One billionaire, tired of what he calls “fake” #MeToo sexual harassment lawsuits, wants the lawyers involved in such cases gagged.
Greek-descended British billionaire Alki David plans to lobby Congress to adopt legislation preventing lawyers from commenting publicly about cases during employment litigation, blaming attorneys for what he says is “a culture of complaining.”
“The overwhelming majority of #MeToo cases are bullshit, and everybody knows it. We are sexual beings, right? To deny the ability to express that in nuance in the workplace is f–king stupid, because it’s not going to work. So get over it. Grow up,” David told the Washington Examiner. “You know why people complain? You know why this culture of complaining has started? F–king lawyers. Complain, complain, complain. That’s all they want. They want people to moan and bitch about everything. And when it gets to the point where they can’t make any more money, they start to fabricate the evidence.”
David, the heir to Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company and the founder of FilmOn, says he’s a good employer who’s been unfairly targeted by false claims. The Beverly Hills, California, resident is working with Arlington-based lobbyist Jeffrey Taylor, who says he plans to begin circulating a draft of proposed legislation called the Restore Privacy Act of 2019 to the Judiciary Committees in the House and Senate this week.
The proposal would “attach the same privacy rules currently attached to and enforced in insurance, family, health, and medical legal proceedings to civil employment legal proceedings” and would “prohibit officers of the court from making any public statements about the legal matter or the accused.” The details would only be unsealed if the accused was found guilty or at the discretion of the judge “in extraordinary circumstances.” Lawyers would be prevented from posting on social media or talking on TV about the case until it was over.
“I think the water might be warm right now for at least the committees to read it, jawbone it, discuss it, and see if the time has come here in 2019 with social media, with the ability to destroy someone’s reputation in 38 seconds,” Taylor told the Washington Examiner.
David has faced widely publicized sexual harassment lawsuits from former employees, including two this year. A jury awarded $11 million to David’s accuser, Chastity Jones, in April after she said David subjected her to unwanted sexual harassment and battery. The other, brought by Elizabeth Taylor, accused David of making her watch graphic videos and groping her. That case ended in September with a hung jury 8-4 in David’s favor, resulting in a mistrial.
Both women were represented by Lisa Bloom, Gloria Allred’s daughter. Both attorneys are known for representing women in high-profile and high-stakes cases and for media appearances by their clients engineered to induce sympathy for alleged victims, though Bloom recently represented mogul Harvey Weinstein against claims of sexual harassment. Allred and Bloom have each represented women who have alleged David harassed them.
David said the allegations lobbed against him by Bloom and others in the media, and on social media, were unfair. And in the Jones trial, he said, he wasn’t prepared for court.
“I really wasn’t ready. I had just arrived back. I was jet-lagged. I was high. I was pissed off,” David said. “And I walked in and said, you know what, this is not justice, this is not real, go fuck yourselves. And I said that to the judge — not directly to the judge — but to all the lawyers and the plaintiff and whoever else was in there.”
David said he is appealing the verdict in the Jones case.
“She will never see a penny, in fact, if anything, when I end up filing a malicious lawsuit prosecution against Bloom and Allred and anyone else involved — because that is going to happen,” David said. “When I say I’m going to sue somebody, I’m going to sue somebody.”
The billionaire admitted he’d cultivated a “quasi-Dr. Evil” persona for himself, but insisted “that doesn’t give people the right to assume facts without getting them checked.”
Taylor said they didn’t currently have sponsors for the proposed legislation but hoped they could get Republicans and Democrats to sign on. And he said David was pushing this bill for the benefit of others with less means who might find themselves facing accusations.
“Not everybody has the resources that Alki has,” Taylor said. “So how does a person like that — well, slander lawsuits, but those could take years and money too, for a middle-income person. So I think his point of the bill really has nothing to do with his interactions with his opposing counsel.”
David said his proposal “is a law that protects the innocent employer and protects the innocent man” and said he’d fight to get it passed.
“I’m really really angry, and I’m going to use that anger to motivate me to get this thing done,” David said. “I’m angry, and I also know that there is a lot of support out there from women as much as men, in fact probably more from women, or should I say heterosexual women, because this fake #MeToo thing really is the manipulated extreme extreme leftist cross-gender bullshit criminality that goes on. These are the facts, and you know it, and everybody knows it.”
