Billy's Investigation Into Amy Griffin's 'Claudia' Just Got Explosive

[00:00:00]I have identified whom Amy says is the real Claudia.

[00:00:06][music] Just me doing me, right? Sharp. That's insane.

[00:00:14]Another compliment. There she is.

[00:00:21]>> Welcome to Hot Mics. Thanks for tuning in on Facebook, YouTube, TuneIn wherever you get your podcast. I'm Billy Bush.

[00:00:28]Thank you very much because today's a big episode. Uh I have found the real Claudia in the Amy Griffin saga here. We have connected. She is none too happy about being involved in this whole thing. Um it came from a hot mic's loyal viewer named M. We'll call her M. Uh she said, "Billy, I'm loving your podcast, especially your series on Amy Griffin.

[00:00:51]By the way, I know who the real Claudia is." Wow. Uh, she does know who the real Claudia is. It it checked out. I made contact. Uh, what led me to the real Claudia? I'll give you the playbyplay a little later on, but it's all becoming so real here. I have seen Mr. Mason, uh, the teacher that Amy alleges um, graped her for four years in middle school. uh the coach uh who was friends with that teacher and with whom Amy connected years later and confided in. Uh today also the Lost Martha Stewart podcast, the episode with Amy that I think was all but scrubbed from the internet. I like Amy's comment on Reese Witherspoon's Instagram page. And Sam Lansky, the ghostriter, did he just blow Amy's cover?

[00:01:47]But let's take a look at Amy's side here, right? We've talked a lot about the California case against Amy Griffin filed by Jolene Alum, which started all of this on March 4th, 2026. Um, where Jolene cited intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy. In essence, Jolene accuses Amy of a hostile takeover of her most traumatic childhood memories.

[00:02:17]We have discussed all the things that are going against Amy. Um through her book proposal, she identified the teacher who perpetrated such u alleged violent acts of pedophilia against her.

[00:02:33]Yet he remains in town in Amarillo. She identified a family friend who uh she says abused her when she was very very young.

[00:02:46]Eight years old, Amy conducted a failed hometown investigation using one of the top corporate investigative firms in the world. No corroborators were found other than a another girl from the school named Ally who's said, "Oh, I remember that teacher. He looked at you in a creepy way." Um, and then you know there's James. If you read the tell, you know James. He's the kid in college when they were studying overseas uh in Europe who graed her. I guess after her sophomore year or something, so you know, maybe around 20 or 21. That was only four years after the final alleged grape by her middle school teacher. And of that, you know, four years or so later, there there's there's no memory.

[00:03:35]Didn't didn't trigger any memories in the book. Um, MDMA induced the recovery of Amy's memories, but in the Nevada suit, the memories came back before the medicine even hit. A major premise of the book was that this was all about recovering traumatic childhood memories using the drug MDMA.

[00:04:03]Do the details of the grape align with another student's experience?

[00:04:10]And who is Claudia? She's written about in the book. Amy cited the elusive Claudia. Uh the character in her book whom she says haunted her, a girl from her eighth grade class whom she thought shared the abuse. She she remembers she writes about seeing the teacher this alleged pedophile teacher you know putting his hand on Claudia's shoulder in a hallway and she thought oh my god is it happening to her she was an inspiration for Amy to come forward I have identified the real Claudia Amy's Claudia and and connected it is definitely her and that I mean it's definitely the person Amy as pinned as the real Claudia. And guess what? She was not in Amy's class. She wasn't even in Amy's school. Uh, we'll get to that.

[00:05:05]But in the interest of fairness, today we go inside Amy Griffin's counterattack, her federal lawsuit. She articulates uh this in a complaint that she filed in federal court in Nevada against Jolene Alto on June 15th.

[00:05:25]So, this is Amy Griffin's version of events. Uh, by the way, I'm I am mentioned in this complaint by Amy's lawyers. Um, because uh Zack Rosenblat, the lawyer for Jolene, appeared on Hot Mics as soon as this uh came out um March 18th, he was a guest on Hot Mics and told us about what was to come from his client, Jolene. Why Nevada? Um, Jolene filed a motion to dismiss this case, saying defamation claims that Amy has should be resolved in California, where the original suit is, all in the same place here. On Monday, Amy's lawyers rejected that. They want this to remain its own federal case and to go down in Nevada. Basically, this latest back and forth is procedural, but uh Amy is going all in on this narrative that the New York Times colluded with Jolene.

