The phantom phone call, the secret subpoena, and the mightiest of motions

by ersatz_cats

2023 continues to be a terrible year for disgraced video game cheater Billy Mitchell. His friends are abandoning him. He’s been caught lying about joysticks and faking evidence for his lawyers, and of course just lying out his ass in general. His deposition video full of falsehoods continues to circulate, despite his best efforts at suppressing the truth. And from the looks of it, things are only going to get worse for him.

The major topics of today involve new filings from both TG’s and Billy’s attorneys. Billy’s side is complaining about the public dissemination of deposition testimony, which of course happens to make their client look like a liar. Meanwhile, TG’s attorney is following up on the revelation of Billy’s latest bout of fake evidence. Billy and his lawyers are potentially facing up to $81,000 in sanctions, or possibly even outright termination of their lawsuit. Plus, Billy may be required to turn over privileged communications, or to sit down for an additional deposition at his own cost.

After you’ve read about Manning & Kass’ latest folly, stick around as we go over a couple other stories of interest in the greater Billy Mitchell saga. If you watched Billy’s recently released deposition video, you may recall conversations about things like Skype conference calls, which may have seemed unimportant without the proper context. As you’ll see, I’m not exaggerating when I say Billy’s entire case hinges on being able to prove this phantom phone call happened, which (spoilers) it did not. Also, you may have heard a rumor online that, despite Billy’s testimony, perhaps he really did have access to the mortgage brokers photos after all. But if he did, why would he walk right into Tash’s questioning about the joystick? We may not have all the answers to what goes on underneath that mullet, but today I offer the facts we do have, as we explore the heretofore untold story of the secret FAMB subpoena.

IN LIKE A LION

This time, we’re going to start off with the day’s main event.

I would recommend folks go back and read the saga of the two plaques if you haven’t, but as a refresher, Billy testified in deposition that he was given not one, but two different commemorative plaques at the 1999 Tokyo Game Show. One of these simply congratulated Billy on allegedly doing a perfect score on Pac-Man, and talked about Namco’s new Playstation game. (This is the plaque people had seen at conventions and in movies over the years – i.e., the one that actually existed.) But now, according to Billy, there was a second, nearly identical plaque from Namco, which specifically bore the words “Player of the Century”. This was all part of Billy’s ongoing lie that he was named “Player of the Century” specifically by Namco, and not just by his friend and business partner Walter Day.

As discussed last time, both of these new plaques are blatant forgeries. For one thing, the proportions of the embossed Pac-Man design are totally different. Neither of them may even be the same size as the original – unless the photographer has the world’s tiniest laptop. And although the hotel room photo was of such low resolution that the text on the plaques can’t be read, we are able to identify two additional lines of text on one of them – most likely where Billy had the words “Player of the Century” inserted. This photo was inadvertently disclosed by Walter Day during his deposition (which has not yet been released in full), leading to a wild goose chase over who took the picture, where the plaques were found, and who has current possession of them.

It can be exhausting tracking down all of Billy’s lies, which is one reason why, historically, Billy tended to get his way. (His threats and bullying also proved to be effective tactics, especially among those who were more interested in clout than in actual gaming history.) But all of that changes when you bring your silly Donkey Kong cheating nonsense to court. The litigation process is supposed to be a search for the truth, and judges don’t like it when clients and attorneys deliberately lie just to swamp their opponents, and the court itself, with more work.

We’ve been hearing for a while about how Billy Mitchell is going to lose this lawsuit – and he is. But we’re starting to see the end of that road coming over the horizon. I present to you, filed on Wednesday, September 6, the mightiest of motions, courtesy of TG’s attorney, the Mighty Mister Tash:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2023-09-06-TG-Motion-to-compel.pdf

There’s a lot to unpack in this introduction, but we’re gonna take this one step at a time.

Tash goes hard on the two plaques chicanery. He makes no bones about the fact Billy’s lawyers made claims about the plaques and that photo they knew (or at least should have known) were untrue. Tash highlights many of the things we discussed in our last update, including that neither of the new plaques match the single one which had been seen publicly, all by itself, before this lawsuit. As Tash stresses here, “There’s only ever been one.”

Since you can’t just walk into court and say “Your honor, this is obviously a bunch of bullcrap”, Tash had to secure expert testimony, establishing the new plaques as distinct items relative to the award from 1999. To that end, he employed the services of forensics expert Matthew “Motti” Gabler. Motti compared the plaques seen in the motel room photo to various photos of the original plaque available online and in the films King of Kong and Chasing Ghosts. Most of his analysis covers what we discussed last time – that the Pac-Man design is a different size on the new plaques, and one of the fakes has too many lines of text. But if you’d like to review Motti’s work in full for yourself, you can find that here:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2023-09-06-TG-Declaration-of-Matthew-Gabler.pdf

As for how the plaques were supposedly discovered, Tash explores that as well, highlighting how Team Billy’s stories kept changing each time Tash attempted to track it down. First either Jerry Byrum or Brian Cady were supposed to know about Billy’s “donation”. Then it became a guy named John Grunwald. And finally, thanks to a YouTube screenshot, they found the fingerprints of Billy’s longtime friend, Isaiah “Triforce” Johnson.

Tash also provides stills from CCTV footage from Bridge View Center, pairing it against the narrative of when Triforce allegedly left the venue and returned, and when he came into possession of the black trash bag supposedly containing the four awards seen in the motel room photo. I’m not getting into the weeds of this narrative at this time, in part because the actual language Grunwald used in his deposition is not yet public. In the previous joint discovery statement, Tash cited the claim that Triforce left Bridge View “at 5:00 p.m.”, whereas the new filings revise that language to “after 5:00 p.m.” At any rate, you can see Triforce and an unidentified individual leaving at about 7:00 p.m., and returning about forty minutes later. The trash bag seems to manifest between corridors, perhaps emerging from that rolling suitcase. You can find this analysis and the relevant screenshots in a new declaration by Tash, filed alongside his motion to compel:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2023-09-06-TG-Declaration-of-David-Tashroudian.pdf

The new documents from TG’s side also include a brief declaration from Laura Carrell about her knowledge of the “search” for Billy’s plaques, and another short declaration from a Jacob Pilkington authenticating the cited CCTV footage from the Bridge View Center.

It would be one thing if Billy had said his “Player of the Century” plaque had just disappeared at some point. Maybe he’d suffered a burglary in his gated neighborhood, and some scoundrel had absconded with all of his exonerating evidence. Or he could have set his own house on fire, which ironically could end up being the less costly of his options. But no, Billy (or one of his close associates) felt the need to fabricate blatantly phony mockups, and in doing so, provided exactly the evidence Twin Galaxies needed. As Tash points out, a key point in TG’s countersuit is that Billy and Walter created Billy’s “Player of the Century” title themselves, then lied and told everyone that title came from Namco. Sure, it’s doubtful that these phony plaques existed when the counter-suit was filed in 2020, but they do exist now, and they demonstrate Billy’s intent to defraud the public. Assuming Billy’s case is not tossed outright, this motion to compel further production will absolutely be granted, because proving this bit of fakery is now central to proving the fraud perpetrated by Billy Mitchell.

The new plaques were last reported to be in the possession of Triforce, who allegedly mailed them back to Jerry Byrum in Iowa before flying home to Jamaica. Granted, this is just the newest version of the story, and thus we don’t actually know for certain where these forgeries are hiding as of this moment. But thanks to Team Billy’s own stories, Tash was able to accentuate his arguments with the following ironic remark: “Now that Mr. Byrum has the plaques and they have been discovered, Plaintiff should be able to produce them pursuant to this discovery request.”

