Happy Tuesday, I’m Eriq Gardner.

Welcome back to The Rainmaker, a private email about money, power, fame, the law, and, lately it seems, sex scandals.

In part, that’s due to the legacy of Harvey Weinstein, who successfully overturned his New York conviction last week but remains incarcerated. It’s easy to forget, but one of the many reasons the Weinstein story had such an impact in 2017 may have been residual public outrage that Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood comments didn’t derail his presidential bid. In that light, it’s a little ironic that the Weinstein appellate ruling coincided with the first week of Trump’s first criminal trial, which has recalled for many the lowlights of the pre-#MeToo, catch-and-kill era.

Anyway, in this week’s edition, I have updates on Andrew Cuomo and Vince McMahon’s respective scandals before getting into Angelina Jolie NDAs and the Hunter Biden revenge porn case. Plus, a new case alleging extortion against Bryan Freedman. Buckle up!

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Let’s get started…

• Cuomo’s comeback tour: Since resigning as New York governor in the summer of 2021, Andrew Cuomo has been on a “revenge campaign,” pushing the courts to an extent rarely seen as he seeks background information around the sexual harassment allegations that precipitated his downfall. He’s investigated his accusers, of course, but also their families, friends, and support networks, as well as the New York Attorney General Office, and the state’s outside law firms.

  But Cuomo’s next target is the media. The Cuomo camp is in the process of issuing subpoenas to CBS and ABC, demanding they hand over their communications with his accusers, including the outtakes from interviews. The two TV networks have yet to appear in court to contest the subpoenas. Cuomo’s efforts may trigger a legal showdown over New York’s Shield Law, designed to safeguard journalists from being compelled to disclose materials obtained from confidential sources. Meanwhile, Charlotte Bennett, one of Cuomo’s accusers, is petitioning New York Magistrate Judge Sarah Cave to curb the scope of his discovery efforts.

  Cuomo’s scorched-earth tactics aren’t incidental. It’s no secret that he’s testing the waters for a New York City mayoral campaign next November—if, and only if, he says, the state and federal prosecutors currently investigating Mayor Eric Adams bring an indictment or otherwise turn up information that would force Adams to resign. Given Adams’ lousy approval ratings, Cuomo might be tempted to primary him—an unlikely scenario given the lasting damage it would do to the city’s Democratic coalition. Then again, Cuomo’s prickly self-regard knows no bounds.

• Fighting dirty in the WWE: Vince McMahon, accused of sexually abusing WWE employee Janel Grant, is also fighting back, although his latest move seems highly questionable. Was there any good reason for what McMahon’s legal team did this past week, when they dug up and highlighted a foreclosure action on Grant’s parents’ home to impugn her claim of being a loving child? That detail seems potentially erroneous, especially given that the motion seemingly pertained to an arbitration demand. McMahon’s legal filing, engineered by attorneys at the Kasowitz law firm, is unbelievably nasty (see for yourself), and I doubt it’ll score any points inside or outside the courtroom. On Friday, Grant’s attorneys asked a Connecticut judge to strike irrelevant statements from McMahon’s brief.
• More wine spilled in Pitt-Jolie battle: The legal showdown between Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a.k.a. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, concerning the sale of Jolie’s stake in their Miraval Rosé wine venture, is escalating. I’ve previously detailed the tumultuous fight over the rosé business, and broke the news about an investigation into an alleged assault by Pitt against the family during a flight on a private plane. Now, Jolie asserts that the impact of the alleged domestic abuse extended beyond this airborne incident, claiming that Pitt’s insistence on a wide-ranging non-disclosure agreement as part of the Miraval sale influenced her decision not to proceed with the sale.

  Pitt, in turn, is seeking to challenge the sincerity of Jolie’s objection to the proposed N.D.A. by requesting access to other confidentiality agreements she has signed. Jolie’s legal team is vehemently opposing this line of inquiry. In a provocative filing last Thursday, they asserted, “There is a profound distinction between an N.D.A. Jolie entered into with a movie studio or an employee, and an N.D.A. her abusive ex-husband attempted to coerce her into signing to conceal his criminal behavior.” (Read the full filing.)

While word of these demands is spreading like wildfire in the media, don’t hold your breath waiting for the letter itself to appear on mainstream news sites. That’s likely because the demand letter is NSFW. Yes, the notorious intimate snapshots from Hunter’s stolen laptop have found their way into The Trial of Hunter Biden, which his legal team argues is a breach of “revenge porn” statutes and constitutes a copyright infringement. But rather than simply, and chastely, asserting the illegality of publishing someone’s selfies sans consent (the Freedman letter nods to Ellen DeGeneres’ iconic Oscar photo a decade ago, where Bradley Cooper inadvertently became the “author” simply by holding the camera), Hunter’s legal squad has gone one step further by including the risqué images themselves. That’s highly unusual, in my experience, and likely a tactic to limit circulation of the letter. (I’ve gotten my hands on it, but I’ll spare you.)