[00:06:24]Basically fed her all the information to help her build out her story and and thus Jolene defamed Amy. So, more feedback from another Hot Mike's viewer named Colleen. Billy, I love that you are following the Amy G story. One thing I've noticed about Amy is the excessive Instagram comments she leave leaves on A-listers pages. That is how I knew who she was before all of this. I used to think, you know, that's the insecure lady who always leaves Instagram comments on every page with some personal note to make it clear that, you know, we're friends and and I know you well and we're close. Uh, and then she said, "Well, take a look at Reese's page." And I I looked at Reese Witherspoon's post from when Amy's book came out saying, you know, my best friend's book just came out. She's an inspiration. And then I noticed that Amy's comment is um in the comment section is gone. I don't know who removed it. Uh but who is who is Amy Griffin, right? Um, you know, I've had conversations with mutual friends and acquaintances that that people that know Amy, um, and people that I know. I'm from New York. Uh, she is a New York mover and shaker. She went to UVA. She's well connected. She met John Griffin.

[00:07:43]Um, married him when she was 27. He was on the cusp of his 40th birthday. He's 13 years older. He was already very wealthy uh, when they got married. He graduated UVA as well but in 1985 then he went to Morgan Stanley and uh and then you know the move of his life in 1987 this guy became one of the original Tiger Cubs mentees of Julian Robertson at Tiger Management one of the biggest hedge funds. John then uh after that experience got to start Blue Ridge Capital in 1996 with approximately $55 million in assets and when he closed it in 2017 he had 12.4 billion uh in his portfolio uh at its peak. So John and Amy ran into each other in the park. They were both runners. Good timing, right? Um they married in 2003.

[00:08:38]Amy describes John in the book. He he wasn't like other finance guys like you know cocky kind of guy. He was playful like a Labrador and just as disarming and very very rich. Very rich and and I'm going to say it kind of handsome.

[00:08:53]Amy made moves as a mom about town in New York. All the right nonprofits and charities, the right committees, the best schools for the kids. She joined the very exclusive Maidstone Club in East Hampton, Long Island in 2011. This club is old school, man.

[00:09:10]Multigenerational kind of place. It's the uh it's the epitome of high class, but uh not fancy or go in any way. It's more of a how do you say a Brooks Brothers and Volvo crowd, not Chanel.

[00:09:26]Um, in recent years, Amy and John, according to folks out there, um, have kind of blown off that uh that crowd.

[00:09:34]Don't don't really come around much. Um, they've got a different crowd, a fancy crowd. Uh, an A-list crowd. Roger Federer and his wife spend, you know, couple weeks a year at Amy and John's house. And, well, you know, the others.

[00:09:48]Um, I I get the sense John goes along with uh with Amy. I mean, so he's an odd Labrador. Um, intense like her. He does Iron Man competitions. Um, you know, uh, they say happy wife, happy life. That's generally accurate. Unless your wife is doing something stupid and then you got to speak up. Um, why not when you're that rich and you have that much exposure, why not just pay for the best therapists and, you know, continue to lay low? I mean, billionaires are generally detested, right? they have high exposure.

[00:10:25]Why go worldwide uh you know sit with Oprah Winfrey and launch what Amy said, quote, "The idea that I had been sexually assaulted." That's word for word what she said to Oprah. Um I recovered in MDMA the idea that I had been sexually assaulted.

[00:10:46]the idea.

[00:10:48]None of the big journalists and A-listers, you know, asked any questions of Amy except Martha Stewart. Um, you'll hear that in a little bit. I'll tell you all about Martha Stewart's kind of lost episode. It seems to been scrubbed by from the internet, but Martha had a lot of questions for Amy. She was like Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes. And the other person to call into question is a Amy called herself into question throughout the book. She writes all kinds of like incredul. She's like, "How could this have happened? There's no way that this could have happened." I mean, she's sort of, you know, voicing what might be uh anticipated from the reader.