All of this would be enough for one mighty motion, but we’re not done yet. In making his case that Billy’s lawsuit should be terminated, Tash also highlights Billy’s other testimonial lies, including that he was never a director with the Hall of Fame – something contradicted by current Hall president Jerry Byrum, as well as his fellow counter-suit defendant Walter Day. This lie is relevant because Billy claimed to have donated those plaques to said Hall of Fame, implying that they were no longer under his control. Billy’s deposition testimony about his mortgage brokers score also contradicted that of Josh Ryan, the fabled GameStop manager. Ryan recalled setting up the game and locking the cabinet, but was clear that he did not connect any recording equipment, and that there was no way any direct feed from that machine could have been recorded.

There are a few other loose ends as well. Tash makes formal his request to compel disclosure of Billy’s settlement with the late YouTuber Apollo Legend, as well as the videos Billy acquired in that settlement. Also, given the revelation of the above shenanigans, Tash is asking that the court require Billy to sit for another deposition, specifically at his own expense, to answer for his now demonstrated lies and trophy-related tomfoolery.

Ah, but it continues to get worse for Team Billy. It turns out Billy Junior, Manning & Kass’ purported “law clerk”, has been up to shenanigans of his own. Starting way back in their early filings, the narrative put forth by Team Billy was that Twin Galaxies entered into their dispute investigation with a pre-ordained conclusion – in other words, that TG intended all along to defame pool old Billy, and that the dispute was all a farce to give this decision a veneer of legitimacy. And to that end, a story was concocted that Jace Hall called Walter Day in the midst of the investigation and asked him, for no apparent reason, “How will you feel when I announce that Billy [Mitchell] cheated?”

As seen above, that exact quote was even included the court’s ruling against TG’s anti-SLAPP motion in 2020, which you can find on page 214 of a “compendium of evidence” filed alongside this new motion:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2023-09-06-TG-Evidence-compendium.pdf

Note that, when evaluating a potential anti-SLAPP dismissal, the value of evidence is not weighed, and contradicting evidence is not considered. That’s what an eventual trial is for. All that mattered at that stage was that the plaintiff (Billy) must show that he’s at least attempting to prove all the required elements of his case. Presumably, one party isn’t going to just tell a bunch of lies, because if they do, they can get in big trouble for doing so. But as we’ve already documented, Billy indeed pushed his case past anti-SLAPP by lying through his teeth. Of course, this hasn’t stopped Manning & Kass from boasting about their anti-SLAPP win for their celebrity client (at least not yet). At the time, Billy cited this as a major win, while seemingly forgetting that continuing his lawsuit will only cause his lies to get more closely examined and exposed.

However, when TG got to actually question Walter Day directly, they were able to demonstrate what Tash and Jace already knew – that this quote was fabricated. It turns out, the actual thing Jace asked was something closer to “How will it affect you if Billy is determined to have cheated?” You might notice how this lacks the tone of a pre-ordained conclusion, which was the entire point of its inclusion in anti-SLAPP arguments.

I’m not going to tell you that Billy’s lawsuit was allowed to proceed strictly on the basis of this fabricated remark which “law clerk” Junior falsely attributed to Jace Hall, or that the case would have been dismissed by now without Junior’s lie. But I’m also not going to tell you that it was not crucial to that ruling. Given how it was directly cited as an element of the case, it’s undeniable that it was a nonzero factor in the court’s decision to prolong Billy’s litigation for almost another three years now. An argument can certainly be made for termination here, given that some of the testimony the court relied on to deny an anti-SLAPP dismissal is now shown to have been an outright lie.

If you were a judge, and you weren’t inclined to toss this Dankey Kang nonsense out of your courtroom altogether, how would you resolve this particular sub-fiasco? My friend, the answer lies in more of what the lawyer types call “discovery”. Normally, attorney-client communications are considered “privileged”. In other words, while you can subpoena Billy’s chats with Todd Rogers or Rob Childs or Eric Tessler or any of the other clowns who kiss his ass, Billy’s communications between him and his attorney are considered confidential. And this extends to “law clerk” Junior, as he would be considered part of Billy’s legal team. However, this privilege becomes waived once you can demonstrate that an attorney and their client may be conspiring to commit a crime. Or as Tash puts it:

[T]he crime-fraud exception applies to communications between Plaintiff, his son, and Plaintiff’s lawyers by virtue of the fact the son is a law clerk suborning perjury by writing false statements for witnesses to sign and submit to this Court.

But that’s not even the juiciest tidbit to be revealed in this new motion!! When I first heard this next item, I howled with laughter.

Did you notice how, at 5:20:20 in his deposition, Billy testified that he received none of the money from the sale of TG to Jace Hall (“HD Films”)? Tash summarizes that testimony in his new declaration:

So far, we’d gotten only Billy’s version of events. Walter Day has been deposed, and his deposition is still designated as confidential (something which I hope gets challenged). However, through these new filings, we’re beginning to get snippets of what was discussed. And it turns out, when it comes to what Billy received from the sale of Twin Galaxies to Jace Hall, Walter Day had a different story:

You have got to be kidding me!!! Billy Mitchell swore under oath that he received none of the money from the sale of TG, when in reality, he received $33,000 of that money, and he asked Walter Day to keep that money a secret!? LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

They know that they’re being counter-sued for fraud, don’t they? How could anyone possibly think they’re going to put this case before a jury and not get absolutely eviscerated?

Oh, right. As was reported last time, and as Tash reminds the court in the new filing, Team Billy are literally filming a movie talking about this case. If you think the court frowns upon lying, wait until you see how they treat plaintiffs filling court dockets with bogus lawsuits just so they can film “documentaries” about them. Meanwhile, from the sound of it, Tash is interested in getting access to Ed Cunningham’s footage as well. Stay tuned, I guess.

At any rate, Tash makes clear that monetary sanctions against Billy and his attorneys are called for “because there is no substantial justification for Plaintiff’s failure to produce the requested documents”. After calculating the hours he has spent addressing these items, Tash calculated the bill at $81,875. This is addition to calling for a termination of Billy’s case, which Tash refers to as “the only remedy appropriate to curb” the “abuse of the discovery process”.

It was easy for Billy’s side to file a bunch of nonsense, putting TG on the defensive and forcing Tash to do the work of accurately and diligently refuting everything. But now, it’s Manning & Kass that are on defense. As Tash said in his conclusion, the burden is now on them. They can’t ignore this motion – if they do, they’re looking at an $81,000 loss. I bet that, going in, Manning & Kass thought they were getting an amazing deal with this case. Contingency defamation? Representing a celebrity client? And his son is gonna do all the leg work for us? We can just sit back and stamp our names on filings and rake in the winnings? Surely, this Jace Hall guy doesn’t really care about some Donkey Kong score. TG’s insurance will probably pay it out before it goes anywhere. Open and shut… Except that now, thanks to relying on Billy Mitchell Junior’s sleazy work without sufficient oversight, they’re facing an ever-escalating mountain of work, and now could be on the hook for thousands of dollars in sanctions. I guess you get what you pay for.

I normally avoid giving strategy suggestions to lying cheaters. But in this case, I’m genuinely at a loss for how Team Billy will respond. Are they gonna say the fake plaques got lost in the mail? Are they going to try and argue that Triforce is some chaotic lone wolf, who Billy barely knows? Good luck with that one. Are they gonna try and fashion yet more new plaques, which somehow look a little like the original and a little like the motel room ones? Are they gonna say “Junior isn’t really our ‘law clerk’ after all”? “And all the times we said he was, we were just lying”? And what possible justification can they have for arguing that Billy shouldn’t have to sit for another deposition at their expense?

If they were smart, Billy’s lawyers would come out right now and say “Our client lied to us, we honestly believed everything we reported at the time, but we can’t represent him any longer,” and then just hope that the $81k is levied against Billy exclusively. But I think we’ve established by now that Anthony Ellrod, Kristina Ross, and the other jokers at “the U2 Fan Club” are not very smart. If they were, they would have taken one of the many, many opportunities to drop this case before the two plaques fiasco buried them thousands of dollars deeper.

