrous for everyone involved, even Mitchell, who's suing as well.
It's not just because nothing happened to them that they're not suffering trauma from having witnessed this and having been in his presence.
But from a legal perspective, obviously, if I'm Baldwin being sued, I'm obviously trying to not pass the buck in an irresponsible sense.
He might still be to blame for having pulled the trigger.
But I would obviously, as his attorney, tell you're going after the people who you think should have known that those live rounds were there or who may have brought them in on their own.
Because typically the truth comes out at trial when evidence is presented.
There might be really stupid reasons for which that live ammunition was on set.
And it might have to do with negligence by, or even worse, in the sense that it was brought on deliberately when they were having fun, you know, during off hours shooting live rounds in the desert.
You know, got to kill time.
If that, and that might be the case, or it might just be the case that she should have known and she should never have put Baldwin in that position, even if he should never pull the trigger.
As his attorney, I'd be, I'd be doing the same thing.
Money aside, this is actually, you know, one of those issues where it's a question of principle and clearing one's name in as much as one's name can be cleared.
But at the end of the day, he still pulled the trigger.
So even if she were negligent and he succeeds partially there, he still pulled the trigger himself of a real gun pointing at a real human with real tragic consequences.
Well, and also doesn't seem to feel any guilt about it.
That's what he told George Stephanopoulos, which wound up getting him in some hot water with Helena Hutchins' widow, widower.
Here's Alec Baldwin with Stephanopoulos on guilt, SOP5.
Your emotions are so clearly so right there on the surface.
You felt shock.
You felt anger.
You felt sadness.
Do you feel guilt?
No, no.
I feel that there is, I feel that, that, that someone is responsible for what happened.
And I can't say who that is, but I know it's not me.
And then Matt Hutchins comes out, stand by because I want to talk about this admission.
The husband was upset by not just by that, but by everything he said in that Stephanopoulos interview.
And this is what he said over on the Today Show afterward.
Watching him, I just felt so angry, just so angry to see him talk about her death so publicly in such a detailed way, and then to not accept any responsibility after having just described killing her.
He said essentially he felt grief, but no guilt.
Almost sounds like he was the victim.
And hearing him blame Helena in the interview and shift responsibility to others and seeing him cry about it.
I just feel like, are we really supposed to feel bad about you, Mr. Baldwin?
What do you make of that whole thing?
I don't believe Baldwin when he says, I don't feel guilt.
It's the no, no.
It's the, he's trying to reassure himself.
And I think this is self-protection, sort of psychological defense mechanisms.
He's trying to convince himself he doesn't feel guilty.
I think he does.
Setting that aside, to say that he doesn't feel guilt optically is terrible.
Messaging-wise, it's terrible.
He should feel guilty.
Now, whether or not he feels responsible is different than guilt, but of course he should feel guilty.
As far as what Hutchins' husband said, he said, I 100% I agree with it.
Giving this interview is rubbing the trauma in the face of the family.
In the interview, suggesting it was her fault.
Well, she told me to do it.
She told me to do what I said I would never do because I have such experience with firearms is a mutually incompatible defense.
But it's insensitive.
He would have been better off just shutting up legally.
And also, from the perspective of the grieving family, to see this guy doing interviews with George Stephanopoulos, the softest softball of an interview you can possibly imagine, to effectively paint himself as a victim.
Yes, the husband is grieving and right to be pissed off.
And I know, and Stephanopoulos, let him, I mean, at least act the role of an impartial interviewer to say, what do you mean you don't feel guilty?
This is outrageous.
You killed a woman.
I understand you're saying it was unintentional, but how can you not feel guilt?
Like, at least act it if you're not actually feeling the indignation.
I mean, this is the problem with GMA when it came to the Jussie Smollett case, too.
And Robin Roberts gave him the biggest butt kiss ever given in all of interviewing.
And they wound up embarrassed because we all know that that was a hoax.
It was so said a jury.
So in any event, just more media malpractice there.
I wonder, though, what's going to happen with Matt Hutchins, the widower, because he did file a lawsuit.
It's been settled.
That one was taken care of quick.
And undoubtedly, Alec Baldwin's insurance company on the movie set paid it.
