For our non-American readers, I should explain that Mark Levin is one of the most successful radio hosts in the United States. In fact, a few days ago he was nominated for the National Radio Hall of Fame. I also want to re-emphasize what I said last week: I did not pick a fight with CRTV. They picked a fight with me - and two judges have now ruled that they lost, comprehensively.
The day after the New York Supreme Court confirmed my victory over CRTV, Mark Levin took to his radio show and gave a leisurely retrospective of the stellar career that has brought him to that Hall of Fame nomination. And toward the end, perhaps to neutralize any damage from the court decision of the previous day, he rhapsodized about CRTV's sugar-daddy and lone investor, the student-loan billionaire Cary Katz. Here's what he said (you can hear the audio by clicking the button above):
You're smart, you love your country, you wanna know what's going on... You know, it's like the starting of Levin TV - just bear with me a few more minutes - it's like starting Levin TV.
I met in my living room with a great patriot - a great patriot - who made an enormous amount of money in a completely different business and decided to sell it and get out of it. And this great patriot - Cary Katz - he came to my home and we sat in the living room and we threw around different business models and ideas on what we would do and what we could do.
And he said, 'Do you want to do this?' I said, 'Yeah, let's do it.' We were blocked from satellite TV, we were blocked from cable TV, we were blocked by Netflix. We were blocked by blocked [sic].
He said, 'Well, let's do this on our own. Let's build our own studios. Let's build our own platform. Let's just do this on our own.'
And, that's how Levin TV started. And, now we have a wonderful network called Conservative Review TV - that's CRTV.com - with at least a dozen wonderful hosts, for you to watch anytime you want.
'Cause he's a patriot.
Just how "great" a "patriot" is Cary Katz?
A mere thirty minutes before the start of Mark Levin's show and his paean to the Great Patriot, Katz filed suit against CRTV, LLC in Las Vegas seeking recovery of the gazillions of dollars he's sunk into Levin's "wonderful network" - or in legalese:
Defendant hasn't made promissory note payments to plaintiff.
So I'm a bit confused: If Cary Katz is a "great patriot" because he created Mark Levin's "wonderful network", why is the "great patriot" now suing the "wonderful network"?
Or to look at it the other way: Why would Mr Levin hail as a "great patriot" the guy who's trying to sue Levin's "wonderful network" into bankruptcy and oblivion?
Or to look at it a third way: Is Mark Levin full of sh*t when he hails Cary Katz as a "great patriot"? Or is he merely the latest rube to be suckered by Katz?
Perhaps Mr Levin could clarify in between giving out the 1-800 number for would-be subscribers. Otherwise, impressionable types might get the idea from the lawsuit that the Great Patriot seems more like some sleazy bum that no genuine "constitutional conservative" should be mixed up with.
Cary Katz vs CRTV LLC is, in fact, Cary Katz vs Cary Katz. If you read Judge Gordon's final order, you quickly understand that Cary Katz is CRTV and CRTV is Cary Katz: He's not only the sole investor, and spent two days on the stand testifying as CRTV's principal witness, but he also makes every major decision, and most of the minor ones, too - for example, he personally approves every payment over $1,000. And he also personally decided to leave me on the hook for well over 300 grand in payroll and production costs for shows he aired on CRTV. So, if "defendant hasn't made promissory note payments to plaintiff", it's because Cary Katz's left hand hasn't made promissory note payments to Cary Katz's right hand.
Happily, at some point not too far distant, Mr Katz the Great Patriotic Individual and Mr Katz the LLC will announce that, after tense negotiations between Katz's left buttock and Katz's right buttock, they've hammered out some out-of-court settlement that by sheer coincidence leaves CRTV sufficiently gutted not to be able to pay its other creditors.
As of right now, however, effective with the filing of the Great Patriot's suit, Cary Katz has just rendered Mark Levin's "wonderful network" officially insolvent: its debts outnumber its assets.