OUT LIKE A LAMB

We go from the mightiest of motions to the flattest of filings. As most of you know by now, on August 1st, I uploaded a copy of Billy Mitchell’s full six-hour deposition to YouTube. Within 24 hours, it had received… a copyright strike?

This was a stunningly gross abuse of the DMCA system, given that nobody named William James Mitchell has any copyright claim over anything in that deposition whatsoever. The deposition was paid for and recorded by Twin Galaxies and their attorneys at Tash Law Group, and thus the copyright would belong to them (aside from any exhibit audio which in this case would clearly fall under fair use).

This fraudulent copyright claim was also a pretty shocking admission, when you think about it. Shouldn’t Billy Mitchell want everyone to see his deposition? After all, it’s his story, straight from the guy himself. And he’s under oath, so you know it’s the truth this time! Why would he want to compartmentalize this supposedly exonerating testimony? (Unless of course it’s all a bunch of lies that he wants to keep perpetuating as long as possible.)

Unfortunately, YouTube’s copyright system sucks, and I’m not particularly YouTube-literate, so I don’t anticipate that original upload being restored. Thankfully, other heroes of the community have taken up the mantle of preserving this important piece of gaming history, and I sincerely couldn’t be more appreciative. Billy’s maneuver may have even drawn more eyes to the video, from people knowing they have to watch it now before it disappears again. As I write this, you can watch Billy’s full six-hour deposition at Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/the-deposition-of-billy-mitchell

(You may want to keep that open in another tab. We’ll be referring back to it a few times.)

Or, if you’re more of a reading-on-the-go type, here’s the full Billy Mitchell deposition transcript:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Depositions-Transcript-Billy-Mitchell-2023-01-09.pdf

But as is no surprise, Billy’s fiery hatred of evidence continues to burn. This deposition video, and deposition transcripts of others featured in recent Karl Jobst videos, were the subject of a new motion from his attorneys, aimed at limiting public access to this testimony:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Legal-Billy-vs-TG-2023-09-06-Billy-Motion-for-contempt-and-sanctions.pdf

This time, Manning & Kass attorney Kristina Ross is leading the charge, with her signature on both the motion itself and an attached declaration. In short, Ross is arguing that the judge should find TG and Tash in contempt of court for sharing Billy’s deposition with Karl Jobst’s attorney in Australia – the only person identified as having received it directly from Tash. Ross claims this was in violation of a protective order approved by the court in October 2022, which you can find also attached at the end of Ross’ filing. This motion was foreshadowed in my previous update, when Manning & Kass tacked this grievance on to an otherwise disastrous (for them) joint discovery statement. As I remarked at the time, “I suspect this protest was lodged out of concern for being on the wrong end of so many other grievances.”

There are a few interesting things about this motion. For one thing, Kristina claims portions of the deposition were marked “confidential”, but she never demonstrates this fact, nor does she identify where or how it was allegedly marked confidential. In the actual motion (as seen above), Ross simply cites paragraph four of her own declaration. But if you were to follow that citation, it’s literally that same paragraph again word for word. (In fact, the majority of Ross’ declaration is a mostly-verbatim lifting of language used in the motion itself. But I guess that’s what you do when you’re scraping by on Cocoa Puffs.)

It’s not as though there’s some rule preventing Manning & Kass from citing a page number in Billy’s deposition transcript. In July’s joint discovery statement, when discussing Billy’s testimony about the Apollo Legend videos, they specifically cited pages 98 through 101 of that transcript. But now, suddenly, they can’t identify where the deposition was designated confidential? Not a page number or email or notification or anything? I mean, there was a weird bit during the deposition where Ellrod asked that the proceeding be designated due to a public podcast interview which Ellrod suspected was an “illegal conversation”, before learning it was not and withdrawing the designation. Is that what Manning & Kass are hanging their hats on here? I guess we aren’t allowed to know. As we see in an email exchange which Ross did provide, Tash offered to “buy Billy’s deposition testimony twice” if required, but this doesn’t seem to satisfy Ross or Ellrod.

But it’s not just Billy’s deposition they’re concerned about. Kristina also accuses Tash of improperly disseminating the deposition transcripts of five other witnesses in this case, whom they’ve identified as Josh Ryan, Valerie Saunders, Jerry Byrum, Brian Cady, and John Grunwald. The filing does concede these depositions are generally not considered private, but argues that there’s normally a process which involves proper notice, giving both parties an opportunity to add confidential designations. Of course, it’s unclear exactly what parts of these other people’s testimony Ross wished to mark confidential, or why neither she nor Ellrod did so at the opportunities they had. One might be forgiven for thinking this has less to do with genuine confidentiality concerns, and more to do with not wanting the public to see this evidence proving their client is a fraudster. Maybe they even have eyes on getting a few Karl Jobst videos taken down for legal reasons.

But here’s where Kristina’s crocodile tears really shine. They’re deeply concerned about material being “blasted online in an attempt to further defame and injure Plaintiff’s reputation and dissuade third party witnesses”. I’m guessing that’s code for “Journalism we don’t like”. Never mind, of course, that they willingly entered into a legal action which they knew from the start had heavy hobbyist attention and existing media saturation. But hey, we are talking about the law firm that didn’t bother simply googling the fact that their client was guilty as accused.

Kristina cites “Billy’s lifelong friend” as “one of numerous witnesses that has indicated an unwillingness to provide testimony in this matter” for the “exact reason” of not wanting his testimony published on the Internet. While this description could arguably fit Billy’s Pac-Man colleague Chris Ayra, I would argue they are actually referring to Rob Childs, Billy’s old technician friend. (He is, among other things, the goofy guy from the fake board swap video.) Reportedly, Childs was scheduled to be deposed in Florida shortly after Billy back in January, but backed out at the last minute. However, Rob’s reticence came well before any depositions were being posted online. This theory also doesn’t seem to explain why, earlier this year, Rob scrubbed Billy from his business website entirely. One must also remember that Billy and his attorneys could simply subpoena Rob and force him to testify – that is, if they thought his testimony would help their case. (And they certainly do need the help!) Is it possible Rob has finally had it with his serial liar friend? Did Rob make it clear that he wasn’t going to lie under oath about the board swap, or about the Donkey Kong scores Rob knows are fake? Is that the real reason they’re not bringing Rob under the lights? Come to think of it, is this characterization, that Rob’s reticence is on the “sole basis” of published testimony, just another claim from Billy and from Junior which Kristina is unquestioningly repeating as fact?

I can’t help but notice that, while Billy Mitchell’s making excuses and struggling to get even lifelong friends to vouch for him, Twin Galaxies is not having any witness problems at all, no matter how much publicity this case generates. Steven Kleisath, Carlos Pineiro, David Race, Tanner Fokkens, and Michael Ward are just a few of the names lining up around the block to testify against this guy. Innocent individuals like Josh Ryan and Valerie Saunders also didn’t have trouble showing up as requested. People aren’t reacting negatively to the truth. It’s Team Billy’s reliance on lies that’s the source of their problems.

Getting back to Ross’ motion, yours truly does get a few tips of the cap again. She seems fond of calling me a “YouTuber”, despite my having very little clout or presence on that platform. I must admit though, there’s something I do find uplifting and heartening about Kristina Ross’s universe, wherein I, the redoubtable journalist, and those relentless souls like myself, have the awesome power to humiliate, isolate, and vanquish con artists like Billy Mitchell. Perhaps when this case is done, I’ll turn Kristina’s words into an inspirational plaque on my wall. It can remind me every day of why I fight for the truth.

