Are there secrets the FBI and Netflix don’t want the public to know?
The two defendants in the federal ‘OneTaste’ forced labor conspiracy case served a subpoena on Netflix, seeking to learn more about the FBI’s role in a film produced about the defendants.
Last week, the prosecutors pushed back, arguing before a federal magistrate in the US District Court in Brooklyn seeking to stop the defendants, Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz, from getting any information from Netflix about the FBI’s role in the film and their case.
The subpoena seeks to learn how Netflix purchased a journal from Ayries Blanck, which is being used as evidence in the criminal case, and how Netflix filmed a phone call in their documentary to the FBI reporting Blanck’s alleged abuse.
Nicole Daedone (l) and Rachel Cherwitz (r) head to court seeking answers to the FBI and Netflix’s collaboration.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors argued to prevent Netflix from making these disclosures, saying a “subpoena may not be used to conduct a ‘fishing expedition'” and that if Netflix provides the information, it may cause an “undue lengthening of the trial.”
U.S. District Judge Diane Gujarati for the Eastern District of New York has set the jury trial of Daedone and Cherwitz for forced labor conspiracy for January 2025.
According to court filings, the defendants claim FBI Special Agent Elliot McGinnis, with the New York office, collaborated on the film Orgasm Inc: The True Story of OneTaste, produced for Netflix by Lena Dunham. The film premiered on Netflix on November 5, 2022.
US Attorney Filed Indictment Following Documentary
US Attorney Breon Peace is pursuing forced labor conspiracy charges against two executives of OneTaste Inc. Five months after the Netflix film aired, US Attorney Breon Peace filed an indictment in Brooklyn federal court charging Daedone, the co-founder of OneTaste Inc., and Cherwitz, an executive with the San Francisco sexual wellness company, with a single count of forced labor conspiracy.
The indictment alleges that during 12 years, from 2006 to 2018, Daedone and Cherwitz conspired to force OneTaste “members” to perform “labor and services” by “subjecting them to economic, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse; surveillance; indoctrination; and intimidation.”
Attorney Jennifer Bonjean, who represents Daedone, criticized the government’s efforts to prevent the court from requiring Netflix to disclose the FBI’s role in the film. The film was produced while the FBI investigated her clients.
Bonjean also seeks to know the origins of the alleged “victim” Blanck’s journal, which Netflix filmed her sister reading. The film also shows a call to the FBI to report an alleged crime against Blanck mentioned in the journal.
Autymn Blanck reads from her sister Ayries’ journal purportedly written in 2015 in the Netflix film, Orgasm Inc. The Story of One Taste.
Attorney Bonjean said, “The government is using filmmakers to develop evidence. If they want to make filmmakers an investigative tool of the government, they can’t hide the evidence from the defendant.”
No Named Victims
Months earlier, attorneys for Daedone and Cherwitz filed a motion in federal court seeking to learn from prosecutors who are the alleged victims of their alleged forced labor conspiracy.
The eight-page indictment does not specify victims, dates or specific acts by the defendants to force the labor of anyone, leaving defense attorneys at a loss on how to defend the upcoming case, the defense said in court filings.
Federal prosecutors hit back, arguing they only charged Daedone and Cherwitz with a conspiracy to commit forced labor, and not actual forced labor.
US Attorney Peace wrote, “The government notes that defendants could be proven guilty if they never forced any victim to do anything so long as the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they agreed to do so.”
Judge Gujarati denied the defense’s motion, agreeing with the government that a forced labor conspiracy indictment does not have to have any victims, but only a plot to force victims to labor.
Netflix Clue to a Victim
The Netflix film’s “victim” of an alleged crime is Blanck, and the defense believes she is central to the criminal case.
Ayries Blanck claims she wrote a journal in 2015 that OneTaste defendants say is suspicious.
The US Attorney tried to prevent the defendants from learning Blanck’s identity, referring to her as Jane Doe in a court filing “to protect Jane Doe from further potential harassment and undue embarrassment.”
Judge Gujarati denied the government’s request. Blanck has appeared in media criticizing OneTaste in her own name.
Though she does not appear personally in the Netflix film, her full name is mentioned by her sister reading her journal, and another individual explicitly names her as a victim of a crime on a call to the FBI.
In the Netflix film, Orgasm Inc. Audrey Wright, a former OneTaste student, makes a call on camera to the FBI to report an alleged crime against Ayries Blanck.
In Blanck’s journal, a copy of which Frank Report obtained, Blanck alleges she worked for OneTaste in 2014. During this time, she claims her boyfriend repeatedly raped and beat her, while OneTaste executives did nothing to prevent it, but told her she asked for it.
Blanck also claims the company encouraged her to have sex with random men, including a spate of men on Tinder. OneTaste executives have produced texts Blanck wrote that show she voluntarily sought men to quench her insatiable sexual appetite. She once suggested to a OneTaste executive that she wanted to have sex with her boyfriend and five men.
The OneTaste executive, Rachael Hemsi, suggested she slow down.
One of many texts Blanck sent describing her hunting expedition for men.
