Robert Kraft would like his sex tapes back.
The billionaire owner of the New England Patriots filed a complaint in Palm Beach County this week against States Attorney Dave Aronberg, just a few months after Aronberg’s office was forced to delay criminal proceedings against Kraft.
The 78-year-old businessman had been charged with two counts of soliciting a prostitute for incidents that happened on back-to-back days at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, and were captured in hidden camera.
Those tapes are now high on the list of materials Kraft would like prosecutors to turn over but they have not, which is why his is now demanding declaratory and injunctive relief.
Patriot games: Robert Kraft (above with son Jonathan in Foxborough last month) filed a complaint in Palm Beach County this week against States Attorney Dave Aronberg
Kraft’s attorney Alex Spirro claim that Aronberg and his team of prosecutors only handed over material that already been presented in court instead of all those materials which would be related to discovery in the case.
This includes the tapes, as there was an issue with the basis on which the search warrant was granted to prosecutors.
The footage of Kraft was taken by hidden cameras inside Orchids of Asia Day Spay which allegedly shows him having oral and manual sex acts performed on him by two employees.
The Jupiter Police Department had placed those cameras inside the facility after getting a judge to sign off on search warrant which they said would prove that sex trafficking was taking place at the company.
This is what led the judge to dismiss the tape, but an appeals court then agreed to hear prosecutors argue their case.
Two months after proceedings against the Patriots owner fell apart,the 4th District Court of Appeals in has accepted the case.
The criminal trial against Kraft has been stayed until state prosecutors have the chance to argue why the videos should be allowed in court.
Those videos are the bedrock of the case, and without them it is almost impossible to build a case against Kraft and most of the other men who were seen at Orchids of Asia Day Spa.
‘They lost every motion and all of their evidence. They conceded they cannot move forward,’ Alex Spiro told DailyMail.com back in May after the tapes were tossed .
‘They have waived the white flag.’
Kraft had been celebrating his freedom all summer, where he has been seen at events like the 2019 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Awards in Boston, an awards ceremony in Israel and the French Open in Paris.
And now, his Patriots have kicked off the season with a perfect 5 – 0 start.
The trial has proven to be disatrous for proesctuors, starting with the 10 individuals who appeared to be soliciting prostitution but were not charged when authorities determined the footage of the men was inconclusive.
Then, there were reports that women had also been tped in the massage rooms.
Judge Hanser, the Palm Beach County magistrate who is overseeing the Kraft case, first revealed that there were female clients caught on film just days before the proceedings came to a halt.
It did not stop there either according to Judge Hanser, who wrote that ‘more than one woman had a significant portion of her spa time viewed… and the entirety of her spa time recorded and placed in Jupiter Police Department record.’
This was problematic for a number of reasons, he went on to state, with the most glaring being the fact that ‘the search warrant did not allege that women were seeking illegal contact.’
In the order announcing that evidence obtained from hidden cameras and a traffic stop of Kraft would not be permissible at trial, Judge Hanser also detailed the flaws in the warrant obtained by the Jupiter Police Department to conduct their sting operation.
‘The fact that some totally innocent women and men had their entire lawful time spent in a massage room fully recorded and viewed intermittently by a detective-monitor is unacceptable and results from the lack of sufficient pre-monitoring written guidelines,’ said Judge Hanser.
The number of women is not known at this time.
A lawsuit was previously filed by a male client however who claimed he was at the spa while the sting was being conducted by Jupiter police.
A complaint filed in federal court by attorneys Edward Mullins of Reed Smith and Joe Tacopania of The Law Offices of Tacopina & Seigel on behalf of a John Doe, accuses authorities of violating Doe’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, Fourteenth Amendment right to procedural due process, and constitutional right to privacy.
Doe states that he was visiting the spa on January 19 for a massage that did not include any manual or oral sex act from a spa employee.
The filing, which was submitted in the United states District Court for the Southern District of Florida, goes on to state that Doe had a reasonable expectation of privacy as he undressed inside the spa and then received a massage while in the nude.
He is now seeking monetary, punitive and exemplary damages while demanding that no copy of any of the tapes showing men inside the spa be released to the press or public.
Doe also wants those tapes, and any copies, destroyed for good.