Date: Sun, Oct 23, 2016 at 8:03 PM
Subject: Leonard Cohen Article
To: New Yorker, "*irs. commissioner" <*IRS.Commissioner@irs.gov>, Washington Field <washington.field@ic.fbi.gov>, ASKDOJ <ASKDOJ@usdoj.gov>, ": Division, Criminal" <Criminal.Division@usdoj.gov>, "Doug.Davis" <Doug.Davis@ftb.ca.gov>, Dennis <Dennis@riordan-horgan.com>, MollyHale <MollyHale@ucia.gov>, fsb <fsb@fsb.ru>, rbyucaipa <rbyucaipa@yahoo.com>, khuvane <khuvane@caa.com>, blourd <blourd@caa.com>, Robert MacMillan <robert.macmillan@gmail.com>, a <anderson.cooper@cnn.com>, wennermedia <wennermedia@gmail.com>, Mick Brown <mick.brown@telegraph.co.uk>, "glenn.greenwald" <glenn.greenwald@firstlook.org>, Harriet Ryan <harriet.ryan@latimes.com>, "hailey.branson" <hailey.branson@latimes.com>, "stan.garnett" <stan.garnett@gmail.com>, Mike Feuer <mike.feuer@lacity.org>, "mayor.garcetti" <mayor.garcetti@lacity.org>, Opla-pd-los-occ <OPLA-PD-LOS-OCC@ice.dhs.gov>, "Kelly.Sopko" <Kelly.Sopko@tigta.treas.gov>, Whistleblower <whistleblower@judiciary-rep.senate.gov>, Attacheottawa <AttacheOttawa@ci.irs.gov>, tips@radaronline.com, bruce <bruce@brucecutler.com>
I am wondering if it is humanly impossible for journalists to research the facts of a story and present credible and factual information to the general public. I am referring to the New Yorker October 17, 2016 article - Leonard Cohen Makes It Darker - about Leonard Cohen and the slanderous, defamatory, and outrageous comments about me. Feel free to read Ann Diamond's article called "Whatever Happened to Kelley Lynch." While I wasn't Cohen's lover, the article is generally factual. The reason for this is due to the fact that Ms. Diamond, a former lover and friend of Cohen's, communicated with me, reviewed evidence, communicated with third parties, reviewed my son's declaration, etc. In other words, Ms. Diamond researched her article.
I would like to correct the factually inaccurate, baseless, and slanderous statements. I'm surprised one of Cohen's inane stories about Phil Spector didn't make the final cut. He has dazzled journalists and his audience with his fantasies about men who hold guns on him. For example, Castro's soldiers who evidently viewed him as CIA recon during Bay of Pigs or Phil Spector. With respect to Spector, it's difficult to know which version of the "gun" incident is true. Cohen told me for 20 years Spector never held a gun on him and now has three versions of that incident before LA Superior Court. Unsurprisingly, his testimony during my show trial (meant to highlight the Spector gun incident, discredit me, and sabotage IRS) contradicted the version Spector prosecutors used during his trial. That version appears in motions they filed with the Court and, if Mick Brown is accurate, Cohen's statements or testimony were presented to Spector's Grand Jury. Mick Brown assured me that he reviewed the Grand Jury transcripts which were unsealed by Spector's so-called judge.
I see you've borrowed a phrase from Cohen's lyric - "absolute control." At no time did Leonard Cohen give me "absolute control" over his "financial affairs." I did not handle his financial affairs. He had lawyers, accountants, business managers, and a financial adviser/investor who did. Cohen personally hired those individuals. I was Cohen's personal manager.
Leonard Cohen's so-called "spiritual adventures" lasted from January 1995 through approximately December 1998. The intellectual property transaction at issue occurred in 2001. I know these details are irrelevant but some people find accurate news reporting important although I am aware that most people prefer salacious details such as your statement that I was Cohen's "lover." At no time was I Leonard Cohen's lover. I can assure you that sexual harassment and indecent exposure do not a dating relationship or lover make - unless, of course, you're in LA Confidential and half the local government of Los Angeles has targeted you for a celebrity such as Leonard Cohen.
