Almost two years after Joseph Gatt was arrested by the LAPD on now dismissed charges of engaging in “online sexually explicit communication with a minor across state lines,” the Game of Thrones actor is taking on the police, the city of Los Angles and the office of District Attorney George Gascón.
In a $40 million suit filed Thursday in federal court in LA (read it here), Gatt alleges he was falsely labelled as serial pedophile. To that end, Gatt and his attorneys have put before the court a sordid saga of a 16-year-old “obsessed fan,” a botched police probe, and a now former Deputy LA D.A. with a supposed “personal animosity” against the actor.
Today’s violation of Constitutional rights complaint, which comes six-weeks after a LA judge tossed out the felony case against Gatt “without prejudice” on the advice of the prosecution, reads like an louche thriller that most studios and streamers would reject as too over the top. Having lost his reputation, his freedom of speech (for a while), and his career, the actor who played Thenn Warg on Season 4 of GoT wants his own day in court, and he wants the steamrolling he experienced to all come out in public:
Defendants, using threats, intimidation and coercion, and with no cause, let alone probable cause, subjected Gatt—a successful actor with numerous film and television series credits, including Game of Thrones and Banshee, among many others—to an utterly baseless arrest, unlawful detention, unlawful search and seizure of property, and malicious prosecution in which Gatt was alleged to have electronically communicated with a minor in a sexually explicit manner. Defendants’ conduct was purportedly based solely on the uncorroborated word of a then-16-year-old, admittedly obsessed fan of Gatt—who will be referred to throughout this Complaint as “Jane Doe” to preserve her privacy because she was a minor at the time and is not a party to this action—whom Gatt did not know and has never actually met, and whom Defendants did not even bother to interview or even remotely assess for credibility until almost one year after Defendants arrested Gatt, charged him with baseless crimes, and publicly branded him as a serial pedophile.
The complaint from the UK-born journeyman actor lays out a frightening sequence of events at how a seemingly innocent Cameo birthday greeting by Gatt to a Washington state residing teen in 2020 turned into a raid of the actor’s home in April 2022, his arrest and his apparent silencing as a condition of bail. The jury seeking filing also points some very detailed and private investigator backed-up fingers at the current LA DA Gascón, one-time deputy DA Angela Brunson (who left LA to work in the Riverside County DA’s office last summer), and LAPD Det. Denos Amarantos over their alleged roles in this perplexing case.
The abuses in question were the product of a culture of tolerance within the LA DA and/or LAPD. This culture is rooted in the deliberate indifference of high-ranking LA County and/or City of Los Angeles officials, including without limitation Defendants Gascón, Brunson, and Amarantos and any other high-ranking official, individually or acting in concert with one another, to the widespread misconduct on the part of the LA DA and/or LAPD employees, investigators, and consultants in recklessly engaging in unlawful arrests, searches, seizures, and criminal prosecutions.
Neither the LAPD nor the LA County DA’s office would comment on the filing by the Black Adam actor and its claims today because of the “pending litigation.”
However, Gatts and his Kasowitz Benson Torres legal team have a high-octane theory as to why this case was so deep-rooted for DDA Brunson – and it has little to do with the alleged sex crime itself.
Gatt was well known in the high-performance sports car community generally, and to DDA Brunson specifically, for his liberal political beliefs, including his vocal support for the Black Lives Matter movement and for LA County District Attorney George Gascón. Like the vast majority of the high-performance sports car community, DDA Brunson espouses conservative political beliefs that are the polar opposite of Gatt’s beliefs, and she was also a vocal critic of Gascón despite working for him at the LA DA.
The 38-page complaint goes on to say:
Given her political beliefs and Gatt’s reputation as a liberal and a Gascón supporter in their shared community—including his connection to her boyfriend’s employer, WRTeknica——DDA Brunson clearly already held personal animosity toward Gatt at the time this matter was referred to LA County. Remarkably, however, DDA Brunson never revealed her personal connections and clear conflicts of interest to the Court, Gatt, or his criminal defense counsel.
Even though the February 9 dismissal of the initial case by LA Superior Court Judge M.L. Villar does allow the prosecution to refile charges if they wish, Gatt’s primary lawyer Dean Pamphilis was unequivilcal to Deadline about where he thinks this very public suit is all about.
“The arrest and charges against Mr. Gatt—for which he was branded by the Los Angeles DA and LAPD as a serial pedophile—were based on fabricated evidence,” the Kasowitz Benson Torres partner declares. “Twenty months later, when the fabricated evidence was finally disclosed to Mr. Gatt and Mr. Gatt’s forensic expert were prepared to expose the truth in open court, the Los Angeles DA voluntarily dismissed the criminal complaint. Mr. Gatt, however, had already lost his community, his acting career and his personal reputation. We look forward to recovering Mr. Gatt’s enormous losses in court.”
Gatt is represented by Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP’s Pamphilis, J. Michael Wilson, Daniel A. Saunders and Sara Wolfe