I don't know what the settlement was, but I'm sure it was a big one.
And weirdly, one of the terms of the settlement was that Matt Hutchins would be an executive producer of the revived movie Rust as it continues shooting and gets made and then released with this same cast.
I can't, I don't, I got nothing.
David, I don't know.
I don't get it.
Okay, there are theories floating around.
Some are mine and some are not mine.
The settlement is to be expected.
I mean, the settlement is the admission of guilt that, you know, he could say, I'm not settling this.
I want to go to, I want to go to civil trial and get a judgment.
It'll make me feel better than the settlement.
Settlement is as good as admission of responsibility.
From what I understand, finances are not a meaningful consideration here.
So it's not as though this was about the money from Hutchins family.
From what I understand, very well to do regardless.
It's the executive producer aspect, which will raise a number of eyebrows.
Now, and not to be too cynical and to give the benefit of cynical doubt to the husband, it's conceivable internally.
He says, I don't want my wife's death to be in vain.
At the very least, this should be her legacy.
Finish the project.
And maybe in his mind, he says, okay, the way to commemorate her is to be executive producer and make sure that this happens.
I don't know.
There are some Alec Baldwin.
I mean, that's the thing that's like, okay, maybe it's one thing.
It was like, we're going to start anew.
We're going to have different actors.
We're going to, you know, it's the same cast.
He's going to oversee some set with Alec Baldwin.
I mean, people are going to go see this out of a voyeuristic, ghoulish desire to see the scene in which the woman was killed.
Like, I just can't understand.
God forbid I ever knew somebody who suffered a tragedy like this.
My advice would be run, run.
This is not something you want to revive.
I don't know anything about it.
I think the husband's a lawyer.
He's not even in the film business.
Yeah, and I won't get into too many things.
Theories that can neither be proven nor disproven.
I can understand the idea that he wants his wife's memory to live on, and this project should not end with her death.
Okay, executive producer, from what I understand of the industry, and this is coming from people who are smarter than me or know it better.
It's typical, they call it a sort of an honorary title.
It's about someone, it's to show someone raised money for the movie.
So maybe he thinks to show you're important.
Yeah, or just to honor.
And maybe that's the way he's visualizing this in his mind.
One of the theories, and again, this is a shout out to Eric Hunley and Mark Robert.
Some of the theories about politics in this is that they sort of, if you want to protect Alec Baldwin for whatever the reason, political connections, stardom, whatever, a way to try to put some pressure on prosecutors not to prosecute, settle between the two main parties.
And so that you say, well, look, there's been some justice here, but not only is there a settlement, we're going to continue production of the movie.
It would be very bizarre if you started pressing charges against the people who are now making the movie together to the extent that some of them stay in the same production.
I suspect some of them would not be in the continued production.
Others would.
So if they settle, the plaintiff in a civil suit and the extended victim in a criminal suit says, well, now we're partners in this.
So it would be very weird if you actually prosecute my partner in this project.
Well, that could be sort of the wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Let's not press charges against Baldwin.
That would be a more sinister way of looking at it.
For the time being, Hutchins is a grieving widow.
He's got a kid who's going to grow up without a mother now.
I'll go to the side of he wants to see this project come to fruition.
He doesn't want his wife's death to be the, you know, to, you know, be extinguished with this, her project, which was, you know, she, she was in love with this project as well.
But people will have theories and they're not going to be wrong for hypothesizing as to what the heck is going on.
The whole thing is shocking to me.
It's shocking to me that he would want the project to go forward with Alec Baldwin and that he would want his name on it.
I just, you know, God bless this man.
He's been through a horrific tragedy.
I just, to me, it's like, all this is happening so fast.
I do wonder whether he's going to regret that someday because he's he suffered the loss.
He sued.
He watched this guy go all over television defending himself and smearing his wife.
And then he settled all within this like eight month period.
It's too much too soon for this guy.
And now they're going to resume the production.
I assume they're not going to have the same armorer and the same ammo provider and the same AD.
I mean, you assume, but I mean, who the heck knows?
There's continuity issues, not only in terms of actors, but in terms of style, et cetera.
