From what legal Kiwis have said here and in other threads for litigious cows previously, it seems to be uncommon for perjury committed in court filings to actually be prosecuted. If you provably lie to the FBI, sure, you'll get smacked down hard, but apparently not if you make up a bunch of shit in your frivolous lawsuits.
Also, it's good to keep in mind that we only have Russhole's version of this event, which he described in his "Why I Sued Taylor Swift" book--a book that has been found to contain a multitude of inaccuracies, exaggerations, and completely made up events (such as Russhole doing flips and aerial somersaults, the firebombing of his imaginary friend Ken, etc.). The judge may in fact have accused Russhole of fabricating the letter. The judge may also have simply refused to allow the letter to be submitted into evidence as it wasn't a notarized affidavit and Hof didn't show up to the trial to confirm those were his words. Maybe the judge said something like "I have no proof that this was written by Mr. Hof; it could have been written by you for all I know," which was twisted around and blown up by Russhole into yet another instance of a mean "bias" judge yelling at him and not allowing him to show his awesome evidence because he hates the disabled, yadda yadda.
This is all speculation on my part of course, but Russhole is an extremely unreliable narrator so we always have to take his side of the story with a whole cargo ship's worth of salt.
I agree with you that Russ is incredibly unreliable, but the bombshell that he faked the Hof letter didn't come from him or the court. It was his former manager on Nick's show. He said that Russ showed him a letter that was pretty much identical to the Hof letter and asked him to proofread it.
I know we've hashed over this a million times already, but fuck it. I like psychological analysis, and there's not much else to talk about that also hasn't been done to death.
Russell's abstinence from being a full-blown criminal isn't because of his "nice guy" persona, at least not in my eyes. I said this before, but Russell is a massive narcissist and literally cannot relate with other humans. He views other people as NPCs in a video game.
Think of a game like Skyrim. Let's say I walk into Whiterun and just start murdering people left and right for no reason. There's nothing wrong with that morally, because it's a video game, they aren't real people, and nobody is being hurt. But it's inconvenient to me as a player because it puts a bounty on my head, cancels several questlines, and makes the Whiterun guards attack me on sight, so I can't go to Whiterun ever again. I don't refrain from wanton slaughter in Skyrim because it's immoral, I refrain because it severely limits my enjoyment of the game by essentially locking me out from a good portion of the content.
I believe Russell, like many psychopaths and narcissists, views crimes in real life much the same way. It's not that he's bound by morals - we have plenty of instances where he's made it clear that his moral compass is skewed at best - it's that committing a crime would be terribly inconvenient for him. It's hard to file frivolous lawsuits and woo thots on Instagram from a jail cell, so he tries to keep himself from doing things that will land him in jail for that reason.
TL;DR: Russell doesn't give a shit about morality, only about what's convenient for him. Prison is an inconvenience, so he tries to avoid it.
Agreed. What people kinda miss sometimes about Russ's "good guy" self-concept is that he doesn't think he ought to play by the same rules as anyone else. He went on religious mission and went to strip clubs and didn't even have the sense to keep it on the downlow, not just because he's an exceptional individual, but because he didn't think it was worth getting mad about. He's one of those people for whom religion is 100% a means of being superior to the heathens, and for assuring his place in this world (and the next). It's not a moral guide. It's a contract. He does X, god promises him Y. He's a lot like Melinda in that regard. But god wasn't giving him a girlfriend, so he went to a strip club. Fuck you, god. Russ was owed a wife and he didn't get one, so he'll find another way to get laid and force a woman to obey him.
He openly patronizes prostitutes in areas where it's illegal, because he feels entitled to do so regardless of the legality. Legalizing prostitution per se is an afterthought -- it's about inconvenience (having to go to a brothel) and power (being able to force women to serve him/protecting himself from "fraud" when he feels ripped off/legislating his acceptance into brothels so he can be the biggest douchebag he wants and never be denied entry). He isn't taking a principled stance. We all know this, right?
He thinks he's a good guy, but he doesn't define that the way anyone else on earth does because he's a malignant little shit. He checked the boxes, so he should get the reward, and if no one will willingly give him the reward, he'll force them. That's true whether it's offering flowers to a whore or submitting an audition tape for AGT. He made the effort, he gets the prize. And if you won't give it to him, he'll make you (by suing you) or just take it (by flaunting your petty "laws" and "morality," neither of which fundamentally apply to him).
Adriana Grande seriously, truly insulted him by visiting her fans in the hospital after the terror attack at her concert. Russ couldn't believe that he wore a suit and didn't even get a compliment, but some fucking nine year old who made NO EFFORT and merely got her legs blown off got ALL THE ATTENTION. We laugh, but consider for a second how pathological that thinking is.
AGT seems to regularly feature disabled contestants (I don't watch, so I wouldn't know) and some of them seem to go quite far in the competition, or even win. But they're not disabled the way Russ is disabled. He's had it worse. So what if you're deaf? No one's ever called you Ratface. So what if you're in a wheelchair? You've never had to repeat yourself to be understood. Russ is inspiring; you're just a gimp. Whatever effort you made was nothing compared to the effort he made. Russ is possibly the greatest man who ever lived, but no one will give him what he wants because of his face, and that's unfair. You're just an ordinary person with a disability, so who cares about you? It's not like you'd be the greatest guy in the world if you weren't disabled, so it's totally fair if you take second place in the competition.
Rules are very much for other people, not for Russell Greer. He'll make sure you follow the rules and look down on you if you don't, because you're just a peasant. He's the king. He's the deformed ubermensch who society exists to serve and who can't be expected to play by the rules of the little guy. He does what he wants, and if he does something that aligns with what other people think is "good," that's just evidence of his magnanimity and righteousness, and when you think about it, just more proof that he's better than you and the rules don't apply. He doesn't need rules to be good. He occasionally does it spontaneously. What a guy.
So yeah. I am convinced that he will absolutely hurt someone someday. He'll follow the script, she'll reject him anyway, and he'll feel tired of being "walked over" and "stand up for himself" and take what's rightfully his (or try to). This won't affect his image of himself as the good guy, because he'd simply be taking what he was owed. In fact, he'll just come out of it feeling more misunderstood and persecuted. He has anxiety, you know. He can't help himself. It's wrong of you to hold him accountable, especially when he was just taking what he deserved.
Hof may not have written that letter, but it's
what happened and if only Hof were more honest, he would've written a letter
just like it. So does it
really matter if Russ wrote it himself and signed Hof's name? It's in the name of the greater good and it's not like Russ was making stuff up. Russ was 100% right to bring that legal action, so when you think about it, it's actually
more immoral for him
not to face evidence and then lose. That's just injustice right there. And besides, everyone else is an idiot and Russ will never get caught. And if he does, his parents will bail him out, and it'll look really bad in the media for the bias judge to put a poor disabled man in jail.
Right?