ROBSON’S CASE and THE PEOPLE BEHIND IT

On December 19^th the judge finally threw out Robson’s case. It took him four and half years to rule on the matter clear to most of us from day one – Michael Jackson’s companies could not be held liable for Robson’s “exposure” to him as the media puts it. If there was anyone really responsible for it, it was Robson’s own mother who pursued Michael Jackson for years with dogged perseverance and determination even amid the scandals and media frenzy around Jackson.

But this is not the point. The point is that though the judge’s ruling is good news, it is still absolutely no Michael Jackson’s vindication. When a lawsuit is dismissed due to a technicality it always leaves doubt about the accused, especially when the media hammers it home in each of their papers that judge Beckloff “didn’t rule on the credibility of the allegations themselves”.

The latter is true of course, but only half true. The untold half is that the judge was not even supposed to look into the allegations. Moreover, at that stage the judge was even required by the law to take the complaint as given because it was necessary to determine if the case could go forward at all – without any look at the allegations proper.

But the general public doesn’t know about this law requirement, and by withholding this crucial detail the media gravely misleads the public, leaving the story open to all sorts of speculations. See how this web of speculations is woven right in front of our eyes.

The Associated Press omits the fact that the credibility was not an issue at that stage:

“Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff’s summary judgment ruling against the now-35-year-old Wade Robson found that the two Jackson-owned corporations, which were the remaining defendants in the case, were not liable for Robson’s exposure to Jackson. He did not rule on the credibility of Robson’s allegations themselves.”

Entertainment Weekly (and all others) repeat the AP brief statement without adding a single word.

And websites like Digitalspy.com do add, but a twisted comment creating the impression that the judge chose to dismiss the case on technical grounds rather than rule on its credibility:

However, Entertainment Weekly reports that a California judge has dismissed the latest lawsuit on technical grounds, rather than ruling on the veracity of Wade Robson’s claims.

First of all Entertainment Weekly said nothing of the kind, and secondly, to make sure that their idea sinks in better, the above site referred its readers to a Rape Crisis centre in case they were “affected by the issues raised in this story”, though they were absolutely not raised there:

Rape Crisis England and Wales works towards the elimination of sexual violence. If you’ve been affected by the issues raised in this story, you can access more information on their website or by calling the National Rape Crisis Helpline…

http://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/news/a845910/michael-jackson-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-from-wade-robson-dismissed/

The dirty job is done – the “right” word is mentioned, the seed of doubt is planted and a lot of room for fantasizing is left, all of which is a well-known method of creating fake news about Jackson.

However the truth is plain and simple – Robson’s story is just a silly piece of fiction. When he was an adult he testified under oath that Michael Jackson had never as much as touched him in an inappropriate way, but four years after Michael’s death when he was turned down for the coveted job on the MJ show, he suddenly recalled that he had been raped, and for seven years too, claiming that he always remembered it but “didn’t realize that it was molestation”.

You don’t need a judge to see that he is lying, especially in a situation when both ways you look at Robson’s story he comes across as a liar – when he testified under oath to Michael’s innocence (with no financial incentive) or now that he is suddenly complaining (asking for millions at that).

TECHNICALITIES

As to the technicalities of the case he first made his claims in May 2013, after losing a lucrative job with the Estate and being replaced by Jamie King as a show director. But at that moment – alas – it was already too late to seek damages from the Estate as all deadlines for claiming money within the probate proceedings had expired.

This required an intricate explanation why he couldn’t make his claims earlier. He said he didn’t know that MJ’s Estate was in charge of the probate matters, he needed a therapist to make him realize that rape was molestation, and other absurdities of the same kind.

The judge looked into the scenario most favorable to Robson, but even that didn’t help – the probate court found that the claim was too stale. The judge’s order to that effect came on June 9, 2015.

But Robson’s attorneys had one more variant in reserve – pursuing Michael Jackson’s companies (MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures) which operated when Michael was alive, and declaring them responsible for everything under the sun.

To this end they called these companies “the most sophisticated public child sexual abuse procurement and facilitation organization the world has known” and Michael’s then assistant Norma Staikos a “madame” who facilitated abuse – though all she did was a secretarial duty of putting Michael on the phone when Robson’s mother was desperately seeking him during their first visit to the US.