I suspect stylistically, it's easier to have a shift or not notice a difference, but obviously with the actors, you can't.
But yeah, it's bizarre enough that people will ask questions.
I don't know if there was in the settlements, if there's a portion of revenue splitting from the movie, but he's an executive producer.
One can assume or imagine that that might be the case.
Although, yeah, revenue might not be the big issue, but it is true, Megan.
It's a good point.
Like some people are going to see this because they want to just see the horror.
Others are going to, you know, I think most people are not going to say, I want to see this movie would have been.
Otherwise, it's, I want to go live a piece of this, this tragedy.
And so it's going to be sort of a gawking rubber neck.
Yes, exactly.
I was just going to use that term, rubberneck.
It's the same reason we rubberneck.
You know, God forgive us all.
We do it.
We want to see what's there.
We're all fascinated by our own mortality.
We all know it's going to come for us eventually.
We hope it's not going to come in a gruesome way like a car accident or an accidental shooting.
But there's something very human about wanting more information about a situation like this.
Trauma and Professional Fallout 00:10:30
And then it can veer over into exploitative.
And this will, because there will be people not wishing any of these characters well who will be like, yeah, yeah.
Oh, you know, I mean, it's just going to be, it's going to be great.
Bottom line is you still have investors and you still have interests that don't want to see this end now because it's a non-monetizable waste as is.
So you even have economic interests, which are very sinister, which is, okay, forget the tragedy.
And by the way, or even exploit the tragedy.
It'll make it even more marketable.
We'll make more money off of this and we'll get back to you.
That sounds more like Hollywood.
That sounds more like that.
But now, as we divvy up the responsibilities between the guy with the ammo, the armorer, the AD, Alec Baldwin, the woman who oversaw the props on the set and sort of ran her on the crew, who gets rehired could be potentially relevant.
Like who makes that decision?
And is it an admission by the production company?
If the armorer doesn't come back, they think it was her.
If the ammo guy doesn't come back, they think it was him, right?
Like that could be interesting.
Well, as far as that, there's an easy answer to that.
I don't expect Mamie Mitchell to come back.
And I don't think anyone's the one suing the script.
She's the one supervisor.
I don't expect the armorer to come back because I think some of these people are going to have experienced professional trauma to such a degree that they're going to find other lines of work right now.
So I've heard people discuss that.
Like, okay, if this person doesn't come back, they're tacitly blaming them.
I think that the people behind the camera are probably not going to come back just because it would be too traumatic.
The question is going to be with Souza.
Is he going to come back as the director?
That I could see happening.
Definitely a different armorer, if only for insurance purposes.
I mean, who's going to insure this movie going forward?
If the person who was responsible for a death or involved in it, culpable or not, is back.
No, a new armorer.
I don't know what the other positions would be that you'd have to fill for liability, insurance reasons.
Stylistically, I could see the director coming back, not the assistant director.
And Baldwin obviously has to be there.
But no, you could easily explain away not coming back without it meaning any form of culpability.
I can't imagine Joel Seuss is going to come back to wounded by the same bullet that killed Helena, but who the hell knows?
Now, wait, so let me let's talk a little bit about the civil suits and what's going to happen criminally, because now the sheriff's investigation is complete.
He's handed over his file to the DA, Mary Carmack Altwise, Santa Fe County DA.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, A-L-T-W-I-E-S.
And she's going to have some assistance brought in because they sought extra funding saying that he may have as many as four people to indict.
That could have just been puffery to try to get as much of a budget as possible for the DA's office.
We don't know.
No one's been charged yet.
But looking at it yourself, we'll do the criminal, then we'll do the civil.
All of the above likely to get charged.
They say as many as four.
So that's what we did.
Ammo, Armorer, AD, Alec, and maybe Prop Gal.
That's five.
So six, if you include the company.
No, you wouldn't criminally won't do the company.
So I'd say Prop Gal is the most, she's probably the first to be eliminated from the chain of potential criminal charges, though she could be involved civilly.
Depending, see, I'm not totally clear on the evidence that about the intermingling of live rounds with dummy rounds on set.
So depending on that factor, I might be inclined to think that Kenny might not face criminal charges just because I don't know what the evidence is in terms of what was delivered.
