The Controversy Around The Tell EXPLAINED

There are a significant amount of people who don't quite get it yet. They're totally confused or they're a little confused. So let me just reset the table now. Amy Griffin is the wife of billionaire investor John Griffin. They live in New York City. They have a beautiful home in the Hamptons. They have a place in New Zealand. He is, you know, a tiger cub. He was one of the great original tiger cubs, which means trained under a guy named Julian Robertson, who made some of these unbelievably successful hedge fund managers. And this guy is one of them. John Griffin is incredibly rich. And when he wrapped up his fund, because he made so much money in 2017, he put some money into Amy's and let Amy go forward with her firm called G9. And that's where Amy got to, you know, do big things with big money, seeding companies like Bubble, Google, Spanx, you know, female founders. This won Amy over to the A-list crowd, especially those who got the investments. They got weak in the knees for Amy's pull for her capital. It wasn't enough. She was big with the Hollywood Women's Empowerment Luncheon crowd, I call them. The general public didn't know her. But, you know, at the Elle magazine, Women Who Make a Difference Lunch, she's a keynote speaker. She's a massive sponsor of many tables. You know, her followers kind of, you know, resembled, resembled the A-list. You can see a lot of people on there that you know and star in your favorite series. But you can't really belong to that crowd if all you do is invest your husband's overwhelming wealth in the celebrity crowd's ventures, right? You've got to be seen, too. You've got to have your own platform. She published a memoir called The Tell, okay? A book in March 2025. And in the book, Amy writes that after undergoing MDMA-assisted therapy, which is ecstasy, she recovered memories of being repeatedly graphically graped between the ages of 12 and 16 by a male teacher at her middle school in Amarillo, Texas. She wrote under the premise that these memories had been buried for decades and only resurfaced because of this therapy. Remembering that MDMA-assisted therapy is not legal outside of clinical trials. In America, at this point, her lawyers adjusted her story to indicate that the memories were recovered just before the medicine had kicked in. Okay, gotcha. So readers taking her at her word, the book became a bestseller. It was number 112 on Oprah's Book Club. Oprah embraced it. It was widely praised by others in the literati outside of Oprah. All the You're So Braves and You're Empowering Women Everywheres came rolling in, and boy, that had to feel good. Then the story took an unexpected turn. In September of 2025, so six months after the book came out, The New York Times had been working on an investigation into it. The New York Times was asked to review the book, to make a book review, to sort of spotlight the book. But the writers there were kind of scratching their heads saying, things don't add up. They had another plan, and that was to launch an investigation into the facts of the case, which no one else took the time to do. So in September of 2025, the Times published a lengthy investigation questioning all kinds of aspects of Amy's memoir. The article raised the possibility that significant portions of Amy's account may overlap with the experiences of another woman from Amarillo, specifically another woman from her eighth grade class, or middle school class at the same school. That reporting has changed the public conversation around the book, shifting from widespread acclaim and praise to scrutiny, and now intense scrutiny. It also led to lawsuits. The other woman from Amarillo is named Jolene Altom, and she's a classmate of Amy's from middle school. She filed suit. She alleges that Amy and her ghostwriter, Sam Lansky, appropriated central elements of her life story and incorporated them into the tell. A judge, literally in an hour from now, is about to decide if the merits of Jolene's case in California against the billionaireess Amy Griffin are strong enough to go to trial. She has to show a limited, minimal amount of merit. Amy has categorically denied those allegations and has filed counterclaims of her own. Amy's got a small mountain of problems right now. One, nobody really vetted her story, not her lawyers, not the publisher, not the sycophantic little ghostwriter who seems desperate to come to Amy's house now that she is hosting the Mahjong party. He might have gotten a little swept up. Amy called out her alleged accuser by name in her book Proposal to the publishing companies. That spread quickly. As the New York Times writers were traveling around Amarillo, which isn't a very big town, 200,000 people, but as far as cities go, traveling around, knocking on doors, asking about people and asking about this teacher whose name was revealed in