The Megan Thee Stallion case started before Judge Altonaga with opening statements yesterday. Some coverage by Meghann Cuniff here:

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The jury of five men and four women saw the obscene video during Megan’s lawyer Marie Hayrapetian’s 20-minute opening statement.

Before she played it, Hayrapetian said she wanted “to acknowledge how disturbing this is.”

“Imagine
having to sit in court and watch this play for a room full of
strangers. That’s what we’re asking Megan to do today, but you need to
see it to understand what Milagro Cooper promoted,” said Hayrapetian, an
associate in Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP’s Los Angeles
office.

The approximately 45-second video included commentary from Milagro as
she played it for viewers on her live stream. “Watch how this post jump
… I just liked it and I tweeted ‘go to my likes.’”

“I apologize to everyone in this courtroom for having to see that, especially to Megan,” Hayrapetian said. “But Milagro Cooper made the choice to promote it.”

Hayrapetian began her opening by playing audio of the gunshots that Daystar “Tory Lanez” Peterson
fired at Megan on July 12, 2020. She told jurors he was convicted in
December 2022, and the California Court of Appeal affirmed his
convictions last week. She played an excerpt of Milagro discussing Megan
that begins, “At the end of the day, a bitch lying on somebody is low
down. So believe what the fuck you want to believe.” Milagro goes on to
say she wants to “slap” Megan.

“This case is about someone
who wasn’t there that night, the defendant, Milagro Cooper. She didn’t
see the fear or the blood or the gun, but she saw something else: Her
shot had the spotlight,” Hayrapetian said. “This case is about what
Milagro Cooper did with her shot at the spotlight.”

Hayrapetian
said jurors will learn “how she turned attacking Megan into her brand,
how she coordinated with Tory Lanez and his team, how she built her
platform by tearing Megan down.”

She said the case “is not about
whether Tory shot Megan. That has already been decided: He did. This
case is about Milagro Cooper’s continued effort to undo what’s already
been done, to free Tory.”

The first thing Milagro’s lawyer Nathacha Bien-Aime
told jurors in her opening was, “Yes. Megan Pete was shot.” But she
said “whether he did or not, that case, that tragedy, that happened in
California.”

“The plaintiff desperately wants to drive a
California criminal trial across the country, to replay it for you here
in Miami, Florida,” Bien-Aime said.