Did I accidentally spark the “New #MeToo Movement”?

Well, that’s what various media organs have been proclaiming in recent days. Hilariously.

So I guess I’ll take CNN, NYT, AFP, Reuters, and the German national broadcaster’s word for it, and hereby take credit for launching the New #MeToo Movement: #IamJaneDoe. Even though I prefer to call it the #ZombieEpstein Movement.

I apparently sparked this historic movement by doing what else — Tweeting. (Which also sparked MeToo back in the day, if memory serves, so I guess that bookends nicely.) What I tweeted was a crowd-sourced solicitation for info about the Cornell Jane Doe — a journalistic method that the NYT et al. use every single day. But me doing it in this instance has apparently changed the world forever. Lol.

Well, it worked, because I was able to journalistically verify the identity of Jane Doe, after talking to multiple people who knew her personally at Cornell and in her home town, and cross-checking this with court records, university records, sorority records, social media, and more, as well as conferring with various lawyers and fellow journalists. After publishing her identifying info on the night of October 1, I made the independent discretionary decision to take down the info shortly thereafter, not because it wasn’t 100% accurate as to Jane Doe’s identity, but because the objective I had sought to achieve had been achieved: contesting the totally fallacious, untenable premise that any sex-abuse claimant who gets thrown in a melodramatic civil action is entitled to enjoy perpetual media-bestowed anonymity, to assist in their lawyers’ sleazy tactical ploy to extract the largest possible settlement payouts. And which in the case of Cornell Jane Doe has now also triggered renewed criminal investigative activity, followed by the appointment of a Special Prosecutor — which only further strengthens the public imperative for transparency / disclosure. And then there’s the chorus of screeching politicians, NGO activists, corporate-backed “influencers,” and untold others who are out there demanding urgent legislative reforms based on the spectacular “gang rape” allegations promulgated by the anonymized complaint. Governor Kathy Hochul promptly rushed forth to endorse a punitive new “rape” law in the state of New York, to further enhance the ability of prosecutors to throw people in prison for rape stuff.

So the public interest in identifying the litigant who catalyzed all this couldn’t have been more obvious. But given the truly bonkers-level of intense vitriol around this matter, I did not want to bring any more negative attention to Jane Doe herself than was necessary, as I have no animus toward her as an individual, and wish her no harm whatsoever. I even communicated this to her directly over text on Thursday. SO I’LL REPEAT AGAIN: PLEASE DO NOT HARASS JANE DOE, HER FAMILY MEMBERS, OR ANYONE ELSE ASSOCIATED WITH HER.

Meanwhile, I’m still getting deluged with literally thousands of these “I am Jane Doe” missives, such that it would be impossible to actually read through them all, much as I would love to. Here’s one I just picked out at random:

Sandra’s message is comparatively quite mild, which I greatly appreciate. Many, many others threaten me with brutally extreme violence, such as gang rape — curiously enough — as well as murder and so on. I guess these are the fruits of the new “movement” I hilariously spawned? I don’t know, you tell me — I’m not the one who proclaimed the movement’s existence! Though yes, I’ve seen a small sample of the thousands and thousands of videos posted by women, mostly to TikTok and Instagram, in which they stare at one of my Tweets:

Typically these videos are set to the same musical score, “LABOUR” by Paris Paloma, which is a legitimately genius song I hadn’t heard before, and is now dangerously stuck in my head. So I guess that’s one upside to this whole fracas!

Another bemusement is that to underscore how journalistically anathema I am for seeking to publish information plainly in the public interest, Big Kahunas like the NYT are describing me as anything but a “journalist” — since that would ascribe me with far too much Seriousness. So instead, I am a mere “political commentator,” according to today’s important NYT update from John Leland and Emma Goldberg. This despite the NYT describing me before as a “journalist” — but, you know, whatever. USA Today says I’m a “content creator,” which I would rather gouge my eyes out than ever earnestly self-describe as. AFP says I’m simply “a man named Michael Tracey,” which I’ll admit is very funny. NJ Dot Com curses me with the title of “podcaster” — perhaps the one thing that could actually drive me to suicide, unlike the tsunami of “kill yourself” emails currently clogging my inbox. Reuters was at least gracious enough to go with “journalist,” which I so deeply appreciate. I actually just did an interview for “Reuters TV,” and it was fair/reasonable. Not sure when or if it’s coming out.

