Hi all. OA had a very rocky 2023, and is already having a dramatic 2024. If you don't know why that is, or are missing some details, or just want to hear it summarized in one place, this is the right place for you! I'll be objective here, but I'm not going to abstain from an obvious conclusion if there's very strong evidence in favor of one party.

Last updated Feb 19 2024 (Small formatting changes)

This explainer is broken down by time periods. If you have context for that period, skip forward to the next section. The latest updates are at the end (and are comparably short!)

Relevant Podcast Acronyms:

OA: Opening Arguments (duh) but also the company Opening Arguments LLC.

SIO: Serious Inquiries Only, Smith's solo podcast with rotating guests.

MSW Media: "Mueller She Wrote" Media. Allison Gill's podcast network, which contains Clean Up On Aisle 45 to which Torrez was the previous cohost.

PIAT: Puzzle in a Thunderstorm. A Skeptical/Atheist podcast network with which OA was affiliated. Torrez was their Lawyer and (small %) owner. Both Thomas Smith and Andrew Torrez would occasionally guest on PIAT podcasts like God Awful Movies, and Smith shares the Dear Old Dads podcast in common with members of PIAT.

Primary Source google drives:

Some of the accusers and their helpers compiled this drive with primary sources/statements.

/u/KWilt maintains a drive with redacted court documents here. In this post, [#.#] and [#] refer to court filings in the OA lawsuit as per KWilt's number system.

Podcast beginnings:

Opening Arguments had its roots in some law focused episodes of Thomas Smith's podcast (Atheistically Speaking at the time, later SIO) when he hosted Lawyer Andrew Torrez (example). The two later spun off those episodes into a dedicated podcast: Opening Arguments, with its first episode releasing in Summer 2016. It featured Smith as the layman opposite Torrez the Lawyer, and covered a variety of law topics and current events, with a heavy progressive political focus as well. They stated on air that it was a 50:50 venture.

The podcast grew quite popular, with as many as 4500 patrons on the podcast Patreon page and 40,000 downloads/episode in early 2023.

I. The Scandal Breaks: February 1st 2023 - February 4th 2023.

On February 1st, Religion News Service (RNS) published an article detailing how Torrez had left the board of American Atheists, while an ethics complaint was pending against him. Torrez had not been yet made aware of the ethics complaint. They detailed an accusation of unwanted sexually charged messages by a former atheist podcaster (Felicia) who met Torrez when he guest hosted with her. Another podcaster, Charone Frankel, was mentioned as a previous affair partner of Torrez. Frankel added:

My chief complaint against Andrew Torrez is that on more than one occasion, he aggressively initiated physical intimacy without my consent. When he did this, I would either say no and try to stop it, or I would let myself be coerced into going along with it.

Torrez responded to the RNS article the same day with an apology statement that claimed there were many factual errors in the article but then apologized for being a "creepy guy on the internet". Torrez announced he was withdrawing from public events and any direct interaction with listeners.

Smith responded on February 2nd, saying that Torrez would be taking a podcast hiatus and his spot filled in the meanwhile by other OA figures and hosts.

Over the coming days many women/femmes ((at least) one accuser is nonbinary), most of whom were fans of OA, came forward with similar claims to Felicia's against Torrez. What was especially worrying was that some of the accusers (and their allies) mentioned that their entire movement (for lack of a better term) was spawned because of an accusation of nonconsensual sexual contact against Torrez from 2017. That 2017 accuser has stayed anonymous.

The response both from listeners and professional contacts was fierce. Whether voluntary, involuntary, or a mixture of the two, MSW cut ties with Andrew Torrez and so he left his other podcast Cleanup on Aisle 45. PIAT removed Torrez as part owner and company lawyer. Other professional contacts spoke out against Torrez, like lawyer Andrew Seidel. Torrez's employee and recurring pop law host Morgan Stringer withdrew from the podcast, and would later leave Torrez's firm for brighter pastures (Non Neutral sidenote: That's Mark Bankston's law firm. Way to go!). Listenership and Patreon numbers began to decline. And as we later found out later, many on-air sponsors pulled out.