The civil law allows an alleged victim to file a lawsuit against an entity – for example, a boy-scout organization, a sports club or a school, if the alleged abuse was committed by their employee if the management knew of the employee’s sexual misconduct and could exercise control over him in order to stop or prevent it.

So roughly speaking, Robson’s attorneys likened MJ’s companies to boy-scout organizations and Michael Jackson, who was the sole owner and president of both companies, to an employee who could be hired, supervised and dismissed by the management.

Naturally no one in MJ’s companies could do any such thing as they were hired personnel themselves, so no wonder the judge ruled on December 19^th that they “lacked legal ability to control Michael Jackson”, which is something we have known from day one.

What does the statute of limitations have to do with this problem? Well … nothing in my opinion, because in this case the statute of limitations is simply a non-issue. Generally the law allows a child victim to sue the nonperpetrator organization for the alleged abuse until his 26^th birthday, but this period is extended if the management knew and had control over the alleged abuser.

But if no control could be exercised, it doesn’t matter whether Robson was 30 when he filed his claim or 35 as he is now – if the companies had no control anyway the age of the accuser is irrelevant.

You will find a more detailed explanation of the case and all its absurdities in this blog  while I will share only some of my personal thoughts here.

GOOD OR BAD?

The judge’s ruling could have come much earlier, in my opinion, as too much damage to Michael Jackson’s name was done in the meantime. While the purely technical and easy matter of no control over MJ was under the judge’s scrutiny for four and a half years, Robson’s lawyers had plenty of time to try the case in the court of public opinion.

Dirty publicity was both their tool to pressure the Estate into a settlement and sully Michael’s reputation after his death and full acquittal at the 2005 trial. In pursuing the first goal they didn’t succeed, but in pursuing the second one they partially did. And under the circumstances it couldn’t be anything different.

Robson’s absurdities were repeated by the media without a grain of doubt or scepticism over them. In support of his lies numerous completely false stories were published by Radaronline.com and widely spread by other tabloids (about some “newly found porn” in MJ’s home for example, which was simply fabricated for the purposes of the case).

After so much mud-slinging only God knows how much of it stuck to Michael’s name in the public eye, and this is what’s so extremely bad about it.

The only good I see in the whole ordeal is that at least from this moment on there will no more fake “victims” lining up to extort money from MJ’s Estate in the same way they did it during his lifetime. The window of opportunity for this type of industry is now closed and this is exactly due to those very technicalities why Robson’s case was thrown out.

Now even if the law is amended and there is no statute of limitations on sex abuse crimes as Corey Feldman wants it (which I fully support in the interests of real childhood sex abuse victims), it won’t change anything for Michael Jackson – even in the unlikely case the amendment in the law refers to the deceased too.

His case doesn’t depend on the statute of limitations at all  – he is gone and the only remaining defendants are his companies which are not liable as they had no control. This is why the judge’s ruling technically finalizes the matter for MJ, unless it is appealed and reversed of course.

Unfortunately the judge’s ruling won’t stop the gossip as even the silliest of lies inevitably leaves a trail behind it. So its only good is that it will discourage new applicants from seeking millions at the expense of smearing Michael Jackson, and this looks like divine justice finally being done to him after his death.

The justice is indeed divine as during his lifetime no one, I repeat, no one was afraid to make allegations against Michael Jackson due to the malicious atmosphere he had to live in. So in a strange twist of justice the long horror he went through then became his best exoneration now – his public persecution lasted for almost two decades, and this was long enough for all the children he knew to grow up and realize any wrong that might have been done to them.

Two of them used that chance to its utmost capacity, but that was all. If some decide to trade their soul for money now, they will have to accept that they lost their chance of which they had plenty when Michael was still alive and they were already grown ups to claim whatever they liked.

NO TO THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS

On the other hand Corey Feldman is absolutely right when he is asking for no statute of limitations for real child abusers – they should indeed be held responsible for what they did irrespective of the time that elapsed since then. Ruining a child’s innocence is an unforgivable crime, and since the child’s life was distorted forever, so the abuser should be held responsible for it forever too.

This is all the more true as due to the specifics of this crime a small child is often unable to see what’s right or wrong about the way he or she is treated by an adult, and it is only as the child grows up that the wrongs of his/her childhood come to be realized.

This shouldn’t be confused with Robson’s role-playing and pretending to be a naïve baby who at the age of 23 (when he testified to Michael’s innocence) allegedly didn’t know that rape was molestation.

