Leah Remini and her Troublemakers 1 – For-profit Troll Farm Operators. Remini, Rinder, and Orteg

Leah Remini and her Troublemakers 1 – For-profit Troll Farm Operators. Remini, Rinder, and Ortega

So we spoke about denialism – and that is part and parcel with the whole ASC – narrative. They have to deny any possible benefit or the 55 million words of spoken words and lectures that constitute Scientology philosophy. They have to deny that it exists in its entirety and so there narrative can be summed up real simply as “Scientology is a group of people who have no substance”. There is no substance that they are trying to protect and yet they do two things: if somebody breaks ranks and vociferously disagrees with the group they are ostracized and they are disconnected from. And if the person then sets their goal or activity to escalate that disagreement and turn it into an attack, Scientology then ruthlessly, dispenses with the attacker. Ok.

And that in essence is the narrative that goes over and over and over.

It’s the basis of Going Clear, it’s the basis of Aftermath, it’s the basis of the blogs in the troll farm and what I learned through five years of interacting with these people who are the center of the, the authors of the bible of the asc and the center of the hierarchy – the “troika cluster” is that literally that narrative that they tell, is precisely a description of themselves.

There is literally, no philosophy. It is literally an anarchy of ideas. There’s no—no solutions; there’s no inter-connecting sort of philosophy or way of looking at things, there is only ostracizing, marginalizing and attacking Scientologists. It’s “us versus them” and it’s the basis upon which the group exists.

Ok, so the troika. I mentioned that the troika of asc considered that they had a well-defined, hard bound hierarchy. The only problem is that all three members of it think that they’re in charge. And what I mean by that is – the three members: Tony Ortega – who runs a daily blog -- he’s there sort of PR meme guy. Mike Rinder – who runs a daily blog and Leah Remini who runs reality TV spin offs on Scientology.

Every meme, every idea that emanates from the asc, emanates from those three. I mean, somebody may have an idea and bring it in, but it clears one of those three before it gets put out there. And they continue to churn this stuff out. And they only do it, because it is profitable.

Now when I say they consider they have a hierarchy, I mean I discussions with these people. I mean – Tony Ortega snickers about what a fool Mike Rinder and Leah Remini are, and how easy it is to sucker them into making him the only first scoop guy so he gets all the “scoops” right!

Mike Rinder says that Leah Remini is just a ditzy, hair-brained, privileged person who has a great over-bloated self-image of herself and that he has to guide her every step of the way and hold her hand.

Leah Remini says that Mike Rinder and Tony Ortega are hallucinating if they don’t realize that they’re her bitches. And she is just using them. And so that’s why I say it’s like a cluster and they think they have a hierarchy but each part of it thinks that they are the one that’s in charge.

But again, I say, it always comes back to money. And Leah Remini explained it to me one day. She asked me if I got paid to participate in Going Clear and I said no, I never participate in, I never got paid for participating in any media or documentary, and I never would out of principle. She said, “I don’t get that. I don’t understand what, I don’t understand your thinking”. She said, “I don’t” she said “I didn’t participate because they wouldn’t pay me”. She said, “I don’t do anything unless I’m paid”. Nothing.

So at one point Leah Remini told me she had, she, after two years of careful work through her publicist and Rinder and Ortega, had successfully come up with unlimited financial backing to go after Scientology and she was going to create a production to do so. And she told me that she was so well backed that I could write my own ticket to participate as a producer. And so I asked her, you know, what are you looking at producing? And she told me, essentially, it was going to be a regurgitation of everything that’s been publicized about Scientology over the last 7 years. About things that have happened over the last 40 years, allegedly, and she would sort of resurrect the players who were saying things about Scientology 7 years as somehow new and current.

To which my reaction was I have no interest whatsoever. “If you want to do something”—I’ve had this conversation over 2 years. “If you want to do something that’s educational, that is somewhat objective, that could lead to people getting on in life better, that gave some new perspective”, that was the only basis upon which I ever told her I would ever participate in any of her stuff, right, I said, and that still stands, “But what you’re proposing is, is a, essentially a cheap tabloidesque pile on, and I’m not interested”. OK?

And I thought that would be the last I’d ever hear of her, because, I mean, she, that was the end of the conversation. She just, you know. She was like a long tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs, it was like Ralph Kramden, hubeda hubeda hubeda. And it was the end of the conversation, she had nothing to say. See. So I did think that would be the end of it, I told her what my position was. But, it wasn’t, but I’ll get back to that. Because I’m on this subject of financial motivation. Her partner, Mike Rinder, since he’s left the Church of Scientology, has never had a job, or never had employment, or never lifted a finger to do anything that wasn’t related to anti-Scientology work, that wasn’t paid for by people that were interested in seeing Scientology’s oxes gored.

And I know that because his first 3 or 4 engagements he specifically asked me to help him get into a position where he could have such backers and I put him in that position. And so from 2009, it’s just been a series of sugar daddies for him one right after the other. You know, venture capitalist, former traitor, well actually, a number of people that are in that kind of business, an old woman, with, you know, a ton of money, which is obsessed on the subject. It’s just been one chain, one after the other. And so, in essence, he’s, he’s followed the same philosophy as, oh, and now Leah Remini. You know, who, when I rejected her offer, she went straight to Mike Rinder and he took her up happily.

And then there’s Tony Ortega, who’s the third part of the troika, and Tony Ortega, you know, at one point, was really shining—was really sort of sucking up to me. Because I was sort of attention of a lot of media, and he wanted to get his media cred, and he flew all the way down to south Texas, to my home, and he had just got fired from the Village Voice which he had sort of converted into this anti-Scientology platform for 2 years. And at a rare moment where he had a motive to be somewhat candid, he told me about the circumstances in which he left the Village Voice. And the circumstances, he said, you know, this can’t go anywhere, but what happened was, is that, the Village Voice had been accused, and practically been, factually been investigated by law enforcement of human trafficking and promoting the child sex slave industry by its backpages ads. And he pointed, he told me that, you know, Scientology had been exposing that. And he said the problem, is, is that Scientology was more accurate than anybody thought. And that in fact, the Village Voice was almost exclusively financed by that human trafficking operation and that there were profits beyond that and so the owners, now that Scientology was exposing it and law enforcement was investigating it, said—decided they had to get rid of Tony Ortega, because he was just obsessed with Scientology, and he was keeping their focus on him and their operation, so they needed to get rid of him. And so, in order to do that, they, and to extract his cooperation in keeping quiet about what he knew, which is interesting, because of course, he’s the first guy to accuse anybody who doesn’t go after Scientology as being bought off, right? He literally agreed to cover it up and obstruct justice for a payout of essentially a 2-year buyout deal. Where they paid him enough where he could literally do nothing for 2 years and go out and, and write a book on Scientology so that he could begin with some foundation of credibility upon which to continue his career which he had turned into trashing Scientology. So, with all three of the troika, I’ve had personal experience that tells me, the primary motivation is money.