Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue

by Ryan Holiday

Ostensibly it is a chance to anticipate the hard cross-examination coming forthwith, to humanize his client before he is attacked, but it isn’t taken. Sullivan’s difficulty connecting with the jury becomes clear. Even in his questioning, he comes off as lecturing when he doesn’t mean to, punctuating every sentence with an obnoxious “Okay?” and “Do you remember that?” The jury has drifted, they are not buying what has been sold. That boredom is about to be banished. After an hour and a half of slow questioning by the defense, Shane Vogt is let off his leash and set upon his target. The full brunt of years of denied accountability, of bad legal strategy, of growing, building resentment against the media is going to pour down upon Daulerio. This will not be easy. “If I understood your testimony a moment ago,” Vogt says, hardly taking even a moment to flip through his papers, he is ready to set a new pace, an aggressor’s pace, “when you referenced your standard of newsworthiness of any child celebrity over the age of four, you were joking? Is that what you just said?” “I did say that, yes.” “You think that’s a funny topic to joke about, child pornography?” “No, not at all.” “At the time you made that joke, you were in a deposition, right?” “Yeah.” “You were in a deposition and you were asked a question about one of the central issues in this case, were you not? Newsworthiness, that’s your defense, is it not? And when you were asked a question about newsworthiness you made a jo...