The age of 25 is set by the law as a deadline for a reason – by this time everyone is able to see what’s what, and the only thing the law overlooked is the fact that even grown-up people may face obstacles like Corey Feldman did. When Corey was 22 years old, he gave the names of his molesters to the Santa Barbara sheriff department, however they didn’t follow the lead and literally turned it into a joke.

Their laughing reply to Corey Feldman about his molester was incredibly cynical. Dr. Oz who recently played the tape of Corey Feldman’s testimony to the Santa Barbara sheriffs said it was this laughter that really threw him off:

Detective Linden: “Where is this guy now?”

Corey Feldman: “I have no idea. Um, actually, I heard now he is back in California, because he was in Utah for a while”

Detective Linden: “If we run across him, we’ll let you know, ha-ha-ha”

It is exactly due to such police failures to do their duty, their ridicule, lack of interest and the victim’s fear that all the effort would be in vain that the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse should be lifted.

Problems for these victims arise not only because of their own confusion, trauma, shame and whatnot, but mostly due to the unwelcome, hostile or skeptical atmosphere around them discouraging them from sharing their story.

This is what Michael Jackson’s accusers never experienced, but this is a unique exception to the general rule which is just another proof that he was not what some try to make him out to be.

PRECEDENT?

When Robson’s attorney Finaldi learned that their case was thrown out he began talking of it as a ‘dangerous precedent’. How indeed can justice be served if the perpetrator is the owner of the company and the company is found not responsible for what he did?

Here is Finaldi’s take on it, readily reported by the media:

“What the judge is saying is that if you own a corporation or a company, you can hire people, use these people to facilitate your sexual abuse, use them to facilitate victims,” Finaldi told The Associated Press by phone. “So long as you’re the sole owner of that corporation, the corporation can’t be held liable.”

What Finaldi is describing is actually someone like Harvey Weinstein, whose scandal immediately springs to our minds upon hearing this comment. And it is true that if Weinstein were gone his company would not be held responsible for his misbehaviour (if he is its sole owner). And if his victims wanted to sue him it would be too late to do it if he passed away.

But the big difference from MJ is that Weinstein is alive and can perfectly answer for his misdeeds himself with no need to approach his company with any lawsuits.

And this will only be for the better, for him in the first place. It will give him the opportunity the deceased are devoid of – to face the accusers and defend himself in court should it come to it. The right to face the accuser is guaranteed to the defendant by the 6th Amendment to the US Constitution. It places both parties on an equal footing, which is totally absent when claims are made against the deceased. Considering the rights enjoyed by the living, suing the dead would be equivalent to robbing them of their rights and denying them justice.

Michael Jackson was also alive once, and answered for what he did or rather didn’t do in the fullest possible measure. Robson had all the time in the world and every opportunity to accuse him then, especially since Michael Jackson was constantly under the media fire, was scrutinized by every law enforcement agency (FBI, police, District Attorneys and DCFS), was put on trial and anyone who wished to pose as a ‘victim’ received more than an enthusiastic welcome.

However even despite those extremely favorable conditions all they could scrape together was two so-called victims with a ten-year break between them. And Robson already had his say then, so there is no point in telling horror stories about Michael’s companies now – the companies knew no more than the rest of us, which was a lot though thanks to Michael’s unlimited exposure to the media.

Compare it to Weinstein’s company again – nothing was leaked from it as journalists like Dylan Howard stood on the guard of Weinstein’s secrets and informed him of any new accuser appearing on the media horizon, the former officers of Massad were at Weinstein’s disposal to collect information and deal with these people, and all his employees were tied by confidentiality agreements, though perfectly aware of his behaviour and some being complicit in his deeds.

Of course the employees had no more control over Weinstein than you have over your own top boss, but some of them can probably be found liable on an individual basis – for obstructing justice, for example, but only if there is proof enough that they were his accomplices. After all they are also alive and can defend themselves in court.

So getting back to Finaldi’s comment, it would sound correct only with the following clarification:

“What the judge is saying is that if you own a corporation or a company, you can hire people, use these people to facilitate your sexual abuse, use them to facilitate victims, BUT YOU CANNOT SHIFT YOUR BLAME ONTO YOUR COMPANY. So long as you’re the sole owner of that corporation, the corporation can’t be held liable. IT IS PERSONALLY YOU WHO WILL BE HELD LIABLE FOR YOUR DEEDS”.

