SEScoops

Tag: Hulk Hogan sex tape

  • Hulk Hogan Declares Recent Baptism As The Greatest Day Of His Life

    Hulk Hogan Declares Recent Baptism As The Greatest Day Of His Life

    Hulk Hogan is a pop culture icon at this stage of his career, for a multitude of reasons. At 70-years-old, The Hulkster is still running wild, but he will do so while having a closer relationship to a higher power.

    Hulk Hogan’s Spiritual Awakening

    Hulk Hogan recently shared a profound moment in his life, undergoing baptism alongside his wife, Sky Daily Hogan. This spiritual experience marked a significant chapter for Hogan, as he expressed his complete surrender and dedication to Jesus.

    The two-time WWE Hall of Famer described the event as the greatest day of his life, emphasizing a message centered on love, free from worries, hate, or judgment.

    While reflecting on his spiritual journey, Hulk Hogan disclosed in April that he had accepted Christ as his savior at the age of 14. Throughout his life, he attributed his sustained well-being to a combination of training, prayers, and vitamins.

    I accepted Christ as my savior at 14yrs old, and the training, prayers and vitamins kept me in the game but now that I am one with God,the main event theme of surrender,service and love makes me the Real Main Event that can slam any giant of any size through the power of my Lord and Savior and so it is,even now brother,AMEN!

    Today, Hulk Hogan revealed footage of himself, along with his wife, getting baptized. He mentioned that this was the best day of his life, as his sins were resolved.

    Total surrender and dedication to Jesus is the greatest day of my life. No worries, no hate, no judgment… only love!

    Hulk Hogan’s Troublesome Past

    Hulk Hogan embarks on this new spiritual chapter, it’s crucial to acknowledge the controversies that have marked his past. One notable legal battle involved a sex tape trial with GAWKER, where Hogan sued the media company for invasion of privacy. The trial brought to light personal aspects of Hogan’s life, leading to discussions on the boundaries between public figures and media scrutiny.

    Aside from the GAWKER lawsuit, Hulk Hogan has faced a microscope he never wanted on him for his involvement in a racist scandal and allegations related to a steroids controversy. That doesn’t even include the countless lies he’s been caught in over the years. Despite these challenges, he carried on, and it doesn’t appear that there is any sign of stopping.

    In recent Hulk Hogan-adjacent news, his son, Nick Hogan, was recently arrested for DUI, a charge to which he pleaded not guilty. He was arrested in November 2023 when he was on his way home after judging and DJing a bikini contest at Hogan’s Hangout.

    Hulk Hogan seems focused on turning over a new leaf as he continues to run Hogan’s Beach Hangout in Clearwater, Florida. While acknowledging his past, Hogan appears committed to navigating this new chapter with a renewed sense of spirituality and dedication to a life centered on love and faith. We’re pulling for him as he enters this fresh chapter, brother.

    Hogan’s Hangout is always running events, and they have a nice website as well, if you wanted to visit his online home. 

  • Hulk Hogan Barred From Searching Gawker’s Computers For Now

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bGkS3KnUWE

    On Thursday (but not uploaded to the court website until yesterday), in the Second District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida, Gawker won the latest battle in their long-standing legal entanglement with Hulk Hogan. This time, the appellate court granted Gawker’s request to issue a stay blocking the Pinellas County trial judge’s order that a forensic examiner hired by Hogan could search their computer network. As reported here in October, Hogan’s side was granted the ability to hire a forensic computer examiner (on his own dime) to look for specific key words and phrases allowed by the judge, and Gawker quickly moved to block the ruling.

    This all stems from the leak this past summer of Hogan’s racist comments on one of the sex videos shot without his consent in 2007. Hogan’s side was arguing that Gawker must have leaked the story to the National Enquirer, violating a court order about certain documents Gawker got in the discovery phase of the litigation. Gawker argues that they never even had the transcripts of those comments, including the most inflammatory ones.