Was it well, yeah, the ammo guy?
Was it intermingled when it was delivered?
In Baldwin's lawsuit, you know, they show some pictures of a messy-looking business, but that's neither here nor there.
And, you know, four pictures does not characterize a business.
But I don't know what the evidence there is.
We know that there were live rounds on set.
The question is.
We know the armorer is saying it, but we don't know whether it's true.
I think it's definitively known that there were lots.
Oh, the armorer was saying that they were intermingled.
Yes.
She's blaming him.
She's definitely blaming the ammo guy, of course.
For sure.
But in terms of criminal charges and probable cause, Seth Kenny, that's one where I have a big question mark, but it does depend on the evidence that they have in terms of what was delivered, what was ordered, what was delivered.
But criminally, I would be hard pressed to not think.
And we're talking like, you know, involuntary manslaughter in this case, like where the negligence comes in under New Mexico law, under my cursory understanding from what I've looked up or heard as well from others.
The negligence comes in with involuntary manslaughter.
Baldwin, it should be a no-brainer in terms of the most obvious charge.
The armorer, the AD, potentially, I mean, this is all contributive to a death.
So involuntary manslaughter.
I'd go with four and possibly five.
But My biggest caveat is with the with Seth Kenney, the production guy who's just the producer.
You raise a good point because she's definitely going to allege that the armorer is definitely going to say it was him, him, him.
He's patient zero.
Seth Kenney, if it weren't for him and his screwing up of the ammo, none of this would have happened.
But it's one thing to say it and it's another thing to prove it.
And how does she prove that he delivered mixed rounds in the same box to her?
That's even more.
It's what evidence they would have to charge.
So it wouldn't even have, it wouldn't be what she has to prove.
It's what evidence do they have to even charge Seth Kenney.
So, I mean, well, her testimony, her testimony is evidence.
True.
And so, and then they're, well, that's true, but there has to be harder evidence in terms of purchase orders, delivery.
Well, maybe somebody was in the truck with her.
Maybe some, maybe, maybe somebody after the accident went back to the truck and saw and saw exactly what was there, like mixed, you know, boxes and boxes.
If there were boxes and boxes of mixed, you'd be much more likely to blame it on the ammo guy than there was a spill and this ridiculous armorer completely blew off every responsibility and just threw them all in there.
It's if that's the case, then one would deserve to get charged if they delivered blank and dummy, blank and live rounds in the same case, the same box.
I don't see how they cannot charge anybody.
At the end of the day, someone got killed through an accident.
It's not up for the prosecutors to say, you know, people feel bad and let's move on.
Someone died.
There was clearly negligence somewhere.
And it might just have to come out through the evidence.
Who bears what portion of the responsibility?
But yeah, four or five charges seem realistic and probable at this point in time.
Criminal.
What role is Alec Baldwin's celebrity going to have in all this if he gets charged?
You know, both with the DA.
DAs are human.
You know, they tend to be bowled over by big names and certainly juries.
You know, it's New Mexico is not LA.
They're probably not as used to seeing big name defendants come through courts.
I don't know.
I just worry that his celebrity may have an outsized role in the charges.
I'm tainted by how much I've seen politics infiltrate and ruin everything.
I think the political side of it might have the bigger impact.
That's a good point, too.
It's a known fact.
He's a pretty vocal Democrat supporter, Democrat donor, from what I understand.
But that politics and celebrity are, you know, basically the same thing with different angles.
Yeah, that could come into play.
There could be some sympathy.
But at the end of the day, also, from my understanding, the involuntary manslaughter, I think it's like either a minimum, a maximum of 18 months.
So it's like at the end of the day, it might be short sentences that are symbolic of sorts, but that some form of justice has to occur at the criminal size.
But we'll see.
If no charges, it'll be mind-blowing, flabbergasting.
And I will say, yet again, politics ruins everything because politically speaking, if this were the other way around, they would be using it and exploiting it for the purposes of making a point about firearms and Second Amendment issues.
They would weaponize it to make the point.
If they decide not to press charges here, one can only assume that they are invertedly weaponizing another aspect of politics.
That's a good point.
