Summary: Kathy Griffin revealed on Twitter this weekend that she wants her money back from attorney Lisa Bloom.
In late May, Kathy Griffin experienced the wrath of Trump supporters when she posted a photo of her holding a head that resembled our 45th president. After the decapitation photo was posted, she experienced a wave of hateful messages, including denouncements from Trump’s family members; and her paid gigs were also canceled.
To try to defend herself, Griffin held a press conference with her attorney, Lisa Bloom, in June; but instead of helping her case, Griffin’s tearful press conference brought more criticism. Now, it appears that Griffin wants the public to know that she was not happy with Bloom’s services.
“Dear @LisaBloom pls stop calling me. If you’d like to refund me the tens of thousands of $$ I wasted on your services maybe I’ll talk to you,” Griffin tweeted on Saturday.
According to Fox News, Bloom immediately issued a response on Facebook to Griffin’s demand. She explained her side of the story and said that Griffin had chosen to not read the prepared statement. Thus, it was Griffin’s actions, not Bloom, that resulted in the disaster of a press conference.
“Kathy Griffin reached out to me after her Trump mask photo posted a few months ago and a few days later I had a press conference with her,” Bloom wrote. “Her entire team (entertainment lawyer, criminal lawyer and several others) approved in advance the statements she and I were going to make. Yet Kathy then during the press conference spontaneously chose to put aside the notes we had worked so hard on together. She said on camera “my notes are by the wayside and it’s all off the cuff” and then ad libbed. I was sorry she made that choice but I respected her right to speak as she saw fit. She was, as she always says, then widely panned for her comments. Now she blames me. She’s the only client I’ve ever had who chose to extemporize at a press conference rather than read from notes we prepared in advance.”
Bloom shared that she and Griffin had received death threats because of the Trump photo and that it was “sad” that Griffin had chosen to attack her and not any of her male lawyers.
“I got a lot of death and rape threats afterward and still do. I know Kathy has as well and I’m sure it’s unnerving,” Bloom wrote.“Kathy has now made a video about how women should stand together, and yet she’s attacked me, a lifetime women’s right attorney, and not the rest of her team, all of whom were men. This is sad, but I still believe that Kathy Griffin is one of the funniest comics alive, that she meant no ill will with the photo, and I wish her the best.”
Below is the full Kathy Griffin press conference.
After Griffin tweeted her displeasure of Bloom, she revealed to The Daily Beast that Bloom was a “fame whore” who had tried to push her to do a media tour about the severed head photo. Griffin said that Bloom had yelled at her and tried to play the feminist card.
“Lisa said, ‘Kathy, I don’t like it that you’re the only other woman on this call and you’re not speaking up for me,’” Griffin told The Daily Beast. “And I’m like, ‘Are you f-cking kidding me? After everything I’ve been through, you’re gonna try to play the f-cking feminist card with me?… Are you f-cking nuts? It doesn’t work that way. I don’t have your back on this one at all.’”
Bloom is the daughter of famed feminist attorney Gloria Allred, and she had made a name for herself as a champion of women’s rights, representing the alleged sexual harassment victims of Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly. However, her reputation has taken a hit recently because she represented accused rapist Harvey Weinstein, who was working on a TV adaptation of her book.
Bloom told The Daily Beast that Griffin’s allegations were “false.”
“I do not insist on anything with any client,” Bloom said to The Daily Beast. “I offer options and make recommendations. I am not a shouter. I don’t recall anyone shouting.”