    You can read the latest order below:

  • Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Police Report Analysis In Depth

    Last night, I went over the key items in the report that the Tampa Police Department released released this week about the 2012 theft of DVDs from Bubba the Love Sponge Clem. These DVDs included videos of his former wife Heather Cole having sex with various men, some (like a police officer friend) who knew they were on camera and others (like Hulk Hogan) who didn’t. While there are still some unknowns, like who leaked one of the Hogan videos to Gawker and why nobody has been prosecuted, the report fills in a lot of details that weren’t public previously. I tried to outline those in last night’s article, and now, it’s time to examine them a little deeper.

    So, how do you contextualize all of this?

    To me, the most interesting part overall was the detailed summary of the December 14, 2012 FBI sting operation in which Hogan and lawyer David Houston pretended to go along with making a deal with sex tape broker Keith Davidson. Not only was it a detailed look at a strange, seedy backroom celebrity business deal, but Davidson made some telling comments. Specifically, the “issues” in the videos that he mentions are Hogan’s now-infamous N-word rant and Hogan saying his son Nick’s then-girlfriend’s twin sister had been coming onto him. The former has been out since July and the latter was known going back to Gawker’s October 2012 article.

    I was able to confirm that, contrary to the baseless rumors about racist comments towards Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson being on one video,  there are no other comments deemed to be a threat to Hogan’s public persona. At least when it comes to the videos themselves, there’s not much more damage they could do to Hogan. He was lucky, relatively speaking, that only transcripts got out and not the audio. That the general public hasn’t heard the comments likely plays a factor in why:

    1. He’s so optimistic about being rehired by WWE.
    2. Some fans mistakenly think he got in trouble for an old radio interview where used the n-word in the context of quoting people.

    Obviously, he wants to make sure that doesn’t change, and he also wants to ensure nobody else sees him having sex. But unless there’s something that came up in the FBI investigation that we have no real concept of, there may not be further skeletons this case’s closet that can ruin Hulk Hogan.

    Gawker has, at times, claimed that determining if Hogan was aware of the cameras in Bubba the Love Sponge Clem’s house is why they sued the FBI. He’s always insisted that he wasn’t, with skepticism coming from Bubba talking about his security system on his radio show and Cole seemingly positioning Hogan for the camera on the video. While a friend of Bubba’s who had a tryst with Heather after Hogan was aware of the camera, Heather swore to police that Hogan was unaware. From the report (in a section that’s been redacted from the version Bubba posted on his website):

    Cole stated that the sex she had with others during her marriage to Bubba was consensual. She stated that Bubba insisted on it being videoed. I asked Cole if Bollea knew he was being recorded and she said no. I told Cole that the in the videos it appears as though she is positioning Bollea for the camera. She said she did that because that is what Bubba wanted. Cole said Bubba could be very controlling. Cole said she remembers Bubba coming to the house after they had separated and requesting the DVDs sometime around the end of 2011.

    One would think that issue should be put to bed at this point. Of course, that passage raises another issue, which is that Bubba comes off terribly here. It at least reads as if he heavily pressured his wife into participating in making secret videos of trysts with his friends even if she was fully into their swinger (for lack of a better term) lifestyle. That doesn’t take away from him being a legitimate victim when it comes to the DVD theft and related crimes, and he’s right to be angry at the prosecutors for not charging anyone. After all, if the police have so much evidence and are willing to name Matt Loyd in this report, why do the prosecutors think they won’t get a conviction?

    There’s honestly no good answer other than that  conspiracy theories about Hogan using his influence because he’s worried about things that could come out in a trial. As I said earlier: If it’s not on the videos, we don’t know what that is. Unless it’s just not wanting anyone to hear his racist comments on the videos out loud, there’s no indication why this would be.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk0ZACuiYAY

    Speaking of things that Hogan doesn’t want out: One would think that Gawker as well as various interested media outlets (who have filed intervening motions in the past) may try to parlay the release of this report into the unsealing of some of the FBI documents. After all, if the substance of what was said during the sting operation is now public record, why not the word for word transcript? It wouldn’t shock me at all, and it’s something to keep an eye on in both lawsuits.

    As for Matt Loyd being named as who stole the DVDs from Bubba, that’s no surprise at this point, as it had been hinted at in various lawsuit filings. But if he didn’t leak one of the DVDs to Gawker, then we don’t really have any good leads as to who it is. That is unless there’s some obfuscation going on here.

