| Reheated
Ghislaine with a Side of Scotty David Is
Paramount+'s Recipe In Maximum Maxwell
Cook-Off
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell
Book
BBC-Guardian
UK - Honduras
- ESPN
NY
Mag
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
April 12 – True crime on
streaming platforms is a
thing, and so there are
knock-offs, like some purses
sold on Canal Street in lower
Manhattan.
So
it is with Paramount+'s
cookie-cutter documentary
series Partners in Crime about
the Ghislaine Maxwell trial
that concluded in guilty
verdicts in December 2021 in
the U.S. District Court for
the Southern District of New
York.
Even prior
to the trial, there had been a
slate of podcasts about
Ghislaine, on top of the
four-part Dirty Money video
series about Jeffrey Epstein.
So beyond the verdict, what
was new for Paramount+?
Two words,
both of them fake: Scotty
David.
After the
guilty verdict, Juror 50
quickly went public, first in
the British media including a
video interview with the Daily
Mail, then ultimately with
immunity in the courtroom of
Judge Alison Nathan, who was
nominated for elevation to the
Second Circuit Court of
Appeals during Maxwell's
trial, and confirmed just
after she held the Scotty
David hearing and denied
Maxwell's motion for a new
trial.
Paramount+ played sloppy
second, giving Scotty David a
platform. With an immunity
deal from DOJ, how far can
Scotty take
this?
Episode
One of Partners in Crime -
they call it Season One, no
less, seemingly rooting for
Maxwell to be cleared or the
verdict to be set aside by
other Second Circuit judges
and another trial held,
endless seasons of sleaze -
doesn't only have Scotty
David.
It also
has sit-down interviews with
Ghislaine's siblings, and
footage of them talking to the
media scrum in front of 40
Foley Square.
(Full
disclosure, if belated: this
reviewer was in the scrum, and
has a mixed-form booklet about
the case, Maximum
Maxwell, on Amazon, here. Shameless.)
The irony has
been noted of Big Tech
successes like AppleTV and
Amazon Prime making
documentaries about the
indictment or implosion of
other high flyers, like
SuperPumped about Uber or the
various interactions of the
Elizabeth Holmes / Theranos
story.
(An
aside: who will make the
Balwami "Partner in Crime"
series? Why even wait for him
to be convicted?)
But
Paramount+, despite its
appended mathematical symbol,
is not a new tech company. It
is old media dressed up as new
and in Partner in Crime it
shows. It has the feeling of
an NBC Dateline, or even the
Cold Case Files channel
streaming on PlutoTV, which
Paramount's channel notably
does not run even this first
episode of Partner in Crime,
as is done on Pluto for the
new Dexter, the new Billions,
even SuperPumped, the pilot
again and again.
Paramount+ uses gossip
journalists, and a legal one
who placed the first Scotty
David interview in the UK's
Independent; there is not
mention of Scotty David saying
that to go public he got the
green light of his employer,
The Carlyle Group.
There are long camera shots of
the Upper East Side townhouse
of Wexner then Epstein, and an
old interview of Robert
Maxwell by Mike Wallace of,
yes, Paramount+'s parent CBS.
Partner in Crime indeed.
***
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