Smith and many hosts of the PIAT podcasts, were also implicated in that many of the accusers had come forward to them with their accusations against Torrez. A lot of those details are out of scope/hard to summarize. For the most relevant person, Smith, we did later get a bit more context: he claims he always believed the accusers and in one instance he told one that he would cover their legal costs if it led to a lawsuit from Torrez. Smith is constrained from saying further until the legal situation is resolved.

On February 4th, in response to the additional published accusations and listener responses, Smith himself offered an apology on the SIO feed. Stating that he should have taken more action in response to the accusations he knew about. Smith claimed that he was inappropriately touched by Torrez a couple of times (once on the hip), which made him feel uncomfortable, and should have informed him (Smith) that the accusations were serious. He provided a contemporaneous message he sent to his wife from one instance of unwanted touching in 2021, where he comments on that discomfort. Smith noted that the touching was not sexual in nature, and he did not believe his accusation was of a similar magnitude to the others. He also mentioned that Torrez had substance abuse issues with alcohol.

II. The Scandal Breaks OA: February 6th - End of March 2023.

On February 6th a couple of short audio messages from Smith went up on the OA podcast feed, claiming Torrez was in process of stealing OA. Those message disappeared shortly thereafter, and a second apology from Torrez went up on the feed. In it Torrez again apologized for his behavior to his accusers, but took offense that Smith had made public his alcohol issues, and categorically denied the veracity of Smith's accusation. Torrez then stated he was committed to producing more law podcasts. In a contemporary letter from Torrez's counsel to Smith's, Torrez claimed the accusation was implausible as he is not attracted to men.

On February 9th, the first episode of the new format of OA was released. It featured Torrez hosting opposite Liz Dye, who was recently brought on as a recurring host with a specialty on Trump topics. She stated that Torrez had seen consequences, and was committing to do better, and she was staying with OA. After a few weeks, the dust settled numbers wise. The OA Patreon hovered around 1100 patrons from a previous height of 4500, and listenership halved from roughly 40,000 to 20,000 downloads/episode.

On February 14th, Smith, locked out of most of the OA accounts filed suit against Torrez in court. In his complaint (later amended on March 30th) [1 and 3]* Smith asked for the court to award him damages (stemming from the misconduct and behavior in seizing control of the company) and to oust Torrez from the company. Smith also accused Torrez Dye and some ancillary OA figures of working with Torrez to seize control of the podcast. I note that one of those figures was Teresa Gomez, who Smith also accused of publishing false and damaging public statements about him (example). Curiously, Smith contended that OA did not in fact have any formal contract/partnership agreement.

On February 15th, responding to the short audio messages and the stealing accusation, Torrez released an improperly redacted screenshot of the OA account balance and recent transactions. Torrez was disputing the strawman that he (Torrez) had taken all profits. Redditors here used image editing to determine that the bank account had $10k remaining after a Smith withdrawal. In a followup, Smith confirmed that he withdrew just under half of the account's funds when the takeover was happening.

III. The Lawsuit Progresses Slowly: April - Early December 2023

The podcast side was straightforward for the rest of 2023: Torrez continued producing episodes opposite Dye 3 times a week, focusing mostly on Trump news items. I like to call this "Modern OA".

The lawsuit side was not. On June 15th, Torrez filed his reply/cross-complaint[7]. It opposed most everything in Smith's complaint, claimed that Smith was the reason for the company's decline due to his disparagement of Torrez in violation of his fiduciary duties. He asked for damages associated with that violation, and for Smith to be expelled from the company. There was one notable omission: it did not contest that there was no written contract/partnership agreement behind OA, confirming Smith's assertions.

Torrez mostly avoided the topic of the accusations in his filings, briefly mentioning that he was attacked by the RNS article, and that it was embarrassing that it put his personal life into public scrutiny.