[00:11:26]Um Amy says she took about 10 years off of any kind of work to raise kids before she returned as an investor of uh of some of that Blueridge Capital money. uh she started G9 Ventures and in 2017 as John was you know winding down the the f the fund uh she started the female founder investing in Goop and Bumble and Spanx and you know some people buy their way into the right clubs and social circles. Uh in this case I think she invested her way into the right female Hollywood power circles.

[00:12:08]That's Amy. I'll also say this, a lot of people said she's a nice person. Um she's not like some kind of Hell on Wheels kind of lady at all. Um which is which is good to hear. But um back to Amy's Nevada federal suit. She filed it on the same day uh that she filed a motion to strike Jolene's California suit against her. It was a busy June 15th.

[00:12:36]So, what does Amy believe is her strongest evidence?

[00:12:42]Why did Amy's lawyers choose a federal case and the timeline, witnesses, you know, the villains and exhibits that it lays out.

[00:12:53]Here is the introduction, the thesis to Amy's counterattack, her defamation suit filed on June 15th, the federal case in Nevada against Jolene Alum.

[00:13:05]She her lawyer's right. In 2025, Jolene Alum told the New York Times and through it the world that Amy Griffin is a fraud and a thief. According to Miss Alum, Miss Griffin's bestselling memoir, The Tell, which recounts the brutal sexual abuse Mrs. Griffin suffered at the hands of a middle school teacher in Amarillo, Texas, is not Mrs. Griffin's story at all. It is Ms. Alum's claims, her story.

[00:13:30]A story Mrs. Griffin pride from her through a talent agent hired to coax out its details. On Ms. Alum's telling, Mrs. Griffin stole the grape of another woman and built a bestseller on it. Every element of Miss Alam's account is false.

[00:13:50]The tell recounts Mrs. Griffin's own abuse, her very own abuse, memories she recorded in writing and reported to the police before Miss Alam claims they were stolen. The talent agent Miss Alum identified has affirmed in an affidavit that he has never spoken to Mrs. Griffin or Miss Alum. And Mrs. Griffin has not spoken with Ms. Alum since they attended the same middle school over 35 years ago. I just saw a picture of the two of them in a yearbook. They're both there.

[00:14:21]Ms. Alum's claims that Mrs. Griffin contacted her out of the blue and met her for coffee in Palm Springs in late 2019.

[00:14:30]That in 2022, a man employed by Mrs. Griffin and posing as a talent agent coax the details of Miss Alam's abuse from her. And that Mrs. Griffin appropriated Miss Alam's story as her own in the tell are all fabricated.

[00:14:45]Four indisputable facts prove this.

[00:14:48]First, the meeting at the beginning of Ms. Alum's story never happened. Mrs. Griffin was not in Palm Springs in 2019 or in 2018 or 2020, and she's never called Ms. Alum. By the way, Katie and KC on Tik Tok has tracked down the tail number to John Griffin's Bombardier Global Jet and traced it to those years and and seems to suggest that there were some landings in the area. she very much was in the Los Angeles area which is considered the surrounding area uh of Palm Springs. There was even a landing that she alleged uh not confirmed but in the Mojave area which is very close to Palm Springs. Uh, Miss Alam for her part has essentially conceded that she does not possess a single document, communication, photograph or receipt substantiating that this meeting at the center of her account occurred. The meeting cannot be corroborated because it never occurred. Mrs. Griffin takes no position on whether Miss Alum has been, you know, saaid at the hands of a teacher or anyone else. Mrs. Griffin alleges that Ms. Alam's claim that she stole her story of abuse is false and defamatory.

[00:16:13]Second, Dominique Price, the former reality show contestant, season 2 of Temptation Island. God, does this get weird, right?

[00:16:24]Dominique Price, the talent agent Mrs. Griffin supposedly deployed to extract Miss Alum's story has sworn under penalty of perjury that he's never spoken with Miss Alum. He's never communicated with Miss Griffin or posed as a talent agent.