Alaina Demopoulos of The Guardian continues the subtle derogatory fun, though, and declares me a “content creator and commentator.” By which, of course, she not-so-subtly means I have forfeited my Serious Journalist Card, as I have defied “decades of established journalistic norms for reporting on alleged rape victims.” From whence do these purported “norms” arise, Alaina? Certainly not American law, since in 1971, a television reporter in Georgia reported the name of an alleged rape victim, the alleged victim sued, and eventually the Supreme Court held in Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn (1975) that any state action to prohibit or punish the publication of such information was patently unconstitutional. To the extent that media institutions choose to abide by certain self-censorship “norms,” that’s a function of ideology — namely, their dogmatic adherence to the idea that anyone who ever claims any kind of sexual victimization, and wishes for their identity to not be made public, will have their wishes eternally granted by pliable journalists. Rather than scrutinize whether these demands for secrecy have merit, or are tied to allegations with any credible substantiation, journalists instead have a sacred duty to take all secrecy demands at 100% face value, 100% of the time, and enforce a totally optional prohibition on transparency and disclosure. Even if the anonymized allegations have been orchestrated by skeevy plaintiff’s lawyers to castigate others, BY NAME OF COURSE, as perpetrators of the most heinous, reputation-destroying crimes — such as, say, “gang rape.” And subsequently use this media-enabled anonymity as leverage to extract maximum settlement $$$$$ from their well-endowed litigation targets. Don’t take my word for it, though: this is the explicitly-advertised business model of Thomas Giuffra, lawyer for Cornell Jane Doe, as found on his own website.

“Most abuse cases settle, and what a survivor is offered in a settlement depends heavily on whether the institution across the table believes the case will actually be tried if it isn’t resolved,” Giuffra writes, in hopes of soliciting new clients and therefore, of course, big-money business for himself. The idea being: if you hire Giuffra, the entities or individuals you sue will have such fear struck in their hearts, given his sterling reputation in the field and track record of success, that they will be highly incentivized to settle forthwith, and for a very generous sum. “Mr. Giuffra has recovered over $250 million on behalf of survivors of sexual abuse and sex trafficking, including a $14 million trafficking settlement,” Giuffra adds, apparently speaking in the third-person, and under a website URL that is as follows:

https://survivorsofabuseny.com/epstein-maxwell-survivor-lawyer-ny/

Which is a little too on the nose, even for me. Are you enjoying the #ZombieEpstein era yet?

I’m trying to figure out which alleged “Epstein Survivors” Giuffra actually represented, if any, and in what precise litigation. He claims explicitly to have had Epstein-related clients at some point, but I can’t find any evidence of this in the court dockets:

Whereas there’s plentiful evidence of his settlement-seeking pursuits in relation to Harvey Weinstein, Sean “Diddy” Combs, etc. So who knows. You can’t take a single thing this guy says or does at face value — he could just be bullshitting to juice Google searches. But his firm still has dedicated pages up to specifically solicit Epstein/Maxwell-related claimants, teasing salacious speculative “newsy” lawsuit hooks like “Trump’s & Clinton’s Possible Connections” [sic] and “Epstein’s Fascination with Transhumanism & Control.” He also posted a blog post of some kind under his own byline in August 2020, titled “Chasing Jeffrey Epstein Beyond the Grave,” which heralds a particularly demented suit brought in New York State by another notorious huckster firm, Merson Law, purporting to represent a slew of “Jane Does” against Epstein’s estate.

