Portnoy Wages Own Defense in Mock Trial, Unveils New Evidence That Accuser Allegedly Threatened to “Expose Him.”
Amy Dash
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In a dramatic and passionate, live streaming, hour-long press conference held for his millions of followers on Twitter, Dave Portnoy held a mock courtroom exhibition where he waged a full defense. Referencing numerous “exhibits” that he and his followers dug up, including videos, social media screenshots and tweets, Portnoy was on a mission to prove his innocence. The presser comes in the wake of a Business Insider article that accused the Barstool Sports Founder of sexual violence toward women. Portnoy claims the descriptions in the article, which include a woman claiming she tried to run away from him and tell him the sex was “too much” but he just “went harder,” subtly accuse him of rape, which he ardently denies.
The title of the Business Insider article begins with “I was literally screaming in pain” and accuses Portnoy of being violent and humiliating to three women during sex, though only two women are mentioned in the article. Portnoy says it was in the works for eight months and even though Business Insider reporter Julia Black fell short of interviewing any women who said he did anything unlawful, they decided to run the piece. In it, Black draws attention to Portnoy’s private sex encounters with a 19-year-old and a twenty-year-old woman. The article is fashioned to infer that he solicits sex from teenage girls, although it never accuses him of sleeping with anyone under the legal age of adulthood.
During the press conference, Portnoy adamantly advocates for his innocence, playing his own defense attorney and taking viewers on an hour long recap of the saga from start to finish. He buttresses his legal exhibits next to excerpts from the article in an attempt to disprove every accusation against him.
Perhaps the biggest revelation from the presser was new evidence allegedly uncovered by a “stoolie”, (the nickname for Portnoy’s fan base) that Portnoy claims was scrubbed from social media by one of his accusers prior to the Business Insider article coming out.
In the article, the accuser listed as “Madison” to protect her identity, alleged that during the sex encounter, she told Portnoy that the alleged rough sex was “too much” but he only “went harder.”
“It was so painful,” Madison told Insider. “I kept trying to get away and he was like, ‘Stop running away from me. Stop running away from me.’”
Madison allegedly sent a friend a text message following the encounter, saying Portnoy choked her so hard she couldn’t breathe and that it felt like being raped.
Portnoy, during his press conference, said of the article, “I’m being accused of rape.” He then spent an hour publicly defending himself on social media against the accusations, showing alleged evidence that he claims vindicates him when it comes to Madison’s accusations. Initially, Portnoy said the BI allegations from Madison presented a he said/she said scenario that he couldn’t defend against beyond proclaiming innocence because only he and the woman were there during the experience.
However, Portnoy claims last night a “stoolie” who had been following the saga, reached out to him with evidence.
Portnoy said Madison allegedly posted a video to instagram back in July of 2020, detailing, in real time, her experience at Portnoy’s house and the “stoolie” had screen recorded it before Madison allegedly deleted it from her social media account.
The first picture from the screen grab shows a picture of Portnoy thinking hard while playing scrabble and the caption reads “me beating Dave portnoy in scrabble.” The next picture is a blurred picture and the caption reads, “Portnoy was a dick and lame and grumpy. He gets a 2/10 from me. If he ever truly pisses me off I have lots of content to expose him with. I am going to stick to the athletes.” The text was followed by seven emojis of flying stacks of money. The next picture shows Portnoy posing with Donald Trump during his interview with him, and says “ok. not my proudest f***.”
Portnoy denies all of Madison’s allegations claiming he and Madison had consensual, “normal” sex but just did not get along afterwards. In the presser he went into more detail, saying the two argued over politics and even though he’s not political, it turned into a “vicious conversation.” Portnoy, who says he doesn’t like extremist politics on either the left or right described Madison as an extremist liberal. He showed screenshots of her alleged past tweets calling Donald Trump “the biggest idiot out there” and saying she was “surprised nobody has killed Donald Trump yet,” among other anti-Trump tweets.
“My interview with Donald Trump was like three days later,” said Portnoy. “I think we have a pretty clear agenda that has developed.”
Portnoy was trying to draw a connection to Madison’s allegations against him possibly being politically motivated and fueled by their political arguments and her hate for Trump.
In response to her comment about Portnoy not being her proudest sexual encounter, Portnoy responded, “That’s because you f****** hate Trump. Somewhere along the way she started viewing me as this.”