the book Proposal, it starts to spread that this teacher is, oh my gosh, he could be a total violent living amongst us. That spreads quickly in a small-ish town and his reputation is upside down. Although nothing has been done, the police have not pursued him. There is no investigation into him. There is no corroboration. So it's just out there like that. He has had no other accusations against him in 30 plus years living in the community of Amarillo. One of the biggest points of confusion involves a character in the book named Claudia. By the way, I told you I'd reached out and discovered the real Claudia. I just reached out again about an hour ago. So I'll tell you what's going on there. But anyway, this woman in the book named Claudia, not a close friend of Amy's. Amy was popular, athletic, pretty. She was rich. Claudia is portrayed in the book as vulnerable, quiet. Amy recalls lending Claudia a dress for a cotillion dance. And she writes, the joy I felt to be able to offer Claudia that dress was boundless. But Claudia was someone to whom Amy felt eerily connected, right? Like someone she needed to protect and that they shared a secret. She kept writing, this woman was always on my mind. Claudia, Claudia, I know we are connected somehow. I know we share a secret. And of course, underneath it all, it's a dark, dirty, you know, dark secret. One that she leads the reader to believe is connected in these violent grapes and sexual assaults from childhood. Amy writes that she distinctly remembered seeing the alleged violent pedophile assailant of a middle school teacher, Mr. Mason, she calls him in the book. She alleges remembering seeing Mr. Mason's hand on Claudia's shoulder in a school hallway. She says that image stayed with her for decades, and later took on a significance after recovering her memories through MDMA-assisted therapy. In my memory, the dress and Claudia and Mr. Mason were all linked in some mysterious way I could not explain, she says. What we're learning is that Amy's having a hard time explaining anything that requires corroboration. Several people assume that Claudia was Jolene Altom because of the way she was described in the book. To a T, it was Jolene Altom to many. And those people have written legal testimonies, declarations to that effect on Jolene's behalf, filed as part of her Jane Doe versus Amy Griffin lawsuit that is in California and before the judge's desk this morning, today. So it's a big day. Amy Griffin says what Jolene alleges is not true. Amy's position is that Claudia is an entirely different person, and that the character Claudia in the tell is not based on Jolene Altom at all, but Amy cannot produce the woman she says is in fact Claudia because that woman wants to retain her privacy. I have found that woman because of a viewer of Hot Mice. It was basically someone who said, oh my gosh, this person, we got a phone call from Amy Griffin, can you believe it, told me she got a phone call from Amy Griffin. And so it corroborated out that way. I contacted the woman and it's definitely the woman Amy is claiming is Claudia. But I took it from there. I tracked her down. I connected with her. It appears keeping her real name anonymous is not only beneficial to her privacy, but also to Amy's untethering story here. I discovered that this woman was never in Amy's class. She went, you know, the eighth grade class that she talks about, this woman went to a different school entirely. And just over the weekend, I was sent by our Hot Mice viewer and anonymous reporter a yearbook of a different school called Crockett Middle School. And there is this person. Very interesting. You know, I texted this morning. I've tried to get her to speak. I wrote a very long text. I said, hi, Blank. It's Billy Bush. Again, I've shared your name with nobody. Just desperate to clear up a few things. Asking again for a private off the record conversation. You attended Crockett. Was it Austin? Was it always that school? Do you recall a Jolene Altom? Do you remember Jolene? What's your take on Amy Griffin's story altogether? Are these hijacked memories or based on maybe others still silent recollections? Is any part of it possibly true? This is all on background. If the teacher, and I use his real name, if his life, you know, deserves to be destroyed, well, that is good. But right now, he and two other men have had their lives upended by uncorroborated allegations made in either the proposal or the book. Also, I'm personally motivated here. I am deeply related to a survivor who was young when something happened. Psychedelic assisted therapy has saved her life. Anyway, I thought I would try one more time. Please forgive me if this is an invasion. And then I got the bubbles back. You know what I mean? Like, I was like, within 10 seconds, the bubbles started appearing on my phone, like she was responding. And the bubbles were up