After a long day of testimony in a Clearwater, Florida courtroom, Ken Dandar tells us that retired Judge Crockett Farnell has scheduled written closing arguments in his secret trial to be submitted by December 27.
Today’s proceedings, which involved Scientology submitting evidence to bolster its claim that it deserves to be awarded more than $1.1 million in sanctions against Dandar, were closed to the public and press, and Scientology even requested that windows in the court doors be covered to prevent anyone from seeing inside (see photo above).
With Thanksgiving behind us, the rest of the year will, as usual, fly by with alacrity.
Scientologists, like the rest of us, are bracing for the final mad weeks of 2012, and we have some of their most recent fundraising mailers and other come-ons that have arrived in the inboxes of members.
As you ponder all the things you need to get done before 2013 starts, take a moment and join us for our weekly dose of Sunday Funnies!
Florida attorney Ken Dandar has added David Miscavige as a defendant in his federal lawsuit, a case that has already resulted in stunning new allegations that the Church of Scientology spent millions to cover up the 1995 death of church member Lisa McPherson.
Dandar represented McPherson’s estate in a wrongful death lawsuit that was settled in 2004, but Scientology is suing him for taking on another case against the church in 2009, and on Monday, in a hearing closed to the press or public, Dandar expects a state judge to award Scientology more than a million dollars in sanctions against him.
Dandar was unable to stop that hearing with his federal lawsuit, which he filed on October 31. But now he’s filed an amended complaint in that suit, added Miscavige as a defendant, and put in more detail about what he claims was a conspiracy between Scientology and Florida state Judge Robert Beach to violate his civil rights. We have obtained a copy of that amended complaint, which we have posted below.
We’re tracking down some interesting stories on this holiday weekend, and should be able to post some fascinating dox very soon. In the meantime, we thought we’d plague you with our latest radio appearance.
Boy, could actor John Travolta use some good publicity about now.
Scientology’s Celebrity magazine obliges with a particularly friendly look at the Pulp Fiction star in a new issue our tipsters passed along to us.
The magazine reviews Travolta’s film-making career, calling him an “icon of the silver screen,” and in a six-page piece manages to avoid anything remotely redolent of rubdowns going terribly awry, or other revelations that have been the stuff of lawsuits, news stories, and endless Internet sniggering.
Celebrity, in fact, managed to come up with just about the safest question possible to put to Scientology’s troubled icon. Asked several different ways, the story’s unnamed author tries to pin down Travolta and get out of him just which of L. Ron Hubbard’s many books is his absolute favorite.
The suspense, we know, must be killing you right about now.
Breaking news! One of our tipsters forwarded to us an internal Scientology video urging church members to take part in a big push to sell copies of Dianetics around the world!
We’ve taken some stills from the video to give you some idea of just how persuasive it is. It’s so infectious, we suspect it may be difficult in the coming days to go anywhere without running into pushy Scientologists demanding that we buy a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s masterpiece!
Much is being made in the press that today, Kelly Preston will appear on television and for the first time acknowledge that her late son Jett Travolta was autistic.
Jett died in 2009 after having a seizure in a bathtub while the family was in its Bahamian estate. At the time, a family spokesman confirmed that Jett had been prescribed anti-seizure medicine, but his parents — actors John Travolta and Preston, longtime Scientologists — had taken him off the medicine.
In the years since, the press has insisted that in Scientology, autism is a fiction of the evil psychiatry industry, which is why Travolta and Preston could never admit that their son suffered from it and instead promoted the idea that he had a rare condition called Kawasaki disease. Acknowledging publicly that their son was actually autistic, it was believed, would go against their religious beliefs.
And now that Preston is finally using the word “autism” in public, reporters are characterizing it as a “rebellion” against Scientology (just as they did when Travolta used the word a few years ago).
Here at The Underground Bunker, however, we noticed long ago that Preston is often trotted out to talk about her diet successes and other frippery whenever the church is in dire need of some positive publicity. Could she really now be speaking out in a way that challenges the church? Is Preston beginning to break away from her role as Scientology happy person?
The lack of any new developments in the ongoing investigation of deaths at Scientology’s flagship Narconon drug rehab center in Oklahoma didn’t prevent the Fox affiliate in Oklahoma City from putting together this lengthy and hard-hitting two-part series, which aired last night.
A lesson for other media: This is how you keep a story in the public consciousness, even as you’re waiting for the next news peg.
Ken Dandar called us after he got out of the hearing on his federal lawsuit in Tampa, Florida today.
He said he was unable to convince Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington to grant him an injunction that would prevent a state court from saddling him with huge fees demanded by the Church of Scientology.
Next Monday, November 26, in a hearing that will be closed to the public or press, retired state Judge Crockett Farnell will decide what to award Scientology, and Dandar has said he expects that amount to be more than a million dollars.
While Scientology’s private eyes were tailing us around a different part of Los Angeles yesterday, one of our tipsters kept an eye on Sheriff Lee Baca’s appearance in Inglewood to promote L. Ron Hubbard’s 1980 booklet, The Way to Happiness.
We have a couple of photographs of the event, as well as some notes about who attended — which included the voice of Bart Simpson, actress and Scientologist Nancy Cartwright!