In her journal, Blanck tells a far different story, claiming she was forced to have sex, Blanck never filed a criminal complaint in 2014; instead, she made her allegations for the first time through the journal, which Blanck claims she wrote in 2015, but was made public for the first time in Netflix’s film in 2022.
Netflix’s producer paid Blanck’s sister $25,000 for the journal.
The government’s effort to quash the Netflix subpoena is not the first time prosecutors have tried to stop OneTaste from getting information.
Judge Allows Civil Case to Proceed
Last year, OneTaste filed a civil suit in Los Angeles against Blanck for breach of contract.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Gillian Kassner of the Eastern District of N.Y. argued in L.A. Superior Court that Judge Rupert Byrdsong should hold the civil case against Blanck until the criminal case against Daedone and Cherwitz concludes.
AUSA Gillian Kassner is the lead prosecutor in the federal case against Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz.
AUSA Kassner argued Blanck is a “potential witness” in the criminal case and that Judge Byrdsong should halt the civil case to prevent OneTaste from using it as a “back door” to obtain information for their defense in the criminal case.
Judge Byrdsong was puzzled that the prosecution sought to hide evidence. He said, “Isn’t it the other way around [in criminal proceedings]? That you have to turn everything you have to the people who are being defended? That’s usually how it goes.”
Judge Byrdsong then denied the government’s motion and allowed the civil case to proceed.
Defense Claims Lack of Information After Lengthy FBI Investigation
The indictment of Daedone and Cherwitz came after a five-year FBI investigation.
OneTaste corporate attorney Paul Pelletier, a former federal prosecutor, said that he and other attorneys for the defendants repeatedly contacted the government – preindictment – to determine the nature of the FBI investigation.
The government, he said, was unresponsive.
Pelletier said the best answer he could get was when he asked AUSA Kassner what the government’s claims were, and she told him to focus on “the allegations in the media.”
Attorney Jennifer Bonjean
Daedone’s attorney, Bonjean found this ironic. She said, “How rich. [The U.S. Attorney’s Office] builds a case around tabloid journalism. Prosecutors refuse to tell us who their witnesses are or what their evidence is, and when we do our jobs and try to discover the information through subpoenas, they cry ‘fishing expedition.'”
Emails Reveal Alleged Victim Deleted Evidence Under FBI Advice
Because the government could not halt OneTaste’s civil case against Blanck, evidence emerged that might harm the prosecution’s case.
In responding to a OneTaste subpoena for her emails, Blanck claimed she could not provide them because FBI Special Agent McGinnis told her to delete her email account.
Blanck’s attorneys provided OneTaste an email dated November 8, 2022, three days after Netflix premiered its film on OneTaste. In the email, Blanck asks FBI Special Agent McGinnis if she could delete her email account. McGinnis advised her to cancel the account, since it was “making [her] feel uneasy.”
Further discovery revealed Blanck’s request to delete her email account coincided with emails she received from two women who worked with her at OneTaste, both of whom left the company shortly after she did, who accused Blanck of lying about the rape and other accusations made about OneTaste.
Blanck (l) and her roommate at the time, Maya Gilbert. Gilbert said Blanck lied about her abuse.
The defense believes her now-canceled email account would have shown evidence that Blanck, possibly with others, wrote her journal not in 2015 but in 2020 or later.
Since the journals are the only known contemporary evidence of Blanck’s abuse, OneTaste lawyers said, “the FBI’s direction to Ms. Blanck to delete emails compromises the defense’s ability to access potentially exculpatory evidence and undermines the defendant’s right to a fair trial.”
The U.S. Attorney, admitting that FBI agent McGinnis advised Blanck to delete email correspondence covering the period she was at OneTaste and through the production of the Netflix film, replied, “The government had no control over the evidence and no obligation to preserve it.”
Questions Arise Over Authenticity of Journal
According to the defendants’ attorneys, the authenticity of the journal purportedly written by Blanck is central to this quest for discovery.
OneTaste general counsel Kevin Williams says Blanck’s journal cannot possibly be authentic. He points to an entry in Blanck’s journal dated February 22, 2015. In it she says she is reading the Post Traumatic Growth Guidebook by Dr. Arielle Schwartz.
OneTaste lawyers want to know how Ayries Blanck could read the Traumatic Growth Guidebook in 2015, when it was not published until 2019?
According to the Library of Congress and the book publisher PESI Publishing, the book was first published in December 2019, almost five years after Blanck’s 2015 journal entry.
To discover whether Blanck even wrote the journal, or whether Netflix hired someone to write it for her and backdated it by more than years, OneTaste retained forensic linguist Dr. Robert Leonard, an expert witness for the FBI, DOJ, and overseas intelligence agencies, including MI5 and MI6.
Dr. Leonard stated it is “unlikely that Ayries is the sole author of the Journal.”
What remains to be seen is whether Netflix will reveal what their role, if any, was in collaborating with the FBI, whether they had a hand in concocting a journal and staging a phone call with the FBI before the agent instructed the witness to deleter he email account. The US Attorney does not want the defense to know and it may ultimately be up to the judge to decide.
