Given that its case in defense of Bill Cosby was distilled down into one succinct, six-minute interview with a detective who was part of the initial 2005 investigation into sexual assault charges brought by Andrea Constand against the disgraced comedian, one might conclude that Cosby’s team of attorneys know the evidence is stacked against them, and have decided to just end this as quietly as they can. Not so fast: As reported by Jezebel, defense attorney Brian McMonagle was just saving all the pyrotechnics for his closing argument, a greatest-hits set of victim blaming and rape apology designed to shift the blame onto Constand.
McMonagle opened with the oft-covered “She’s a liar,” trying to convince the jury that Constand’s account was unreliable by picking apart the timeline of her story and going over lines crossed out from her interviews with police, including one “in which she’d said that the cognac was fantastic.” Speaking of, he followed that up with the timeless classic “She knew what she was getting into,” setting a romantic scene where Constand and Cosby drank cognac by the fire together like lovers—or like two executives talking business at a country club—a meeting Constand agreed to even after Cosby had tried to put his hands down her pants. (McMonagle conveniently left out the part where she stopped him and told him not to do that.)
McMonagle then brought out the No. 1 chart topper “She wasn’t acting like she got raped,” pointing out that Cosby and Constand once talked on the phone for 20 whole minutes after the alleged assault took place, an event that can only be understood in the context of a consensual romantic relationship—or the fact that Cosby held a position of significant power at Temple University, where Constand worked. “She’s been sexually assaulted, ladies and gentlemen!” McMonagle loudly exclaimed. “Look at that, 20 minutes.” Topping it all off was the obligatory gesture towards pop-cultural relevancy with “This is all the media’s fault,” as McMonagle gestured around the courtroom at the reporters and Cosby accusers sitting in the audience while banging the back of his chair and repeating, “banging the drum, banging the drum.”
“It is sickening what happens when lawyers get involved. It is sickening what happened here,” he concluded, having apparently forgotten that he himself is a lawyer. The prosecution will presumably remind him in their closing arguments, which are scheduled to begin shortly.
[Note: Jezebel, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]