The Scientology spy in the hallway: The Danny Masterson trial gets underway

[Hallway at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, photo by California Historical Society]

Yesterday morning, the Danny Masterson criminal trial began with jury selection, and your proprietor was feeling on the spot.

It turned out that only two journalists had bothered to apply to be pool reporters during jury selection, when there would only be a single seat for media in the courtroom. So that meant your proprietor was on duty yesterday and today, and our colleague will take over on Thursday.

As it turned out, very little happened yesterday, and after about a half hour additional seats became available as potential jurors were allowed to leave, and more reporters came in. So we were the sole reporter for only a short time.

But in the hallway before things started, we didn’t know that. We only knew that we’d need to keep notes and type fast so we could give an accurate report to the half dozen reporters who had approached us and asked to receive copies of our notes after the day’s session.

And it was while we were contemplating that, waiting for things to start, that we noticed someone come down to our end of the hallway and take a seat.

He didn’t appear to be a juror, and he wasn’t a lawyer. He was dressed casually, and seemed out of place. He simply sat down on one of the benches and waited, as we studied his face, sure that we’d seen it before.

Danny Masterson was already inside the courtroom. We’d seen him arrive with his very tall friend, Chris Wadhams, an actor who had generously given one of his kidneys to Danny’s wife, Bijou Phillips.

Masterson’s attorneys were already in the courtroom too. This new person didn’t seem to be with anyone. Who was he? It nagged at us.

Then, Deputy DA Reinhold Mueller emerged from the courtroom, walked directly to the man, who stood up, smiled, and shook Mueller’s hand as the prosecutor said his name.

And then it hit us like a ton of bricks.

Of course. We knew who he was, and hearing the name come from Mueller cemented it for us.

And then, we watched in amazement as Mueller led the man into the courtroom.

Oh, wow.

Now, we want to make it very clear that all of this happened before we went into the courtroom to begin our duties as the pool reporter, and so we didn’t share with the other journalists just what we’d witnessed.

And we didn’t even say anything about it in our afternoon video reporting outside the courtroom.

We wanted to consider this a bit. We wanted to cogitate on it.

Because what we’d just seen was a known Scientology spy walk into Danny Masterson’s courtroom with Danny Masterson’s prosecutor.

Now look, we want to be careful about this. We don’t want to do something that causes a problem for either the prosecution or defense. We’re interested in a fair and thorough trial that has the best chance of arriving at an accurate verdict.

So we’re not going to name the Scientology spy we saw in the hallway just yet, even though we’ve confirmed his identity with others who personally knew him.

Here’s what we can tell you. We have written about this person in the past, as well as the complex operations he was involved in.

Scientology has earned its reputation for bullying and retaliation, and for cultivating the friends of former members or other people it considers enemies in order to spy on or intimidate them.

The spy in the hallway is someone we have written about because more than a decade ago, he was recruited to target a well known former Scientologist in a complex, multi-year operation.

Then, more recently, something far more important occurred.

This man’s name came up again in private conversations when we learned that he had been named in attempts at intimidating one of the key witnesses in the Danny Masterson case.

We have talked to this witness and we know that they have been the subject of this intimidation, and that there is independent evidence of it.

This is why we were so stunned to see this Scientology operative, someone we know there is documented evidence was recruited to spy on and intimidate Scientology’s enemies. And he was sitting in the hallway just a few feet away from us.

And then, even more surprisingly, he received a friendly greeting from Deputy DA Mueller and then followed him into the courtroom.

We don’t know what occurred in the courtroom. We were only let in as pool reporter later, and by that time the man had left. We didn’t actually see him leave, and we suspect that he did not emerge again into the hallway. That would imply that we was allowed to leave through the exit used by the staff. But we couldn’t swear to it. It is possible that he might have been able to emerge from the courtroom and pass by us in the hallway, but we were looking for him and didn’t see him.

Yes, we know this is a potentially huge story. If a Scientology spy who was personally involved in intimidating a witness in the Danny Masterson case is now willing to testify about it, the consequences for the Church of Scientology, well, we don’t want to speculate. We just don’t know yet how this is going to turn out.

But that’s what happened on only the first day of the trial, when nothing was supposed to happen at all.

We think Scientology might be in for a bit of bother.

If you missed it yesterday, we sent out this rapid report after the morning’s hearing on the Substack for our supporters. We’re getting good feedback on these videos, even if we feel a bit silly talking at a smartphone in the middle of a sports field outside the courthouse.

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Scientology deals with LA mayoral mess with charm offensive

Scientology has a lot to deal with right now, what with Mike Rinder on his publicity tour for his book ‘A Billion Years’ and the two Los Angeles mayoral campaigns trying to outdo each other with how much they think Scientology is a festering boil on the city landscape.

David Miscavige isn’t going to take that sitting down! The church has now put together a slick 10-minute video that tries to make the case that Scientology is the best thing that ever happened to LA.

This thing is really over the top. And it’s so long we struggled to get through it. And that tells you that Scientology is really worried about its reputation in what has historically been its global home. (As we’ve been pointing out for years, however, Scientology’s presence in LA has been steadily waning as the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida gains a more central role.)

We are looking forward to your thoughts on the video. And we hear that some of you are seeing portions of it aired in briefer ads on local broadcast stations, is that right?

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Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

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