Recently Tony Backpage Ortega, Leah Remini, Mike Rinder, Ray Jeffrey, and Paul Haggis conducted a coordinated pile on effort to shut me up. It was a resurrection of a propaganda campaign started by them in January 2016. See Monique Rathbun vs. Church of Scientology for background.
Monique’s former attorney Ray Jeffrey was the lynch pin of the lynch mob campaign. He posed for ‘interviews’ with Ortega, Rinder and Remini providing the big lie that serves as the propaganda narrative’s foundation. Without Jeffrey, there is nothing to campaign and nothing to campaign with. The big lie is that he was suddenly blindsided by Monique’s firing of him in January 2016 with no warning, and no idea why it came, followed by puzzling, ‘hurtful’ words about an innocent, honorable man.
Yet, Jeffrey invents the answer to the ‘mystery’ firing by floating conspiracy theories as to how Monique (at my direction) fired him to settle Monique’s lawsuit with Scientology behind his back. As you shall see, the only behind the back skullduggery was his own. After unethically inventing and broadcasting the big lie, he sanctimoniously claims he can’t give the corroborating evidence for his conspiracy theory because he must protect his client’s privileged communications, clearly communicating that the evidence exists, thus revealing the substance of the alleged communications themselves. Just as Tony Ortega routinely tells his audience that he knows the conspiracy is true, because he has inside Jeffrey information (namely, privileged information unlawfully leaked by Jeffrey). This conduct is far more unethical and treacherous than their implicitly acknowledged prohibition of straight-forward attorney-client privilege breaches.
Jeffrey has eagerly pandered to Ortega to the detriment of his client’s position from the outset of the case. It became so noisome and destructive that a few months into the lawsuit Jeffrey was put on notice to cease his repeated practice of sharing analyses, strategy and even pleadings with Ortega and other ASC members before sharing them with his client. His response? Six and a half more years of it.
Jeffrey has become so confederated with Ortega, the latter effectively serves as his public relations agent. When Jeffrey, Rinder and Remini’s ‘house on the coast’ conspiracy theory was dismantled (See Monique Rathbun vs Church of Scientology), Ortega was quick to defend his comrade in the bunker: “So the fact that they subsequently bought a modestly priced house in South Texas shouldn’t really be considered proof of one thing or the other. It’s more interesting what Ray pointed out on the podcast this week, that they bought the house and moved down there without even telling their own attorneys! THAT’s much more telling than the fact that they bought a $270,000 house, seems to me.” Ortega’s cult-think ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ argument is based on a falsehood, yet again. Jeffrey would have known had he listened to his partner or his client. But, Jeffrey could not have cared less where we lived. More than a year prior to the move, Jeffrey announced to his client that he was off the case until further notice and went incommunicado. His client was told specifically not to reach out to him. He has yet to have a civil, substantive conversation with his client since, to this day.
This summer Ortega restarted the campaign with a podcast appearance. He repeated on it (and followed up with a post that again paints Ray Jeffrey as an ASC hero and yet another Scientology victim) that Monique suddenly dropped her lawsuit when her attorneys were on the verge of forcing David Miscavige into deposition; proving there was a plot afoot to sabotage the Anti-Scientology Cult (ASC). Even bunker bots with double digit IQs should understand the absurdity of the claim, since the lawyers had their asses handed to them on that issue by an appellate court (despite our repeated efforts to spare them that fate) nearly two years before the suit was terminated. If they read the press of the time they’d have learned that when Jeffrey lost in the appellate court he informed the media that the Miscavige deposition issue was dead. Only six years later does he reverse course on the Remini/Rinder podcast stating the deposition was still a possibility after the appellate court decision. Because, that invented narrative harms his former client.
