Bill Cosby's attorney Monique Pressley appeared on HuffPost Live Friday and did what she was hired to do: defend her client. She poked holes through the swarm of allegations that Cosby sexually assaulted more than two dozen women over the course of three decades.
Pressley scolded the media as being biased and wondered why, when information comes out that contradicts some of what the accusers have claimed, reporters haven't pounced on that information and reported it with the same ferocity with which they report the allegations levied against Cosby.
"When contrary information comes forward, the people who are putting forward the interviews, the people who are doing the reporting, should do both sides. Why aren't we seeing those?" Pressley asked.
Pressley pointed specifically to an accuser who claimed that an incident happened on The Tonight Show, but Pressley said that they were able to prove that Cosby was "on the other side of the world having eye surgery" that day. Pressley argued that those kinds of discoveries that discredit some of the allegations aren't given a lot of attention.
Pressley also made it a point to argue that not all of the accusers have accused Cosby of "rape." She said some of them are accusing him of grabbing their wrists or brushing up against them in a club inappropriately and that not everything has involved sexual assault or penetration.
Pressley insinuated that Cosby's power and wealth have made him a "walking magnet for defamation suits," and so when asked specifically about the claims put forth by Beverly Johnson—a former supermodel who has fame and presumably no reason to seek out any more public attention—Pressley said that she has a hard time believing Johnson, since her then-manager discredited her claims.
" 'Hmm, I was around during the time of this action, and Ms. Johnson had nothing but positive things to say about her interactions with Bill and Camille Cosby,' " Johnson's then-manager allegedly said, according to Pressley.
But what was perhaps most revealing about Pressley's interview was when she spoke about how Cosby's race would have worked against her client. She argued that even though Cosby was wealthy and powerful, he was still an African-American man. Pressley finds it difficult to believe, being "a student of history and all," that back in the 1970s and 1980s, Cosby's white accusers would not have been believed or taken seriously, since the alleged perpetrator was a black man.
"Bill Cosby was a black man in America," Pressley said. "If we look back on our own history and see what was happening during those times, he would have been target No. 1 in those days.
"I'm saying, based on what I know of our country and our country's history, and when we look back on the kinds of things that were being done to African-American males, I find it incredulous that no one would have believed [his white accusers] enough to check their story," she said.
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Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele is a staff writer at The Root and the founder and executive producer of Lectures to Beats, a Web series that features expert advice with scarily insightful people. Follow Lectures to Beats on Facebook and Twitter.