The government’s case against OneTaste just took a massive hit...

After weeks of wild courtroom tales and a full-blown #Metoo-style smear campaign, the Biden holdovers in New York City still haven’t produced anything resembling actual “forced labor” in the OneTaste lawfare trial. What they’ve laid out is shameful. It’s a parade of adult witnesses, many with graduate degrees, who happily and willingly joined a wellness company, lived communally, explored sexuality, and later decided they regretted it.

That’s not criminal, folks. That’s a bad gap year.

The DOJ’s entire case hinges on the idea that spiritual pressure and emotional regret are now classified as “physical coercion.” But that’s a hard case to prove without any threats of violence, withheld passports, or actual barriers to leaving.

As a result, this case is looking like one gigantic overreach that could backfire spectacularly.

You know it’s bad when The New York Times jumps in and gives away the game. The message in their latest article on the case is this: there’s no hard evidence of forced labor. Just a handful of ex-members trying to reconstruct their adult decisions into a trauma narrative.

And the fact that the judge just blocked the government’s star “coercive control” expert from testifying is not just bad news for the feds; it’s a sign that this entire trial may be collapsing under the weight of its own poorly written fantasy.

And that’s the very heart of the problem for the government. They’re trying to sell a jury on the fantastical idea that emotional discomfort and spiritual pressure, without any physical threats or real-world consequences, somehow amount to a forced labor conspiracy.

The feds claim that OneTaste leaders used psychological tactics to keep staff loyal and compliant, but even their own witnesses admit there were no threats of violence, no passport seizures, and no physical restraints.

To score a conviction, prosecutors now have to convince a jury that a bad breakup with a spiritual guru is basically the same thing as human trafficking or some kind of underground labor ring. So far, that argument is hanging by a very thin thread, and even the NYT knows it.

The New York Times:

Prosecutors say Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz deployed “psychological tactics” to groom OneTaste employees for masturbation rituals and to isolate them, leaving them reliant on the company and unable to access or even imagine a world outside.

Such forced labor schemes usually employ a tangible threat, such as physical violence or the confiscation of travel documents. OneTaste employees have not described such blunt tactics. Rather, they say, they feared that defying Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz would ruin them not financially or physically, but spiritually.

Lawyers for Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz have seized on that, noting that the witnesses were adults who had free will, and that some came from affluent backgrounds. They have pointed out that the witnesses did leave OneTaste, only to return when they yearned for spiritual community.
“Each time you left, you made a choice to come back,” Michael P. Robotti, a lawyer for Ms. Cherwitz, told one witness.

To win convictions, prosecutors must convince jurors that Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz forced OneTaste employees to work against their will, using physical, emotional or psychological coercion, and that each woman benefited. They must show that OneTaste employees had to keep working, including by engaging in orgasmic meditation, in order to avoid “serious harm.”

Through the first half of what is expected to be a six-week trial, more than a half-dozen former OneTaste employees have testified to sexual acts rarely mentioned in a courtroom. They said they had no other options at the time, but have stopped short of saying they were threatened with violence, the loss of property or anything beyond losing their standing within OneTaste.

The Biden holdover prosecutors are working overtime to paint OneTaste as the next NXIVM, but the comparison falls apart fast. OneTaste didn’t blackmail people, confiscate nudes, or threaten anyone with public shame. What we’ve got instead are grown, well-educated adults who willingly jumped into an unconventional lifestyle, now claiming victimhood because their old choices no longer match their current identity. This isn’t coercion; it’s regret being spun as a federal crime. The NYT piece goes on:

Juda Engelmayer, a spokesman for the defendants, said the former OneTaste employees had chosen to explore an “unconventional lifestyle,” and had then “decided they were victims because it no longer aligns with how they see themselves.” “This case is a dangerous attempt to criminalize regret,” Mr. Engelmayer said in a statement.

Determining consent can be difficult when it comes to cults, which by nature wipe away a person’s capacity to question order, said Rick Alan Ross, the founder of the Cult Education Institute. Mr. Ross, a deprogrammer who has testified as an expert in many such cases, said OneTaste appeared to bear the hallmarks of a coercive cult.

Cults, Mr. Ross said, “shut down your ability to critically think and reason,” leading people to do things they would never have considered before they joined the group. “People have these unreasonable fears, that ‘if I leave the group I’m a traitor.

If I leave the group, I’m a counterrevolutionary,’” he said in an interview. NXIVM, the Albany-area sex cult led by Keith Raniere, also billed itself as a self-help organization and offered classes in its idiosyncratic rituals.

But it blackmailed members with threats to release nude photographs and embarrassing secrets. So far, there has been no evidence of such acts against OneTaste employees.

Witnesses said they did what Ms. Daedone and Ms. Cherwitz asked because their entire senses of self revolved around OneTaste.

However, the mind-control fairytale Biden’s holdover prosecutors are spinning in court just took a major hit. The judge won’t allow their star witness to testify.

Revolver:

To articulate the theory to the Brooklyn jury, prosecutors hoped to offer clinical psychologist Dr. Chitra Raghavan, once named one of “New York’s New Abolitionists,” as an expert witness.

While similar expertise has been offered in other cases, the judge denied the government’s request to present this witness—and her testimony—Tuesday evening.

This is what lawfare looks like in 2025: fairy tales dressed up as federal cases. It’s not about facts; it’s about feelings. The goal isn’t justice; it’s manipulation. Prosecutors throw a bunch of emotion at the wall and hope a jury cracks under the pressure of someone’s past regret. That’s not law. That’s theater. And it’s time to bring down the curtain.

The government’s case against OneTaste just took a massive hit... - Revolver News

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The government’s case against OneTaste just took a massive hit…

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