    We’re still over three months away from the Hogan-Gawker civil trial, and this story is far from over.

     

  • Hulk Hogan Trying To Get Gawker To Pay Six Figure Court Costs

    Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker rolled on this past week. First, Gawker president and General Counsel Heather Dietrick conceded that the company will probably lose at trial. Then, Gawker filed a stay to attempt to freeze and overturn a ruling allowing their computers to be searched for evidence that they leaked Hogan’s racist comments. Now, the latest big move is from Hogan’s side, who filed on motion on Tuesday demanding that Gawker reimburse his attorney’s fees and other court costs stemming from a number of discovery issues in the case.

    Discovery is the pre-trial procedure where the two sides get information from each other as well as third parties via document production, answering interrogatories, and deposition testimony. For example, Hogan’s 1998 WCW contract was everywhere last week. How? It became public record in the famous racial discrimination lawsuits against WCW because it was filed as an exhibit by the plaintiffs, who got it from WCW during discovery. There are of course a number of very specific rules governing discovery, and in the case of Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker, Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) is saying that Gawker is in violation of a bunch of them.

    Hogan is asking for $427,665 ($392,475 in attorneys’ fees and $35,190 in court costs) stemming from the abuses that his side his claiming Gawker has committed throughout the discovery process. His lawyers are arguing that Gawker is doing this specifically to raise costs to the point that the case is too expensive for Hogan to litigate.  As for their accusations of wrongdoing, they include:

    * That “Gawker repeatedly refused to produce any documents or information related to” sister company Kinja/Blogwire Hungary. It’s alleged that they continued to do this even after the Special Discovery Magistrate overseeing the case ruled in Hogan’s favor. “Eventually, Gawker’s delay tactics required Mr. Bollea to sever Kinja from the case simply to secure a trial date.”

    * This: “Gawker attempted numerous times to turn discovery into an inquisition into Mr. Bollea’s private life. At the start of this litigation, Gawker wanted to know the name of every woman Mr. Bollea had sex with over the course of a decade. Gawker wanted to know if there were sex tapes other than the illegal recording that had been sent to Gawker [Note: There were, but they were other illegally made recordings], and Gawker repeatedly asked witnesses at deposition about Mr. Bollea’s private sex life. Gawker also wanted all of Mr. Bollea’s medical records, even though Mr. Bollea did not seek any damages based on any claim that Gawker’s actions led to his seeking medical treatment.”

    The claim is that Hogan had to spend “large amounts of money” just to go to court to protect basic privacy rights. And that’s even after the judge issued an order  prohibiting discovery of that nature.

    * Gawker filed 24 third-party subpoenas in the case, “many of which were not tailored at all to the First Amendment defenses in its case,” instead seeking “private information” that violated the judge’s protective order. Among those served subpoenas were Dixie Carter, TNA Wrestling, WWE, Bischoff Hervey Entertainment, Hogan’s lawyer David Houston, Keith Davidson (the lawyer representing the mystery person who tried to extort Hogan using the sex tapes), and Matt Loyd (a former Bubba the Love Sponge employee). Hogan says he cooperated with all of the subpoenas.

    * Gawker objected to a subpoena to their loan broker in an attempt to determine the worth of the company.

    You get the idea: Hogan’s side is saying that Gawker tried to block legitimate discovery because they knew it would run up costs for Hogan. while the other side made ridiculous requests to further run up said costs. Where exactly the truth lies, who knows?

    As for the costs themselves, Hogan has a total of eight lawyers working on the case at rates ranging from $295 to $550 per hour. In determining costs that Gawker were owed, Charles Harder, one of Hogan’s lawyers, wrote in a sworn affidavit that not only did he did not include travel costs, but all hourly billings were rounded down instead of up.

    So for example: When responding to Gawker’s exception to the ruling on discovery about Hogan’s sexual partners, four of his lawyers billed a total of 27 hours ranging from $395 to $550 each for a total of $12,390. That’s on the lower end of some of these itemized arguments, as they ranged from $6,315 to a whopping $72,960 (five lawyers working a total of 160 hours).