You're saying if this were an open Republican actor like a Clint Eastwood James Woods, literally, what would be the sympathy if it were James Woods?
And I like James Woods.
I'm not saying this because I don't like it.
No, I guess.
Imagine, imagine if it were James Woods.
I mean, this would be a field day, John Boyd.
Can't think of another one.
Well, they don't really come out.
I don't know.
Tina Carrado.
Who am I thinking about?
The dirty jobs guy, Mike, Mike Rose.
Oh, Mike Rowe.
It would be a field day.
But it's Alec Baldwin.
And so, you know, George Stephanopolis, the cleanup guy, interviews him.
Yeah, no, it's the same way that they're covering for this FTX guy who donated all this, you know, these billions.
Well, he raised billions and he donated tens of millions to Democrats.
And the New York Times writes about him like, good guy, hard in the right place, may have made a sad little mistake in a difficult industry.
Gets even worse.
I don't know if you saw the Washington Post, but the Washington Post, it's not even a puff piece.
It's outright propaganda.
The headline, or at least one of the persons tweeted, the FTX crypto going bust or collapsing frustrates this individual's ability to prevent pandemics.
There was something along those lines.
Because he was donating so much money to preventing pandemics that the collapse is going to frustrate this philanthropist's desire to prevent the next pandemic.
It's in your face at this point.
But just imagine what would have been the different angle from the media had the politics of this situation been different.
If he had donated millions to figure out whether this came from a lab and the side effects of the vaccine, can you imagine how they would catch it?
It's nuts, but it's also the FTX is a rabbit hole for another day, but my God, it's a good one.
I will say, I love the fact that the guy admitted to the Vox reporter that it was all bullshit.
All the woke nonsense was just to tell the left what they wanted to hear.
He said it.
He said it out loud.
He was like, great.
I'm so glad that he basically mocked them.
Lawsuits and Media Angles 00:13:21
Like, you're so stupid, you and all your dumb puff pieces.
I was never on your team.
I was using you assholes to cover up my shit and you bought it, hook line, and sinker.
I'm like, what's worse than that is like someone said, who was it?
Or just ask the question, you know, how did these two dweebs dupe people into investing?
They didn't dupe people.
There were people, celebrities, investors who were, for whatever the reason, vouching for these two people who couldn't convince an ordinary investor to put money in.
What was going on here?
There's a deeper story to all of this, but as the evidence unfolds, we'll see where that goes.
All right, let's talk about Gloria Allred and Mamie Mitchell, who we've mentioned a couple of times here, who is the script supervisor suing the producers.
As I said, alleging assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress, intentional infliction.
Here's Gloria from a November 2021 press conference.
Mr. Baldwin should have assumed that the gun in question was loaded unless and until it was demonstrated to him that it was not or checked by him, that it was not loaded.
Even if the assistant director made an alleged statement to Mr. Baldwin that the gun he was handing to Mr. Baldwin was a quote, cold gun, end quote.
Mr. Baldwin should not have relied on such a statement.
Mr. Baldwin chose to play Russian roulette when he fired a gun without checking it.
And this, she went on to say in her claim, again, filed November of last year, because now it's been upheld after a motion to dismiss, that there was nothing in the script about the gun being discharged by Baldwin or any other person.
They're saying it was not in the script for him to fire.
Once again, if he fired, he did it on his own.
It was like a joyride.
Well, he didn't mean to, he says he didn't pull the trigger, which would necessarily imply he did not mean to pull the trigger if he did, or he did.
And I don't think that's the salient point.
First of all, that was a zoomed in or cropped in image from that interview when she was presenting the case with Mamie Mitchell next to her.
Behind them was a big banner of the name of the law firm, which I thought was classic Gloria.
Yeah, it wouldn't give lawyers a good name to begin with if we ever deserved it, but It was very in your face.
But her arguments there are pretty even poorly described because she says it was up to Alec to check the gun to make sure it was empty.
Well, no, because if you're using blanks or dummies, because when you have an extreme close-up, an ECU, as they say in the industry, it has to have bullets in so that you're not having a close-up of a gun that doesn't have bullets in it.
Nobody's going to buy it.