As for the bribery allegations, Team Hunter points to the recent indictment of former F.B.I. informant Alexander Smirnov, who was charged with fabricating a story about Joe and Hunter Biden accepting $5 million each from Ukrainian energy company Burisma. They cite Fox’s “brazen” and “no remorse” coverage of Smirnov’s arrest, and demand that Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, and Maria Bartiromo inform their viewers that they’ve been sharing a debunked allegation from an indicted source. (There’s no obligation under libel law for follow-up coverage of new facts, although Fox could mitigate damages for past defamatory statements.)

Then, there’s the alleged commercial use of Hunter’s name, image, and likeness in The Trial of Hunter Biden, a six-part dramatization of “how a possible Hunter Biden trial might look.” From a legal standpoint, this might be the most noteworthy claim in the entire letter, given that news organizations everywhere will soon be able to harness artificial intelligence to simulate this sort of stuff. (Sidebar: Anyone think of taking the transcripts of the Donald Trump hush money trial and using A.I. to take viewers inside the New York courtroom? How will the federal judiciary respond when technology is used to evade bans on the filming of court proceedings?)

Hunter’s lawyers argue that the newsworthiness exception to New York’s name-and-likeness protection laws don’t apply to The Trial of Hunter Biden because it’s essentially fiction, or at least an imagined portrait of future events. Potentially problematic for Hunter’s team, the fictionalization doesn’t necessarily render the series a commercial use of his name. Regardless, courts have scrutinized efforts to dress up a dramatization as “unalloyed truth.” And here, as the letter itself acknowledges, Judge Joe Brown, the TV magistrate who “presides” over this “trial,” tells viewers, “This is a mock trial. It is not a real proceeding. To be clear, Hunter Biden has not been implicated in or charged in any crimes arising from his activities, alleged activities.” Still, Fox News spokesperson tells me that out of an abundance of caution, it has removed the series from its streamer while they evaluate the concerns raised.

The series could come back—sans nudity, I’d guess. But regardless, I expect the larger topic of news organizations taking creative liberties will resurface, especially as lawmakers discuss broadening and federalizing name-and-likeness laws in reaction to deepfakes. (Read the testimony in Congress today.) Hey, wouldn’t it be something if that policy debate gets impacted by Fox News’ taste for graphic images?

The case involves Christian Lanng, the former C.E.O. of a billion-dollar company called Tradeshift, who stands accused of coercing his executive assistant into a “slave contract” and then sexually abusing her. He responds that the two were consensually into BDSM. A lawsuit is now playing out like Fifty Shades of Grey gone horribly wrong, where the #MeToo movement reckons with the power dynamics of bondage in the workplace.

In 2022, Lanng’s assistant—called “Jane Doe” in her lawsuit—entered into a $10 million structured settlement that drew from money raised by Tradeshift. Afterward, she received “holding” payments totaling $675,000. However, disbursement of the rest of the $10 million faced delays due to unspecified complications with the company’s investors. It was then that Doe hired Freedman.

Freedman reached out by text to Lanng last September, warning that he could face media exposure unless $10 million was paid to Jane Doe. Freedman texted Lanng, in part, “I have been asked by a major media outlet if you would appear to explain your side of the story this week in conjunction with the claims being filed. They can have you appear by zoom.” Lanng replied, “Bryan, I will get back ASAP with new counsel, any kind of media will not help achieve any outcome I’m afraid.” Freedman responded, “Christian, I don’t control the media as you know but once filed cases take on lives of their own.”

That month, amid accusations from a second woman and other rumors of misconduct, Lanng was fired as C.E.O. of Tradeshift. He now blames Freedman for his ouster, accusing his firm of orchestrating the creation of “fake websites” and “fabricated” Twitter accounts to smear him. (Freedman vehemently denies these claims.) Lanng also has brought a counterclaim against him for extortion over the threats to go to the media.

While it wouldn’t be fair to equate Freedman’s present civil situation to Avenatti’s criminal situation (which, incidentally, also involved Geragos), Lanng’s counterclaim warrants a few words on what courts evaluate in such circumstances. For instance, a judge may assess whether any threats of exposure by Freedman were “inextricably tied” to a pending complaint to authorities, in which case they’re likely protected by the First Amendment, or whether the threats occurred independent of a legal action, in which case they might not be. A judge might also evaluate whether there was a threat to ruin someone’s reputation, and whether that had some “nexus to [a] claim of right.” Incidentally, in the Avenatti case, an appeals court noted in passing that threatening to disclose the sexual indiscretions of an executive lacks such a nexus—although the court wasn’t faced with this exact, totally bizarre situation. So who knows?

In any event, Freedman tells me, “For him to now try and play the victim and turn this around is transparently preposterous. It’s not legal or factual extortion to fight on behalf of your client to get them what they are rightfully entitled to. The cross complaint is nothing more than his desperate attempt to deflect from his own abuse as reflected in his own slave contracts.”