Johnny Depp, Jeff Bezos, Defamation & Me
Why we are going to the Supreme Court in Johnson v. Huffington Post
Two steps forward, one step back. At least so it seems in my efforts to get some accountability for the foreign-agent backed defamation claims against me.
One of the things that nobody tells you as you become successful is that you become the target of foreign actors and that those foreign actors have their friends and allies everywhere.
So it is with Johnny Depp, so it is with Jeff Bezos, and so it is with me.
There are several ways of thinking about the Heard and Depp case and we will explore them in a subsequent post. You better believe I am watching every minute of it. That Depp’s woes coincided with the admitted Israeli spy Arnon Milchan - probable Israeli spy Steve Mnuchin-Australian compromised manic depressive failson James Packer’s plot to take down Kevin Tsujihara of Warner Brothers cannot be overlooked. Yossi Cohen, the disgraced director of Mossad, was also involved and was supposedly in talks to join Mnuchin’s Arab funded fund. Totally normal stuff.
Gal Gadot, aka Wonder Woman, is not a spy, no not at all. How many actresses or singers are spies for foreign powers? We know Julia Child was a spy. So too was Ernest Hemingway. And yes, even Christopher Lee.
And what exactly is Amber Heard? Is it true that Elon Musk was introduced to Amber Heard by Ghislaine Maxwell?
Who is the father of Amber Heard’s daughter? Is it Elon? And what’s the deal with Heard’s dad and the mobbed up animal abuse ring?
Stay tuned.
In Bezos’s case The National Enquirer, working with Saudi and Israeli intelligence, tried to blackmail him over his affair with Lauren Sanchez. As you know, neither Bezos nor Ms. Sanchez have any ties to American intelligence whatsoever. Oh, they do, don’t they? Huh.
The thinking by the operatives who had exfiltrated his phone was simple enough — if Bezos can’t keep his pics secure how can he keep our classified data secure? That this coincided with a fight over the hosting of US Army data in AWS servers should not be ignored. Ultimately the contracts weren’t handed to Oracle as they wanted but to the very compromised Microsoft. After that happened the news came out about Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein. Now the JEDI project is on indefinite hiatus. Funny how that happens.
Bezos stood up to the National Enquirer in his great response to the blackmail, “No thank you, Mr. Pecker.”
In my case it was a two step process. Defame me through the faux press, make it hard to work with me, and then try to steal my equity in Clearview the facial recognition company I cofounded after I clarified what was going on to the responsible press.
Naturally Huffington Post relied on foreign intelligence assets to concoct an elaborate story targeting me. (Huffington Post is now owned by BuzzFeed, which became the go to place for laundering material from Israeli intelligence. Oh, you thought Arianna Huffington and Ben Smith were but journalists? Ha! Interestingly BuzzFeed cofounder Jonah Peretti’s father was a criminal attorney and worked at Epstein-connected Joi Ito’s MIT Media Lab. Curious indeed.)
Say, wasn’t BuzzFeed where the Fusion GPS dossier was published? Indeed it was. Who do Mr. Sussmann and Mr. Elias really work for anyhow? I guess we shall find out when Mr. Durham concludes.
This foreign intelligence-backed campaign of defamation cost me millions of dollars and potentially hundreds of millions. In fact, my cofounder at Clearview continued the campaign of defamation against me this past week when he told the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell that I had nothing to do with founding Clearview. (I guess we will have to see!)
Still other start ups have walked away from me (though the loyal few have not!)
What then was my crime? Merely walking with a member of Congress whilst discussing genetics.
Like Depp, it was a form of character assassination to take everything from me.
Like Depp and Bezos, I am fighting back. (I was particularly struck by Depp talking about how he wanted to set a good example for his children and that’s why he had to address the untrue things being said about him.)
Today I received news that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied my en banc petition in a vote of 10-7. I sued the Huffington Post for defamation a few years ago and the case continues to wind its way through the courts. (Huffington Post was essentially gifted to BuzzFeed after losing hundreds of millions of dollars. BuzzFeed has lost hundreds of millions in its market cap too and is down more than 50% since listing. Who knew that defamation was not a sustainable business!)
Judges Elrod (Bush ‘43), Haynes (Bush ‘43), Costa (Obama), Willett (Trump), Engelhardt (Trump), Oldham (Trump) and Wilson (Trump) voted to rehear the case while Judges Richman (Bush ‘41), Jones (Reagan), Smith (Reagan), Stewart (Reagan), Dennis (Clinton), Southwick (Bush ‘43), Graves (Obama), Higginson (Obama), Ho (Trump), and Duncan (Trump) opposed it.
I am told that this breakdown was a very unusual state of affairs and that my case, Johnson vs. Huffington Post, remains a source of great interest to defamation lawyers. Happy to provide an education, friends!
This is not my first rodeo. I won a 7 figure settlement against the Russian billionaire backed Gawker Media in 2018.
I believe in a free, responsible, accountable press. They’ll never have any enemy in me. The Washington Post, The New York Times, Reuters, and Wall Street Journal have all earned my respect.
I want my children, my family, my friends, and my countrymen to know that I stood up against the blackmailers and extortionists, not just for myself, but for all the nerds who come up after me. This is my responsibility.
“My goal is the truth,” says Johnny Depp. “Truth is all that I’m interested in."
Will one man with the truth make it to the Supreme Court?
Well, I guess we are going to find out.
Another excellent piece. I would love to see more about Ben Smith, a particularly troublesome character.
Love the Peter Jackson clip. Some people have first hand knowledge of what it sounds like when a person is stabbed in the back.