[00:16:40]Ms. Alum played no role in the tell. Ms. Alum claimed to the Times that she is a character in Nutell. The book refers to a woman whose pseudonym is Claudia who attended the middle school at which Mrs. Mrs. Griffin was raped as told in the tell. And in reality, Mrs. Griffin had recalled that Claudia spent time around Mrs. Griffin's asalent when Mrs. Griffin did.

[00:17:10]But you're going to find out later, I'll give you a little headline now, is that Claudia, the real Claudia, with whom I have connected, did not go to that middle school. She did not attend Austin Middle School. On April 21st, 2023, while she was writing the tell, Mrs. Griffin met with the real Claudia in a coffee shop thousands of miles from Palm Springs.

[00:17:38]Now, this is in a state that is a long way from California. It's in the middle of the country. Um, that meeting was attended by Sam Lansky, who is the ghostwriter for Amy on this book and was documented thoroughly during and shortly after the coffee meeting had ended. After learning uh after having learned of Mrs. Griffin's abuse through the tell, Ms. Alum claimed that she is Claudia. This too is false.

[00:18:07]And of course, as you know, Jolene Alum has several declarations and testimonies from kids back in the day who testify that of all the descriptions and characteristics that Amy Griffin put forth uh in her book and in the proposal to the book describing who Claudia is that Jolene Alum uh checks a nine-point list nine for nine.

[00:18:35]Uh, fourth and most importantly, Mrs. Griffin had already recorded her account of the abuse she suffered well before Miss Alum claims that she stole it. In 2021, Mrs. Griffin reported her abuse in great detail in a recorded interview with the Amarillo Police Department.

[00:18:54]That is true. She spoke with a Sergeant Gordon Eatley. By March 2022, Mrs. Griffin had finished a full draft of an article that would later become the tell. So those details are in there. Miss Alum has had the opportunity to come clean at every step, including before the filing of this complaint. Miss Alum's attorneys have personally reviewed the evidence described above. But Miss Alum has insisted on maintaining her lies, continuing the enormous reputational harm she's already dealt Mrs. Griffin.

[00:19:28]This lawsuit's purpose is to set the record straight. It ends when Ms. Alum tells the truth publicly and plainly.

[00:19:38]So, this federal complaint in Nevada federal court uh goes on and lists Amy's factual allegations, what she is alleging here. Amy said her body kept the score for years. She knew that she was carrying something. She wrote that in the tell as well. Back pain, rib cage pain, you know, pelvis pain. Uh anxiety rose within her when whenever she discussed any memory from childhood, anything about childhood. A friend told her about an interaction with an older man that was unpleasant. She broke down sobbing. Um, by the way, again, this kid in college, James, that she writes about in the book, who forced himself non-consensually on her and graped her uh while she was um studying in the middle of her college term uh in Europe.

[00:20:37]Um, you know, that would be about four and a half, maximum five years after the last time she was allegedly raped by this teacher. Um and and in that four years later, you know, nothing recalled an earlier memory, a memory of just four years ago. Um again, I've reached out I've also identified who James is and um pretty sure of that and I reached out uh to him. No, no response. Amy said she always believed that something sexual in nature had happened to her and it had according to the book proposal. She there was a family friend she alleges that lived down the street and he was abusive with her when she was 8 years old. Now this is the source of my empathy with Amy. Again, I have no axe to grind with Amy Griffin at all. My interest here is the truth because lives have been upended and also psychedelic assisted therapy is a personal cause of mine. I I believe it has the potential to heal the world. I I really do. It's very important. It's doing wonders in the life of someone I love more than anything in this world. Um you know, so that's that that's That's my purpose here. Um, I I do think, you know, something something happened to Amy Griffin. She's not just coming out of nowhere like like a crazy person.

[00:22:13]I don't what the motives are. Did she get in too deep or or or it just having a hard time connecting these things. It I do think something happened to her and if anything happened to her, um, my deepest my deepest empathy. Um, I I and I don't want to see the trolling and the dragging and the and the of Amy Griffin like just of anyone. What's the point?