If someone like Weinstein dies and no one is able to sue his company, his employees will for sure talk in support of his numerous accusers. Even now many of Weinstein’s employees are suffering from the qualms of conscience, so how many more will speak up when they are no longer tied by their confidentiality agreements?

Interesting, but this is something absolutely lacking in Michael Jackson’s case again. It looks like all those who were ready to smear his name already took their chance, and now the tendency is in reverse as even those who previously slandered him are not that willing to talk as Robson’s failure to depose Jordan Chandler and others shows it.

THE APPEAL

Will Robson’s lawyers appeal the judge’s ruling? Finaldi says that they will, and this is where the story becomes really interesting, and not even from the point of view of its outcome.

First of all, we can’t help noticing that the judge Mitchell Beckloff was extremely cautious in making his decision and this is why the case dragged on and on for years – the judge was safeguarding himself from a possible appeal and before finally dismissing Robson’s case even let him amend his lawsuit four times.

You will probably agree that for a case to be examined for technicalities only giving a chance to amend it four times was probably too much. Apparently the judge had a reason to be so super cautious and this reason could be his anticipation of an appeal.

The appeal would indeed be extremely helpful to Robson’s team in terms of time as smearing MJ for as long as they can has always been one of their major goals.

But how long do appeals take?

According to this detailed manual the average time for a decision to be reached in California civil appeals is roughly 518 days from the date the notice of appeal is filed. And the notice of appeal can be filed within 180 days after the judgment is entered.

All in all this gives Robson roughly two more years to continue playing the role of a victim and trying his case in the court of public opinion with more fake stories and more mud slinging.

But on the other hand the appeals can be costly business. The problem for Robson here is that all documents for the appeal are usually addressed to special appellate lawyers for their evaluation and further handling, and these lawyers usually charge between $150 to $250 an hour for all the work they perform. So if we multiply these fees by the average time of an appeal it will give us an idea of the eventual cost.

And this is when it would be logical to ask who is sponsoring Robson’s project and paying his attorneys’ bills.

COSTS

Mr. Finaldi does not elaborate on the subject, but some think that he may be working on a contingency basis (under contingency agreements the attorney’s fees are paid only in case of a favourable result).

However this is surely not the case of Mr. Finaldi.

How do we know it?

We know it because Mr. Finaldi once explained it himself that he “can’t incur that kind of liability for the firm”.

This statement was made in connection with another case, filed by Michael Egan who accused Singer, Goddard, Ancier and Neuman of abusing him as a child but later withdrew his complaint. The case was initially taken on by Jeff Herman, but at a later point had Vince Finaldi involved too.

Finaldi’s refusal to incur expenses on Michael Egan’s case came in the course of a notable discussion with the judge which is quite extraordinary in and of itself considering that Egan is a real victim of child sex abuse proven at an earlier trial, and surely needed a more delicate approach.

This piece has been quoted in this blog once, but please see its shortened variant again, this time with a focus on Finaldi:

According to a transcript of the hearing obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, when the judge asked Egan what help the firm [Finaldi’s firm] was providing, Egan answered, “Nothing in this case.” That didn’t sit well with [judge] Seabright, who responded sharply, “Well, that’s not true. I mean, facially that’s not true.” He pointed out that the documents had been emailed from the firm, and added, “Don’t say ‘nothing,’ Mr. Egan, okay? … You understand this is a court of law.… You understand if you lie to me you’d get in trouble.”

<> Egan then replied that he didn’t know how to file pleadings, so the law firm had helped him with that. This seems to have further angered the judge, who interrupted Egan and said, “You don’t know how to get a stamp and put it on an envelope and write your return address on it and then mail it? You don’t know how to do that?”

Egan conceded that he did, but said, “I’m just at a loss, I’m not an attorney.”

< > Egan finally acknowledged that < >a law clerk had researched and drafted the language in the documents. The law clerk, identified as Trejur Bordenave, was described by the firm’s Vince Finaldi as a law student who no longer works there. A LinkedIn page for Bordenave lists him as a 2014 law graduate who is still at the firm.

