I recently appeared on the Roger Stone show on WABC to talk about the OneTaste case.
The Roger Stone Show Interview with Investigative Journalist Frank Parlato, Jr. discussing the OneTaste trial
https://frankreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/25-434 PM.m4a
Roger Stone:
Right now in the Eastern District of New York, there’s a federal trial going on against the founder of OneTaste, a wellness company, Nicole Daedone, and one of her executives, Rachel Cherwitz, that has got a lot of public scrutiny.
Publications as diverse as Vanity Fair, Revolver, the UK Daily Mail and upstate ArtVoice, have been harshly critical of this prosecution. The government seeks to position this as some sex cult, but then we learned the federal prosecutors actually colluded with executives and producers at Netflix to create a documentary that became the rationale for the indictment of these two women who are in trial in New York.
But here to break down this complicated story is Frank Parlato Jr., he’s an investigative reporter, the founder and the publisher of ArtVoice, the Upstate Lively Arts Outlet. …
So this is complicated for those who’ve never heard of One Taste. What exactly is it?
Frank Parlato:
One Taste is an educational company founded in San Francisco, California. And its goal was to and is to educate people on human sexuality and also in thriving and advancing in life.
Roger Stone:
It’s interesting that Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz, are charged with conspiracy to commit forced labor. As opposed to constricting somebody to force labor itself. It seems kind of concocted in itself. Were people forced to stay in this practice or could they voluntarily leave?
Frank Parlato:
The situation is unique because there never was a federal prosecution based only on forced labor conspiracy. The government couldn’t find proof that they actually forced a single person to labor. So they charged the two women with conspiring over a period of 12 years to get people to labor under the threat of serious harm, but the women were unsuccessful in forcing anyone to labor. So only the conspiracy charge is charged in the indictment.
Roger Stone:Matt Gaetz, former congressman, has a show on OAN. He was criticizing the FBI in this trial, saying this was another example of a weaponized judiciary and extraordinary overreaching and outright corruption by the FBI. What is been the FBI’s role in this entire sordid tale?
FBI Special Agent Elliot McGinnis
Frank Parlato:
Well, I think ultimately FBI Director Kash Patel, will look at FBI Special Agent Elliot McGinnis, the lead agent in this case. I think he is guilty of evidence tampering, obstruction of justice, perjury, and suborning perjury.
McGinnis collaborated with a woman named Ayries Blanck to fabricate evidence.
The evidence was created for a Netflix documentary. McGinnis and Blanck put this Netflix-produced fiction into evidence as if it was real evidence. They got caught. Blanck was kicked off the case, but the prosecutors continued with the case anyway.
Ayries Blanck, perjuror, was not charged by the FBI despite her string of lies to federal agents.
Roger Stone:
So who are the other witnesses?
Frank Parlato:
A motley group of disgruntled employees and students. One Taste had about 32,000 people take classes over the years and a couple hundred employees. The government got about a half a dozen former students and employees who say they were brainwashed.
Roger Stone:
How much of the story will the jury actually hear? How much will the judge let in? Sounds to me like this FBI agent will have a very hard time under cross-examination.
Frank Parlato:
He won’t be cross-examined. The government refused to call him. … He tampered with evidence. He used his personal email instead of his FBI email. He got caught. He hid evidence. And he fabricated evidence.
Roger Stone:I thought it was extraordinary when the defendants moved for dismissal , no fewer than 20 FBI agents showed up in court in some show of force, which tells me the government knows they have an extraordinarily weak case. This isn’t about justice. This is about optics, of power, of control…
A member of Congress has written to the head of the FBI, saying he thinks there are extraordinary abuses of power here by the FBI and by federal prosecutors, and asking them to look at the case. We have a new U.S. attorney, and it’s clear, in my opinion, this case should been dismissed from the get go. What do you think happens next year in the courtroom, Frank?
Frank Parlato:
They’re in the midst of trial. The FBI came in a show of force, the prosecutors came, more than 20 of them. I think it was a signal to the judge, who I believe is intimidated. She’s not capable of conducting a fair trial. She really should just take off her robe and join the prosecutors. She has excluded evidence that any kind of fair presentation to the jury would have mandated she include.
Roger Stone:
Two women started a company. The feds decided to indict. Now, they’re in federal court facing twenty years.
Frank Parlato writes, “The OneTaste trial is an artifact of the scorched-earth tactics of a government drunk on power, of how language is twisted, memory rewritten, and freedom rebranded as coercion. It is not about crime. It’s about confusion, where consensual touch becames a federal offense.“
Tthe judge, Diane Gujarati, has ruled for the government on every pre-trial motion, on every process motion in this case. Any time you see a judge ruling solely for the government and never ruling for the defendant, you know the fix is in.
It was true in my trial. It is true in this trial. The judge went out of her mind, when the lawyers representing these two women asked that videos that had been excluded from the jury’s sight be preserved. Obvioulsy signaling that whatever happens in Brooklyn, there’s going to be an appeal.
Frank Parlato:
Judge Gujarati, recently made a judge, was 21 years a prosecutor in the Southern district. This is the Eastern district. This is a question of honor. The defense has challenged the integrity of the prosecution, the novelty of the charges, and the bizarre and criminal behavior of prosecutors, and the FBI agent.
It’s almost like the blue line. This is a black line for the judge. She has to ensure there’s a conviction to protect the corruption in the Department of Justice and the FBI. But happily, Donald Trump, Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are here to change this.
Judge Diane Gujarati, a prosecutor in black robes.
Roger Stone:
We pray from your mouth to God’s ear. It’s amazing. If there are videos that would address this practice of OneTaste, why would the government not allow them to be seen by the jury? Why would they not be allowed to be presented as evidence? But more importantly, why would the judge, lose her cool and start shouting when the defendant’s lawyer simply asked that they be preserved? To me this is an incredible smoking gun.
Frank Parlato:
What the government wanted was out of context, selected clips, spliced, not unlike a Netflix documentary from which this case came.
When Jennifer Bonjean, defense counsel for Nicole Daedone, said, ‘the jury deserves to hear context. You can’t take a word here and a clip there and present that out of context.’ The judge said, no. The context might show that these people were happy, they were adults and they consented. So she said it was excluded.
Bonjean said, ‘Well, at least let’s preserve these tapes on the record. The jury doesn’t have to see them if that’s how you rule, but we should at least have them there.’ That spelled appeal. Judge Gujarati lost her mind.
Roger Stone:
I don’t understand how you could have forced labor, or in this case, not even forced labor, but conspiracy to commit forced labor, if there’s no coercion. Based on everything I’ve read, there is no actual evidence of coercion or conscription or that anybody was locked up or detained or beaten or bruised. I mean, this whole case seems to me, to be a fabrication.
Aa you point out, the FBI actually colluded with producers at Netflix to create a documentary which becomes the basis for a subsequent indictment. While that may seem outrageous, frankly, the FBI did this all the way back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover working with the tabloids to plant stories which would then become the basis for a prosecution….
Frank Parlato, an investigative journalist, has another big story that President Donald Trump reposted last week, pertaining to New York Attorney General, Letitia James, and allegations of the cover-up of sexual harassment by the attorney general.
It’s a bombshell story.
From #MeToo Crusader to Cover-up: Letitia James’s Silence on Alleged Serial Predator Ibrahim Khan
We’re going to have you back on the show to talk about that. But in the meantime I appreciate you tuning in today on The Roger Stone Show.
A orevious appearance by Parlato on Stone’s show.