[00:22:38]But let's make what needs to be right right, you know, if that is the case.

[00:22:43]It's certainly worth asking the questions because again of the three reasons I gave you. Um Amy's counsel, her legal team writes in this complaint.

[00:22:55]She has always had vivid memories of personal interactions with her asalant.

[00:23:01]Okay. So she can remember, you know, him in the hallway but not doing terrible things with bandanas and belt buckles. I don't understand this. Um, how could you remember anything other than that about someone? Um, Amy always held the memory of lending a dress to a classmate. She writes about this. It was very important that Amy was a good kid and she helped this poor student, poorer girl in her class, you know, wear a dress to the dance. It made her feel good about herself, which is nice.

[00:23:36]Um, and that would be, as Amy says, the real Claudia.

[00:23:41]But all of Amy's experiences and the pain welling up inside of her and that eerie feeling that something had happened in sexual in nature all came to a head when Amy writes that her 10-year-old confronted her um, saying, "Mom, there's a lack of connection.

[00:23:58]You're this perfectionist. You're too perfect. I feel like you're here, but not here." In the book, she says, "Here, but not here." On Oprah, when she was telling the story, she said that her daughter told her, "You're there, but not there." Now, I know it's a small change. Here and there, same thing. But boy, something so pivotal pivotal coming from a 10-year-old, you know, the mouth of babes, uh, you know, which compels you to go and discover your childhood traumatic memories and write a book and make this incredible platform.

[00:24:33]I I don't know. I think you'd remember exactly what your child said. Um, she tried, Amy says, to, you know, cope using the usual methods of running and overworking and raising kids and running, you know, to and from, you know, camps and pickups and but John, her husband, she says, you know, suggested MDMA. Um, and Amy warmed up to it. Kind of a goody two shoes, she said.

[00:25:03]Didn't was doesn't connect with drugs and didn't do any drugs. never did anything like that, but she thought, "Okay." And she did it. Her first session was July 19th, 2020, and she told the facilitator, "Um, right off the bat, something happened to me, but I can't remember."

[00:25:26]within minutes of the uh first administering of MDMA. Um, and her lawyers say well before it fully took effect, Mrs. Griffin sat up and asked, "Why is he here?"

[00:25:42]Meaning the teacher who allegedly violently raped and assaulted her uh back in middle school. And she then describes what he did, what he allegedly did, the brutal graping scenes, the belt buckle on the floor, as you know, the bandana tied her hands behind the back. Um, defiling her mouth and dragging her across the floor and threatening to rip her teeth out and smashing her head against the the wall. Many different locations, the bathroom being the central one. Um, she says a detective in Amarillo concluded her account was very credible after she told him. However, she never told that detective that she had taken MDMA to recover them. And of course, now her lawyers are saying the memories were recovered before the medicine kicked in. This is getting webbby. Uh, her lawyers added to her Nevada complaint. Here's the exact verbiage. An expert in MDMA therapy has since reviewed Mrs. Griffin's memories and concluded that they were recovered before the drug took effect. Straight up legal ease and not what the book says.

[00:26:55]No, the book's entire premise is that the memories were recovered thanks to MDMA.

[00:27:03]Amy says in the complaint that her PR team pitched the New York Times to cover the release of the book when it came out. Maybe write a spotlight spotlight piece. What could be better than a New York Times book review? Um, the New York Times, I guess, had other plans, it turns out, an investigation.

[00:27:23]Amy certainly calls Jolene a liar in her Nevada complaint. Um, but her lawyers want the focus now on the New York Times. They accuse one of the two female journalists, Katie Rossman, of professional jealousy when she wrote that article, The Billionaire, the Psychedelics, and the, you know, recovered stolen memories or recovered memories. I can't remember the title, but it was the big, you know, check yourself article that started all of this. Amy's legal team asserts that Katie Rossman and her partner Liz Egan interviewed at least 80 people, old classmates, neighbors, um, MDMA and medical community people. They accuse the New York Times of asking leading questions to achieve their premeditated objective to take down Amy Griffin.

