Joe Francis Claims He Orchestrated the Lawsuit That Destroyed Gawker
Another old enemy of Gawker is now taking credit for the lawsuit that led to the organization’s demise.
Before the gossip site made the controversial decision to release Hulk Hogan‘s sex tape, they got in a significant fight with Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis over a piece that called him an rapist back in 2009. In a series of recent interviews with Newsweek, Francis claims that he connected Hogan with Paypal founder Peter Thiel, and thereby orchestrated the billionaire-funded lawsuit that ended up burying the gossip site.
“It was really a coordinated effort,” Francis says.“It was an all-out assault. And we got him…I liken this operation to killing Osama bin Laden. And we did—we killed the most reckless, dangerous scumbag in the world: Nick Denton.”
According to Newsweek, Francis introduced Hogan to attorney David Houston during a pay-per-view event, and that was how the lawsuit began. The exact timeline of their coordination is unclear however, due to conflicting timelines offered by Francis and Houston, as well as the fact that they used different legal approaches and tactics to remove Hogan’s sex video wherever it was posted on the Internet.
There are several other oddities with Francis’ claims that he was the catalyst for the lawsuit. Not the least of these is that he claimed that it was by his efforts that Thiel became Hogan’s sponsor, when Thiel had already planned for revenge against the site for years after they outed him as gay.
Furthermore, Death and Taxes noted that Francis states Houston was threatening Gawker before Hogan’s sex tape came to light. Houston, for his part, says he never heard of Gawker before he began the Hogan lawsuit.
[Image via wikimedia]
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