Cohen did not discover, in 2004, that his "accounts" had been "emptied." Cohen personally raided his so-called retirement account and took loans, or caused payments to be made, totaling approximately $7.8 million. Leonard Cohen understood that those "loans" had to be repaid within three years with interest. Millions of dollars that Cohen personally borrowed, expended, or spent were not "gone." Cohen never fired me. I refused to meet with him and his tax lawyer, hand over corporate books and records, or assist them in unraveling certain corporate matters and transactions. The situation also involved Cohen and his representative's failure to report $8 million in income to IRS. And that's only part of the issues re. tax matters. In October 2004, Leonard Cohen personally informed me that he heard I had - or planned to - contacted IRS re. my concerns about his tax fraud. In fact, he told me an "informant" discovered a letter I wrote to IRS Chief Trial Counsel's office in July 2004 in my office.
Leonard Cohen willfully failed to serve me his lawsuit. A fraudulent default judgment was entered against me. That issue remains ongoing and the fraud renewal of the default judgment is under appeal. Cohen used his complaint narrative to further defraud the U.S. government by applying for and receiving fraud tax refunds.
I never called Cohen 20 or 30 times a day. I contacted Cohen for a variety of reasons: I was not served his lawsuit, there were outstanding business and legal matters (he owes me millions in intellectual property I owned but he evidently believes "theft" is acceptable), I advised him to cease and desist; and I repeatedly requested IRS required tax and corporate information. The City Attorney, Cohen, and Cohen's lawyers all lied that I was in possession of this information. I didn't "ignore" a restraining order. The order you are referring to is a fraudulent domestic violence order that I was unaware of. That issue is also under appeal at this time. The local government of Los Angeles will not be assigning me a relationship with Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen's tactics have been desperate and outrageous. This is not the conduct of an ethical, religious man. He has had an army of professionals lying about me, filing fraudulent legal pleadings, and others have relentlessly targeted me, my sons, elderly parents, sister, friends, and now roommate. Their conduct - including lying to IRS, FBI, DOJ, etc. - benefits Leonard Cohen. If Leonard Cohen's thinks of me every time a car slows down, he is hallucinating. I have no interest whatsoever in Leonard Cohen the person although I remain unconvinced that he is a sentient human being.
Of course Cohen would thank the judge. He knows who he can manipulate. Is reform lowly? Perhaps for the religious sage, Leonard Cohen, who has a pattern of stealing, has now stolen from me, Machat & Machat, Phil Spector, and possibly others. Perhaps Cohen can dazzle some judge with that fact.
You understand that Cohen is still in litigation? That's fascinating. He doesn't like to talk about it because it involves criminal tax fraud, I would assume.
I would like you to remove or correct your slanderous, defamatory remarks about me. If you're interested in any swamp land, give me a call at your convenience.
Kelley Lynch
P.S. Feel free to read through my blog or listen to Paulette Brandt, Ann Diamond, and my interviews with a small internet radio program. One of Cohen's operatives, Stephen Gianelli, is even in the comment section trashing me. That has gone on since he heard from Cohen's lawyers in 2009. This man has terrorized my sons. As Ann Diamond understands, this is how Cohen also operatives. This is her introduction to "Stephen Gianelli," who is evidently Cohen's "fixer." She's also been stalked, harassed, and slandered by Gianelli over Cohen. I didn't participate in the portion of the interview about Cohen and CIA's MK Ultra program because I know nothing about that program. Cohen merely informed me that he was a participant. It's hard to know what the actual truth is when one is dealing with an unhinged, pathological liar with motive.