The judge allowed Egan’s responsive document <> to stand, <> but said that going forward, Finaldi’s firm would have to either fully represent Egan in the case or not at all and could not engage in any more ghostwriting of pleadings. Finaldi responded, “We will be providing [Egan] no more assistance, because I just can’t incur that kind of liability for the firm.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/judge-scolds-hollywood-sex-accuser-742505

So after assigning a law student to do a minor job for Egan, Mr. Finaldi flatly refused to fully represent him due to his inability “to incur that kind of liability for his firm”, which is another way of saying that his firm does not work on a contingency basis.

But that was for Michael Egan. Could Finaldi incur all the expenses in Robson’s case?

This is highly unlikely as the expenses for even half the litigation – as Finaldi is Robson’s second attorney – would still be a lot. To get the idea of the overall cost of this litigation we need to find a case comparable to Robson’s in terms of time and effort that went into it.

COMPARABLE CASE

So what may be the approximate sum of litigation expenses when the case drags on for four and a half years and will possibly be appealed at an extra cost? And can it be sponsored for that long by a third party? And if it can, what for?

Surprisingly, the recent lawsuit against Gawker gossip media group may help to answer some of these questions. That litigation also lasted for four years and ended in 2016 with a $140 million judgment that led to shutting down its websites and the founder going bankrupt. The complaint against Gawker was made by a former wrestler Hulk Hogan for the invasion of privacy by publishing a portion of his sex tape.

This lawsuit was funded by a third party who managed to stay behind the scenes until the Forbes discovered it was the tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Forbes also reported that the sum spent by him on that litigation was $10 million.

Let’s make our calculations now:

• Hogan’s case ended in a civil trial, so it must have been more expensive than the non-trial proceedings over Robson’s complaint, but even if we take just one tenth of $10 million as an absolute minimum it will still amount to a seven-digit figure.
• Add to it the possible expenses on publications in Radaronline and the National Enquirer whose top editor Dylan Howard can be easily helping Robson’s team to undermine Michael Jackson on the same terms he helped to undermine Weinstein’s victims based on their agreement.
• Add to it the expenses on the parallel cases of Safechuck and the girl “victim” who mysteriously appeared and then mysteriously disappeared without any explanations – the girl was found by Finaldi in an effort to bolster Robson’s case, but was dropped for some reason.
• And we haven’t yet calculated the costs of Robson’s possible appeal yet.

All in all these expenses should come to a pretty impressive sum and I am sure that neither Robson, nor Finaldi are ready to spend this kind of money (if they have it), especially without any guarantees of winning the case.

So the chances that Robson has a sponsor behind his back are very high.

And this person should be no less than a multi-millionaire for whom a couple of millions spent on another person’s lawsuit is just a drop in the bucket – the way it is for Peter Thiel whose net worth is $2,5 billion.

But if Robson’s case is funded by someone else, why is this secret sponsor doing it?

And why did Peter Thiel fund a lawsuit against Gawker?

FUNDING AGAINST GAWKER

Thiel was deliberately vague about his motives and in his only one interview with the New York Times said it was “one of his greater philanthropic things that he had done”. He refused to divulge exactly what other cases he has funded but said,

“It’s safe to say this is not the only one.”

So it is actually common practice!

Explaining the reason for his  funding he also made a dubious compliment to the US legal system:

“If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system”.

However the real reason for Thiel’s attack at Gawker was that its journalists wrote biting reports about some very powerful people many of whom are Peter Thiel’s friends. The Gawker media had no trouble whatsoever while they were trashing the usual targets like Michael Jackson, for example, but as soon as they started picking at really big shots that was it.

Gawker wrote a lot about Thiel’s professional life, but also criticized his plans to be cryogenically frozen until scientists learn how to make people immortal, his opposition to the climate change science, his wishes that women couldn’t vote and his encouragement for students to drop out of school and start their own projects instead.

But probably the biggest offense of all to Peter Thiel was that Gawker outed him as gay in 2007. Thiel was extremely angry, but said his funding was “less about revenge and more about specific deterrence.”

Nick Delton, the founder of Gawker and Owen Thomas, the author of that article are gay themselves and defended their decision by calling it a retrograde approach  to keep “silence around a gay public figure’s private life in a way you’d never do about a straight person”.