[00:28:20]Subjects who said they were inclined to believe Mrs. Griffin, her lawyers say, uh, were omitted from the article. The New York Times uh, pair of Rosman and Egan obtained the confidential watermarked version of the book Proposal when the book was originally called Believe Me. And in it, there were real names and the foster home where Jolene went and and you know, details that didn't make it to the book. And the lawyers say this is how the New York Times found Jolie, who by the way had not read the tell until they contacted her on June 17th, shortly after she read it. And Amy claims only after reading the book did she tell the New York Times that she had been abused by a middle middle school teacher. I got to say here, I mean, it's not that is it that shocking that she didn't offer up her story right away to a couple of journalists from the New York Times. I mean, are these the kinds of people you tell your story to? She likely wasn't planning to tell the biggest newspaper in the world about traumatic childhood, you know, grape memories.

[00:29:36]But reading the tell, when you see that the details of Amy's accounts match your own, I mean, at that point, maybe you start to talk. The New York Times sent Amy's team a factchecking list for the article two weeks before publication and there they said u that Jolene told the Times the same lies that are in her California complaint. What are those lies?

[00:30:03]Well, Jolene was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a teacher at the same school. Jolene's abuser was a different person than Amy's. uh that Jolene said she was Claudia in the book.

[00:30:16]Uh that Jolene borrowed a dress from Amy for the school dance which she returned during a church youth group meeting the next day at Amy's house. Amy appropriated Jolene's own stories of abuse in her book. There they are, the lies of Jolene, according to Amy's lawyers. And then Jolene asserted that she met Amy in the coffee shop in Palm Springs late 2019, producing no evidence. Well, there is a hold on discovery right now until Judge Fruan, Richard Fuin, decides Thursday, tomorrow, if there's enough merit to Jolene's case for it to proceed. So, she hasn't provided anything, but let's assume that she will. She'll certainly be called upon to do so. Amy's council made it clear to the New York Times that Jolene's story was demonstrably false, that there was no coffee shop meeting and the Griffins never hosted a youth group meeting for the church at her house, and that she never lent Jolene Alum address.

[00:31:31]On that front, Amy asserts Miss Elum told the New York Times that she borrowed a floral pattern dress from Miss Griffin for the eighth grade dance, but the but the dress that the real Claudia borrowed was pink, not floral patterned. They say Jolene only claimed it was a floral pattern because the tell said it was, but that detail was deliberately changed during the editing process to protect the real Claudia's identity.

[00:32:00]Jolene claims this guy calling himself Dominic Price uh called her posing as a talent manager, a producer type to glean the details about her abuse uh from her posing as a guy who's going to make a movie out of it. We could pay for your story. It could help people. And she talked to him. She said she talked to him several times a week for about a month. Amy says the New York Times called to verify and he told him he knows nothing about it as he stated in the affidavit which is part of his part of this complaint.

[00:32:39]Amy's council points out that Amy started recording her memories in 2020 and produced a draft of an article about them in March 2022. How could how could speaking to Dominic weeks later produce similar details? It's after the fact.

[00:32:56]Well, on that note, I say, let's see that article.

[00:33:00]It had to be submitted to, you know, a big editor at a big magazine. Let's see it.

[00:33:07]Okay. Uh coming up here in a second, um the Lost Martha Stewart podcast where Oprah kind of went light on in her interview with Amy about the book and the details leading up to the book and the details of these horrible childhood traumatic uh memories.

[00:33:26]Martha Stewart went full Mike Wallace like it was 60 Minutes. We'll share that with you in a second. Also, something interesting Amy's ghostriter said which kind of doesn't add up. We'll get to that in a minute. First, let's talk about Batch, our sponsor today. We love you, Batch. Who gets a little overwhelmed? A little overwhelmed. You you you're running around, you got the kids, you got work. Uh you're managing all of that, your own relationships, your own health. Somewhere in all of that, you kind of start falling apart maybe a little bit. And the worst part when you finally bring it up to your doctor, they say, "Exc here, take this GLP1, you know, give take the jab.

