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\u201cOne of the things you\u2019re always balancing is, how do you respond to accusation? Do you add more fuel to the fire or let it dissipate?\u201d asks Howard Bragman, a longtime crisis manager in the entertainment industry.<\/p>\n
Says Neville Johnson, an attorney who has previously brought suits against tabloids but questions the star plaintiff’s wisdom here: \u201cDepp doesn\u2019t need the money [from any damages award] and it is not going to enhance his reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
How did Depp find himself at the point of zugzwang? More and more, one has got to question Depp’s reliance on attorney Adam Waldman. Depp has many attorneys, and the others seem to be the ones actually doing the hard work in court, but Waldman has become Depp’s mouthpiece and also looks to be the lawyer who has emerged as the star’s svengali of sorts.<\/p>\n
Who is Waldman?<\/p>\n
A search on Google (where he referred this reporter instead of agreeing to an interview<\/a>) yields some clues, though hardly anything definitive. Unlike most attorneys, Waldman maintains no bio page these days. A few years back, Waldman’s D.C.-based Endeavor Group did have a working website, but no longer. A trip to the Internet Archive\u00a0reveals<\/a>\u00a0that Waldman once took credit for overseeing “all corporate aspects” of the landmark antitrust trial\u00a0United States v. Microsoft<\/em>, being the “principal architect of several ground-breaking initiatives” including the Center for Global Development, and even predicting the 2009 financial crisis with a “seminal law review article” authored all the way back in 1993. That would be when he was a student at American University, which did indeed confirm his graduation\u00a0<\/strong>in 1995.<\/strong><\/p>\n Waldman, according to reputable\u00a0press reports<\/a>,\u00a0seems to have been involved in various dealings with the Kremlin, Russian\u00a0oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and\u00a0Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He had a lucrative ($40,000 per month) lobbying contract with Deripaska, was registered as an agent for the Russian government, visited Assange nine times in one year at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, apparently in connection with efforts to strike a deal with the DOJ, and more. His associations have become fodder for intrigue among reporters and\u00a0lawmakers<\/a>\u00a0even if there\u2019s a lack of public evidence of anything more than Waldman having a talent for landing recurring, if minor, roles in real-life Russian political dramas.<\/p>\n I’d say that Waldman’s foray on the periphery of the industry hardly matters, except that it appears Depp is publicly burning bridges with the sort of abandon that one hardly ever sees among big Hollywood stars. Depp’s recent legal pursuits include\u00a0battling his former money managers<\/a>\u00a0over the disposition of hundreds of millions of dollars;\u00a0splitting<\/a>\u00a0with longtime transactional attorney Jake Bloom; and, of course, continuing to face off against Heard again and again and again, including in\u00a0a separate defamation suit<\/a>\u00a0against her over an op-ed she wrote for\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>. That latter case is currently scheduled for trial in Virginia in January 2021.<\/p>\n That’s a lot of legal work, and Waldman appears to have taken on a central role. As Stephen Rodrick put it in an often-cited\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em>\u00a0article<\/a>, “Waldman seems to have convinced Depp that they are freedom fighters taking on the Hollywood machine rather than scavengers squabbling over the scraps of a fortune squandered.”<\/p>\n Waldman\u00a0is also conducting<\/a>\u00a0a public experiment on social media. In a nutshell, do tactics of preaching to a choir of a small number of Twitter accounts achieve anything outside of politics? Most attorneys don’t pick fights with the media during a big case, particularly in the weeks before trial. Not Waldman. For weeks, he’s been\u00a0goading reporters<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0who apparently are investigating him, and he’s been whipping his followers into a frenzy with attacks on\u00a0Rodrick<\/a>,\u00a0Variety<\/em>\u00a0(“Saudi Arabia’s Variety<\/a>“),\u00a0THR<\/em>\u00a0(“too much corruption<\/a>“) and other journalists and news publications.\u00a0(That said, Waldman may not be above going to his own favored media outlets. Depp’s attorneys have been accused in court papers of leaking to outlets like\u00a0The Blast<\/em>, which seems to be to Depp what Fox News is to Trump.)\u00a0He’s also\u00a0litigating on Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0presenting evidence<\/a>\u00a0procured from Depp’s cases, and overall, exhibiting highly unusual behavior for a working attorney.<\/p>\n To what end? That one is very hard to answer. But if anyone in Hollywood is ready to take on “fake news,” the ticket of Depp-Waldman should be deemed real contenders.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In the era of #MeToo, allegations of misconduct get attention \u2014 and deservedly so \u2014 but some newsrooms have traditionally made a distinction between behavior in the workplace and domestic conduct, with the latter being perceived as tabloid fodder. This time, though, an ugly divorce proceeding has transformed into something quite more.<\/p>\n Alas, the trial of\u00a0John Christopher Depp II v. News Group Newspapers Ltd<\/em>\u00a0has now begun.<\/p>\n