“There has been a good deal of confusion, and perhaps a better word would be misrepresentation, regarding the deposition testimony which has been filtering out in excerpt form,” a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, Monique Pressley, said in a phone interview. “There is no criminal conduct here. Nothing within the deposition moves the ball forward for those people accusing Mr. Cosby of criminal activity.”
Ms. Pressley, a lawyer in Washington who is newly representing Mr. Cosby, took to television shows like ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “Shepard Smith Reporting” on Fox News Channel as part of a whirlwind series of interviews aimed at defending Mr. Cosby.
In the legal filing on Tuesday, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers asserted that the entertainer had been damaged by some news media accounts that they said inaccurately portrayed his testimony in the deposition, by suggesting that Mr. Cosby had admitted to drugging women so he could molest them.
Mr. Cosby, 78, has strongly denied such accusations. The lawyers also criticized the fact that the deposition in the case was released at all.
Ms. Pressley, in the phone interview, said that her role was to draw public attention to the arguments made in the legal filing, and she echoed its contention that Mr. Cosby was being portrayed unfairly. She said she would not go beyond what his lawyers said in their document.
She said people needed to understand the context of Mr. Cosby’s comments in his deposition, specifically that Quaaludes were a legal drug in the 1970s that many people used during consensual s*xual encounters.
She also said that while Mr. Cosby had admitted to having extramarital affairs, these were a private matter.
“I don’t understand why that’s news,” she said. “A man having an affair or two or 20, even extramarital affairs, to me is not a news item. It’s history.”
The 2005 lawsuit, brought by Andrea Constand, a former Temple University basketball manager who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and molesting her, was settled in 2006. In the deposition, Mr. Cosby, who has been married since 1964, described in candid terms a number of extramarital affairs, and admitted to obtaining Quaaludes to give to young women with whom he wanted to have s*x.
For several days, Mr. Cosby’s advisers declined to comment on the deposition. But the filing on Tuesday, along with Ms. Pressley’s on-the-record pronouncements, suggest the team’s strategy is to proceed on three broad fronts: 1) to cast Mr. Cosby’s use of drugs during s*x as a widely accepted practice four decades ago; 2) to assert that his testimony does not change his consistent denials that he did anything criminally wrong; and 3) to argue that it was a mistake for the court documents to be released.
While some news articles following the release of excerpts from his testimony suggested that Mr. Cosby had been “drugging” women, others presented a balanced account of Mr. Cosby’s remarks, noting that he said the drug-taking and s*x had been consensual.
Ms. Pressley joined Mr. Cosby’s team of advisers recently. Last week, she had made another appearance on “Good Morning America” as a legal analyst asked to speak about the Cosby case.
While Ms. Pressley said it was too early to know the full legal ramifications of the release of the deposition, she claimed that it would help Mr. Cosby in any criminal investigation because he admitted only to consensual s*x.
Mr. Cosby still faces two defamation cases, in Massachusetts and in California; a civil case in California; and a criminal investigation into a complaint brought by a woman in Los Angeles.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have been trying to have the California lawsuit, which was filed by Judy Huth, dismissed and had asked the California Supreme Court to review the case. Ms. Huth alleges that in 1974, when she was 15, Mr. Cosby forced her to perform a s*x act on him at the Playboy Mansion.
On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court denied the Cosby team’s petition for review, and the lawyer for Ms. Huth, Gloria Allred, said in a statement that she wanted to depose Mr. Cosby as soon as possible.
Ms. Huth is one of more than two dozen women who have come forward to allege that Mr. Cosby s*xually assaulted them in some way.
On “Good Morning America,” Ms. Pressley was asked by the host George Stephanopoulos, “All of these women, more than two dozen women, all of these women are liars?”
“I’m not making conclusions,” Ms. Pressley responded, “and you know that I can’t, about whether someone is lying or not. What I am saying is that Mr. Cosby has denied the accusations that have been lodged thus far. The sheer volume, or number of people, who are saying a particular thing does not make it true.”
Ms. Pressley also defended Mr. Cosby’s response in the deposition to a question about an episode in 1976. He was asked whether one woman was capable of consenting to s*xual intercourse after he gave her Quaaludes.
Ms. Pressley said Mr. Cosby’s reply — “I don’t know” — should be taken in context.
“What he was speaking to in the deposition, if you look at it contextually, is her state of mind, which no person, as you know, can testify to,” she said on “Good Morning America.”
Public relations experts said there was a potential tactical advantage in having a female lawyer serve as an advocate on television for Mr. Cosby.
Andrew D. Gilman, the chief executive of the crisis communications firm CommCore Consulting Group, said that Ms. Pressley “may convince some people, and she helps credibility a little bit.”
But he said the Cosby team’s attempt to shift the blame by characterizing the entertainer as a victim of unfavorable media reports would likely resonate only with his supporters, and that a better way forward would be for Mr. Cosby to make some sort of admission or express remorse himself.
Ms. Pressley denied that her remarks represented a new strategy, and she said that Mr. Cosby’s lawyers had been speaking through the courts.
She said she could not speak to how Mr. Cosby reacted to the recent publication of the deposition, nor would she say whether Mr. Cosby would make any public statements. The world was already hearing his point of view, she insisted. “When his lawyers speak, he speaks,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/business/media/cosby-team-begins-public-pushback.html?_r=0
Monique Pressley, attorney for Bill Cosby, speaks to CNN's New Day for the first time, defending the entertainer.