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[00:35:49]Hellobatch.com/hotmics at checkout. All right. Sam Lansky, the ghost writer for Amy Griffin, gave an interview to actually a guy that used to work with me at Access Hollywood. He's now over at Glad, a producer for them. And this is Sam Lansky talking to Anthony Ramos in June 2020. The date is important. And I was just having this conversation with a friend who who is about to who's in the process of writing her first book and she was saying like every time I get to something that I feel like is going to implicate somebody else like I get stuck. I I can't keep going because I just start dreading having that conversation of having them or them having to read it. Um and what a nightmare that's going to be. Well, Sam Lansky is the ghostwriter for Britney Spears, but he couldn't be talking about her because she didn't even start thinking about a book until after the conservatorship was over in 2021.

[00:36:52]So, again, this interview is June 2020.

[00:36:56]There are no other ghostwriting gigs that I've did a search that Sam Lansky had other than Amy Griffin. So, it would seem he's talking about Amy. I have a friend writing her first book. She's nervous about this, but wait a minute.

[00:37:10]This is one month before the memories were recovered in July of 2020 thanks to MDMA or recovered just before the MDMA kicked in. Remember?

[00:37:23]Huh? I was dead positive that MDMA was what pushed her to write the book in the first place. That was the launching point.

[00:37:36]Okay, sit on that for a second. Now that Amy Griffin has finally laid out her complete defense in federal court, does it answer the questions we've been asking for five episodes? Is there anyone to corroborate her account?

[00:37:54]On that note, Martha Stewart questioned Amy a lot harder than Oprah or anyone else on that book tour did uh any other than she was all over her. It's hard to find this, but I got to give credit to Katie and KC on Tik Tok. She found it. I watched her go through it today, so holler to you. That was an interesting find in it. It's dated Mar uh May 1st or May 3rd, 2025. Amy's very giving. She's very relaxed with Martha. Martha is all over her, but Amy's kind of wanting to give her good answers. You get that feeling. She's kind of like psyched to be sitting there with the legendary Martha Stewart.

[00:38:35]So Amy says, "Well, I guess I'd been married to John for 20 years, so um you know, I I got to the point where I could trust him to to tell him what was going on." 20 years to trust. I uh she says about the alleged violent grapes uh in middle school. I believe it started around when I was 12. It's very much explicitly 12 um in the book. Um Martha says, "You didn't tell anybody. You know, maybe even on the upper end at 16.

[00:39:08]Uh why?" And um Amy sort of said couldn't really figure out what was going on there, but she said it happened only on school grounds, so confined within the school's wall. She said only in the school bathroom.

[00:39:30]What? What?

[00:39:32]Where's the locker room? The bleachers.

[00:39:35]Under the bleachers, the classroom, the tennis center, which was the last one.

[00:39:41]She's only in the bathroom. She said to Martha. She told Martha that, you know, all throughout her life, she was kind of a straightlaced girl. Um, you know, never liked being out of control. So, she said, didn't do drugs, never seen drugs. She said in the book she says there's explicit account she's with her roommates living in New York and they ordered a pizza and the pizza came they open the pizza box and there's a bag full of joints in there and her roommate starts smoking it out the window. Um so I think we think we've seen the drugs on the day that I went in. She said for her MDMA session um and said I know I have a lot of sexual trauma. She, the facilitator, who in the book is Olivia, took notes for me. I could have sworn in the book that when it was over, John, her husband, gave her a beautiful blue journal, and that's where she started to take her notes. So, if Olivia took the notes, let's subpoena Olivia. Well, subpoena Olivia anyway. She's not a real doctor. I don't think there's HIPPA here. Then Amy said within five minutes I said I'm ready to tell you everything.

[00:40:57]And then she told Martha she spent eight hours in the MDMA session. I got to tell you I took 120 milligrams. Uh that's a lot. I had a profound experience during MDMA therapy and you know it was 2 hours and 45 minutes. Let's say double that but I've never eight hours. I mean it's psilocybin journeys don't take eight hours. Ibo gain takes eight hours and you know things that the the wounded vets are doing now. I gain championed by Joe Rogan. Anyway, a central character in all of this is the elusive Claudia described in the book proposal nine different ways, all of which Jolene claims, you know, match her and two others from her own lawsuit. uh two other middle school uh kids confirm that in their declarations on her behalf. Amy denies that Jolene is Claudia. Says, "No way." And in response to Jolene's original complaint in California against Amy, she produced text messages between her and the real Claudia. The woman she says is the real Claudia. Why doesn't Amy identify her? She's a private person. Doesn't want to be identified.