So even by her own statements, it wasn't up to Alec to make sure it was empty.
It's going to be arguable as to whether or not it was at the end of the day, bottom line up to Alec to make sure that the rounds in it were dummy or blanks.
But one thing for sure, at the end of the day, it was up to Alec not to ever pull that trigger.
Certainly, certainly if it's also true that nothing called for it in the script, which by all accounts, nothing did because this was a rehearsal just to get a close-up of the gun.
So she had some two bad or weaker arguments that I think she tried to correct in that longer interview by saying, you know, even if Hall said it was a cold gun, he shouldn't have relied on it.
He could have relied on Hall that it was a cold gun, but he still should never have pulled the trigger, period.
And so now that the FBI has concluded, it didn't go off on its own as if we needed an eight-month FBI investigation to conclude that he should not have pulled the trigger, period, even if he were within his rights to conclude or assume that it was a cold gun with blanks because he was assured of that.
So this is the big civil lawsuit right now in which everybody's pointing the finger at each other because it's just withstood a motion to dismiss, which is very, very bad news for Alec Baldwin.
That was the big, his big chance to get rid of it was on the papers.
And the judges said, no, I'm not getting rid of it in the papers.
So he's going to have to go through discovery and he's going to have to either settle or go to a jury.
And now he's brought in the armorer.
She's bringing in the ammo guy.
And a little bit of color on that too, just to add to our earlier discussion.
They're saying she is accusing Seth Kenney, the ammo guy, of supplying her with mislabeled dummy ammunition that included live rounds.
That's what it says.
And then also describes a rushed and chaotic environment on the set, which created a, quote, perfect storm for safety breaches.
Again, that goes back to the executive producers.
It goes back to her immediate supervisor and what that person did to make sure that Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was able to do her job safely and they train the actors safely and do all the things that you're supposed to do.
There's also been a series of text messages released between Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and Seth Kenny, the armorer and the ammo guy.
The sheriff's office released a trove of documents.
She asks Kenny whether she can shoot hot rounds on a movie set.
Sounds almost like, you know, for fun, like in our downtime.
Kenny warns her never to shoot live ammo out of prop guns, calling it a serious mistake that, quote, always ends in tears.
But Gutierrez-Reed brushes him off, telling him, quote, I'm still going to shoot mine.
The records indicate an email from Lane Looper, a camera assistant to production manager Roe Walters about gun safety concerns, saying, quote, during the filming of gunfights on this job, things are often played very fast and loose.
So far, there have been two accidental weapons discharges, to be clear.
There are no safety meetings.
And just one other thing, as I mentioned, her, the armorer's dad is Thal Reed, and he's like the most legendary armorer in Hollywood.
He told investigators that he once brought live ammo to a training session for Seth Kenny, who kept some of that ammo, according to the affidavit.
So this is him trying to help his daughter by saying maybe Seth got the ammo from me and mixed it in there.
I don't know whether it's going to be helpful or not, but we're starting to see potentially the chain into how those bullets got on set, how it wasn't intentional, but it was very negligent.
And how if this armorer really did do shooting with the live rounds someplace on the set for fun, like her liability just went through the roof.
It's um this is the unfortunate thing like in law, it's not a question of who you like, who you feel bad for.
I mean, it's it's a game of chess where you just can anticipate the arguments or the next moves.
It's one of two things, and I good good thing you brought up that text thread because there were rumors of I think it's called plinking where they were shooting live rounds on set.
You're in the desert, time to kill, have a little fun.
But even by Hannah's own, let's just take it at its word.
She discovered that there was live rounds mixed in with the dummy rounds.
A lawyer, my question is going to be, when did you discover that?
Because if you discovered it at any moment prior to the incident, that's when you shut everything down.
That's what she's going to say after for sure.
She's going to say, I had no idea.
Well, yeah, I went back afterwards and then noticed it.
She'll say afterwards, but then you got to reconcile that with her asking Seth Kenny about shooting live rounds or hot rounds on set, where it sounds like people knew that there were hot rounds on set.
They might have just gotten mixed up.
They might have forgot that they left one round in the gun after they were having target practice.
But the question is, when did anybody know that they were mixed in?