“Jane Doe XIV,” for instance, claims that “in or about 1978, and continuing for a period of time thereafter” — when this strategically anonymized litigant “was approximately thirteen years old” — “Epstein sexually assaulted, abused, battered and raped her multiple times.” There’s not a shred of evidence anywhere amongst the now-millions of publicly-available “Epstein Files” that our favorite deceased financier raped a 13-year-old domiciled in Tennessee in 1978, when he would’ve been 25 years old. Even to go all the way back to the 1970s shows Merson, applauded by Giuffra, had zero scruples about who they were enticing to throw spaghetti at the wall adorned with dollar signs. It could have easily just been another straight-up mentally ill person who never met Epstein, and maybe hallucinated something decades later, but who could still be instrumentalized by these money-grubbing lawyer syndicates to manufacture big paydays. Made all the more possible by their demands for strict anonymity, which severely limited the ability of anyone, including opposing counsel, to evaluate the claimants for bare-minimum veracity.

It’s unclear precisely what happened with these mystery Jane Does circa 2020, but a bunch of their claims ended up getting “discontinued with prejudice,” such as “Jane Doe XVII” from Missouri (???), who claimed some sort of “abuse” in 2001-2002, when “she was approximately 25 years old.” She remains comfortably anonymized, to the best of my knowledge, since her claims were dropped on November 11, 2020. Unfortunately, the lawyers for the Epstein Estate were known to settle with any wackadoodle accuser, so it’s possible the minders for this allegedly adult-victimized claimant just pivoted to some other means of financial extraction. More claims were dropped when the judge finally ruled, on April 5, 2021, that the previously operative confidentiality order was “unduly burdensome,” as the Epstein estate lawyers were supposed to be producing a “key that contains the true names and identifying information for [identified] individuals,” and the sweeping anonymity requirements then in effect would “disturb defendants’ factfinding attempts.” Subsequent to this, a bunch of the Jane Does seem to have transitioned over to the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program, which preserved stringent anonymity. So, that probably means not one, but two Tennessee-based Jane Does who claimed to have been viciously raped by Epstein as young teens in the 1970s and 1980s, despite zero known evidence that Epstein ever even set foot in the state of Tennessee, got their sought-after monetary reward, with the Giuffra-allied lawyers of course receiving a handsome cut.

So that’s the big Epstein Survivor claim Giuffra was promoting in 2020; I would love to ask him which claimant(s) he’s represented individually, as he boasts of doing on his website. Because I’m very confident the answer would be an absolute hoot. I’m likewise very confident he was adamant about preserving any and all anonymity privileges related to these theoretical clients, ideally till the end of time, because otherwise the whole exercise would almost certainly look extremely silly, even to the most true-believing “trauma-informed” victim advocates.

By 2024, Giuffra took a detour into making stuff up about Sean “Diddy” Combs, coupled with a big media tour very similar to the one he’s currently on with respect to Cornell Jane Doe. The prior tour was to hype up the lawsuits he brought on behalf of three anonymous (male!) clients who were accusing Diddy of “rape,” and demanding that their anonymity be preserved forevermore. Giuffra’s demands for anonymization have since been rebuked over and over again by the presiding judges in these cases, and the once-anonymous Diddy claimants have been judicially “doxxed,” to use the now-popular parlance. Feel free to search “Eman Barzi” AND “Diddy” for additional information.

As illustrated above, Giuffra’s desperate attempts to keep secret the identity of his Diddy Rape Accusers have been repeatedly rejected, because it’s been ruled that asserting “generic claims” of potential “physical and psychological harm,” or “embarrassment,” is wholly insufficient to override the public’s presumptive interest in transparency in the legal system. Ding ding ding.

Also see these related rulings from Judge Lewis J. Liman:

Something tells me soon enough, the “movement” I allegedly sparked is not going to be happy with how things pan out. But I will always be grateful for the role I allegedly played in this historic moment. Thank you.

#IamJaneDoe

#NoYoureNot

(Don’t miss this joyful phone call I had last night with an especially passionate “Jane Doe” supporter. There’s plenty more where that came from!)

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