0:00:00: A: Well, hello folks. Listener Thomas S here. I've got something that should, you know, just be like a positive joyful announcement, but because of the trauma and just absolute heartbreak associated with this, I have a hard time being that happy about it or joyful about it. But it's over. The legal battle is over. The legal hell is over. We've won. OA is ours. Andrew's out forever. No more Andrew. Gone from this. Never to return. Zero financial stake in OA whatsoever. It's over. And it is a relief. It really is. But I want to say some things. First off, let me say, if you are like a new listener who wasn't here for the bullshit last year, this may be very confusing. So, I don't know, skip it or something. But yeah, you'd be missing a lot of context. I also want to warn that if any of what I'm about to say comes across to you as, like, inappropriately bitter and angry, I can only assure you that you have no fucking idea the suffering that has been inflicted not just on me, but on Lydia as well, and causing Lydia that kind of suffering for no fucking reason is not something I'm able to get over.
0:01:05: So, if at any time you're like, sure sounds like Thomas is bitter about, yes, I am, and I will always be, And if you would like to scold me about my bitterness and anger over this, save your fucking breath. Sorry. Okay. But what a weird tone to start that off with because this is an incredibly big and good announcement. It's finally over. It's been fucking 15 months or whatever and it's over. It's amazing. All the cases are settled. and they will be dismissed shortly. So while this is obviously amazing and good news, the bad news is that the only people who really benefited from any of this were lawyers. I've joked about it here and there, obviously, but this was a level of expensive that is shocking to even think about. I was never going to give up. But the situation was getting really bad.
0:01:51: And it's only due to my willingness to take on scary amounts of debt that I was able to cross this finish line. And all that expense, hundreds of thousands of dollars, to win the most obvious fucking case to ever exist in the history of cases. Andrew stole the show and ruined the company. He had no right to do so whatsoever. And despite having months to brainstorm creative lies, something that Andrew is extremely practiced at, by the way, he wasn't even able to come up with anything close to a plausible excuse for what he did. Anyone with an ounce of shame would have A, never done any of this or B, at least upon realizing you're not the object of worship you thought you were and you've killed 80% of a business single-handedly would have relented immediately and hoped some of the damage was still fixable at that point.
0:02:42: But no, instead Andrew decided to be Baghdad Bob for a fucking year. And here's the shittiest thing, it almost worked. If when Andrew stole the show, If patrons like you had largely stayed with him, we wouldn't be here right now. I'm serious. The only reason I was able to make this incredibly risky financial bet is that you amazing folks converted something the law doesn't give a shit about, morality, into the only thing the law does give a shit about, dollars and cents. If Andrew's actions hadn't cratered the business, he would have gotten away with it. 100%. Because he knew the truth about our stupid fucking system that only the rich can get any kind of justice. I found myself so many times during this thinking, This is the simplest, most straightforward, obvious legal dispute.
0:03:31: It's just two guys. Very simple. What he did regarding the business stuff was all, like, easily demonstrable. Most of it out in public. And even still, to go all the way through trial would cost a million fucking dollars. That's not my usual T. Smith hyperbole. Like, I literally mean a literal million dollars to go through trial. I don't have a million dollars. I think Andrew was just trying to bleed me out, which is easily demonstrated by how he sabotaged The only element of the company I had any access to the ads he sabotaged that obviously demonstrably multiple times actually like after we found out and complained he turned the ads back on for like a handful of episodes and then turned them back off again all easily demonstrable stuff the most straightforward case you could imagine and still if I hadn't had the good fortune of having a little bit of a support network and a lot of financial literacy to be able to leverage basically everything I've had, truly, like to go into as much debt as I possibly could.