If it was any time before that you shut everything down, the absence of or the lack of security meetings and all this stuff, it's going to be a set issue.
It's going to be a production issue.
But also, you know, that doesn't absolve the armor.
It's going to be an armor issue.
If they're not having safety meetings, someone's got to speak up and say something.
And if it's your job to ensure safety on that aspect of the film and you say nothing, production also, but people are hired to do their jobs.
So it's, you can anticipate the arguments and what the evidence is going to have to be one way or the other.
But that text thread and that question is very damning.
And there were rumors that people were firing live rounds or plinking.
All allegations, and everyone has to bear in mind, Baldwin's allegations are not proven fact, nor are Mitchell's in her suit.
But yeah, there's serious questions as to what and when.
Well, and Alec Baldwin's countersuit really lays out what we're discussing.
He has sued Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film's armorer.
He assued Dave Halls, the first assistant director, who said cold gun and gave him the gun.
Sarah Zachary, the crew member in charge of props, who we mentioned, and Seth Kenney, who was the primary supplier of guns and ammo to the film set.
He and he alleged they have not fulfilled, they did not fulfill their professional duty to maintain safety on the set.
Now, Alec Baldwin, previously, when he was looking at a lawsuit and he hadn't yet fired back, forgive the pun, he didn't much like it when you sue somebody who has no money, which I think none of these people does.
Here's what he said about lawsuits in general getting filed in this case.
It's SAT 8.
What you have is a certain group of people, litigants and whatever, on whatever side, who their attitude is, well, the people who likely seem negligent have no money.
And the people who have money are not negligent.
But we're not going to let that stop us from doing what we need to do in terms of litigation.
So we have people that are suing people that they think are deep pockets litigants, where they're going to be able to, well, why sue people if they're not going to get money?
That's what you're doing it for.
Good question.
Why are you doing it, Alec?
No, it's pathological.
He just needs to shut up.
I mean, I made an I produced an analysis a little while back.
Just shut up, Alex.
Like, do what those pot brother lawyers do.
Shut the blank up and stop talking.
He's portraying himself as the victim for being sued because he's got deep pockets.
He pulled the trigger.
Like, right.
Understand that, Alec.
You pulled the trigger.
You're not the victim for getting sued because someone died as a result of you pulling the trigger.
And he keeps coming out with these statements publicly as though he's the victim at the end of this.
And it's just such a stupid thing to say.
But I- He's like, I'm rich.
That's the reason they're suing me because I'm rich.
That's it.
Well, I mean, everyone has insurance.
All these people are going to be covered by insurance in the civil suit.
They should be covered by the insurance that was provided to the movie set unless they did something intentional, which would take them outside of the coverage.
But in any event, none of them has any money.
So they're judgment proof.
It's really about if these people get criminally charged, they're going to take a lot more seriously.
But a civil suit, that doesn't mean anything to these people.
They don't have two nickels to rub together, I presume.
Well, and that's my understanding as well: they're young, they don't have assets.
And even if they did, it would require a lot of assets to settle or pay for a judgment on this if one is rendered.
But I just say, from the legal perspective, Baldwin turning around and counter-suing people who are already defendants to Mamie Mitchell's lawsuit, it doesn't change much from their perspective.
They're going to have to defend regardless.
But from a legal perspective, it's obviously the thing that Alec Baldwin should have done.
Sympathy be damned.
They might have no money.
If someone put a live round in Baldwin's prop gun, even if he pulled the trigger, legally speaking, he might be partly responsible, but they are certainly also partly responsible.
And I would have done the same thing and also recommended he do the same thing.
Forget the optics.
I would have too, but I probably wouldn't have gone out there and said, oh, you know, you don't sue anybody.
How did it, what was the last line?
I forget.
But he's just, he's just, he just can't be quiet.
And it's, it's just terrible.
All of these things, the internet's forever.
The people piece these things together.
And it's just, they're dumb things to say.
Just be quiet.
There's an investigation going on, but he cannot, I guess, to some extent can't stay out of the limelight, can't stay out of the spotlight.
That's probably part and parcel of what it means to be a celebrity or want to pursue that life.
But man, why would you sue people who have no money?
That's what you just did.