In addition to requesting that Tash be found in contempt of court, Ross also calls for sanctions in the amount of $7,560. This figure, as well as Tash’s $81k, are based on how many hours they testified were spent preparing the current motions, multiplied by their asserted hourly rates. I would take the extreme disparity between their numbers as yet another sign that Manning & Kass have begun mailing it in. I eagerly await Tash’s response to Ross’ legal arguments, just as I want to see what Ross is possibly going to say contrary to Tash’s motion. But I doubt the judge, who is being forced to watch Billy’s nonsense unfold, will be bringing any hammers down on TG’s attorney any time soon.

Before I move on from Billy’s quest to suppress the truth, one last thing was brought to my attention recently. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the latest offerings, but there’s also value in revisiting old items with the benefit of hindsight. In light of Team Billy’s attempts to suppress these depositions, I was directed back to this:

This was from Billy’s first video statement following the TG dispute verdict, recorded in the hallway at Midwest Gaming Classic in April 2018. I don’t think I’d watched or even particularly thought about this video in two or three years. But oh man, it’s only a minute, and it’s great. First, Billy emphasizes how his people have now undertaken “true, professional due diligence” in their attempt to prove his innocence. And then the real kicker comes toward the end:

Everything will be transparent. Everything will be available. I wish I had it in my hands right now. I wish I could hand it to you. But it’s taken a considerable amount of time. Witnesses, documents, everything will be made available to you. Nothing will be withheld. You absolutely have my commitment to that.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL Boy, that aged like milk!

THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE

With the new stuff out of the way, let’s take this opportunity to catch up on some loose ends. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably watched Billy’s six hour deposition, hopefully while playing a fun game on your other screen. And if so, you probably heard Billy Mitchell’s and David Tashroudian’s exchanges going into great detail on this alleged phone call between Billy, TG owner Jace Hall, and Billy’s friend Triforce. (These segments occur at 1:32:30, at 2:48:20, and at 5:40:50.) But to explain what this phone call controversy is all about, we have to start by zooming out as far as we can on Billy’s whole defamation lawsuit against Twin Galaxies.

Strictly speaking, Billy is suing Twin Galaxies in California for defamation, claiming that their stated conclusion that Billy’s Donkey Kong scores “were not produced by the direct feed output of an original unmodified Donkey Kong Arcade PCB” is untrue. Additionally, since Billy is a limited sphere public figure, he has to show that TG acted with what the law refers to as “actual malice”. In other words, especially when you’re talking about public figures, you’re allowed to get things wrong as long as they’re honest mistakes. So even if the statement was an error, Billy can’t win a lawsuit unless that error was more than just a mere, innocent inaccuracy.

What this means is that, in order to prevail in court, Billy has to prove A) the claim made against him was false, B) Twin Galaxies either knew it was false or displayed reckless disregard for its veracity, and C) TG acted with “actual malice” when it made the claim. Now, understandably, some of you may have stopped reading at “A”. The claim that Billy’s tapes could not have been produced using an unmodified Donkey Kong machine were true. Full stop. End of argument. You are allowed to state true facts. And so, Billy’s case is dead on arrival right there. However, with regard to arguing their case in court, TG is right to take each of these elements and sort of flip them in reverse. In other words, “The claim was true. And even if you somehow prove it wasn’t true, we sincerely believed it was true when we said it. And even if we were somehow negligent in making a claim that turned out to be false, we weren’t acting with malice.” These sorts of “I’m not wrong, but even if I was” arguments may not go over well in casual conversation, but we’re talking court procedures here. This is a legally sound approach to defeating claims made against you.

Again, all of this is a major problem for Billy. This was literally the most heavily investigated score dispute in all of video game history. Heck, the Todd Rogers Dragster dispute just prior to this was the single most scrutinized competitive gaming dispute in history at that time, and this ended up dwarfing that by tenfold. The idea that researchers didn’t investigate the score thoroughly enough is laughably preposterous. Does Billy really expect a jury of non-gamers to believe Twin Galaxies didn’t do its due diligence in researching these Donkey Kong scores? Apparently, the pros at Manning & Kass do! And even if you set all of that aside, there was no malice involved. Jace gave Billy’s team of technicians ample time to provide their conclusion, and then acted according to that conclusion:

And there you see the crux of the problem, from a legal standpoint. Jace Hall can throw his hands up and say “What do you want me to do? Your own guy, who you brought on to work with you, concluded your tapes could not have been recorded using an original, unmodified Donkey Kong machine.” Twin Galaxies couldn’t have been acting maliciously when they were simply relying on the provided expert’s conclusion. Sure, Billy could try to sue Carlos for offering that conclusion (and Billy did threaten to do exactly that), but Carlos has no money. Thus, in order to sue TG, Billy has to somehow take Carlos’ conclusion and banish it into exile. And because of the “actual malice” standard, Billy also has to somehow show that TG knew they were wrong to rely on it. (Just as with the fake Walter Day quote earlier, Billy’s side is attempting to paint the score dispute as a pretense TG used to justify what they had secretly set out to do in the first place.)

You with me on this so far? Good.

As you may recall, Carlos was badgered into signing a statement withdrawing his original conclusion. Carlos later provided sworn testimony to Twin Galaxies, detailing these events and asserting that, despite having signed this coerced retraction, he does in fact still stand by his original conclusion. But even if you were to believe Carlos’ retraction was not under duress, it’s not enough to simply have Carlos in 2019 withdraw his conclusion from 2018. After all, TG could still have been innocently misled at the time they made their 2018 dispute ruling.

Also worth noting, by the time Carlos had signed that bullied retraction, more evidence had emerged justifying TG’s decision to keep Billy’s bogus scores off of their leaderboards, so there was no need for TG to decide which new account from Carlos was genuine. But that didn’t help Billy’s case. Billy needed TG’s justification to be Carlos’ conclusion, and for that justification to be a deliberate sham. And so, in the battle over TG’s anti-SLAPP motion, we found Billy’s next attempt to frame TG’s reliance on Carlos as a farce:

Oh, so Billy explicitly denied that Carlos represented him, huh?

Well, unfortunately, Billy’s lazy narrative was easily defeated by more of that evidence he hates so much:

That is literally a text message from Billy to Jace Hall, during the original score dispute, saying of his team’s investigation that “The technical end is headed up by Carlos.” Whoops!

Of course, there’s other evidence, such as a video featuring the late Apollo Legend where Billy points to Carlos and says “He’s the gentleman that has the proof”. Or a video showing Billy playing Donkey Kong for Carlos as he’s doing tests on the cabinet, which Billy is asked about at 3:28:40 in his deposition video. Billy tries to handwave those away, but the direct text message to Jace, outright saying that Carlos represents his technical efforts, is much harder to ignore.

Billy’s rebuttal was to produce a text from his late friend Joel West, attempting to demonstrate that this was all a wacky misunderstanding. Longtimers following this case will recall Joel as the paralegal who posted the unintentionally hilarious “sizzle and steak” legal threat in the original dispute thread:

According to Billy’s new story, West was the one who drafted that incriminating text message, sending it to Billy with instructions to forward it to Jace. So the story goes, Billy then dutifully forwarded it on to Mr. Hall without even reading it.

Of course, we would have reasons to be skeptical of this story. For starters, Billy changed his signature, meaning this wasn’t strictly a blind forward. Second, Billy looped Carlos in on the longer message as well (the one whose only provided instruction was “Send this to Jace”), which Billy would only know to do if he had read the message. Third, as it turned out, Billy sent another text message to both Joel and Carlos a few minutes later, helping coordinate their efforts to request an extension of TG’s deadline.

Even if we tried our hardest to accept Billy’s story here at face value, does this not give the game away anyway? “Sure, I’ll blindly forward on this text message as you request, random person who I am definitely not working with and who does not represent me.” Sadly, Joel has passed on, leaving us with only Billy’s screenshots of these messages and his version of these events.