Portnoy also shared a tweet allegedly posted by Madison shortly after they had sex saying “Dave Portnoy = little bit**,” and said it didn’t sound like something someone would write after being sexually assaulted. Madison told BI that after the sex she slept on Portnoy’s couch for another two nights until she could get a flight home.
Portnoy claims Madison is now on Tik Tok making duets where she makes faces alongside Portnoy’s video and is identifying herself as the girl in the article. He said she is allegedly responding to people’s comments.
In response to one comment, Madison allegedly said, according to Portnoy’s screenshot, “The article never said the sex wasn’t consensual.”
In another Portnoy screenshot which he shared, again claiming it is from the accuser’s Tik Tok comments, she allegedly says in response to someone’s comment, “nobody said he was a rapist.”
Despite Portnoy claiming Business Insider was accusing him of rape, he said Madison clearly is not, as evidenced by her Tik Tok comments and this proves his innocence and BI’s lack of credibility.
After the press conference, Portnoy tweeted a blurred video clip stating “This is Madison.” In the video, a young woman can be heard saying,
“I wanted to take control over their minds and how I did that was manipulation and lying. it definitely got to a point where it was easier for me to lie than tell the truth. So this wasn’t just like lying to my parents about where I was going or whatever, which obviously I did, but when I would meet new people I would lie about my entire life because I just wanted to control the way that they see me. Which, yes sounds crazy but it literally became like second nature to me. Like I wouldn’t even realize I was doing it. Now manipulation is a skill that I feel like I had mastered. It was very thought out. It was very articulate. I could literally get anybody to do anything for me that I wanted them to do.”
It is unclear who the girl in the video is or what the context is since it starts mid-sentence and there is no source explaining where it came from. Portnoy tells League of Justice, “A reader sent it in. From her YouTube channel I believe. It was to discredit her credibility as a source since she was saying she manipulates people and is a fluid liar.”
Portnoy, who blurred all pictures and names from his exhibits says he does not want to reveal either of the girls identities from the Business Insider article because he doesn’t want his fan base harassing them, especially since one of them allegedly has a history of mental health issues, including depression.
Portnoy’s tactic of publicly defending himself is being viewed as necessary by many of his followers online, even though he says his lawyers advised him against it.
It’s well known that many high-profile people are frequently tried and often convicted in the court of public opinion nowadays, following exposes, especially ones alleging sexual assault or abuse. Portnoy calls Business Insider’s article, which involves women accusing him of preying on teenage girls, a “hit piece,” designed to take him down.
The youngest of the two accusers mentioned in the article under the alias Alison, told Business Insider she felt preyed upon. Portnoy, who denies targeting teens, presented exhibits of DMs from Alison, which show her allegedly asking to “bang” him and asking to meet up with him. Portnoy claims they prove she “aggressively pursued” him and not the other way around. Business Insider also interviewed Alison’s older sister who uses the alias Olivia. The older sister explains that she pushed her younger sister to hang out with Portnoy because he wasn’t expressing interest in her friends and she knew he would allegedly take “the bait,” of being contacted by a younger girl. Portnoy uses this as further evidence that he was pursued and not pursuing.
Alison, who says she had a history of depression and was hospitalized days after having sex with Portnoy for suicidal thoughts, describes being “choked” and “kicked out” by Portnoy.
“He kept spitting in my mouth, which was really gross,” Alison told Insider. “I was kind of scared. I didn’t want to disappoint him.”
Her friend told Business Insider that Alison was in shock when she picked her up from Portnoy’s house and her mother said Alison didn’t talk the next day.
Alison’s mother filed a police report about ten days after Alison had sex with Portnoy, saying she heard Portnoy hung out with a lot of eighteen-year-olds and wanted to give the police a “heads up” about his “bad behavior.”
The police department told NBC News it had not received any complaints about Portnoy and was not investigating him. League of Justice wrote about whether the police report officially accuses Portnoy of anything criminal.
Portnoy, who claims Alison lied to avoid facing her mother, showed screenshots of DMs with Alison allegedly evidencing a conversation the two had after the sexual encounter. In the messages Alison allegedly says she bragged about being with Portnoy, is shocked he is still reaching out to her and offers him her cell phone to contact her again. Portnoy said that the messages hardly sound like someone who was upset about their experience together.