That's what I wouldn't have said that.
I would have said, if I get sued, I'm going to point the finger at the people who really did the wrongdoing.
And it wasn't yours, truly.
But really, the number one lesson is shut that.
You shut up.
STF, stop talking.
Megan, I don't know if you've ever seen this ad by these guys called the Pot Brothers at Law.
And they say, if you get pulled over by the cops, the brothers, shut the F, just shut the F up.
Just don't talk.
You can't say anything wrong if you don't say anything.
But Baldwin, Stephanopoulos, roadside interviews in Maine.
It's his narcissism.
I'm not a psychiatrist.
I cannot clinically diagnose without having met anybody, but it sure looks like that.
It looks like he's in love with himself and he thinks he's going to succeed in convincing others of what he has already convinced himself.
But my goodness, you piece together some of those statements.
They are mutually contradictory and they will certainly be used against him at a later point, civilly or criminally.
All right.
Confusion Over Taser Guns 00:03:03
So at this point, awaiting the final decision, do you think if indicted for these charges, you know, criminally negligent homicide, unintentional, involuntary manslaughter, do you think that there is a realistic chance any of these people could be convicted criminally based on what we know now?
I know I couldn't venture that far out.
That case about the Twilight Zone guy who got killed under the helicopter, him and two kids back in the day, and the director got acquitted.
I mean, that's if anybody knows, if you have a producer who can pull up the name, I think guy's name was Morrow or Marrow.
But it was another death on a Hollywood set.
And they got acquitted, but by a narrow, narrow margin.
This is big.
This is in the spotlight.
People will be shocked and appalled if they, you know, I forget who said it recently.
No one's above the law, but we've seen people locked up for years for much less.
I mean, we've seen people in pretrial detention for nonviolent charges.
Someone is going to have to be pushed on a sword here.
But whether or not they, you know, whether or not they serve lengthy periods of time, someone has to get convicted of something.
Otherwise, people are going to say two-tiered system and that no one is above the law is absolute rubbish.
Although I think a lot of people are already thoroughly convinced of that in any event.
Well, how about that female cop in Minnesota who got convicted after she shot a man driving his car?
Kim Porter.
Kim Porter.
And she thought she was reaching for her taser.
Very clearly, no one even disputed that she did not mean to shoot him with a gun, but she made a mistake.
It was an accident.
And made a mistake in a circumstance where she would have, from my understanding, otherwise been entitled to use lethal force.
Right.
So, right.
She's sitting in a prison right now.
So, yeah, it will be very much like a two-tier system of justice: one for the rich and famous and wealthy and hard-left Democrat, and another for cop moms who have never gotten in trouble their entire 27-year career and one night make a terrible mistake, which is what Alec Baldwin did, right?
Terrible mistake.
Best case scenario for him.
Terrible mistake when there was no lawful reason to be doing what he did, what he ultimately did in the first place.
The Kim Porter one is atrocious.
I mean, Derek Chauvin, much more nebulous case.
The Kim Porter, everyone acknowledged it was a bona fide, legitimate mistake.
And anybody who has seen those taser guns could understand how they could get confused.
Arguments that they're supposed to know which side of the body the taser's on versus the real admitted mistake, pulled the trigger, killed someone's life in a circumstance where she would have been entitled to use lethal force by all accounts in any event to jail.
And Baldwin pulls the trigger by accident or pulls the trigger on purpose, but doesn't think there's any live round in there, kills someone and walks.
Yeah, politics ruins everything.
We shall see.
No BS Thanksgiving Talk 00:01:09
David, thank you so much.
Thank you very much for having me.
It was great.
All right, TV continued.
See you soon.
Thanks for joining us today.
We're taking a couple of days off now for Thanksgiving, as I hope you are as well.
And I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful family holiday with your friends, with your loved ones, with your turkey.
And don't forget those who are in need this holiday season.
It's been very challenging, I know, for a lot of homeless shelters and other places that help families struggling during this time of year, like with the inflationary prices and so on.
So if you have a despair, consider giving to help your fellow human beings.
In the meantime, all the best to you.
Have a blessed Thanksgiving.
I'll talk to you Monday.
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
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