And yet, even then, this still doesn’t incriminate Twin Galaxies. So what if this message was an accident? TG was not given any indication that this was anything but a sincere declaration of Billy’s intentions. If this really was a wacky misunderstanding, that would still let TG off the hook for any liability in relying on Carlos’ conclusion.

And this is where we get to the spookiest part of this whole sub-saga: The phantom phone call. Only after all of this was laid on the table did Billy begin claiming that he actually called Jace Hall, on the phone, to tell him (paraphrasing) “Hey, that text message I sent you? I didn’t mean what I said. In fact, I actually meant the literal exact opposite of that.” It’s crazy how the permanent, objective evidence is always conspiring against Billy, but at least his private conversations he claims to have had, which no third party can attest to, clear things right up.

It’s important to note that (as seen above) Billy makes a point to say, under oath, that this call happened “later that same day”. This claim was made to bolster Billy’s opposition to TG’s anti-SLAPP motion in 2020, but Billy was still on this story as late as summer of 2022, when he filed his responses to TG’s interrogatories. (This was where we first heard Billy’s story about his doctor refusing to treat him because he cheated at Donkey Kong.) The very first question posed by TG in their first set of Requests for Admission was in regard to this phantom phone call:

Forgive the double-negative in Billy “denying” he “did not” call Jace, but basically, that’s Billy saying “No, I really did call Jace Hall on April 5th”.

Spoiler: This phone call never happened. And I don’t mean, it didn’t happen in the way Billy said it did. I mean, it literally did not happen. Jace and Billy did eventually converse later on, after such a message would no longer have had any meaning. (It’s not surprising that Billy would say Carlos wasn’t representing him after Carlos’ investigation didn’t go the way Billy wanted.) But this phone call didn’t happen when Billy is saying it did. We know this because phones have records. You don’t just call someone, and then somehow the phone company loses track of it. Maybe that’s how things work over at Rickey’s Wireless, but not at AT&T and Verizon.

Naturally, TG wanted to see Billy’s proof of this phantasmal phone call. In August 2022, at the same time that Billy was continuing to insist this phone call happened, he was also forced to admit he had no proof to provide:

There is just no getting around the fact that, if this conversation happened the way Billy describes, at the time he describes, there would be a record of it. If they lived near each other, and passed by in the hallway, Billy could lie and say he told Jace in person. But they were thousands of miles away, one in California, the other in Florida. Billy isn’t going to be able to just make this one up, like he does so much else. This is something he’s going to have to prove. And again, this is pivotal to his case. Without this supposed retraction, TG was well within their right to believe Carlos was acting as Billy’s technical representative, and to act accordingly.

And this is where we circle back around to Isaiah “Triforce” Johnson, who seems to be Billy’s clearinghouse for bald-faced lies. Billy began making up several nonexistent phone calls where he claims to have told Jace whatever it is Billy retroactively wishes he had said at the time. The new twist was that these were super-special secret phone calls, conducted via conference call with Triforce using Skype, which I guess only Jace, Billy, and Billy’s friend would have any knowledge of. (Perhaps Billy thinks Skype doesn’t retain records the way traditional phone companies do?) While Billy’s answers to TG’s special interrogatories don’t include a reference to an April 5th call specifically, Billy did claim to call Jace using this method in early February, then again on February 24th, then on March 31st and April 3rd, and finally on April 8th. This was in addition to four calls Billy made directly from his personal cell phone on April 11th and 12th. (Those would be the four phone calls that actually existed and would have records for, although unfortunately for Billy, each were placed after Carlos’ conclusion on April 10.)

Why, you may ask, would Billy call Jace in this bizarre, unorthodox fashion, not once but up to five times? Well, when trying to justify their preposterous stories, liars like Billy have a tendency to offer a bit too much exposition, as we see here:

Ah, I see. It was so that Billy would appear as an unknown number (something which could be achieved through much simpler means), and so Jace would not know Billy’s location. Except… Billy’s on a cell phone? He could be anywhere. Does Billy think he’s James Bond? Does he work at NORAD? Exactly what location-identifying information would exist on an ordinary phone call that wouldn’t also exist on a Skype call? Despite this story though, secrecy obviously wasn’t too important to Billy, because he did end up calling Jace directly from his regular cell phone number later anyway.

And that’s when we get to Billy’s deposition, where naturally all of this was brought up yet again. Around timestamp 2:51:30, Billy starts by saying it isn’t true that the call was the same day:

Tash then asks why Billy put in his 2020 declaration that it was specifically the same day as the ill-advised text messages, eliciting a few responses of “I don’t know”:

Once again, Billy gives away the entire game here. Let’s go back to his words from his September 2020 supplemental declaration:

Later that day, I re-read the text message, and realizing the horrible inaccuracy of it, I told Jason Hall to disregard it on our phone call later that same day.

That sounds pretty urgent, right? He both discovered the error and corrected it mere hours after this unfortunate misunderstanding. Except… now that his story is being scrutinized, and proof is being requested, he doesn’t want to commit to anything. “Oh my gosh! I accidentally just sent Jace this terribly inaccurate message, that will affect his adjudication of this dispute against my precious scores! I’d better wait to call him a few days from now, whenever I feel like getting around to correcting this.”

After Tash presses the apparent contradiction in Billy’s testimony, Billy finally agrees that it was April 5th after all:

Let’s see, no records, no specifics. When Tash asks for details, such as how long this ghostly call lasted or what exactly Jace said in response, Billy doesn’t recall those either. Billy also gets wishy-washy on whether this specific interaction (telling Jace to disregard the text message) even involved Triforce at all:

Who knows, maybe Billy’s phone actually is haunted? Maybe that really is Pinky and Inky behind his Pac-Man ringtone? Heck, maybe that’s how all those incriminating text messages got sent to all those people? #3spooky5me

This isn’t the only topic in which Billy relies on stories of what he told Jace via phone call. He also claims to have given Jace a list of witnesses for his scores, while alleging that Jace refused to interview any of them. (Again, this is all an attempt to paint Jace as a malicious party who sought to defame Billy regardless of the evidence.) As mentioned earlier, Billy’s preserved text message conversations with Jace don’t reflect any of these angles Billy claims were so important in their alleged phone calls / Skype three-ways / midnight séances. When asked about this discrepancy, Billy said it’s because he’s just not much of a texter:

One might be skeptical of this claim, however, if they saw Jace Hall’s June 26, 2020 reply declaration, which included the entirety of his text messages with Billy Mitchell from February 16 to April 11, 2018. All told, Billy sent Jace 44 distinct text messages along with four picture messages. This included Billy’s completely unsolicited remarks about the rumor of Apollo Legend’s death, which it seems Billy just couldn’t help sharing with everyone:

Before we move on, there’s one last bit regarding this phantom Skype call I’d like to point out. Twice in his deposition video, you can see Billy pause an uncharacteristically long time as he contemplates his answer to what should be a straightforward question. The first such example involved Billy’s claim that he never attempted to serve his parallel lawsuit against Twin Galaxies in Florida, which he was asked about at 1:16:50. This involves a whole ‘nother rabbit hole, but in short, you aren’t supposed to sue the same entity in two different jurisdictions for the same alleged infraction. Since Billy got a proper lawyer to take his California case, Billy’s story became that the Florida lawsuit was “a backup”. In the grand scheme of things, that wouldn’t be a big deal, except you may recall a certain video, wherein Billy pleads with a certain Judge Keathan Frink in Florida, hoping to keep this “backup” Florida suit active over a year later:

When asked about this in deposition, Billy claimed he “never” attempted to serve Twin Galaxies at its office on Pine Island Road. (Because again, according to Billy, that Florida lawsuit was just a “backup”.) However, at 1:37:20, Tash then plays the above video, where Billy says the following:

Again, I would just like to say for the record, I — we made every effort to contact them. We went by the address. There were people there. There was no one who would help or give any information in any way.

