Mike Rinder Says Whatever Pays: A Firsthand Account from Mark Rathbun

TRANSCRIPT:

God, it’s been ten years since he left, and he literally for an entire decade has not worked, and I arranged virtually all of his gigs with people that would pay him to just do anti-Scientology stuff.

First there was this guy down in Clearwater. He lasted about, I don’t know, only a few weeks and the guy just couldn’t tolerate Rinder being around, so he got fired. Then it was this guy Almblad, who was an alcoholic, who just would go into these alcohol-fueled rants and rages about bringing David Miscavige to his knees and destroying Miscavige. And he just had this complete obsession, and Rinder would just pump that up, and tell him how possible all this stuff was and how they could attack the trademarks and rip off the copyrights, and all this other kind of stuff.

And, you know, my conversations with the guy were, you know, kind of talking him off the ledge about how that’s kind of a neat pipe dream but the practicalities are, it ain’t going to happen. You’re in no legal position to do it. And he could—and he didn’t like that, but he continued to “employ” Rinder for another two years, to have him stroke him with those fantasies, had him living in his—rent-free in a home and the whole thing.

Then there was this other guy, Michael Bennitt, who came along, who said—called himself a venture capitalist from Chicago. He came all the way to south Texas to see me, and was, you know, he—first of all, first, he just walked up to me in a coffee shop in San Antonio. Rinder was there, acting like this little groupie about, you know, “I really admire you,” and this, that and the other thing. He was trying to sleaze in on me, and I said, “God, this guy’s really creepy.” And Mike of course, being Mickey the Dunce, Mickey the, you know, ingratiator, said, “Oh yeah, I agree, Marty.” Right?

Then that Bennitt guy, two months later, comes all the way down to south Texas to my home in Corpus Christi, and he’s running the same thing on wanting to, you know, be my benefactor, be my partner, or some kind of thing. And I’m like, I couldn’t get him out of my house fast enough, he was that creepy.

Well, I didn’t actually arrange that gig—I guess I did indirectly by rejecting the guy, because three months later, or several months later, all of a sudden Rinder tells me he’s working for this Michael Bennitt guy. The long and the short of that, I said, “What are you doing?” He says, “I’m doing public relations.” I said, “Okay. What are you—what have you actually done?” He said, “Well, the only thing I did, I”—you know, he had this woman who was sort of eccentric, who had tons of money; she got a huge divorce settlement and she had nothing better to do so she created a gelato company. “Doesn’t know the first thing about it, but—so I was doing PR.” “Like what?” He said, “Well, basically, I did TRs—training routines, Scientology training routines—to teach her how to feel comfortable communicating.” And that’s all he did.

And then there’s Karen de la Carriere, who, you know, I’ve described before, and she wants to be the center of the universe. And I don’t know how she makes her money, but she makes a lot of it and she passes it out. But she wants lots of face time and lots of influence and I, you know, I finally told her, “Just don’t even send me any money,” because she’d become so meddling. I said, “I’m not going to be influenced by your—you know, I told you that from the beginning, and you just won’t learn; I’m not going to do it.” Well, of course, Mike doesn’t have those rules. He’ll do or say whatever anybody wants him to, as long as there’s grease, right. And so she’s been greasing him the whole time, and she famously makes it known to others that he cannot turn on her or say anything negative about her, pursuant to ASC [Anti-Scientology Cult] “rules,” because she’s his matron.

And so, you know, the Aftermath—that’s the, that’s the “Premath,” okay? The Aftermath is him playing with his latest benefactor, Leah Remini, because I know for a fact: She told me I could write my own ticket to take that place and I rejected the gig—just like I did with the other ones, who want to tell me what I’m going to say and do.