for like, seriously, like, eight minutes. I kept checking to see if the message had gone through. And it was still bubbling, still bubbling, like typing, typing, thinking, thinking, typing. And then about eight minutes later, no comment. So she's, you know, to which I kind of riff a little bit here and wonder, has there been an NDA? I would not be surprised. This is not a fact, not factually reporting. But I think that there, I would not be surprised if some nondisclosure agreements have gone out. I can't imagine the teacher, the teacher who, you know, Amy alleges, did these violent things to her for four years, from the ages of 12 to 16. If somehow that guy signed an NDA, it's a very, very lucrative one, very, very lucrative one. It would be confusing. Again, then there's the volleyball coach, who was friends with this alleged assailant of a teacher. I would not be surprised if the volleyball coach had signed one. She's, I know her number. I'm going to find out. But maybe, maybe there's an NDA here. There's a lot of money. Amy Griffin has an enormous amount of money. So, you know, sending 5 million or 2 million or whatever it is, which is life changing money for most people, I don't think would be off the table. That said, there's a judge deciding today, you know, if there's enough merit for Jane Doe versus Amy Griffin and Penguin Random House and Sam Lansky, that trial, if there's enough evidence, am I wrong? Do we have a lawyer in the chat section here? But doesn't the NDA get ripped up? And those don't matter under subpoena? I think so. So we'll see what's going to happen today. I assume that this case is going to go forward. Today, the controversy is no longer simply about whether Amy Griffin was violently assaulted over four years in school by this teacher. It's become a much broader dispute over memory, recovered memories through psychedelic therapy, the accuracy of the memoir, journalistic reporting or lack of journalistic code in reporting, and whether the tell represents, you know, Amy Griffin's own experiences or the experiences of someone else entirely, or possibly the combination of the two. Those questions are now being fought in multiple lawsuits, with both sides accusing the other of serious wrongdoing. Judge Richard Bruin is the judge. He's 87 years old in Los Angeles Superior Court. He will decide if infliction of emotional distress is on the table, invasion of privacy. I believe 100% this case should go forward. Like we said, multiple lives have been ruined based on allegations of the former popular, attractive, wealthy girl in town. She was the self-ascribed leader of the class who assumed, presumably because you know who she is now, that people would read her words and accept them just as fact. It wouldn't have to prove anything, except you used real names in places you never should have, and it has upended people's lives. She thought that there would be sympathy and support only, and you got that from Oprah and everyone else, until Martha Stewart started asking questions, who by the way is her neighbor across the street on Lily Pond Road. And then, you know, just every reader also is, even your friends are reading it going, something's not adding up, not everything's adding up. Though about 80% of people in Amarillo, according to a local source, believe that, you know, Amy's kind of just misremembering or flat out lying. We'll see where this all goes. Another woman has been featured as a vulnerable former classmate from a disadvantaged background with a wounded soul, a kindred spirit to Amy, you know, a girl who needed saving. A woman who Amy suspected was being S.A.'d like her by the same teacher, so central to Amy's courageous story as Claudia. That woman has been identified, like I said, by me. She's horrified. She wants nothing to do with this. Former classmate again, like, she didn't even go to the school. We're trying to find out if she went to the school in a different year, maybe transferred out. She's still anonymous to you because as much as I'd like to present her as evidence, you know, I promise to protect her privacy and I'm going to do that. Like so many before her and in recent history, instead of presenting evidence, Amy's countersuing in a federal court, which could bankrupt her accuser in the California case, Jane Doe versus Amy. This could bankrupt Jolene Altham. Obviously, Jolene, who doesn't have a lot of money, has an excellent lawyer working on contingency, defending herself in a federal case. She'd have to fund that legal bill herself. There is no contingency for defendants, for the lawyer of defendants. The representing Jolene, though, who, like several others from her life on record in this lawsuit, claims there would not be any other Claudia. The only thing that Amy maintains is one thing. According to, I think they're trying to say there's a lot of noise out there, but they're