0:04:33: If I did not have that ability, we wouldn't be here right now. If I didn't have the ability to come up with half a million fucking dollars, he would win. He knew that. I didn't know that. I always thought, yeah, it's expensive, but you know, there's that Seinfeld, I think it's Seinfeld where The recurring joke of the episode is like someone's trying some food and they're like, oh, yeah, I don't hold on. It's hot. And then they give it to somebody and the person tries and goes, ah, they're like, I told you it was hot. They're like, yeah, but I I don't know what you mean by hot like how hot the exact thing like I I had in my mind that this was expensive. But it turns out there's a lot of room in that description. Way more than I could imagine. There's also, I will say there's another reason this went on longer than it should have though.
0:05:21: And that's because Andrew wanted an NDA. But I was absolutely not going to be silenced. I was not going to sign an NDA or anything like that. And that was a big thing. It is very likely that this would have been over months ago. had I been willing to be silent forever. Refusing to sign an NDA is a decision that I can actually like almost calculate how much of the massive amounts of money it cost me, but also incalculable is the mental health component. It also prolonged the worst thing I've ever gone through in my life. And imagine operating that way with the knowledge that I could probably be done at any time, probably, with the worst thing I've ever gone through, the most stressful, traumatic, constant panic attacks thing I've gone through if I just caved on an NDA.
0:06:07: And then I would also have a permanent excuse not to ever have to talk about this again. That was tough to operate with that knowledge, but there were just so many lies in this entire thing that I have to correct. I cannot live with not correcting these lies at some point, at least to anyone who will still listen at some point. And by the way, it's not just Andrew's lies. Well, okay, by volume, it's basically 99% Andrew's lies, but by impact, it's not just Andrew's lies. And it was bad enough to put myself through this, obviously, but I was also putting Lydia through it. Though, ultimately, the responsibility belongs to Andrew. It wasn't even him that caused the majority of our trauma over this. It wasn't. That's the shocking thing. There were so many disappointments in this.
0:06:56: People that I really thought were my friends, or at least people I thought I could trust to be part of the truth rather than bullshit, and they just weren't. People who are so blinded by the allure of some temporary meaningless online clout or something that they abandon any commitment to the truth or even any commitment to the victims themselves. There's one victim who has always wanted to be anonymous in this and did not want to be any part of this. and they had their identity revealed, not by me, not even by Andrew, but by people so eager to be a part of the pitchfork mob that they didn't even give a shit about violating that victim's trust. It was absolutely astonishing to witness irresponsible, childish, fucking amoral conduct.
0:07:43: I cannot believe it. By people I thought I knew. But while this experience exposed those people for who they were, It also really revealed who genuinely has a good heart and actually wanted to make things better and try to fix this. And this ranges from personal friends to even strangers who just reached out and are now friends to those who sent messages that I never could respond to that were incredibly moving. people who understood what it's like to be in at least parts of this situation and had compassion and also those who got to work to actual work trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening again. I'm just over the moon about CAN, the creator accountability network that they finally launched.
0:08:33: And we've undergone the credentialing. I don't know if it's official yet, but we've started that process. Lydia and I, and a lot of others, by the way. Those folks are absolute gold and they have worked so hard for over a year. They just went to work, put their heads down and did not stop. And they've created something amazing that is really going to help. I genuinely think that if enough people buy into this idea of the creator accountability network, if enough people utilize it, it can prevent this from ever happening again with that group of people. I mean, at least to a wide degree, that's not a promise I'm sure they're making, but that's an opinion of mine. By the way, a reliable way to see who is actually interested in doing that work and fixing problems is to look at who is in that organization versus who has alienated themselves from that organization and basically everyone else.
0:09:23: And that's all I'll say about that for now. But I do need to take a second for an extra special thanks to Matt, because what a miracle Matt is. There are a few passed away guests who I did actually try to contact just to have a conversation and maybe get some guidance who just completely ghosted people I really didn't expect that from. Again, the the amount of heartbreak in this is just it's really hard to fathom. It's just so many things like that that we're just like, wow, I guess I was wrong about that person. Really frustrating. And then there's Matt, someone who was on the show one time years ago, someone who was a complete stranger to me. We hadn't talked since I didn't even book him. I mean, Andrew booked him. I didn't know Matt.