In fact, Jeffrey sabotaged the deposition issue in the first instance for all time (like so many others in the case) by reneging on the agreed upon strategy for success, by secreting material witnesses and refusing to use relevant documents that Mike Rinder allegedly stole from Scientology.* And that continuing obstruction made any future attempt for Miscavige’s deposition with additional evidence impossible. Which is why it has always been Jeffrey’s intractable position – until it served him to smear his client to reverse course – that the issue of Miscavige’s deposition was dead.
To add felony to misdemeanor, Jeffrey claimed as basis for refusal to use the Rinder documents that he was working to protect Mike Rinder’s interests. His argument was that Scientology could come after Rinder criminally if the documents were exposed. At that time, he was re-informed that I had been posting Rinder documents for years on my blog and Scientology hadn’t raised an issue; so, a) why was Rinder’s neck so much more precious than his client, Monique’s?, and b) I thus had already cleared the way for Rinder to stand as if he had some semblance of a back bone. To no avail. When directly confronted with the fact that his position was an exercise of favoring Mike Rinder’s interests over his client Monique Rathbun’s, Jeffrey elected to go with another pea in the ASC pod, Rinder. He implied throughout that he was representing Rinder. Later though, he was forced to acknowledge that Mike Rinder was not even a client of his…until he was again when it later served his purposes…until he wasn’t again when confronted with another conflict of interest issue. It is a dizzying scene trying to keep up with his three-card monte moves. Whether a client or not, Ray Jeffrey flat out attempted to sell his indisputable client down the river to the benefit of third parties, repeatedly.
Ironically, but not surprisingly, when you look under the hood with this krew – it was the very people tampering with witnesses and obstructing documentary evidence (Jeffrey and Rinder) who originated and pushed a faulty strategy for the case in the first place. Jeffrey’s professed wish to become “an Underground Bunker Rock Star” caused him to notice the deposition and litigate the issue for the adoration of the mob over the legitimate purpose of obtaining relevant evidence for his client. They abused Monique’s sincere legal process and rights for the illegitimate purpose of creating an ASC-assclown ruckus in the Scientology camp with a lack of sound factual basis (a classic Abuse of Process).
Interestingly, Mike Rinder had never expressed to me any concern whatsoever about Scientology prosecuting him for stealing documents. Instead, he only ever asserted that he wanted to hold them in reserve when the time came to extort some money from the church. As recounted in the video Mike Rinder Payola, it has always been about the green for him.
In fact, Rinder was cooking up extortion schemes to get rich at the expense of Scientology before the ink was even dry on the original 2009 St Pete Times series. He approached me then with a plan that he dreamed up with his then sugar daddy Robert Amblad. They would hire Scientology’s former real estate advisor to obtain a prime Clearwater property on the same block as the Church of Scientology. He would leak word to Scientology that I was going to set up a reform Church of Scientology there and become their worst possible nightmare. Rinder reckoned he’d create a scenario that would result in Scientology paying over millions for the building to keep me out. I informed Rinder that a) I would not relocate to Clearwater, b) I would not participate in a shake down, and c) I would not accept a single dime from the proceeds if he and his comrades went forward with the plan which he was free to do. Rinder even post-mailed a sealed handwritten note detailing the plan for fear that talking about it on the phone or creating a digital record through e-mail might create evidence of criminally punishable extortion. Click here to see the document “Devious Plan”.