  • Gawker President Expects To Lose Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Trial

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ki_MGwOopI

    Set for March 2016, the trial in Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker (for publishing clips of a sex tape shot without his knowledge)  is still several months away. As we wait it out, Heather Dietrick, Gawker’s President and General Counsel, made a surprising admission according to Capital New York: She thinks they’re going to lose.

    During a Gawker staff meeting this past Thursday (October 22nd), Dietrick said “It’s probably difficult to win the case entirely, outright, knowing the jury that we’re facing, but it’s possible. More likely than not, we end up with a really small judgment that we can easily carry and we appeal that,” Hogan has sued for $100 million, and Florida law requires that to appeal a judgment,  the losing party must post a bond for the full amount plus two years’ interest. Gawker founder Nick Denton has said in the past that a judgment of that size would kill the company or require him to sell a equity stake.

    Dietrick added that “It’s quite possible that Hogan just gets a very small judgment against us, and then we have to make the decision: do we appeal that and incur further fees to vindicate the First Amendment rights that we know we’re on the right side of, or do we simply say, OK this very small judgment is a win and makes it very difficult for Hulk Hogan, who’s spent a lot of time on pursuing this case and could walk away with something very small[, to keep the lawsuit going].”

    If there’s a large judgment, she’s now saying they’ll appeal expecting the appeals court to allow them to pay a smaller bond.”The rights at stake are so important , not just to this story but to other stories that we do and stories that every news outlet does, that I expect that the appeals court will allow us to appeal, which means allowing a reasonable bond that we’re able to post. The appeals court in question has generally ruled in their favor so for (seven out of eight times) in matters pertaining to the case.

    Related: Hulk Hogan’s Final WCW Contract From 1998 Leaks Online

  • Full List Of What Hulk Hogan’s Investigator Can Search For On Gawker’s Computers

    Earlier, we told you about how a Florida judge ruled that Hulk Hogan pay for a court appointed forensic examiner to search Gawker’s computers to see if they ;leaked his racist comments. In the earlier article, we mentioned a few of the search terms that the judge ruled that the investigator can look for. Now, having procured the entire nine page judge’s order, we hav the full list. Here they are, with an explanation of the significance of each:

    “Hulk Hogan,” “Bollea,” “racist”

    These are completely self-explanatory.

    “DVD details,” “Hulk Hogan/Heather Clem Sex Tape from July 2007,” “Hulk_Hogan_Sex_Tapes.doc”

    Also self-explanatory, but the specificity is interesting. Presumably, that wording is what’s on the FBI records that Gawker’s lawyers were sent and ordered not to share with anyone, includign Gawker founder Nick Denton.

    “Keith Davidson,” “Davidson”

    When Hogan went to the FBI about an extortion attempt involving the videos of him and Heather Cole having sex shot without his permission, the investigation took them to Keith Davidson, a lawyer based out Los Angeles. The FBI set up a sting operation where Hogan and his lawyer watched the videos and gave Davidson a $150,000 check. Davidson was never charged, and he claims that he was just representing whoever had the videos. Gawker’s attempts to subpoena Davidson have not gone well.

    “Calta,” Cowhead,” “MRCOWHEAD” “Tony Burton,” “Burton”

    Gawker was sent the video that led to the lawsuit after receiving an odd phone call from Tony Burton, an agent at Don Buchwald and Associates, Inc. That firm primarily represents radio personalities.  Burton said that he had a client who wanted t send Gawker a certain DVD anonymously and wanted to know how to do that. Gawker got the DVD of Hogan and Heather Cole days later. While it came out later that the client was Mike “Cowhoad” Calta, a rival radio personality of Bubba the Love Sponge (Cole’s then-husband and Hogan’s then-best friend), he was purportedly getting the information for an anonymous caller.

    “Richard Peirce,” “richpeirce, ” “Matt Loyd,” “SpiceBoy”

    Former Bubba the Love Spunge employees. Peirce was deposed in the lawsuit and talked about the rumors about the tapes in radio circles. Matt “SpiceBoy” Loyd came up in the FBI investigation in some form. The belief has always been that a disgruntled employee of the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show stole the DVDs when Bubba left Sirius Satellite Radio for a Florida radio station, costing the employee his job.

