Law & Crime: Seagram's Heiress Seeks to Dismiss NXIVM Sex Cult Civil Lawsuit, Claims Plaintiffs Are Just Trying to 'Secure a Big Pay Day'
"The Seagram's liquor heiress who pleaded guilty to criminal charges in connection with the sprawling sex crimes prosecution of NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere now wants a civil case against her thrown out of court.
Clare Bronfman's attorneys said she had "little to nothing to do with most of the accusations" lodged by a series of plaintiffs against various NXIVM-connected defendants. They added that the claims against her were nothing more than a "thinly veiled effort to intimidate and pressure a woman from a family well known in the national and international community."
In a press release, the defense plainly asserted that the plaintiffs were in fact only seeking to "secure a big pay day" by targeting Bronfman with a lawsuit. They also accused the plaintiffs of launching an "attempt to lump [Bronfman] into allegations regarding activities in which she played no part and of which she had no knowledge."
Bronfman pleaded guilty in April 2019 to harboring an illegal immigrant for financial gain and fraudulent use of identification in a criminal case lodged against her by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York. She was sentenced to 81 months in prison — about six and three-quarter years — in September 2020. She also forfeited $6 million, agreed to provide restitution to a victim, and paid a half-million dollar fine, according to prosecutors who called her a "a high-ranking member of NXIVM's Executive Board."
While the criminal case was ongoing, a civil suit, styled as Edmondson v. Raniere, was filed in January 2020; it alleged that a bevy of NXIVM-connected defendants — including Raniere, Bronfman, former "Smallville" actress Allison Mack, and others — operated NXIVM as a "criminal enterprise" and "conspired . . . to commit sex trafficking, peonage, forced labor and human trafficking offenses." It also alleged that NXIVM "functioned as both a Ponzi scheme and a coercive community."
'Defendants exerted power over the Plaintiffs; took their money; made it financially, physically and psychologically difficult, and in some cases impossible, to leave the coercive community; and systematically abused Plaintiffs physically and emotionally," the lawsuit alleged. "In doing so, the Defendants achieved a number of personal benefits including but not limited to enriching themselves; wielding power over others; advancing in the perverse social order they created; and enhancing their own feelings of self-esteem. Many of the Defendants also benefited financially through the receipt of profits and substantial access to free labor, including personal assistants, housekeepers, drivers, personal shoppers and others.'"
UPROXX: A Batsh*t New QAnon Documentary Warns That COVID Vaccines Transfer 'Satan's DNA' Into Your Body
Among the many claims made in the documentary, according to Raw Story, are that the COVID "vaccines contain a mixture of magnets and snake venom with the goal of transferring 'Satan's DNA' into human bodies."
Satan's. DNA.
According to Collins, the movie and its inane theories are gaining quite a bit of traction in QAnon-following circles. In it, so-called "experts" claim that getting jabbed means injecting yourself with metal bits which will magnetize you. (What that has to do with Satan, we're not sure.)
In the trailer, where the sound cuts out several times so as not to reveal the total bullsh*t being spewed, we hear some pretty dire warnings from Dr. Bryan Ardis—a very vocal critic of Remdesivir, the drug that has been used to shorten the lifespan of the COVID-19 virus in many hospitalized patients (including Donald Trump when he was hospitalized with COVID in 2020).
In the trailer for the film, Dr. Ardis claims that while he's been terrified to speak up, he knows he must. Because when the National Institutes of Health issued a final report confirming the benefits of Remdesivir for COVID patients, Ardis knew it was a lie. More specifically, he knew that Dr. Anthony Fauci "was lying." And that the drug "was going to be used to mass murder a whole bunch of innocent people in America that did not need to die. Then he was going to sell the world on the idea, in the media."
Ultimately, Dr. Ardis decided to come forward with his story because God spoke to him through a fortune cookie."
The Underground Bunker: The origin of Scientology's notorious prison program: Hana Whitfield's eyewitness account
"It was January 1, 1974. I was in charge of the Authority and Verification Unit (AVU) on the Apollo, with Ken Urquhart, LRH's Personal Communicator (LRH Pers Com), as my direct boss. Sue Pomeroy, Suzette Hubbard, Marion Witcher, Hugh Harrison, Judi Light, and Kiki Swift were my great AVU team.
Hubbard had established AVU fifteen months earlier. The Unit ensured all management orders from Flag to Scientology, and Sea Org organizations, units, and ships complied with his established policy, technical bulletins, executive directives, books, and taped lectures. The order could be as simple as one line to an executive director to appoint herself a communicator/secretary within the week. It could also be a complex fifty-order program to help an organization with down-trending production statistics. AVU's job was to verify that the submission was 100 percent compliant with Hubbard's policies and, if it was, to authorize it for publication and distribution.
By January 1, 1974, Hubbard had returned to the Apollo from the US, injured himself on a bike ride, and wailed in pain in his cabin.
And that morning, Ken, LRH Pers Com, walked quickly into AVU. Ken was uncharacteristically anxious and white-faced. Ken handed me a proposed Flag Order and spoke in an urgent, quiet voice, clearly meant for me, not my AVU staff working at their desks nearby. Ken said he had written the Flag Order based on notes he had received from LRH and quietly asked me to authorize it for immediate printing and distribution and that he would wait while I read the proposal.
I took the proposed Flag Order and the stack of LRH notes. I was perplexed; I'd never had Ken wait next to me as a submission was authorized.
"Can I read the FO? And LRH's notes?" I asked Ken, wondering if he had expected me to sign the proposed Flag Order without doing so."
The Collider: 'The Way Down' Part 2 Trailer Dives Deeper Into the Cult of Gwen Shamblin
Prepare to have your jaw drop as it all goes down.
"The higher the hair, the closer to God" is definitely a phrase lived up to by Gwen Shamblin Lara, the founder of the Weigh Down Workshop. And now her story is coming back to HBO Max after seven months away. Following the unbelievable true story behind the late cult leader and founder of the Remnant Fellowship Church, the series takes viewers behind the scenes of the church's destructive hold on its community through brainwashing weight loss techniques. Originally released in September 2021, the series quickly climbed to the top of its game, earning itself the title of HBO's most-watched docuseries at that time. The final two episodes of The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin will premiere on Thursday, April 28."
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