Cosby pushes back on damaging deposition
Spokeswoman: Admissions taken ‘out of context’
After months of near total silence, Bill Cosby is speaking out through his new spokeswoman, Washington attorney Monique Pressley. She’s rejecting accusations from dozens of women who have said Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them in episodes dating back to the 1960s.
Pressley says Cosby’s accusers, their lawyers and the media have unfairly tried to convict Cosby by ignoring facts and taking “out of context” Cosby’s own words about his behavior toward women contained in his deposition from a 10-year-old civil lawsuit against him. The suit was filed by Andrea Constand, a Temple University basketball official who accused Cosby of drugging and assaulting her at his home in 2004.
Pressley says the media coverage of Cosby has been marked by unbalanced reporting, salacious headlines and false descriptions of what Cosby said in his 1,000page deposition, which so far is fully available to only a few news organizations.
The volume and number of accusations do not add up to guilt, she says.
“My primary focus is to try to ensure that the reporting by the media is paying attention to the facts” in Cosby’s latest legal filings, Pressley told USA TODAY. “I am the highlighter, pointing to these facts: There has been no charge of criminal conduct, no conviction and no admission of criminal conduct by Mr Cosby.”
Instead, she says, “there’s no there there. (The media) have picked out things they wanted to be seen and heard and then they shut down (access to the deposi- tion), and that’s not balanced.”
Cosby has been mostly silent in the face of the mounting allegations, in part because when he denied them through his lawyers, some of his accusers filed defamation suits against him, charging that he labeled them liars by saying he didn’t do it.
“You have the right to deny and defend yourself, and by saying that something did not happen or denying it does not mean you are calling someone a liar,” Pressley says.
Pressley is getting critical tweets for taking on Cosby’s case.
“I’m getting Twitter feedback of all sorts, from ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Way to go’ to ‘You’re getting money from a serial rapist’ and ‘Shame on you’ — it runs the gamut,” she says. It doesn’t matter, she says: “I believe in the work I am doing.”