Once again, Billy’s circular lies and conflicting stories have put him in a Catch 22. In his attempt to get his way in that Florida court, he had to emphasize how earnestly he had been trying to serve the case. But in California, all of this works against him, so suddenly he was hands-off. At 1:42:10, Billy denied going to the office himself, but claimed his lackey Neil Hernandez went there for him:

If you merely read those words on the page, it would be easy to overlook this moment. However, the transcript does not do the interaction justice. After being asked who went for him, it took Billy seven whole seconds to name Neil, which in a deposition full of quick answers is an eternity. (Count to seven Mississippis if you don’t believe me.) And this was after being quizzed at length about these events, which should have helped bring these details to his recollection. Speaking as an observer familiar with the details of this case, it felt less like Billy was trying to remember who conducted this action they had just spent several minutes rehashing and talking about, but rather was trying to think of who would be most likely to lie for him.

And that brings us back around to the phantom phone call, and our other unnecessarily long pause. At 3:02:40, Tash asks Billy why he would call Twin Galaxies using such a peculiar method:

But once again, totally omitted from the transcript, Billy takes an absurdly long time to answer this one question. They had just spent several minutes going over these supposed Skype calls with Triforce, and Billy still didn’t have an easy answer for the simple question of “why”. This time, it took Billy a whopping eleven uninterrupted seconds, of looking at Tash, looking at his attorney’s notes, looking down at the table, looking back at his attorney again, looking at the table again, sighing, looking way over at Jace Hall on the far side of the room, smacking his lips a bit, and then looking back at Tash again, before he finally begins piecing together words to the effect that Triforce “has his own dealings with Twin Galaxies”, and so Billy wanted Triforce on the line to bear witness to his interactions with Jace.

(As an aside, it seems there’s a little bit of timey-wimey going on with this answer. Triforce’s “dealings with Twin Galaxies” would appear to be a reference to disputes over his scores which occurred months after these alleged apparitional phone calls. Sure, Triforce has a poor relationship with TG now, and had been a pariah in the fighting game community for some time prior. But as far as Triforce’s relationship with TG at the time these phone calls supposedly occurred, the worst that could have been said was that he had egg on his face for his vehement defense of Todd Rogers, that he threatened to expose Donkey Kong players over the use of nonstandard buttons, LOL, and that many individual participants at TG didn’t like him. If this remark was a reference to the later score disputes, that would reinforce that this was a story Billy invented later. But hey, since “dealings” could refer to literally anything, while a negative inference is implied, it’s also easily deniable. I’ve had “dealings with” the local sandwich shop, and I keep coming back, because I’m a satisfied customer and they make delicious food.)

As with the “Neil Hernandez” answer earlier, it seems like if this was the truth, if Billy wanted Triforce on these calls as a witness, Billy would have just said so right away. It would not have taken a roll call of the entire Confederacy to think of that answer. Of course, everyone is different, and some people struggle with interrogation more than others, but we see no indication of Billy being such a person elsewhere in the deposition. Billy was tripped up by these two questions in particular, which were simple and straight-forward. What makes the answers different is not that they’re especially complicated or obscure, but rather the context in which they are asked. Unlike in his cupcake interviews with friendly podcasters, Billy is obligated to sit and answer to a hostile party, who is laying out the evidence and challenging his stories as he tells them. The questioner then arrives at the end of Billy’s trail of demonstrable lies, forcing Billy to forge a new path on the spot. When these are your responses, the reason you spend so long thinking isn’t to come up with the correct answer, but rather to decide which story among the options you’re considering is the least likely to blow up in your face.

And even then, after all that, Billy still manages to miss the mark. He seems to have forgotten that he already gave an answer to that very question of “Why” in written form, back in his answers to TG’s interrogatories:

To protect his privacy, Responding Party used Skype to call Jason (“Jace”) Hall through Isaiah TriForce Johnson so that Responding Party’s information would appear as an unknown phone number and conceal the location of Responding Party. Responding Party undertook these measures to prevent Mr. Hall from sharing his physical location publicly.

If you’re asking yourself “At what point will Billy just admit he lied?”, the answer is “Never”. It may take him a moment to think of something new, but he will always, always, always have another increasingly implausible story to try and patch up the old one.

SPOILED SECRETS

And this brings us to our final topic of the day. By now, you’ve surely seen the photos from the FAMB (mortgage brokers) convention with the bogus red joystick, popularized by Karl Jobst’s video back in January. And you also surely saw Karl’s follow-up video in July, showing the moment during Billy’s deposition testimony when he was confronted with these photos. However, a strange story has emerged relating to the acquisition and release of these photos.

Let’s start by filling in the known backstory. In early January, the photos emerged publicly via a Facebook post from David Race. However, what was not reported until Kyle Orland’s coverage a month later was that I was the one who provided the photos to David. Of course, this raises a number of questions, which I am now in a better position to answer. It is my understanding that these photos had been held as a close secret in the Donkey Kong community for many years prior to the score dispute, specifically with the idea that any challenge to Billy’s bogus Donkey Kong scores could prove contentious. When they were eventually shared with me, it was strictly confidentially. As a journalist, I put a high premium on maintaining trust and confidentiality, because if I did not, nobody would speak to me. Thus, even as people like David Race were trodding the forums seeking these very photos, I kept them under wraps as I had agreed. However, once Billy Mitchell’s deposition had occurred, I became aware that Billy had been shown these photos and was asked about them (as we all have now seen). Knowing that the impetus for keeping them secret had expired, I checked with the necessary individuals to clear that, yes, it was now okay to publish the photos for everyone’s benefit. The choice to release them to David came simply because I didn’t have a good idea of how to present the photos, and because I had recently gotten to publish Billy’s Guinness letters and felt others should get in on the fun of publishing these bombshells as well. Had I expected David to come under scrutiny for releasing them as he did, I would have made clear I was his source in the first place.

So why am I detailing all of this now? Well, given these facts, you can understand my surprise when, shortly after Karl’s January video, YouTuber and now former Billy Mitchell supporter vanburen20 released a video in response, with an alternate version of these events (starting at about 1:40):

Do you know why these pictures exist, Karl? Let me just fill you in. The only reason why these […] pictures exist, and they came out of nowhere, and you’re like “Oh, Billy didn’t know about these pictures, and oh boy is he gonna be scared to see these photos”. These photos just recently got released… because Billy released them. Okay? Billy’s lawyers subpoenaed that convention to get those pictures, for evidence, which is why they exist now.

I don’t wish to pick on vanburen20 too much, given that he recently came to see the light about Billy Mitchell, and delisted all his old videos defending him. At this point, I can see he’s struggling with having allowed himself to be lied to so badly – something which others in the community like Steve Kleisath and David Race have struggled with as well. But for the sake of completion, at 4:50 in that same February video, vanburen20 reiterated the claim that Billy’s lawyers sought out the FAMB photos, rhetorically asking why they would acquire and publish the photos if they hurt their case.

I was understandably a bit stunned when I first heard this story. I had not yet seen Billy’s deposition at that time, but as far as I knew, Billy was blindsided by the photos when they were revealed. (As you all have now seen, that impression was certainly on the mark.) But I’m also careful not to report on things I could potentially be unaware of. Yes, this means sometimes people can tell lies, and sometimes those lies can gain traction for a while simply because people like myself are unable to definitively refute them in the moment. But aside from the risk inherent in writing about a crazed narcissistic litigant, it’s also ethically important to me that I keep my coverage factual. Thus, I took to Twitter (or whatever Emerald Baby wants to call his vanity site these days) to clarify some facts regarding this new theory from Team Billy, as best I could:

As you see, the only thing I attested to for certain was that Billy and his lawyers had absolutely nothing to do with the public release of the photos, which was the one thing above all else that I knew to be true. Of course, I was pretty skeptical of this new subpoena story overall. Who wouldn’t be? After all, by rule, if one side in a civil case issues a subpoena for something, they are required to disclose it to the other party. You can’t just subpoena things and then say “Oh, never mind, this hurts my case” and then keep it a secret. Again, the process is supposed to be a search for the truth.