When Stephen Gianelli’s emails land in my inbox, mostly out of the blue and unsolicited, they are so overflowing with repetitive accusations, misinformation, threats, self-aggrandizing boasts, undiluted rage, and general nastiness that it’s next to impossible to read to the end of one of them. My impulse is always to ignore them and tell him to stop sending them. That he seems to have unlimited energy and endless time to go over all these details with someone he does not know in an attempt to win me over, while at the same time he constantly accuses me of having an ancient axe to grind with Cohen (i.e. I’m a hopeless case, as far as he’s concerned, so he’s barking furiously up the wrong tree), would under normal circumstances be a sign of mental imbalance.
He always throws in plenty of insults, false statements and fanciful deductions. His tone is that of a pitbull straining at the leash and gives me flashbacks of a courtroom where I’m being cross-examined by a vicious criminal lawyer whose whole strategy is to exhaust and terrorize the witness. Gianelli’s game is to complicate and obfuscate, mixing legal arguments with irrelevant nonsense. He seems to assume his opponent is stupid and weak and can be overwhelmed by a word-salad. I think some of this could be caused by his overuse of “copy and paste” — he’s in a hurry and not really writing “to me” or trying to make a persuasive argument. He doesnt reread his emails to see what kind of message they actually convey: that the writer is standing on some soapbox in his mind, shouting at the world, like certain mental patients you see walking the streets who seem to be mad at the air, the cars, the sidewalk.
He’s obviously not interested in holding a discussion, getting to the truth, or looking beyond the various documents he “downloaded at his own expense” — and as anyone with common sense knows, legal documents don’t prove what really happened in 2004-5. They convey some of the evidence, all of it coming from one side.
Gianelli’s explanation as to why he’s been out to get Kelley Lynch since 2008, does not make sense either. He claims she slandered him and called him names on the internet, and in revenge he has totally immersed himself in her legal case. To the point of contacting her relatives and friends, spreading false stories about her, making up quotes, “writing her in jail”, posting photos of her residence and roommates on his blog – for the past seven years. Nobody in their right mind, let alone a ‘successful trial lawyer’ — who has no material interest in this case, and is not a paid shill — behaves like this. It’s not just extremely unprofessional, it would land him on ‘stress leave’ or in serious trouble with his colleagues and peers if he were still practicing. Hiding behind the handle Blogonaut would not conceal his identity for long, especially not on the porous internet. His badly written and often illogical, emotional rants would embarrass and bring him close to professional suicide.
But apparently since he’s retired, and apparently well-off, and lives in a comfortable tax haven on Crete, he doesn’t seem to care and just indulges his childish fantasies and catty remarks with his tiny circle of cronies. It’s fairly obvious he uses alternate accounts and different IDs, e.g. “Mongochili,” to make it appear others read his blog and share his ‘obcession’ with Lynch. His sheer extremism indicates he is either a “rogue criminal lawyer” gone slightly postal, or a paid agent of Leonard Cohen and/or his legal team. I think the latter.
I think his over-the-top campaign will have the opposite effect than the one intended: it can only make people suspicious of the case against Kelley Lynch. Otherwise, why not let justice take its course? Why subject her to endless attacks over the internet if she has already been declared guilty? This kind of harassment resembles ‘gang stalking’ — except that Gianelli seems to be both the leader and most of the membership of his own gang.
Gianelli is like no other email correspondent I have ever had. A single-paragraph response from my end always leads to a flood from his. Each exchange is like a trip down a rabbithole of irrational rage. Here and there he mixes in details and facts which might be worth discussing, if they weren’t drowned by high-volume invective. Of course this could be a tactic: if he really was ever a successful trial lawyer, it may have been by being an insufferable bully. Or maybe most of his cases involved low-life criminals or people with little or no education.
He claims to have accurately predicted the outcome of every Lynch hearing — but then so could I. As we all know, cases are won on technicalities. That’s one of the reasons, including the 10-year series of precedents, that I am not surprised the judge dismissed Kelley’s motion.