[00:42:11]Um, maybe a judge could, you know, ask to see her privately or, you know, a subpoena would work if if she was I'm I'm sure Jolene's people will sub subpoena her. I have identified whom Amy says is the real Claudia.

[00:42:30]I got a DM from a Hot Mike's loyal regular viewer listener named M and she said, "Billy, I'm loving your podcast, especially your series on Amy Griffin.

[00:42:41]By the way, I know who Claudia is." I replied, "Amy's version of Claudia, the so-called real Claudia?" Now, keep in mind this is a woman with whom Amy says that she met and who could offer nothing to her other than sympathy for her story, right? And the response came back. Yeah. Amy's version of Claudia M said, "So, when Amy's book came out last year, my coworker told me her good friend blank blank told her the story of Amy contacting her daughter Redacted out of the blue. Amy told Redacted, who is the real Claudia, that she was going to be in her state, which is in the middle of the country, where Redacted now lives, and wanted to get coffee with real Claudia Redacted. Redacted said, "Okay." Uh, so Amy shows up and proceeds to ask Redacted, real Claudia, if anything had happened to her in middle school. I can't remember if Amy specifically asked her about blank blank, that is the name of the real teacher who Amy alleges abused her, or if she just kept it vague. But real Claudia told Amy nothing had ever happened to her. The story is absolutely identical to what Amy wrote in her book.

[00:44:01]By the way, her maiden name is blank blank. Okay.

[00:44:07]And here's the big part. She did not go to Austin Middle School. She went to a different one and that is named here. I think she might have played volleyball or something with Amy and that's their connection. But I moved to Amarillo from a small town in my 10th grade year. I knew Amy from high school.

[00:44:29]redacted. Real Claudia is now and gives her full married name, the name of her town and the state she lives in, and also sends me a photo. Um, I've seen the photo, I know the full name. I use my contacts to now that I have name, town, and state. I looked her up. Her number was easy to find. And I texted her and I called her a couple times. And after a little while, she responded to me. She said, "Where did you find my name?" I said, "A listener of my podcast." Random. Can we chat off the record? No, but thank you. I said, "I promise I won't share details. Not interested. Best of luck on your search.

[00:45:18]I have very strong feelings on this topic and do not want to discuss." Well, there's no doubt that it's the real Claudia. If you shared those feelings with me, I said, I promise I'll keep them completely to myself. Can you tell me the name of the school you went to?

[00:45:36]And she said, once again, best of luck.

[00:45:38]Thank you so much. And um anyway, I have seen the eighth grade yearbook from Austin Middle School in Amy's year, and this woman is not in there. And according to my loyal M here, Hot Mike's viewer, she said she did not go to that school at not only is she not in the class, but she did not go to the school.

[00:46:03]So there it is. And there we are.

[00:46:09]Tomorrow, a big day. Judge Richard Fuin, who was born in 1939, is presiding. He is 87 years old. So, he's like farmer's insurance man. He knows a thing or two cuz he's se seen a thing or two. But I I don't I don't know if he's got the time for it, but he has to judge Jolene Alam's case based on merits and she's got seven or eight declarations supporting her. Uh Amy's got a Dominic Price saying I don't know her and that's it. It would shock me if he did not find enough merit and shock me if this whole thing was thrown out. I don't think it will be, but we will find out. Guys, thank you for being with us uh for this episode of Hot Mics. Please hit like, hit the notification bell so you know when we're on, and please subscribe. That's it for us. Until next time. Oh. Oh, Moren Callahan from The Nerve. We'll have a special chitchat with her about all this tomorrow.

[00:47:14]Bye-bye.

[00:47:16]>> [music] >> Just me doing me, right?

[00:47:23]Another compliment. There she is.