Ortega is such a pathological liar that he told his podcast interviewers that he never accused Monique and me of settling her lawsuit behind her attorneys’ backs, and even counselled ‘everybody’ (who thought we had) to reconsider their biases. In fact, upon Jeffrey’s first covert-backstabbing-unethical whining about being fired, Ortega immediately headlined “Monique Rathbun Fires her Entire Legal Team – Seeks Settlement.” For the next several months he viciously shot down any bunker commenter who defended Monique or me in the slightest. He even banned commenters for failing to toe the ASC Underground Bunker politburo party line. On several occasions in order to squelch fledgling ideas that maybe he had rushed to judgment on claiming Monique had settled, Ortega resorted to claiming he had inside Jeffrey legal team info that proved we were guilty as charged (he used that ‘I have inside data I can’t ‘yet’ disclose’ ploy as recently as this month). Ortega promoted how devastating a settlement would be to the ex-Scientologist community as it would result in the erasure of all the alleged important legal precedents Monique had attained along the way and what a criminal betrayal it would be to leave Rock Star Ray unrewarded for his hard-won achievement. Ray Jeffrey recently supported Ortega on that score on the Remini/Rinder podcast, with misleading and inaccurate representations.**
Monique Rathbun and I did not seek settlement and never settled. And Ray Jeffrey knew that for a fact, because we explicitly rejected Ray Jeffrey’s request to approach church of scientology counsel to offer settlement in November 2015. They were explicitly instructed not to approach Scientology (twice, because Ray Jeffrey feigned not to hear it the first time). Incidentally, that was only the latest in a long line of attempts by Ray Jeffrey and his krew to twist our arms to settle with Scientology. It literally began within a half hour of the lawsuit being filed. That is notwithstanding Jeffrey’s guarantee he would litigate the case for the fifteen years I assured him it would require. He said he’d been more than compensated already by all the services I had provided him and his clients (gratis) which had netted him a small fortune. Clients whom – contrary to Mike Rinder’s podcast and blog lies – similarly had their arms twisted by Jeffrey to settle out early. And whose respective cases were impossibly bogged until I single-handedly snatched them from the jaws of defeat. So much so that Jeffrey, a member of his family, and his former law partner thanked me repeatedly for single-handedly saving his law firm from financial demise.
That Monique would be cyber lynched by Ortega, Rinder and Remini for caving to Scientology against the wishes of the crusading ASC lawyers is all the more incredible when one considers the following facts.
In mid November 2015 – after having been prohibited from reaching out to Scientology on bended knee – Ray Jeffrey and his krew asserted to Monique and me that Scientology had approached them to meet with us in order to discuss Monique’s case. The Krew were told that we were always open to listening, but were amenable only to hearing what they had to say. So, they were authorized only to allow for the requested meeting. For six weeks Jeffrey and krew played out a complex web of deceit as to why it was not as simple as sitting down and hearing Scientology’s acquiescence. They insisted we must make all manner of concessions in advance, including a gag order against me, a requirement I snitch on Rinder and others, and assenting to ‘selling’ all asc-friendly court rulings to Scientology. None of his demands were consented to by Monique or me.
After more than a month of weathering Jeffrey’s attempted coercion, we learned that Scientology never did approach Ray Jeffrey concerning settlement as he and his krew had represented.
In fact, Ray Jeffrey approached Scientology waving the white flag before he ever asked Monique’s permission to do so – which permission, again, was explicitly withheld. Ray Jeffrey and krew literally concocted the lie that Scientology approached them for the purpose of covertly nullifying his client’s instruction to not originate settlement. They then spent more than a month continually deceiving and lying to Monique to maintain the fiction that Scientology was aching to settle. Jeffrey choked the gaslighting play by trying to pressure me into agreeing to a gag order, a comprehensive ‘debrief’ and Monique into selling all rulings and opinions in the case.
We subsequently learned that Ray Jeffrey asserted to Scientology that his krew represented me personally and that I wanted him to approach scientology to settle. Ray Jeffrey and krew did not represent me and I had not expressed to him any intention to approach scientology – quite to the contrary.