0:10:09: But rather than taking the approach of, well, it looks like there's a conflict. I don't want to wade into that. Looks like there's a dispute. You know, keep my distance. Or even more cynically, I think, rather than saying, well, let's wait to see who ends up on top of this. You know, rather than taking that approach, Matt actually looked at the situation and the available evidence and made a choice. And I can't tell you how important that is that people actually make choices and judgments like make a judgment. So many people declared their neutrality. and wave the banner of skepticism to justify it as though that's good skepticism when really it's just both sides-ism and it's the same both sides-ism that has ruined our national politics.
0:10:57: It just advantages the worst person. That's just what it is. And it is absolutely true that there is so much information that is not public that you don't know. There's so much. However, it's also true that there was more than enough public information to come to a moral conclusion about, at the very least, the incredibly simple question of who was in the right regarding opening arguments to the podcast. But back to Matt, he reached out, he offered his help, and he never was asking anything in return. And at a time when I very much felt I could not or at least should not trust anyone, I just knew right away I could trust him. Matt was instrumental to all of this. I could not have gotten through this without him. I just thank you so much, Matt. I count myself among the, I'm guessing, really large group of people whose lives would be unfathomably worse if you had not become a part of them.
0:11:50: So thank you so much. And I also need to thank Yvette Saibabe, who assumed the position of receiver of the company. The list of people who I could trust with the existential gamble that was the receiver motion. was about one name long, and that was Yvette. I don't think anyone realizes how risky that decision was. I could have spent, again, six figures of money that I don't have to do the whole receiver motion thing, and A, I could have just lost it, sure, but B, I could have won the motion, but the judge could have picked Andrew's receiver. Imagine that. Imagine if I had gone through all that battles, wasted all that money, to make the matter worse to where now we're not in deadlock, but Andrew had like a tie breaking vote on his side.
0:12:41: Boy, that was a tough decision to make, let me tell you, whether or not to do that. And a very difficult part of it was who the hell is gonna be the receiver? Like who should we nominate? It's a ridiculous question. I'll get into this more obviously later, but you have to find someone who's neutral, but who knows enough to do the job and who from my perspective is also going to make the right decisions or at least I think is going to make the right I can bet on will make the right decisions. It's a really weird thing. Anyway, Yvette did an amazing job and faced dozens, if not into the hundreds of harassing emails from Andrew and his lawyer. Just non-stop bullshit and threats that were silly but were relentless and scary I'm sure for Yvette and she faced it all down.
0:13:30: But there is nothing more important to this and to me than this. My wife Lydia and I have a love and partnership that is stronger than the foundations of the earth itself. And despite everything, I knew there was no way this fucking psycho toolbag idiot was going to put the slightest dent in that. And I knew that even if my crusade bankrupted us, that we'd be holding hands in bankruptcy court. Probably doing flirty eyes. Going through something like that together just really showed us that there's nothing that can come between us. The stress of going through all this, having the kids too, having us both be all consumed by something horrible. And when every awful traumatizing thing would happen, it would happen to us at the same time.
0:14:15: We both receive the information at the same time. And then we have to parent two kids and a baby. Remember, Remy was just born before all this happened. This has been a really hard year. 15 months, thousand years, whatever it's been. And I'm really proud to have gone through all that and to feel closer than ever with Lydia and more excited than ever to live the rest of our lives together. It's funny how all the cliches are true, you know, family really is all that matters. But anyway, I want to say a few things that I can only now say because the legal dispute is over. First, this is very important to me about the pledge I made that any profit above expenses would go to repair and accountability. That statement I had been making. So what was going on there was that it was vital to the case that patrons come back to OA when I took it over.
0:15:02: It was just absolutely vital. And I was worried that they wouldn't do that if they thought or knew that half of their money would go to Andrew. And so I came up with the idea to pledge profits to repair and accountability to announce maybe charitable donations. I specifically wanted to announce a big donation to CAN. But of course, Andrew threw an absolute fit at this. and fought us tooth and nail on this and it became clear that that was a very risky thing to do that if I followed through on announcing a bunch of donations it could very well have compromised the wider case and that really what we had to do was just bulletproof the case as much as possible and so I had to kind of back down from that and it sucked because I couldn't explain myself then because you cannot like speak at all you can't Be realistic about anything because any show of any weakness just invites an asshole to yell about it and to crow about it and argue about it.