So imagine my surprise when I learned later on that there actually was some nugget of truth to what vanburen20 was saying. Billy’s lawyers really did subpoena these photos!

The above segment is from Ellrod’s questioning of Valerie Saunders, one of the mortgage brokers who supposedly “witnessed” Billy’s score at the FAMB convention. (As reported by Karl Jobst, Valerie was the one who recalled Billy achieving the Donkey Kong record within a span of about 15 minutes, which would be a blockbuster speedrun record if the score were real.) Soon after the above exchange, the questioning was turned back over to Tash, who asked about the photo subpoena again:

Valerie then confirmed this subpoena was resolved in late 2022, which was shortly before Billy’s January 2023 deposition:

So what the heck is going on?

There are two angles to dissecting this. The first involves the strict facts as we know them now. The second, which we’ll get to in a moment, is what I, personally, believe to be the underlying context of these events.

It is true that someone in the Donkey Kong community acquired the photos many years ago. And it’s true that Twin Galaxies had been given them some time prior to Billy’s deposition. And, given the subpoena, it’s also true that Billy’s attorneys had access to them prior to Billy’s deposition. However, we have also now seen Billy’s deposition video, and he says very clearly that he has no photos of either himself or the Donkey Kong machine from that event:

Obviously, this could be yet another lie. Or there could be some silly wordplay involved; perhaps Billy had seen them and knows who has them, maybe he even has them on his computer at home, but he feels he can say “No” because he doesn’t physically have them in his own hands at that exact moment. But even if there was such an intent to mislead, the implications of such a lie are mind-boggling. Did he willingly walk right into Tash’s red joystick trap?

As for how this subpoena could have gotten past Twin Galaxies and their attorneys, I inquired about this, and was able to get an important point of clarification. If you go to the Los Angeles court website, and enter case number 19STCV12592 for Stanley Mosk Courthouse, you can see a giant list of documents filed and proceedings held in this case. And buried within that list is this seemingly unimportant item:

In late 2020, Tash filed a change of address with the court., which is all fine and dandy. However, two years later, when Ellrod went to disclose this subpoena as required, his office sent the notification to Tash’s old address, and not his current one of two years. And that was how TG missed this subpoena.

This discrepancy was not discovered until after Billy’s January deposition. Once the matter was addressed and resolved, Tash was able to acquire the versions of the photos Ellrod received in 2022. This batch includes 729 total photos of the mortgage brokers convention and related gala, all from Friday. (This means, no photos from Billy’s claimed high score on Saturday, nor any from “Arcade night” on Thursday. Note that the previously acquired photos did include a couple from that “Arcade night” event. I do not know why those were not included in this batch.) Since I’m sure none of you need hundreds of photos of drunk mortgage brokers dancing around to ’80s music, and since I’m not inclined to host 1.5 gigabytes of such nonsense, I’ve included just the few photos I believe are relevant in this zip file:

https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Mighty-FAMB-photos.zip

These new photos are of much higher resolution than those acquired by the Donkey Kong community several years ago. In one photo, named JSJ_0013.JPG, you can actually zoom in on the game’s monitor and read the default high score of 7650. There are also extra incidental shots with the Donkey Kong cabinet in the background, such as JSJ_0171.JPG, which we did not have before.

In addition to the images themselves, these files also provide corroborating metadata. While I did not find any wall clocks in the photos, the file named JSJ_0032.JPG has a modified date and time of Friday, July 13, 2007, at 12:05 p.m., and in the photo you can actually zoom in and see someone’s wristwatch which appears to be displaying a time of just past noon. (Honestly, whose wristwatch in 2007 wasn’t a little slow? Or maybe it was the photographer’s Nikon D200 camera that was running fast.) Also, the photos from the Friday night reception and gala start with the first arrivals at 6:45pm and run until 11:03pm, which basically match the 7pm-11pm time on the displayed itinerary in the first photo. (I’ve included only one of those gala photos, showing Sheila Kiniry and Ritch Workman – the same two people posing with Billy and Todd in front of the DK machine.) Again, we’re talking about 729 photos, thoroughly documenting this photographer’s arduous day throughout the convention and into the night, all of which line up with the day’s schedule. There’s no mistaking the sequence of events here.

In Valerie’s testimony, she was very clear that Billy’s score attempts were intended as a way to generate attendance on Saturday, a historically slower day for their convention. At first, this may sound strange, given that most events are better attended on weekends. But recall that this is a trade show. When these mortgage brokers attend on Friday, they can write off the time as part of their job, whereas coming in on Saturday likely means spending their day off at a work event.

All of this helps place the photos we’ve seen, of Billy and Todd and the red joystick, at shortly before noon on Friday. This would mean these were not celebratory after-the-fact photos, as they may have at first appeared. If so, then it would seem Billy spent some portion of time on Friday hanging around and gathering “witnesses” of him standing next to a Donkey Kong cabinet. It’s possible that, for appearances, he dabbled in a little casual play using the non-standard joystick, although the game was still showing the default high score at 11:33am.

Before we continue, I’d like to present a clear separation between what we know and what we can infer. These new photos were acquired by Ellrod via subpoena in late 2022. They were sent to Tash’s old address. When Tash asked Billy during his January 2023 deposition if he had any such photos, Billy said he did not, and Ellrod did not interject. Those are the facts. What follows is strictly my own speculation.

I find it very hard to believe that Anthony Ellrod, accomplished attorney, founding partner at Manning & Kass, would have acquired these photos, held them back from his own client, and allowed the hapless guy to trot out into deposition not knowing what he was walking into. I certainly know that, if it were me being deposed, even being honest as I am, I’d want everything I could get to help jog my memory. This scenario is made even stranger by the fact that, in addition to Ellrod, a YouTuber in Billy’s circle knew about the subpoena. Did vanburen20 get his information about this subpoena directly from Ellrod? Did he get it from Billy Junior the “law clerk”? Was Junior in on this bizarre conspiracy to send his father blindly into a deposition trap? Did everyone around Billy know about these photos, while Billy himself did not? WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON!?!?

The first, most obvious answer is that Billy was just lying, yet again. But if he was, this would have to be just about the single dumbest lie of the entire saga. If the joystick was red, he would have made them change it to black? He would have ran away? This would be like him saying “I never once ever told anyone how a Donkey Kong tape could be faked using MAME”, while knowing with absolute certainty that a clip of him describing the entire process in accurate detail would immediately be shoved in his face. (To be clear, that was just a hypothetical, and I know of no such clip, although that would be hilarious.) This might be something a lazy liar like Todd Rogers would do, but Billy’s lies tend to be at least a little more thought out than that. You’ll notice, at around 5:24:50 in his deposition, Billy already knows he’s going to be asked about his “Music City Con”, and he already has his story lined up.

Also, if Ellrod knew for a fact that Billy had those photos, and sat and listened as Billy said he knew nothing about them, why did he not get immediately concerned witnessing his own client tell intentional lies under oath? Why would ol’ Boris still be representing this man eight months later?

Maybe Billy’s lawyers are grossly incompetent – and indeed, if they were smart about this, they would not be wasting their time and resources representing Billy Mitchell in the first place. But I feel like there has to be some other answer here – some reason why Billy thought he could play with that stove and not instantly get burned for it.

I’m also left scratching my head as to how, of all things, apparently just these secret photos were sent to Tash’s old address, when presumably so much other later discovery and paperwork was being sent to the correct address.

