Welcome back to The Rainmaker, a private email about money, power, fame, and the law—basically, everything you need to know before starting a rap beef. In this week’s edition, is it really illegal to impersonate a YouTube executive? Thanks to the impending Carlos Watson trial, we’re about to find out. Plus, the $4 billion Ryan Kavanaugh merger nobody is talking about, the lawyers going nuclear on Clare Locke, Shari Redstone’s Rhode Island problem, Rob Gronkowski vs. Mark Cuban, Amazon quietly suing a screenwriter, and finally, could Kendrick Lamar’s rap battle with Drake wind up in court?
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Happy Monday, I’m Eriq Gardner.
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Welcome back to The Rainmaker, a private email about money, power, fame, and the law—basically, everything you need to know before starting a rap beef.
In this week’s edition, is it really illegal to impersonate a YouTube executive? Thanks to the impending Carlos Watson trial, we’re about to find out. Plus, the $4 billion Ryan Kavanaugh merger nobody is talking about, the lawyers going nuclear on Clare Locke, Shari Redstone’s Rhode Island problem, Rob Gronkowski vs. Mark Cuban, Amazon quietly suing a screenwriter, and finally, could Kendrick Lamar’s rap battle with Drake wind up in court?
Programming note: This Thursday at 3 p.m. ET, I’ll be doing an Inner Circle call to break down the latest twists in the Donald Trump hush money trial. Want to join? Upgrade your membership if you haven’t already, and email [email protected] to RSVP.
P.S. If this email somehow found its way to you, sign up here to continue receiving this newsletter. Or, better yet, subscribe to Puck.
Let’s get started…
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- The shadow of Les Moonves: Among the many issues complicating the Paramount Global sales process is the fact that any deal announcement won’t represent a finish line, but rather the starting gun of...
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Can’t see the full story? You’re receiving the free version of The Rainmaker at . For full access to Puck, and to each of my colleagues, you can subscribe here.
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Back in 2021, Ozy Media’s empire of spammy newsletters and cringey videos started to crumble under scrutiny. Ben Smith, then the media columnist for The New York Times, famously detailed how the company’s chief operating officer impersonated a YouTube executive during an investment pitch call with Goldman Sachs. The incident was bizarre, but did it qualify as aggravated identity theft? And was the broader effort by Ozy to secure tens of millions of dollars by embellishing its prospects in the content marketplace, including by inflating revenue and investor interest, tantamount to conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud? These questions will land in the lap of a Brooklyn jury when...
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FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT
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Shari’s Choice
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Could the brutal Paramount M&A process end without a deal?
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WILLIAM D. COHAN
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The A.I. Rat Race
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Inspecting Google’s burgeoning existential threat.
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BARATUNDE THURSTON
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