Denton confided, “Actually I am a gay man. The author of the story on Peter Thiel was a gay man.” “The story was actually saying Silicon Valley is a largely straight white male preserve,” he said. “Here is a figure who is known widely in Silicon Valley to be gay….an extremely successful talented venture capitalist. We should be celebrating…”

He said not revealing a powerful person’s sexual orientation is wrong.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/27/nick-denton-has-no-regrets-about-outing-peter-thiel-as-gay/#ixzz4P5NMFUzK

In other words Gawker was a peculiar gossip media phenomenon as it told stories about everyone without making any difference between gay and straight, ordinary folk and the top powerful, and what’s especially interesting is that in contrast to others some of their information was true and published long before it became mainstream news.

Years before The New York Times published a damning exposé of Louis C.K., in which five women allege misconduct against the comedian, Gawker had published a blind item, describing a male comedian masturbating in front of two female comedians in a hotel room during the Aspen Comedy Festival. The alleged incident described in detail in the 2012 blind item would later be reported in the Times piece.

Gawker had reported early on about Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and James Toback, all of whom have been accused of sexual assault, harassment, and misconduct. Gawker’s propensity to report out blind items based on gossip did not make it popular in 2012 or 2015, but today that same work has taken on new significance.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/some-ex-employees-plan-to-wrestle-peter-thiel-for-the-ghost-of-gawker-past

Other personalities on Gawker’s gossip list were Sandy Gallin (a one-time Michael Jackson’s manager), Barry Diller and David Geffen whom Gawker called members of “Hollywood’s gay mafia”.

And even the billionaire Geffen was not untouchable for them. They often portrayed him in an unfavorable light which is rarely if ever done by other media. You can see it by these Gawker headlines:

“David Geffen: America’s Worst Philanthropist?”

or  “David Geffen Gives More Money to the Charity of Glorifying David Geffen”

Whether these people were or weren’t Peter Thiel’s friends, Thiel admitted that the main motivation for his secret legal assault against Gawker was his concern for its coverage of his friends, one of whom convinced him that if “he didn’t do something about it, nobody would”:

“But as he noted to the Times, it was concern for his “friends” that Gawker had covered that motivated his secret legal assault: “One of my friends convinced me that if I didn’t do something, nobody would.”

http://gawker.com/this-is-why-billionaire-peter-thiel-wants-to-end-gawker-1778734026

METHOD OF DESTRUCTION

Interesting, but the methods used by Peter Thiel in his crusade against Gawker reminded me of what was done to Michael Jackson and is still being done to his name and his Estate.

Besides the most damaging lawsuit against Gawker resulting in a $140 million judgment in Hulk Hogan’s favor, Mr. Harder, the lawyer handling this case was the focal point for several other lawsuits that had nothing to do with Gawker’s journalism.

Gawker suddenly found itself a defendant in at least a dozen lawsuits – one of them was a class action suit filed by unpaid interns with Harder’s active participation. One more case was heard in a federal court in Chicago where the plaintiff openly told the judge that he wasn’t worried about his appeal because he was “getting support from Hulk Hogan’s lawyers in California.”

And this was just a fraction of the coordinated strategy seeking to crush Gawker on all fronts. Forbes said about it:

 “Rather than simply play the vigilante, available to help those who have been publicly attacked by a company even the most ardent press advocates must hold their noses to defend, Thiel secretly declared a multi-front war against Gawker, seeking to crush it by any means necessary. Specifically, while Gawker has found itself defending numerous Thiel-backed lawsuits attacking its kind of journalism, there has also been an orchestrated effort to initiate a class-action labor suit against it. Some in the Los Angeles legal community talk openly about a coordinated strategy against Gawker”

The above method looked to me suspiciously similar to the lawsuits dogging Michael Jackson when he was alive – they also came from every direction possible bleeding Michael of his money, and the media was already relishing the idea of him going bankrupt.

Now something similar is being done to MJ Estate with a possible goal even to ruin it – look at that crazy IRS claim for $750 mln alone.

This story is FAKE

And Robson’s team is doing exactly the same by trying to mount more abuse claims against Jackson and even inventing “victims” with the help of Radaronline that recently fabricated a child molestation story about Corey Haim and MJ – which was a complete fake disproved by Corey Feldman and the fact that Haim met Michael when he was an adult.

