The media tycoon says Donovan Michaels is attempting to extract a profitable settlement by fabricating a “work of fiction” about their marriage.
David Geffen speaks all the contrivance by the YES 20th Anniversary Gala on September 23, 2021 in Los Angeles, California.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Photos
Music and film tycoon David Geffen says his estranged husband fabricated abuse and sexual exploitation claims as fragment of a “a daft and contrived strive and humiliate Geffen in the courtroom of public opinion and extract an out-of-courtroom settlement.”
The accusations attain in Geffen’s first compatible submitting responding to the bombshell lawsuit introduced closing month by the media executive’s quickly-to-be ex-husband, Donovan Michaels, a historic unfamiliar dancer 50 years his junior. The pair is in the midst of divorce complaints after less than two years of marriage.
Michaels (whose staunch title is David Armstrong) alleges in the lawsuit that Geffen treated him as a “sexual commodity” for years, perfect to later accelerate away him destitute and tossed apart “adore a historic object.” Nonetheless the tycoon argues on Wednesday (Aug. 13) that these claims are a “work of fiction” designed to “extort Geffen by publicly shaming him.”
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“Plaintiff can no longer embarrass Geffen and extort a settlement with petty gossip and salacious lies,” writes Geffen’s attorney Patricia Glaser. “Unfortunately for plaintiff, Geffen has the integrity, capability and energy to litigate this case in a courtroom of legislation (rather than in the click) where plaintiff’s fabricated claims can no longer be triumphant.”
Geffen says Michaels’ central narrate — that he promised to present “lifetime” financial give a elevate to for Michaels it’s no longer relevant what — is a entire lie. No such promises had been ever made, Geffen argues, and Michaels obtained’t be ready to corroborate his allegations with any written documentation or witnesses.
Your entire assorted claims in Michaels’ lawsuit are lies, too, in step with Geffen’s answering transient. Geffen says there changed into no abuse in the couple’s relationship, and that he treated Michaels with “nothing however kindness, appreciate and generosity.”
If the rest, says Geffen, Michaels changed into the one to steal succor of him by spending thousands and thousands of greenbacks from the tycoon’s coffers on luxury clothing, cosmetics, extravagant vacations, beauty surgical method, OnlyFans subscriptions and sex workers.
And while Michaels’ lawsuit claims Geffen plied him with medication as a tool of coercion, Wednesday’s courtroom submitting says this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“The allegations in the criticism that Geffen impressed or even changed into attentive to plaintiff’s illicit drug behavior are a pure fabrication,” writes Glaser. “Plaintiff hid his drug exhaust from Geffen for years. Plaintiff veritably historic ketamine, cocaine and maybe assorted unlawful medication. Geffen does no longer.”
Michaels’ attorneys didn’t at once return a quiz for direct on Friday (Aug. 15).
With a internet fee reportedly over $9 billion, Geffen has lengthy been one among the entertainment commerce’s wealthiest figures. He launched the influential labels Asylum Records and Geffen Records, besides to animation powerhouse DreamWorks Pictures.
Per Michaels’ lawsuit, he and Geffen met in 2016 by the site SeekingArrangements.com. Michaels says Geffen before all the pieces paid him for sex, however that the relationship later evolved real into a severe romantic partnership.
Geffen and Michaels married in 2023 with out a prenuptial settlement. Geffen cited irreconcilable differences to file for divorce this previous Would possibly maybe just, and marriage dissolution complaints are continuing to be litigated individually from the civil case that Michaels initiated in July.
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