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Happy Monday, I’m Eriq Gardner.
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Welcome back to The Rainmaker, my private newsletter focused on the legal maneuvering inside Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Washington, and Wall Street.
This week, I’m taking a closer look at the James O’Keefe trial playing out in Washington—a legal saga that could set new boundaries between what constitutes journalism and what counts as spying. Plus an update on Disney’s anti-vax legal headache, a Fifth Circuit thought bomb, and how a Making a Murderer defamation suit offers a rare look inside Netflix.
But first…
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It’s easy to forget these days that Hollywood once was the epicenter of vaccine hesitancy. Yes, in the years leading up to the Covid pandemic, stars like Robert De Niro and Jim Carrey complained about government overreach when California lawmakers, alarmed that student vaccination rates had dropped in wealthy Los Angeles enclaves, targeted parents trying to wriggle out of school mandates. Led by the controversial activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., some like Jessica Biel even began appearing at California’s capitol to lobby against a bill meant to crack down on doctors who issued phony exemptions.
This chapter of celebrity medical history has become newly relevant as Disney’s ABC unit fights with Ingo Rademacher, the longtime General Hospital actor who was fired last year for...
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| This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, so it’s only fitting that Washington is once again salivating over a case that explores the boundaries between political subterfuge and investigative journalism. I’m talking, of course, about Democracy Partners v. Project Veritas, the latest in a series of lawsuits targeting Project Veritas and its crusading founder, James O’Keefe, over their infiltration of left-leaning organizations. At the trial, which began Thursday and is now headed for a dramatic finish, a jury will decide if Project Veritas engaged in legitimate journalism, like what Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pursued once upon a time, or rather nefarious political spying, similar to those Richard Nixon-connected burglars who once broke into D.N.C. headquarters. It’s Watergate, the remix.
Project Veritas was founded by O’Keefe in 2010 to capitalize on his blockbuster undercover video recordings targeting ACORN, a liberal grassroots organization, that were selectively edited to discredit their work helping low-income communities. The videos, which O’Keefe promoted by dressing up as a pimp, transformed the then 25-year-old activist into a star of the Fox News cinematic universe. ACORN filed for bankruptcy soon afterwards... |
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| FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT |
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| The Oscars Makeover |
| Can C.E.O. Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang save the Academy from itself? |
| MATTHEW BELLONI |
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| CNN’s New Day |
| Jon and Peter dissect CNN’s programming shuffle and the NFL on streaming. |
| PETER HAMBY & JON KELLY |
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| Iger’s New Act |
| Observations on the great Wall Street stories of our age, or at least of this week. |
| WILLIAM D. COHAN |
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| The Pigskin Squeeze |
| A discussion encircling the consolidating college football television universe. |
| MATTHEW BELLONI |
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