Leah Remini fires back at Scientology’s attempt to gut her lawsuit

At the end of October, we told you that Scientology had responded to Leah Remini’s ‘Fair Game’ lawsuit with a barrage of accusations against her and more than 1,000 pages of exhibits, arguing that the church was only hitting back at Remini after she had started attacking them first.

Leah filed her lawsuit on August 2, saying that Scientology’s carefully planned harassment was having negative effects on her ability to make a living as Scientology spread misinformation about her to intimidate her producers and other business partners. She amended the lawsuit to say that the harassment has only increased since she first filed the lawsuit, and she also filed for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to force Scientology to stop its harassment while the case is going on.

Scientology’s response was to file a massive motion to strike and anti-SLAPP in an attempt to gut her lawsuit before it even really gets going. And now, we have Leah’s opposition to that attack, and it’s a doozy, with hundreds of pages of declarations included with the pleading.

Let’s get into it with the introduction of her response, written by attorneys Seth Lehrman and Linda Singer.

For ten years, Defendants David Miscavige, Church of Scientology International Inc., and Religious Technology Center, Inc. have waged a coordinated campaign to “obliterate” and “ruin utterly” Plaintiff Leah Remini. Defendants have engaged in countless false and malicious attacks of Remini through multiple Scientology-run social media accounts and websites. Defendants have physically harassed and stalked Remini, her family, and her colleagues. Messages obtained between private investigators hired by Scientology to follow Remini reveal that “word is they [Scientology] want to kill her.”

Scientology is a multi-billion dollar organization, headed by Miscavige. Scientology’s self-described “reliable source,” Mark “Marty” Rathbun, a former member and official of Scientology, has repeatedly accused Miscavige of criminal conduct.

In 2013, when Remini publicly left Scientology, following a childhood subject to abuse and later psychological torture and punishment, Defendants deemed Remini an enemy or “Suppressive Person” and “Fair Game,” and, according to Scientology policies and practices, set out to destroy her reputation, her livelihood, and her life, as they have done to so many others.

The document then argues that Scientology is making false personal attacks on Remini, and that it’s not just protected free speech. And interestingly, they point to Monique Rathbun’s 2013 lawsuit against the church. You may remember that Scientology had used the same approach then, arguing that what was going on was simply a war of words that was protected by the First Amendment. But the court rejected that argument, ruling that the “Squirrel Busters” stalking Monique was harassing conduct, not simply speech. (Monique later famously dropped that lawsuit even though she had won a key appellate victory, and her husband Marty then became Scientology’s go-to attack dog.)

Leah’s attorneys acknowledge that she is a “limited public figure,” but it’s not the case that she “has achieved such pervasive fame to be a public figure for all purposes and in all contexts—including assassinations of her character and attacks of her family.” Also, they say that Scientology has failed to show that its harassing attacks on her character are actually in the public interest.

And they argue against the motion to strike by saying that Leah is likely to prevail in a trial.

Remini has established the requisite probability of success because her evidence shows that Defendants repeatedly published accusations of her that they knew or recklessly disregarded were false and defamatory. The main defamatory statements at the core of Remini’s challenge include attacks that can be categorized as follows: Remini is a religious bigot; Remini engaged in hate speech; Remini is like the “KKK” and “neo-Nazi”; Remini is a racist; Remini is responsible for the wave of violence against the Jehovah’s Witnesses; Remini inspires praise of Hitler; Remini supports and loves rapists and sexual assault; Remini has incited and is responsible for violence, crimes, and hate crimes, including murder, and threats of violence; Remini filed a false police report; Remini engaged in attempted extortion of Scientology; Remini was abusive towards her family and her employees. Defendants do not deny that they published these statements about Remini, both online and in letters to Remini’s employers and sponsors. Defendants’ accusations are false statements of fact that are not protected by any privilege and have caused significant harm to Remini.

The filing also takes on the claim, so often repeated by Scientology, that Leah has been the inspiration for hate crimes committed against the church by people motivated by watching her television shows. They go through each of the incidents that Scientology cites, showing how in each case they are exaggerations by the church or simply false accusations against Leah.

Just to cite one example, the document goes into some length about one notorious incident that Scientology has used time and again, the murder of a Scientology security guard name Chih-Jen Yeh in Australia.

Defendants’ connection between the murder of Yeh and Remini is not only false but unbelievable. Farny absurdly declares that he has “personal knowledge” of the following supposed facts: “On January 3, 2019, a 16-year-old man stabbed to death a security guard at a Scientology church in Australia. The assailant had expressed anti-Scientology sentiments. The Church staff member who was a witness to the crime, asked the assailant’s mother what he was reading on the internet about Scientology and the mother showed the Church staff member the link to a Chinese anti-Scientology website on her phone. This information was reported to CSI after the incident. On January 7, 2019, I accessed the website, saw that it contained links to Remini’s The Aftermath television show, as well as Mike Rinder’s website. I downloaded a copy, enclosed herewith as Exhibit 34.” (Farny Decl. ¶38.) There is no corroboration of Farny’s story in the court proceedings for the murder. The court heard the Taiwanese boy stabbed a man to death after becoming angry that his mother deleted a pornographic story from one of his electronic devices. The boy first confronted his mother about the deleted data (at the Scientology facility where she was taking classes) and then beat her up. The next day he went back to the facility and insisted he wanted to speak to a staff member about his data, but was told if he attempted to enter the building it would be locked down. An altercation then ensued between the boy and Yeh, who was present, and the boy stabbed Yeh. The court found the boy was “not criminally liable” because he was experiencing a mental impairment during the stabbing, arising from psychotic symptoms due to schizophrenia. The decision says nothing about Remini or Farny’s “facts.” Farny also does not state that “CSI” reported this information about what Defendants claim was the cause of the murder (the website with link to Aftermath) to the authorities as one would expect if it actually believed that was the cause. The only “evidence” Defendants cite to support their argument that “the murderer used his cell phone to view an anti-Scientology website that featured a link to Plaintiff’s television show” is a false and defamatory letter that Scientology itself wrote to Paul Buccieri, President of A&E re: “Blood on your hands” claiming that “You paid for the hate that caused his murder.” Moreover, even if there were any admissible evidence that the mentally-ill 16-yearold viewed the website, Defendants do not claim that he: (1) scrolled to the second to last comment containing the link (which appears on page 16 of 17 in Defendants’ Exhibit 34); (2) clicked on the link to Aftermath, (3) viewed it, and (4) was incited by it. The boy did not even speak English. Defendants all but concede that their repeated claims that Remini incited the murder of Yeh are made up — asking the Court to find in the alternative that they are an “opinion” of the events.

The filing goes on to debunk several more of Scientology’s claims about crimes that were supposedly inspired by Leah.

The 36-page opposition is accompanied by more than 600 pages of declarations and exhibits, and we’ll be digging into those in subsequent stories.

Wow, this war has really heated up. The hearing for Judge Randolph Hammock to consider Scientology’s motion to strike is scheduled for January 9.

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