    “Bostick”

    It’s not clear exacrly who this is. The docket in the lawsuit includes a copy of a settlement agreement between “Taryn Bostick” and “J.D. Walsh,” but it’s sealed. Searching for “Taryn Bostick” on Google provides no other substantive results. This is odd. J.D.Walsh could be the actor, the basketball coach, or a third person, but who knows what exactly that has to do with anything?

     The investigator will also  be able to search for these quotes from Hogan’s rant:
    1. “my daughter Brooke jumped sides on me”
    2. “black billionaire guy”
    3. “He had Jamie Foxx coming in on the 22nd track”
    4. “she is making some real bad decisions now”
    5. “the one option Brooke had, Brooke’s career besides me”
    6. “sell beach records”
    7. “south beach records”
    8. “VH1 wanted me to do a big thing and go back to the house I grew up in”
    9. “enamored with Linda”

  • Hulk Hogan’s FBI Record Still Could Be Made Public

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlEDmfzNCo

    Late last week, we told you about the latest development in Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker for publishing clips of a sex video recorded without his knowledge. Various news agencies and media companies, most notably the Associated Press and Scripps, had filed a motion to unseal the FBI case file of the investigation into an extortion attempt made using the sex videos. Gawker had successfully sued to get a copy of the case file, but the judge overseeing the Hogan case made it “eyes only” to each side’s lawyers it when they filed the information in court.

    This means that it’s sealed off to everyone else, including Gawker founder Nick Denton and the media. Hence the motion to unseal it, which could be bad for Hogan because we now know the contents include the transcript of his racist tirade among other things. The media companies argued that with Florida’s open records laws, the judge in the Gawker-FBI lawsuit ruling the case file was public record, and the sealing being highly unusual, the records should be made public.

    Well, on Friday, we told you that, per the Associated Press, Judge Pamela Campbell had ruled against the motion just a day after it was filed. No reason was given, which was strange. Well, it turns out that the Associated Press actually messed up a story about themselves, as they issued a correction last night. It turns out that the motion struck down last week was an earlier attempt to unseal from the Summer. The timing appears coincidental.

  • News Organizations Trying To Get Hulk Hogan FBI Files Unsealed

    Another wrench just got thrown in the private life of Hulk Hogan. Today, the Associated Press reported on a motion that they filed in Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker.

    As you may recall, about three years ago, Gawker published an article about being sent one of the videos that shows Hogan engaged in sexual relations with Heather Clem. The videos were shot on the Clem family home security system without Hogan’s knowledge, and Gawker included a “highlight reel” of the video they were sent with the article.

    Hogan sued Gawker right away, and Gawker later sued the FBI for the records of their investigation into Hogan being extorted by a third party over the videos. Gawker quickly won the FBI case, but the judge in the Hogan case ruled that the products of that investigation(including a video and transcript of Hogan’s racist rant) must be sealed. The AP and its fellow intervenors want the records unsealed.

    Charles Tobin, who filed the motion, said that “It’s highly unusual for this much secrecy to surround a civil proceeding. Ordinarily, whether it’s a celebrity or an average citizen, once you ask the court to help solve a dispute you open the proceedings up to public review. What’s going on in Hulk Hogan’s case certainly is not the norm when it comes to public transparency of the courts.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRpnLCvRhkw

    I’ve obtained a copy of the filing, and here’s what we can add on top of what the AP noted in their own report:

    • Joining the Associated Press in filing the intervening motion are First Look Media (The Intercept and Reported.ly), WFTS TV (a Tampa, FL TV station), WPTV TV (a West Palm Beach, FL TV station), Scripps Media (owns many local newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations), Journal Broadcast Group (a multimedia company that recently merged with Scripps), and the Tampa Bay Times.
    • The argument is, essentially, that the files were ruled public information in Gawker’s lawsuit against the FBI, and Florida’s own state laws err on the side of court records being incredibly open. But…
    • …even if there was a time where the sealing was warranted, the argument is that Hogan demanding an investigation into a potential leak means the records must go public because he put them at issue.

    While none of the intervenors would be expected t publish the sex tapes if this action succeeded, it wouldn’t really matter since they’d be ruled public record and someone else would release them.