going to defend Amy on one thing, that she did not steal Jolene's story. That means they're going out of their way to say, we're not saying something didn't happen to Jolene. I'm just saying Amy didn't steal her story. Lawyers rely heavily for that on the August 2021 date where they say Amy was interviewed by the Amarillo Police Department's Sergeant Gordon Eatley. Remember, and a lawyer, a local lawyer for Amy before this interview said, hey, don't bring up MDMA and don't mention the last time you were essayed or raped was at 16 years old. That's too late. Leave out the 16, keep it at 12, 13, and don't mention MDMA. So she did this interview with this guy, the sergeant, and left out those details. Later, adding in the last time was 16. Her lawyers are heavily relying on that piece. Amy's team says, how could Dominic Price or whoever Jolene alleges called her under that name to glean private assault details from her life on the phone in April 2022 that were already on the record with police in August 2021? Amy's defense is saying it doesn't add up. She told a cop what happened to her in August 2021. So anything she told Jolene shared, it was already out there with the Amarillo Police. So she couldn't have stolen Jolene's memories because Jolene hadn't shared her memories until April of 2022, allegedly when some phony called up and said, my name is Dominic Price. I'm a talent agent. I'd like to maybe make a story about your life and get all of her details. One would have to assume that Amy didn't know them for this to work. One would have to assume that Amy didn't know these details all her life. William Jennings Bryan is one of the people who attested in Jolene's on her behalf. He was the boy that took her to the dance in eighth grade, now a man. He attested that in the day other kids knew what was going on and they were gossiping about what had happened. And when he took Jolene, she came back from disappearing with the teacher and she was tussled and she later told him what had happened. And I think at that point, kids don't just keep things to themselves. So the whole, in order for Amy to have this, I'm already on the record in August 2021, be bedrock, you have to assume that no kids were talking about this for years and years. Makes more sense to me to think that when kids hear of something terrible happening to a student at the hands of a teacher and it's all shrouded in darkness, they make up their own stories and they talk a lot and they don't have a place to synthesize it in a safe environment. So the question is, has this stuff been out there for a long time? And Amy Griffin made that experience hers. Again, not the girl living in the children's home, the foster home, but the wealthiest girl in town who, according to my local source, whose parents were helicopter parents, picked her up 10 minutes early to everything. She was very well cared for and parented and they didn't know anything. It's also hard to swallow. We're left with either, both Amy and Jolene suffered the same experiences with two different alleged assailants. Same, almost like-minded, detailed experience, two different assailants. Or Jolene misremembered. Maybe Jolene, Jane Doe, misremembered her assailant and it actually was the same teacher as the one Amy has pinpointed. Or third, finally, the New York Times, as Amy's lawyers believe, filled Jolene's head and that really Jolene's a fraud or a vulnerable woman who had facts filled in her head by Katie Rossman and Liz Egan, the two reporters from the New York Times. I think that's a stretch. I talked to a guy five minutes before we went on here live and he is a lawyer and a judge from the Las Vegas area. He knows Jolene. They are social friends as well. He's known her for eight years. I just said to him, listen, and Harry led me to him. Producer Harry there lives in Vegas and he gave me his name. And so I talked to him and I just said, look, is this a serious person? Are you from New York? He said, absolutely. We're social friends. She's not some kind of quack. Jolene is not some quack who's just coming for money. I said, okay. Now, I don't know the guy. Harry knows the guy, but I at least needed to hear that. Also, the viewer of mine, the Hot Mikes viewer who led me to the person Amy says is the real Claudia in her book has actually sent more information, her class yearbook from the school that she did attend in eighth grade. And yeah, like I said, it was a different school. So here we are on the day of the hearing. Again, as I said, Amy thinks I'm out to get her. I'm not. You just can't blow up people's lives without evidence or corroboration. No due process. Claim things about a breakthrough method of trauma, recovery, MDMA, and jeopardize its promise in the process. Sell tons of books. Be the keynote speaker at every survivor conference because of all of it while someone with sworn testimony on her behalf