We subsequently learned that Ray Jeffrey told scientology that I was willing to tell scientology everything I knew about every former scientologist I had encountered. Specifically, Ray Jeffrey told scientology that I had agreed to ‘snitch’ on Mike Rinder as part of a settlement and that I would forever remain silent on the subject of scientology – if the price was right for Ray Jeffrey. Ray Jeffrey got his tit caught in a wringer when he later attempted to get to me to consent to what he had (unbeknownst to us at the time) already offered, which I did not. When his threats did not work on me, and I insisted on a full accounting for all alleged communications between Jeffrey and Scientology, Jeffrey and krew attempted to drive a wedge between Monique and me. That included phoning harassment and threats to her late at night while she was attending to her then-ill two-year-old child. That campaign culminated in termination of Jeffrey and Krew. And, contrary to Jeffrey’s Underground Bunker statements in 2016 and this summer to Remini/Rinder regarding his great love and care for Monique Rathbun, the firing occurred the very day the Krew threatened to quit the next day – in the midst of an imminent Supreme Court filing deadline – if Monique refused to denounce my efforts to get them to cease treating her like a second-class citizen. This harassment was incessant even after Jeffrey and krew had a) informed Monique that she should cease communication with them until she had retained new, independent counsel to review their charge that she had a conflict of interest by listening to her own husband, and b) themselves been put on notice in writing to cease and desist from their continuing attempts to drive a wedge between Monique and her husband.
So, when Ray Jeffrey and krew told Ortega, Remini, Rinder and certain media that they were dumbstruck by the unpredictable blindsiding they were allegedly subjected to, he was flat out lying through his teeth. When Jeffrey claimed that he always got along admirably with Monique, he was lying through his teeth. When he asserted that he never abandoned Monique, he was lying through his teeth. When Mike Rinder told Ortega (which he reported) that he had no information to shed further light on the break up, he was flat out lying through his teeth. And when Tony Ortega added “and I believe him” to Rinder’s claim he was flat out lying through his teeth. The layers and depth of deceit are staggering.
Ray Jeffrey to this day has not admitted any of this to Monique Rathbun or to me in spite of serial demands for full disclosure of his covert, prohibited attempted Scientology settlement actions. Knowing the man’s cowardice and his disregard for truth and ethics, my guess is that he has not even admitted it to some of the vermin riding shotgun for him during the attacks upon Monique and me. However, we do know that Mike Rinder, Leah Remini, and Karen De La Carriere were complicit in Jeffrey’s deceit and Tony Ortega’s campaign to cover Jeffrey’s ass by smearing Monique and me. The only entity that has attempted to gag me is Ray Jeffrey and his confederates. And no one, them or otherwise, has succeeded to date.
To all those erstwhile ‘friends’ who piled on or sat silent and gawked while Ortega, Rinder, De La Carriere, Ray Jeffrey and Leah Remini attempted to cyber-lynch my wife – you’ve been had. Ray Jeffrey was not prevented from helping critics by keeping all rulings in Monique’s lawsuit intact as they so boldly asserted (while keeping doubters in line with one-liner comments like “I know what really happened”). In fact, Ray Jeffrey attempted to extort Monique and me into consenting to Jeffrey selling exactly that to Scientology. We refused to agree. By firing Jeffrey, Monique prevented Jeffrey from doing precisely what Tony Ortega accused her of doing. Jeffrey and krew expressly intended to sell it to Scientology, and were only prevented from doing so by Monique Rathbun terminating them as counsel. Thus, she whom Jeffrey and Ortega tried to pass off as stabbing the former Scientologist community in the back, wrenched the knife out of the hand of he who did seek to do so, thus preserving the entire record (including all court rulings and opinions) in Monique Rathbun vs. Church of Scientology International, et al.***
Monique Rathbun did precisely the opposite of what Ortega and krew alleged. She was more than magnanimous in her public characterizations of the lawyers given the skullduggery they practiced on her for three years. Jeffrey should have thanked his lucky stars instead of scurrying like a cornered rat to snipe from the ‘safety’ of the underground bunker. Had they not after the fact gone covertly to Ortega to smear Monique for the next five years, I too would have maintained that magnanimity. Whether it can be restored is their decision alone. It is a simple process. Simply, heed the advice I continually gave them since the year the lawsuit was filed: rise above their juvenile impulses to run with and serve the ass clowns.