Beyond that, CRTV has other shareholders. They're not investors, but Katz has given them stock in return for lending their luster to his dingy enterprise. They include, for example, the former GOP Governor of California, Pete Wilson, whom one would think would know better than to get mixed up in this seamy racket but, like so many superannuated Republicans trading their ever more cobwebbed Rolodexes, doesn't.
Nonetheless, CRTV's second largest shareholder by some considerable margin is Mark Levin.
So Levin's "great patriot" Katz is, in effect, suing Levin.
Did Levin know about this at the time he waxed lyrical about all that living-room bonding? Did he know the Great Patriot was suing his own company when he gave out the 1-800 number and urged you to subscribe? As I said, the case was filed just thirty minutes before Levin began his Friday show. Did the other CRTV hosts - Steven Crowder, Michelle Malkin, Phil Robertson - know their student-loan sugar-daddy was suing himself and thereby rendering Levin's "wonderful network" an insolvent husk? Or were they blindsided? As I was when he yanked the rug out from under me.
Levin is a lawyer in Virginia and Pete Wilson is a lawyer in California, so I'd be interested to know if, as officers of the court and co-owners of CRTV, they've advised their business partner Katz that he's obligated to comply with court decisions and that insider-dealing transfers designed to thwart judges' orders are fraudulent. If not, the stink of Katz's gangsterism will hang on them, too.
Walking toilets like Katz are to be found on both sides of the political spectrum. But one notices that the left's scumbags are at least sufficiently motivated to advance their causes, very effectively - gay marriage, climate change, transgender pronouns, government health care... Too often the right's scumbags are just bored opportunists amusing themselves at the expense of conservatism and fleecing the rubes along the way. And too many marquee names are willing to dignify them as "great patriots".
Trump came along and snaffled the GOP nomination away from the donor class because Conservatism, Inc had proved itself largely impotent. In the hands of Cary Katz, it's both impotent and corrupt. Katz is not a "great patriot": right now, he's a great scofflaw and a great deadbeat. And anyone who makes the mistake of subscribing to his "wonderful network" is just roadkill in the path of his fleeing limo.
Mark Levin is right: "You're smart, you love your country", and you should want to know what's going on - and be far more careful about who you give your hard-earned dollars to. I ended Thursday's report from the New York Supreme Court with these words:
I hope that Cary Katz and CRTV's other owners will accept the verdict, and do as honorable men do who pick a fight and lose: Take their lumps and move on.
"...do as honorable men do..." Boy, I'll bet Katz and the other "great patriots" had a grand old laugh at that one.
Final thought: Cary Katz dragged me through a year of ruinously expensive "confidential binding arbitration", per our contract. The key word there is "binding". Twenty-four hours after Judge Gordon ruled CRTV had to pay us four mil plus change, Katz called to say he would never pay it. So he declined to be bound by the "binding arbitration" and has acted accordingly. In doing so, he's not declaring that my contract is worthless but that the binding contracts of his current talent - Michelle Malkin, Steven Crowder, Phil Robertson - are worthless. Unless "conservative" is a synonym for "criminal", this man and his associates should have no place on the American right.
~Tonight at 8pm Eastern Mark joins Tucker Carlson live across America. Tomorrow, Tuesday, please join him for three hours of substitute-host-level Excellence In Broadcasting as he returns to the Golden EIB Microphone of America's Number One radio program, "The Rush Limbaugh Show". He'll be analyzing, among other subjects, today's terror attack in his home town of Toronto.
Richard Trzupek
Maybe its just me, but can't help but wonder if Katz will pull a David Brock sometime down the line. For those who aren't quite as old as I, Brock was a conservative darling when he was working at the American Spectator during the Clinton administration and exposing some of the worst of Bill and HIl. Then he wrote a pretty awful, poorly researched book on her Hilliraness, found himself out of favor with many conservatives, and flipped to eventually become the George Soros flunky who runs Media Matters today. I always thought Brock's supposed conservatism was simply a form of narcissism and when he couldn't get his fix on the right any more, he flipped so he could continue to get the particular high he needs from the left. Katz strikes me as the same sort of personality.