Shannon Sharpe is explaining why he was willing to give his rape accuser at least $10 million to not move forward with her lawsuit ... saying it was a drastic attempt to keep the "intimate details" of his life from going public -- NOT because he did anything wrong.
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00:00Shannon Sharpe finds himself in an interesting position that we've seen this before with other celebrities when you are when you are sued, you have a civil lawsuit filed against you.
00:11And there are allegations made if you settle or if you make an offer to settle, a lot of times people in the public are like, oh, well, their person is clearly guilty of that.
00:22Well, Shannon Sharpe wants to make it clear that the fact that he offered his accuser at least $10 million, is the way his attorney put it, does not mean that he is admitting anything or that he is guilty.
00:36What he wanted to do is for none of the details of his sex life to come out, which interestingly now he is putting it all out there.
00:48And the very reason he said he didn't want it to come out, you see it unfolding that now he's walked away from ESPN, at least temporarily.
00:55Yes. So this is what his attorney this morning said, while Shannon was willing to pay her a substantial amount of money to avoid the intimate details of his personal life from being exposed, that is no longer the case.
01:08This is a shakedown, pure and simple, and we have the evidence to prove it.
01:13And so the part about that is no longer the case, I mean, obviously it's not the case because she filed the lawsuit and there were details that came out in that.
01:23And then subsequently her attorney, Tony Busby, has released these phone conversations that she recorded where you hear him saying things like, I'm going to choke you or I might choke you in public.
01:35And I think rather interestingly, the, what was the quote? Big black man chokes little white woman.
01:43Right. So it depends on how, it depends on how you view it. I mean, from his perspective, what he's saying, from her perspective, she's saying it's a threat.
01:50From his perspective, he's saying it's evidence of role playing because you don't hear the shock and awe.
01:56And now he has to be open about all of that. And if he wants to win, at least in the court of public opinion and perhaps eventually in a actual court of law, he is going to have to be extremely open about all of his sex life now.
02:12Well, he kind of has been already.
02:14And we know that based on his initial statement where he said, look, Tony Busby is going to say, hey, we have a short video of me in the bedroom with the accuser.
02:23Released the whole thing. I have nothing to hide anymore. And we've all seen these texts in this newsroom.
02:28I mean, this is a complete 180 from initially trying to keep all of this private.
02:33It is quite embarrassing stuff. And he says, look, now to clear my name, let it all out there.
02:38Does this go to trial?
02:40This reminds me of, and it's not the same allegations as Cassie, but you had Cassie file, threatened to file a lawsuit against Diddy.
02:51Right. He refused to settle with her. She files a lawsuit and then he immediately settled.
02:57That doesn't seem to be what's happening with Shannon because he didn't immediately settle.
03:02Right. But the longer this goes on, the more time he has to spend away from his show First Take on ESPN.
03:08Then does he decide, all right, let's settle it.
03:11And by the way, that's kind of, you know, what it's really kind of an interesting thing that goes on in in the law that, you know, people can make a demand.
03:21And then the other side has to calculate what are the damages, even if I didn't do anything for it to come out.
03:26And sometimes it's legit, but sometimes it's not.
03:31And when it's not and you demand money and they pay.
03:34Right.
03:34What some people call it, and I'm not saying it's this case, but what some people call that is legalized extortion.
03:40Right.
03:40Now, the question is, is this legit or or is it not?
03:45And I don't think it's necessarily clear to anybody.
03:49We're a long way away from that happening.
04:00Yeah, I mean, if it even ends up in court.
04:02Yeah, I don't think that is even going to happen.