As far as Ortega, Rinder, Remini and their ASC bot following is concerned, a simple thank you might have been appropriate instead of the incessant public shaming, blackmail, and harassment Monique received from ASC instead. But, hey what can you expect from a pack of whiny, sniveling, spineless cult members running amok like delinquent gang members desperately clamoring for their next airplane glue high?
* I use the word “alleged” because Rinder’s motives are as murky and clouded as his double-speak. Many of his documents contain manufactured fact. When I questioned him on some of the contradictions, Rinder replied with what became a constant refrain of his, “You know I can’t remember anything, Marty. My memory sucks.” And by now anyone with a scintilla of intelligence should recognize that. He now makes a living by recounting (often inaccurately even though it is before him in writing) what I allegedly did in Scientology – never about his own conveniently forgotten experiences.
** Jeffrey’s podcast preening about his alleged epic precedent setting victory on the Anti-SLAPP matter is second-rate Quixotism for two reasons. First, Jeffrey quit the case prior to the Anti-SLAPP proceedings and contributed nothing substantively to the effort. Second, despite ample warning Jeffrey invited the Anti-SLAPP motion in the first place. Although Jeffrey was clearly edited in the Remini/Rinder podcast to omit statements that detract from their invented narrative, one was overlooked. Jeffrey stated that the entire purpose of what Scientology was doing to the Rathbuns was “to shut Marty up.” He apparently conveniently forgot that he fought like a wounded steer for many hours against the demand that he plead the case in exactly that accurate fashion (and throughout the length and breadth of the anti-SLAPP proceedings), so that Scientology could not turn it into a religious or ‘commercial’ dispute. Jeffrey insisted it was critical for ‘optics’ to center stage the Squirrel Busters and their objection to my “competition”, apparently as part of his dream of attaining underground bunker Rock Star status. He did it in the face of being informed over and over that a) the Squirrel Busters were not much more than an entertaining joke from the outset (and were most definitely not what Monique wished to sue about), and b) his pleading would serve as the launching pad for Scientology turning out years of 1st Amendment and intellectual property challenges. When Jeffrey lost the argument for the final time, he came back with the threat that his co-counsel would resign if he didn’t plead it his way. That was how the “Squirrel Busters” protests became the most “important” facet of the case. Of course, that did become the springboard predicted and it lead to two and one half years of litigation on one, single motion. Which to anybody with any common sense, also meant another five or six similar rounds of first amendment litigation on various other motions coming in the future. Whether on appeal to the Supreme Court, remand to the Appellate Court or trial Court, and repeated ping-ponging between them, the fatally flawed pleading would have been ruthlessly preyed upon for many years to come by the scientology lawyers. And since Jeffrey as much as admitted the pleading he forced did not reflect the reality of the facts and view of his client on the R/R podcast, perhaps that is why he was so desperate to settle with Scientology as to threaten to abandon his client if she did not abandon her husband. That and his expressed fear that the Supreme Court might well reverse and/or remand. Despite the wall of Underground Bunker dissonance conveying something otherwise, Jeffrey and krew litigated two years to defend something they were pre-warned over and over again would result in exactly that future for them. On the podcast Rinder cloyingly supports Jeffrey’s pitch for herodom. Yet, Rinder himself acknowledged the truth of it on Ortega’s blog before the anti-Slapp was even heard – that Scientology had already achieved their objective, win or lose the motion, by serving up a multi-year delay with the simple dropping of the motion.
***By the by, the idea that there were any precedents worthy of use by any anti-Scientology litigant is another Ortega straw man myth recently contributed to by Jeffrey’s lies on the Remini/Rinder podcast. The appellate court could not have been more case-before-us specific in its finding; and that specific case was as unique at its time as it continues to be unique till this very day. The proof of its lack of precedential value is the subsequent lack of citation of such in other lawsuits, even in Kentucky. These birds are big on sandcastle building, followed by petulant sandcastle smashing.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 