gets shoved into a manhole. Maybe something happened. Maybe something did happen. And if lives were not torched along the way, it would be very easy to walk away at this point. Boy, I hope there's a good ending here. And again, I'm getting feedback. Who saw Five Star Weekend with Jennifer Garner? So we had to go to Crew, which is the fancy lunch place right on the dock there in Nantucket. We went to Crew and of course, everybody comes over and there are a lot of people circling and some former UVA people and, you know, people who say, no, we were friends, we were friends, but nobody believes the story. Nobody. Even the ones who were super close, because they're given nothing. They're given nothing concrete to say that this woman's a quack. To say the New York Times is full of ---- and is acting nefariously. To say emphatically, you know, that these people are all a conspiracy and they're writing declarations and testimonies on the behalf of this woman, Jolene, because they're all trying to shake down Amy for money. All these possibilities that Amy wants people to believe, you have to give them something. Something. So all these people also believe, Billy, have you talked to James in the book, says Sunshine in the chat section. Sunshine, I've not talked to James. I've texted James three times. I believe, you know, I have his real name and he has not gotten back to me. I think he wants out of it. Maybe, maybe there's an NDA there. If anyone knows him, please feel free to tell him that I'm a man of my word and I will keep his name anonymous in our conversation totally private. There is a prevailing wisdom here that Amy, the money will save her in the long run, that it may all just go away, that the female founders need her, the powerful female founders need her and they need her money and it will go away. And that ultimately, you know, because of her wealth and connections, it'll just be one of those weird things that isn't talked about anymore. I can't, you know, the best for this trial, it should end in a settlement, is what I think. I don't think there's any way to prove. And if Amy settles with Jolene, you know, her off ramp is, I don't want to splice through this. I definitely maintain, this is my story. Give NDAs and pay people everywhere and just walk away. Pay Jolene heavily, donate to her cause, the Father's Ranch, which is the home for children of adult sexual abuse. Donate heavily there because that's in everybody's interest and then just walk away. But we shall see. Again, I'm going to be on a plane in about an hour and a half. I'll be paying attention throughout the day to what's going on in the hearing. We'll pop right into social media. We'll pop back on YouTube if we can, when that comes down. Questions though, if you have them, anybody, anything. What do you, Harry, keep an eye out for anybody who wants to That's why Snoop loves her. Martha gets ghetto on Griffin. Martha saw right through. Martha was just like, wait, you didn't tell anyone? Hold on. And that's another fishy thing is that, Jackie, that interview that Martha did on her podcast with Amy was scrubbed from the internet. I can't imagine where it was because the biggest reveal in that interview was when Martha Stewart said, wait, this happened at school? She said, yeah, only on school grounds. That's why no one at home knew. And then she said, only in the bathroom. Of course, in the book, she was essayed and graped in the classroom, the locker room, the bathroom, under the bleachers, and in the tennis center. So we left out, you know, telling Martha it was only the bathroom. I mean, that's not a mistake. It just seems like I don't think she had any idea that so many people would be asking questions. I think she would just assume that they would be like, oh, my God, you're so courageous. Please, Billy, get to the bottom of this story and show Amy for who she is. Well, here's the other thing. Everybody I speak to says she's so nice. She's a nice person. And then you, of course, say to yourself, well, how can she be a nice person? A nice person doesn't make up something like this to elevate her fame. If you believe that about her, I get it. You know, but do you have room for any nuance where she believes this stuff? She believes this happened to her. And in that case, she's pulling her hair out going crazy because she's like, oh, my God, this is my story. And sometimes, you know, out of self-preservation, people need certain things to be true. That may be the case as well. But again, some type of I think the lawyers for Amy are battling on one thing only, and that is we didn't steal the story. They're kind of getting away from this teacher whom we know who he is did this to me. If everyone believed it, that guy would be arrested right now and watching all this from behind bars in Amarillo. But he's not. He's mowing his lawn. So obviously, the doubt is heavy.