Portnoy also played a clip from an old Dr. Phil show which depicts Ava Louise, a young woman who is also quoted in the BI article, saying Portnoy’s behavior is predatory toward young women. Louise claims they messaged briefly in 2017 but she and Portnoy never ended up meeting. Portnoy confirms the same and questions why she was even quoted in the article. In the Dr. Phil clip, Louise, who licked a toilet bowl on social media to try to prove coronavirus is fake, says the following:
“So you lied to people?” Dr. Phil asks Louise.
Louise answers, “Well yea I mean that’s what the media is doing I think with this entire virus. If it’s a social experiment more than anything else, like obviously I wanted to {muffled} off of it and I was really annoyed that corona was getting more publicity than me because I currently have like a song going viral right now and no-one was covering it so I decided to hop on the corona wave but um yea I just did lie to people, yea I did and it did exactly what I thought it was going to do, it’s funny because I created like fake news myself.”
A furious Portnoy then describes why suing Business Insider would be an uphill battle as a celebrity who would have to prove that the article was written with actual malice. He showed a screenshot of Black’s old twitter profile showing thousands of tweets and her most recent profile which shows over a hundred tweets and claimed she scrubbed her account so that he couldn’t find evidence of her pre-existing bias and prove that she maliciously went after him.
“I got accused of rape,” said Portnoy. “That’s my fuc**** life, thats as horrific a crime as you can be convicted of alright and accused of. I got accused of it, with so far in eight and a half months, two sources that I was able to disprove in three days. They did not put in one positive girls interaction, I have like fifty of them and they’ve all offered… only two negative both disproven.”
In fact, the article, which puts Portnoy under a moral microscope for his private sexual behavior with two women, falls short of expressly accusing Portnoy of rape or sexual assault but accuses him of being violent toward women. Portnoy says Business Insider intentionally avoided making any full blown accusations against him because they couldn’t find any and to avoid a lawsuit. Portnoy, who spoke to League of Justice the other day to tell his side of the story, said the article has certainly damaged his reputation.
“Their description of what happened I consider rape. That is she screamed for me to stop and ran away and presumably I chased her and forced her to have sex with me. That is rape. I’ve been very clear on that. I don’t care how many times a girl says yes beforehand if she changes her mind and says no midway and you continue that’s rape. That is how the BI story reads to me. So that’s why I’m saying they accused me of rape even though that didn’t happen.”
In the presser Portnoy says, “People are gonna see this and think Dave’s a rapist.” He questioned the newsworthiness and journalistic integrity of BI asking how it could print the story with just two sources, that he says are not credible, and not formally accusing him of anything.
League of Justice has reached out to reporter Julia Black for comment and is waiting to hear back. LOJ will update this article with her response, if we receive one. Black was promoted to a full-time correspondent shortly after the BI article came out. The article was placed behind a paywall and Black recently tweeted that she will work hard to make sure the new subscriptions generated from the Portnoy article are worth everyone’s while.
Portnoy, who has been posting parody videos of himself beating up the Business Insider reporter, executive editor and others from BI is also accusing BI’s CEO Henry Blodget of being behind the story. Blodget was banned from the securities industry after settling fraud allegations with the SEC. During the presser, Portnoy played a clip of Joel McHale on the Soup mocking Blodget’s old appearance on the Today Show. Portnoy says the article, which came out the same day as the earnings report for Barstool Sports’ parent company Penn National, was designed to send the stock plummeting, which it did. He claims people shorted the stock in the days before, and alleges there was an insider trading scheme in the works by people who knew the article was coming out.
After the article came out, Portnoy shared an email that showed a BI employee allegedly contacting one of his sponsors and asking if they had seen the article and planned to continue to sponsor Barstool Sports. Portnoy says BI is actively trying to encourage advertisers to abandon the company he founded.
In a tweet posted Thursday night, Portnoy wrote, “Just to clarify I have no interest in digging any more sh** up on the women who lied about me. I proved my innocence. My war is with @BusinessInsider And that was has just begun.”
Portnoy ended his Twitter press conference by saying “this is just, just the beginning… I got accused of rape, it’s arguably the most horrific thing you could be accused of with zero point zero evidence and they f***** knew it.” He then cued dramatic orchestra music and exited the podium. The presser can be viewed below.
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