TOP SECRECY

Another detail that astonished me about Peter Thiel’s war-like operation was its extreme secrecy. It was so profound that even the lawyer working for Hulk Hogan didn’t know who was funding the case until the Forbes broke the news in mid-2016, from which the attorney learned who his benefactor was. All he knew was that his bills were paid and the more cases he found the bigger was the remuneration.

The Forbes story about Gawker is worth our attention as it will surprise us with exactly the same questions that bother us about Robson’s story:

JUNE 7, 2016

As FORBES revealed in late May, Thiel is the clandestine financier of numerous lawsuits targeting Gawker Media, the New York-based company whose biting style of journalism has grated on the egos and sullied the reputations of some of the world’s most powerful people.

For much of this year, Gawker’s Denton floated rumors that someone was behind the Hogan lawsuit. Too many things didn’t add up. How could Hogan, who had recently gone through an expensive divorce, afford a high-powered celebrity attorney on what seemed to be a long-shot case? Why didn’t he accept several settlement offers? And why did he drop his claim involving negligent infliction of emotional distress–thus freeing the real deep pockets, Gawker’s insurance company, from paying any part of a potential recovery?

Forbes learned that the legal firm hired by Thiel represented several clients against Gawker openly and several clients behind the scenes:

Beyond Hogan, who filed a second suit against Gawker in May alleging extortion in the dissemination of his sex tape, Harder has taken on at least two other clients with cases involving Gawker’s reporting.

While Harder’s firm publicly represents those two clients, FORBES has found at least two other cases–Gawker is currently a defendant in at least a dozen lawsuits–in which Harder Mirell has worked quietly behind the scenes. One involves soliciting plaintiffs in cases that, contrary to Thiel’s claims that he’s defending those who have been wronged by the site, have nothing to do with its journalism.

Amidst all that litigation someone acting on behalf of a ‘Silicon Valley heavyweight’ suddenly approached Gawker’s former executives to discuss the possibility of buying the company:

There’s nothing unusual about making a bid by approaching former executives, who bring insiders’ knowledge and outsiders’ hunger. But having a Silicon Valley billionaire circle a private New York media company under siege from a Silicon Valley billionaire is certainly unusual. <> Thiel’s camp declined to comment.

And finally comes the amazing news that the lawyer who followed Thiel’s instructions didn’t know who he was working for:

It gets weirder. According to multiple sources familiar with Harder’s arrangement, he never had any direct contact with Thiel. And, these sources claim, Harder didn’t even know who was funding the litigation until FORBES broke the news in May. What he surely did know: The checks cleared. And there was presumably more where that came from, if he could find more cases.

“For a long time the lawsuits seemed like karmic retribution for skating so close to the edge,” says a Gawker employee. “But for once, Nick Denton’s conspiracy theories turned out to be true.”

In an age where media assets have become a strategic hobby for non-media billionaires <> the idea that a media entity can be systematically sued into submission by an aggrieved subject is an ugly long-term prospect.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2016/06/07/behind-peter-thiel-plan-to-destroy-gawker/#727385d45848

The story ended with Gawker’s founder Nick Denton filing for bankruptcy to protect the Gawker assets from being collected by Hogan and reaching a settlement with him for $31 mln. The assets were then bought by Univision at an auction. Now Peter Thiel is planning to buy the defunct Gawker media websites and if the plan succeeds all their content may be removed from the Internet.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

• The moral of this story is that if a billionaire desires to get rid of a nuisance media group he can sue it out of its existence and ruin its owners financially.
• Everything will be done in complete secrecy, will look like a natural course of events and no one will ever guess that there is someone working behind the scenes (unless someone like Forbes interferes into it).
• The method of destruction will be simple. Lawsuits will come from every direction creating the impression that the entity or person were walking on the razor’s edge for too long and now it is simply karmic retribution for their deeds.
• This secret project may be triggered off by a mere slight, real or perceived, that will make the billionaire angry and set him on a war path. Another reason may be his “concern for his friends” who were also offended by biting but true publications, or simply a request from a friend to “do something about it”.
• All it needs to make it happen is several millions, complete secrecy and an organized multi-front campaign. Several  years later the offender’s reputation will be ruined, his wealth will be gone and even the remaining traces of his activities may be removed.

At each of these points I was reminded of the troubled life of Michael Jackson and even the small details of that campaign rang a familiar bell. What happened to Gawker was most probably the scenario envisioned for Michael Jackson too and it partially succeeded as they did manage to drive him into the ground – with the only exception that his legacy is still alive and the financial standing of his Estate is secure.