0:16:04: And it's like it's just the worst the worst system. But now I can say that despite the fact that I'm in a massive financial hole, I still want to make good on that promise. I don't even know that they're ready to receive donations. But until such time, I am going to pledge $10,000 to the Creator Accountability Network as soon as they are able to use it. That's a lot for me right now. I'm not going to lie. But I want to make good on that promise. And the organization also just deserves it. They're doing such good work. So I'm sure I'll make a more formal thing later on once I've actually conferred with them more. But you can, I'm saying it now so that people can hold me to it. Not that you'll need to but there you have it. Alright and second and this is this is... Alright, I want to correct something and this is about my recording where I revealed that Andrew had touched me inappropriately again one of the hardest things about this whole thing was knowing that I really needed to correct something I said in that recording but any admission like that would open up the idiotic argument of all if that was inaccurate, maybe the whole thing was a lie, just maybe he dreamed the whole thing up, you know.
0:17:10 Stupid but anyway Much more on this later, but one of the reasons I was so upset in that recording, well, the main reason I was so upset in that recording is that some people I really trusted whose opinion I valued had gaslit me into thinking I had done something horrible. But through this entire process, I was forced to relive the awful trauma of this past seven years. I was forced to dig up and go through everything and thoroughly examine it. And the fucking truth is that at every point in this, I did everything I could. In fact, I guarantee you I did a lot more than most people would have done. But I am susceptible to when a bunch of people that I think are good people and are smart people and are not dishonest people, when a bunch of them tell me I've done something wrong, I'm susceptible to that.
0:17:55: And I thought I did something wrong. And the whole thing is so traumatic that it's not like I go back and live in these details from that time. Like it is really hard to go back and check the record. And go back through these messages like every time I do it. I have to have a panic attack and feel like shit for like a day and a lot of this was years old and a lot of the facts were fuzzy. But the truth is that the range of options I had was severely limited for a lot of reasons and based on how our fucking psychopath law works. Had I taken the drastic action that people seem to think I could have done, Andrew actually would have had the grounds to sue me the same way I sued him. And he probably would have won. He could have owned my fucking house if I had taken any action that had killed the business with no, by the way, no one willing to put their name to it.
0:18:44: Okay, well, as I've said a number of times, I will tell my full story. And there will be other stories as well. There will be other people's stories that you have no idea about. There are other components to this. There's a lot. There's a lot to tell. And I definitely need time to heal a little bit and to recover mentally and financially. But I went through a lot to preserve my right to talk, so you can bet that I will talk. Oh boy, alright. Hopefully back to getting on the Trump episodes. This was obviously, this was a big thing, a big distraction. Something that changed my focus a bit. But I really hope as much as just it's clear that I have so much trauma around this, it's really hard to not just get angry about it and...
0:19:32: Frustrated whenever I talk about it, but I hope it comes through that none of this was possible without you at all like the importance of patrons showing Andrew that they weren't gonna accept what he did and then At least some of them coming back when I took the show over That was 100% instrumental. And without it, I'd be nowhere. I'd have no case, really. The law is just fucking stupid, man. I'd have like a case, but then I'd be like, well, what are the damages? And be like, well, I'm emotionally ruined. And they'd be like, meh, we don't really care about that. Alright, onward and upward and thank you so much. Really, really truly thank you. And I'm so excited for the future. There are big things in the future and I've got one fewer armature sending harassing emails to deal with.
0:20:20: And so I'm free to make these choices. I can do things myself now and there's a lot I've been wanting to do with OA and get done and hire people, do all this stuff. So I'm really excited. Thank you for coming along for the ride and I'll see you very soon. Good evening. Good evening. Fucking idiot. Anyway.