While I generally try to avoid sinking into conspiracy theory nonsense, I find the entire exchange to be much more plausible if Billy and Ellrod sincerely believed at the time of Billy’s deposition that Tash did not have these photos. Billy could then answer that he doesn’t know of any such photos with at least some expectation of not being called out on the spot. Meanwhile, observing this exchange with his client, Ellrod would not be confused by TG’s inquiries about whether such photos exist, and would not interject as he did elsewhere in the deposition, asking Tash to clarify his strange questions.

And if this is true, if they really did believe Tash was not aware of these photos, that in turn would mean that Ellrod’s choice to have the photos sent to Tash’s old address rather than his current one was a deliberate attempt at obfuscation.

I wish to be crystal clear, I have no further evidence of this beyond what I’ve already presented. But it’s the scenario that makes the most sense to me. When they saw Tash file a change of address, perhaps someone at Ellrod’s office saw it as an opportunity to eventually hide something they were required to disclose. (I’m admittedly not sure if the postal service still would have been forwarding Tash’s mail two years after a move.) And then, finally, when Tash did show Billy the photos, there was no freak out on Ellrod’s part. I mean, these are long lost photos from his client’s big high score event, mysteriously reemerging after fifteen years! But Ellrod didn’t ask where the photos came from, or why he was not provided a copy. He probably quietly thought “Oh crap, someone in the office must have screwed up and sent them to the right address after all”.

This scenario may feel like a stretch, and I certainly wouldn’t put much stock in it if it were just a matter of something being sent to an old address. As Hanlon’s razor reminds us, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. But I’m not sure the stupidity explanation is adequate here. If this wasn’t a deliberate ploy, that would mean they knew Tash had these photos, and that he would be asking about them, and they walked head first into the joystick trap anyway:

If Ellrod wasn’t playing shenanigans with old addresses, then either Billy was kept in the dark about these photos by his own son and his own attorney, or he knew about them and knew that TG had them and still entertained some idea that he could halfheartedly lie his way past Tash without being immediately called to answer for those photos, like a naughty dog being forced to smell his own shit. Believe me when I say, having researched this case as thoroughly as I have, I long ago stopped being shocked by Billy’s staggering capacity for dishonesty. But this story is a bridge too far even for me. Trying to wrap my head around this as just another stock Billy Mitchell lie is like peering into the abyss itself, and finding only madness staring back. There has to be another explanation. There just has to be.

The other possibility I’ve considered is that this was some bizarre, poorly thought out attempt at culpable deniability. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, Ellrod and Junior indeed conspired to keep these photos secret from Tash, and wished to continue doing so for a while longer. At that time, they could have been reasonably certain that TG still did not know of the photos’ existence. However, it would be fair to assume Tash would ask Billy under oath if any such photos existed. So did Junior think that cutting Pops out of the loop would help facilitate that? Regardless of the elder Mitchell’s proclivity for prevarication, he can’t disclose photos he knows nothing about. And when the photos are eventually revealed, you could say Billy did not know of them when he gave his answers, and it would actually be the truth. Again, intentional ignorance seems like a strategy destined to backfire, but we know we aren’t working with the brightest box of bulbs here.

We may never know the whole story behind this most epic of Team Billy blunders. However, the theory that Ellrod’s clerical error was intentional does leave one lingering question: If they were trying to keep these photos under wraps, what exactly was their ultimate plan in doing so?

I’m often asked what case Billy believes he’s even going to bring to court, or how Manning & Kass think they have any chance of winning. Obviously, whatever hope they have for victory would involve bamboozling the jury into disregarding all of the technical analysis, the expert testimony, and the ever-accumulating mountain of lies from Billy (which, honestly, will matter more in the eyes of a jury not versed in the minutiae of arcade electronics and competitive gaming). But it’s hard to believe Billy and Ellrod actually think they even have any case at all at this point. Whether or not this is a contingency case, you would think someone in that room has an interest in actually winning. As mentioned above, it has been suggested that they’re continuing the lawsuit strictly to produce more content for an eventual movie. I can’t rule that out, but aside from that being a gross ethical violation on the part of Billy’s attorneys, I also can’t imagine what good Manning & Kass would get out of their firm being the laughingstock of a feature-length film.

But I think this is where Billy’s interests and his attorney’s interests diverge. Ellrod probably thought these photos would be a massive boon to his case. “Look! We got pictures of Billy actually at the event! And there was a real Donkey Kong machine there! They said all this time he didn’t really play Donkey Kong, and now we can prove it happened! What more confirmation would anyone need?” Sure, this relies on the superficial notion that merely having a DK cabinet in your vicinity is proof that any given tape you produced must have been genuine, but this is exactly the surface level that non-gaming observers like Ellrod operate in when looking at the case.

Of course, while Billy is happy to play into this misconception for the purposes of manipulating people, he certainly knows better. If someone had “beaten” Billy’s score with a sketchy tape “verified” by their best friend with a bunch of bogus and conflicting stories, Billy would have known all the right questions to ask to expose the fraud.

If Ellrod is indeed still entertaining the idea that he may win this case, then his plan with the FAMB photos may have been similar to Tash’s: Wait until the other party commits to some story that contradicts this evidence, then present the photos and catch them in their embarrassment. Exactly what Jace Hall could possibly say that would “contradict” these mortgage broker photos, I don’t know. But you have to remember, Ellrod’s getting most of his expertise from Billy himself. They already seem to be under the mistaken impression that Billy is accused of rigging a PC running MAME into a Donkey Kong cabinet. Did Ellrod believe Jace Hall would say there was no FAMB convention in 2007? Or that Billy did not attend at all? If there was a gotcha to be had, I struggle to find it.

While Ellrod may yet be entertaining some imaginary path to victory, I would posit that Billy’s “plan” (such as it is) is not necessarily to win the case in court, but to do what he’s always done, which is stall and put off the consequences of his actions as long as possible. If Billy was serious about presenting an affirmative defense, he never would have allowed the innocent Carlos Pineiro into his circle of cronies in the first place, and never would have allowed even the appearance of being affiliated with Carlos’ work. He also would have changed course on his legal threats long ago. But these moves do make some sense as the actions of a man endlessly kicking the can down the road, refusing to worry about the next bridge until he gets to it. What Billy does is drag people on for as long as he can, always giving them one more story to keep them bought in, lying through his teeth about those evildoers who no longer play his game, all while never ever acknowledging when he’s been caught in his lies, not even when the evidence is right in front of him. Historically, he’s gotten his way by caring more and fighting longer than anyone else, in the hopes that the relevant authorities eventually tire of fighting with him and let him have what he wants.

And so much of what we’ve seen plays into this. Remember, they also didn’t intend to disclose that motel room photo of the two plaques. That farce was never going to pass serious muster, but it could help keep Billy’s attorneys bought into his case. “We’ve got a secret weapon. Let’s hold this back until the time is right.” Maybe they’re also sitting on other cockamamie nonsense that Billy knows deep down won’t actually address anything, but which the attorneys have been led to believe will give their case new life?

I would be curious if Billy and his son are the primary advocates for keeping these secrets until the end. Ellrod himself doesn’t seem to be in the weeds of this case, relying on his “experts” to tell him what the evidence means and which items are the most important. He may think there’s some master plan at work, some strategy in compartmentalizing information and withholding evidence from proper scrutiny, when in reality the only plan seems to be suckering him and his firm into continuing to keep this case on life support, dragging everything out as long as possible in the hope that somebody on the other side either gives up or drops dead.

What I find most hilarious about this is, this case involves a broad hobbyist community who are only too eager to explain the facts and the evidence to literally anyone interested in listening. Anthony Ellrod and Kristina Ross may think of us enthusiasts and journalists as their enemies, but they could not have asked for a better resource for free, objective evaluations. Billy Mitchell may never surrender, not even if he has to take everyone else down with him. But Manning & Kass may find themselves wishing they had allowed the gaming community to put their secret evidence under the scrutiny it needed.

As always, thank you all for reading. We’ll see you again here soon.