Torrez concurrently filed an anti-SLAPP motion to strike parts of Smith's lawsuit (the defamation ones, including against Gomez) [1.1 - 1.8]. However this motion was defeated by Smith, who passed the threshold of presenting a colorable argument for his claims [1.9 - 1.16]. That judgement was entered on October 4th. Torrez has appealed this decision (can be done immediately as per California Anti-SLAPP statutes) and it is currently under consideration by the California 1st court of appeals.

On October 13th, Smith submitted a motion to appoint a receiver to OA [1.1 - 1.6]. Receivers are generally intended to preserve the (value of) a company while litigation progresses. Smith argued this was necessary because, among other reasons, OA's finances were dire: monthly income was reduced by 65% since January. Smith asked for the receiver to have a third managerial/tiebreaking vote (alongside himself and Torrez) in company decisions, and have financial oversight. Smith proposed Yvette "Scibabe" d'Entremont as receiver, who is also a figure in the skeptical/atheist space who formerly ran the popular Two Girls One Mic podcast. She had previously been a guest host on OA as well.

Torrez opposed this motion, and argued that the podcast had seen substantial growth since he had taken control and cohosted opposite only Dye. He opposed d'Entremont in specific on the grounds of bias toward Smith, and lack of financial experience. [3.7 - 3.9]

IV. The Receivership Motion is Approved: Early December 2023 - February 6th 2024

In a December 13th Order, the Judge agreed with Smith that a receiver was warranted [3.17]. The judge did allow Torrez to submit his own nominee for receiver however. Torrez suggested Matthew Sheffield, who founded the Washington Examiner magazine and the media analysis website NewBusters (and was formerly conservative, now a strong Trump critic). Smith objected that Sheffield had never founded/run a podcast of a serious size, and his small existing podcasts are of a similar subject matter to OA and would compete. Not redacted by KWilt yet but check the text here and also here]

On January 24th 2024, the Judge sided with Smith and published a tentative order picking d'Entremont as the receiver, who did have experience with larger podcasts and does not currently compete with OA.

On January 25th, Dye announced she is leaving OA. In a clarification from d'Entremont and later from Smith himself, neither had yet taken any actions in the company (the order would not be finalized until a week later). Informally speaking, it does seem likely that the potential of upcoming changes encouraged Liz to make the jump.

On January 26th Dye announced the Law and Chaos podcast, which is associated with her recently started substack ("lawandchaospod.com") that she previously promoted on-air on OA when it was only written content. The inclusion of "pod" in the URL, and its listing of Torrez as a contributor for a time in November, had drawn suspicions that it may ultimately be a raft for him. Dye released the first full episode on January 29th. OA would go on an unexplained hiatus and Torrez published no additional podcasts under the OA name.

[NB: Everything after this point occurred after this post was first published. Keep that in mind if you read the comments]

On February 2nd, the tentative order received minor changes and was finalized/signed by the judge [3.24]. d'Entremont would post the required bond on the 5th and become the receiver de jure, Torrez shared the account login information also on the 5th (the timeliness, or lack thereof itself caused some legal drama [4.1 - 4.5]).

V. Postmodern OA - Smith's return: February 7th 2024 - Present

It seems that d'Entremont and Smith have voted together to choose Smith as the host of OA going forward. On February 7th 2024, Smith released a short episode explaining the new format: Smith intends to make OA podcasts with other lawyers going forward 3 times per week, including Crimmigration attorney Matt Cameron. Smith and Cameron had previously made a handful of law episodes in early 2023 together over on SIO (example). Smith would release the first episode with Matt Cameron that day (with a public release on the 8th). There have not (yet) been any plans announced that would include Torrez as a host of the podcast.

And now you're caught up. Fans of Liz are upset she won't be hosting OA anymore. Fans of Torrez/Modern OA are upset that they won't hear his voice/the "Modern" variant of the show for at least the time being. Fans of Smith are happy that he's at the helm once again. And of course, many people are following to see just what will happen out of this quite dramatic and public battle. Those are the dynamics you're now witnessing in the comments section.

Feel free to comment with pushback/corrections, if it's accurate and especially if sourced I will make an edit.