If Gianelli were truly a respectable lawyer, he would restrict his comments to these legal matters, and not engage in bizarre slander and speculation. He would have no need to bring up my “past” – or a wacked version of it that sounds like it came from someone on Cohen’s disinfo team. He draws from a psychological profile that is easily recognizable because I have heard it from other Cohen groupies. As someone who saw a bit too much when I knew Cohen, I’m no stranger to slander, I’ve written out my story on a public blog etc. where anyone can read what I have to say. Much of what I have written on Cohen was initially to defend myself against gossip and rumours that were circulated (and believed) by some of his friends. My side is completely different, much more detailed and accurate. It’s also quite revealing of the life of a clever pop idol in our celebrity-worshiping culture. There’s no point in my arguing with people who base their opinions on ridiculous myths, like the ‘restraining order’ that never was. Cohen’s deceptive tactics have not really evolved in the past twenty years, since he used them on me.
I really don’t care if Gianelli thinks I am a star-struck ‘scorned woman’ who never got over her passing encounter with greatness. This Mafia-style lawyer’s fixed opinions, based on trashy clichés say much more about him than they do about me or my writing, or why I became interested in what really happened to Kelley Lynch.
And of course, no one would ever suspect Leonard Cohen of encouraging Gianelli. But in my experience, Gianelli is exactly the kind of human megaphone Cohen places in charge of his ‘secret business.’ Like other clowns from Cohen’s private entourage that I have met over the years, he may not even realize he’s being used because he is ridiculous and therefore disposable. It’s a fascinating system that owes much to the criminal underworld that Leonard Cohen skirts with all the skill of someone born into it. I’m sure Gianelli feels at home, and knows his place, in that world where he acts the part of a useful idiot whose job is to create a circus atmosphere and put the audience into a deeper state of trance.
I am by now firmly convinced Lynch is a patsy/victim of a weird consortium of Cohen associates, clueless supporters, and Cohen himself. If I hadn’t lived next door to Leonard Cohen, and witnessed similar dynamics twenty years ago, I might believe differently. But the essence of what happened to Kelley also happened to me, two decades ago, on a lesser scale with lower stakes. It was relatively easy for me to walk away from it back then – my reputation was damaged but my life was not utterly destroyed by my association with Leonard Cohen, as Kelley’s was.
I empathize with her situation, and see it as just one more story of the corruption that is sinking the whole world. I know Leonard Cohen would agree with that. He would only disagree with the idea that we all have an obligation to oppose injustice, rather than ‘let it go by’ and even profit from it.
Ann D.
Interviews with Kelley Lynch, Paulette Brandt, and Ann Diamond
Excerpts:
Before he left on his spiritual adventures, Cohen had ceded nearly absolute control of his financial affairs to Kelley Lynch, his business manager for seventeen years and, at one time, briefly, his lover. In 2004, however, he discovered that his accounts had been emptied. Millions of dollars were gone. Cohen fired Lynch and sued her. The court ruled in Cohen’s favor, awarding him more than five million dollars.
In Los Angeles County Superior Court, Cohen testified that Lynch had been so outraged by the suit that she started calling him twenty, thirty times a day and inundating him with e-mails, some directly threatening, eventually ignoring a restraining order. “It makes me feel very conscious about my surroundings,” Cohen said, according to the Guardian’s account of the trial. “Every time I see a car slow down, I get worried.” Lynch was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and five years’ probation.
After thanking the judge and his attorney in his usual high style, Cohen turned to his antagonist. “It is my prayer,” Cohen told the court, “that Ms. Lynch will take refuge in the wisdom of her religion, that a spirit of understanding will convert her heart from hatred to remorse, from anger to kindness, from the deadly intoxication of revenge to the lowly practices of self-reform.”
Cohen has never managed to collect the awarded damages, and, because the situation is still a matter of litigation, he does not like to talk about it. But one result was plain: he would need to return to the stage. Even a Zen monk has to earn some coin.