And the more we compare these cases the clearer the overall picture becomes.

The fact that Gawker fell by a billionaire’s whim is indisputable. However lots of tabloids tell gossip and even lies about various personalities, but most still prosper and no one is standing in their way. So why Gawker out of all of them?

• The reason is because it is okay to lie, gossip about and mess with private lives of those who are devoid of real power (this is called “entertainment”), but it is absolutely not okay to do the same with serious and powerful guys (it is a violation of their rights).

And this makes us realize that though the media claimed that Michael Jackson’s wealth made him a super powerful guy who “behaved as if he was above the law”, the truth is exactly the opposite – except the power to touch people’s hearts he had no power whatsoever, was completely defenseless and this is why he was turned into a target of a vicious witch hunt.

• The idea to suffocate an undesirable person with lawsuits is evidently a well-tested method used by these people.

This reminded me of 1000 lawsuits against Michael Jackson during his lifetime, which for the most part ranged from the absurd to utterly absurd.

The general feeling about those lawsuits was that it was absolutely safe to sue Jackson as even in case he won no one paid him any money anyway – remember Victor Gutierrez who owed Michael Jackson millions in damages for his lies and then worked as an ‘expert’ on the Dateline program during Michael’s trial without certainly paying him a cent.

Or take the case of the Neverland 5 who sued Jackson for unfair dismissal, lost the case and when testifying against Jackson at the 2005 trial admitted that none of them had paid him.

So even if Michael Jackson won the lawsuits, it was still he who lost money as he had to pay his lawyers and cover all the expenses without getting anything back. All he got was the revenge of these people in the form of more allegations against him. And what surprises most is that none of them were afraid of any retribution for all their lies and frivolous lawsuits.

• Another point that struck me about Gawker is that during their litigation a certain buyer suddenly emerged with a wish to buy it – as if draining the website of its money on the one hand, but offering help on the other which in the long run was to end its existence anyway.

This again reminded me of Michael Jackson – when the allegations broke in 1993 and he began bleeding money due to a civil case with the Chandlers and paying $20 mln damages for the disrupted Dangerous tour, his then advisers advised him to sell his dearest asset – the music catalog. But at that time Michael acted on different advice and merged it with Sony’s catalog getting a multi-million profit at that. However many of the later developments looked like a way to twist his arm to sell it and leave him without this last guarantee of his children’s well-being.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF MR. X

Michael knew that something was terribly wrong and all that was happening to him was just too much to be a coincidence. He always suspected a conspiracy and in his frustration pointed at one person after another as a cause of his trouble. No wonder he felt so lost and even paranoid – he indeed was facing danger from every direction without a way to know where its ultimate source was. Actually no one would know it in his circumstances.

But we here are in a much better position than Michael Jackson was. We’ve observed all the events the way they evolved and have seen the worth of almost everyone who surrounded Michael Jackson with just a few exceptions.

Gawker’s case has given us proof that a billionaire can arrange a clandestine operation to ruin someone that would look like it is nothing intentional. So if we suppose that there was similar foul play against Michael Jackson, all we need to do is search for the right kind of a multi-millionaire who would wish to do extreme financial and moral damage to him and his finances, never minding the cost.

To narrow down the search this person should be someone who was operating when Michael was alive and is still operating now, and whose presence in Michael Jackson’s life was long enough to develop that kind of animosity for him.

To narrow it down further this person should be so powerful as to be able to manipulate most of the media, someone of Weinstein’s stature or even more. He should also have a reputation for being vindictive and having a propensity to work behind the scenes.

And entering totally unchartered waters we could also try and look for a possible slight that could trigger off his strategy to demolish Michael Jackson and carry his malice so far as to deal with his legacy and business even after his death – for example, by funding a long-running lawsuit that smears Michael’s good name.

Let us agree in advance that even if we spot this person it doesn’t mean that he stayed behind all the trouble that befell Jackson. All it will mean is that he is an ideal candidate for the coordinated strategy to destroy Michael similar to the one used against Gawker.

After all, the above is nothing more than a psychological profile of who we are looking for – the same kind of a profile used by the police when they are looking for their guy.

By the way, it is no use asking Finaldi or Robson about their secret benefactor – most probably they don’t know it themselves.

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