After accusations of perjury by Citadel CEO Ken Griffin circulated on social media, one of our favourite lady Apes, Kat Stryker, and her team decided to crowdfund a plane to fly over the New York skyline trailing a banner with the words “Ken Griffin Lied Under Oath” behind it…right past the Citadel offices.
Putting it out on Twitter, and asking apes to contribute to the costs via a GoFundMe campaign, and receiving wide support from the Ape community.
The GoFundMe campaign targeted a total of $1500, and in 3 days smashed it, at the time of writing it’s standing at over $1700. Apes do seemingly want to fly a plane over New York saying Ken Griffin Lied.
Kat then went about organising it… and then Citadel had a meltdown and got their lawyers to make their usual lawyery threats….not against her directly, but against the company they were engaging to fly the plane and the banner, FlySigns.
A letter was received by FlySigns which basically told them to back off. The letter dated 30 September was authored by Thomas A. Clare, P.C. and Andrew C. Philips from ClareLocke LLP, a Virginia based law firm, and it stated:
You and FlySigns should understand that lobbying such a serious and damaging allegation without any factual basis would be a textbook example of publishing a false statement with “reckless disregard for the truth” that would expose you and FlySigns to significant legal liability for defamation. With this letter, you are on formal written notice of the falsity of the statement you plan to publish to a large audience.
Therefore, if you and FlySigns do so nonetheless, you will be considered a publisher of the false statement, and it will be no answer to claim that you were merely fulfilling a client’s request. You should also understand that an accusation of perjury is so serious and self-evidently damaging that the law considers it to be “defamatory per se,” which would expose you and FlySigns to significant monetary damages….
…If this planned flight does go forward, Citadel Securities and Mr. Griffin will take any and all legal actions necessary to address this tortious conduct.
Official letter from lawyers for Citadel Securities and Ken Griffin.
What’s also interesting about the letter is that it actually starts by defending Griffin and making it’s arguments about why he did not commit perjury. Which is really interesting, because you would just think that being lawyers they would simply stick to the facts and the substance of what they were saying, which was “don’t fly the plane or we’ll come after you”. Instead it devoted 3 whole paragraphs to why Ken Griffin didn’t lie under oath.
Surely it would have been enough to simply say “this is contested by us, and he hasn’t been charged, and therefore this could be regarded as defamation so stop it”. But no, they laid out their case, which frankly to many apes just looks like a flimsy attempt to try to take the heat away.
This was reported by Kat Stryker on her twitter on the 30th Sept:
But then, in an interesting turn of events, just hours later, it was announced that the plane WOULD fly after all.
It appears that the issue may have been resolved by slightly changing the flight path, as per a reply by Kat to a question from a Twitter user. Kat Stryker said, in response to the question “So no citadel building? Thought it was the banner that was the problem”, “It’s the location actually”. It appears now it may not fly past the Citadel offices, but it will fly very close to the SEC headquarters.
At the time of writing this article, the plane has not yet flown. But we will of course be following it and publishing pictures when it happens.
Kenny is going to absolutely SHIT himself.
Legal disclaimer to the idea that Ken Griffin Lied Under Oath:
NB: Apes Army does not endorse any of the information in this post, and it is presented for entertainment purposes only. We hold the position that Ken C Griffin has not been found guilty in a court of law of perjury, and therefore is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Citadel Securities however, have been found guilty of multiple violations of financial regulations, and fined over $130M in the last 7 years alone. This is public record information and therefore we can say it with impunity. However, we believe in Jurisprudence, and the rule of law, so technically we cannot say whether we think Ken Griffin lied under oath or not.
We do however retain the right to make various physical gestures and use whatever tonality we want when we say that it is alleged that Ken Griffin lied under oath.
