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The Smoking Gun is a website that posts legal documents, arrest records, and police mugshots on a daily basis. The intent is to bring to the public light information that is damning, shocking, outrageous, or amazing, yet also somewhat obscure or unreported by more mainstream media sources. Most of the site's content revolves around historical and current events, although it also features documents and photos relating to out-of-the-ordinary crimes and people. It is owned by truTV and is part of the Turner Sports and Entertainment digital network.^[1]

The name refers to the smoking gun metaphor, which is commonly used to describe an incriminating piece of evidence.

One section of the site is made up entirely of "riders" in the contracts of popular music acts, focusing on the artists' personal demands; some of the publicized demands are either highly self-indulgent or inherently humorous, while others are extremely simple.

The website was founded in 1997 by William Bastone and Daniel Green, former reporters for The Village Voice, and graphic designer Barbara Glauber. Most of The Smoking Gun's content is obtained Freedom of Information Act requests to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, and from public records such as court documents. The site has used those requests to assemble a collection of mugshots of current and historical celebrities.

Court TV (now truTV) purchased The Smoking Gun, as well as the website Crime Library, in 2000.

The site published its second book, The Dog Dialed 911: A Book of Lists from The Smoking Gun, in October 2006.

A series of the same name premiered on Court TV in 2005. The series features some of the site's stories and assorted sketch humor using string puppets. This series was later moved and shown on Adult Swim.

From March 2008 until January 2011 on Court TV's successor, truTV, The Smoking Gun sponsored a cable television series called The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest.... The series was originally known as World's Dumbest Criminals, but later was retitled World's Dumbest... and became known for covering other topics. As of January 2011, the program was retitled again to truTV Presents: World's Dumbest...

Investigations[link]

The Smoking Gun has recently begun to organize in-depth investigations of criminal activity.^[2] In August 2009, the site outed members of Pranknet, a virtual community who were notorious for tricking hotel and fast-food restaurant employees into setting off fire alarms, engaging fire-suppression systems, and engaging in humiliating acts such as disrobing and consuming urine. The group, whose members include 2 convicted child molestors,^[3][4] also engaged in threatening telephone harassment by placing fake Craigslist ads and shouting racial epithets and obscene language at people responding to their ads. Additionally, they responded to Craigslist ads placed by young mothers selling household goods, then when they had the sellers address, stated that they were on their way over to rape them and murder their children.^[5]

Perhaps their most famous investigation was the 2006 discovery of widespread fabrication in James Frey's alleged memoir A Million Little Pieces. This investigation led to a very public rebuke of Frey by Oprah Winfrey who had previously endorsed Frey's book as part of her Oprah's Book Club. Frey's book, describing his alleged years of drug and alcohol abuse and subsequent recovery, contained a number of descriptions of criminal or otherwise outrageous incidents. The Smoking Gun says that it originally became interested in the accuracy of Frey's account when they had difficulty tracking down mug shots from his various alleged arrests. After discovering one photograph, the web site was unable to locate any others from his numerous claims of arrest. A subsequent investigation revealed that Frey had fabricated or exaggerated many of the more noteworthy claims in his book. The Smoking Gun concluded that most of these fabrications were done in order to make Frey's early life seem more sad and depraved and thus contrast it with his later recovery from drug abuse and success as a writer. One arrest that the Smoking Gun highlighted in particular was a vehicular stop which Frey claimed involved his hitting a patrol officer with his car and later having to be restrained by several other policemen. The Smoking Gun's investigation revealed that he had merely parked his car partially on the sidewalk and had obediently complied with officer's instructions. The web site also took issue with Frey's recounting of the death of Melissa Sanders, referred to as "Michelle" in the book. Sanders, and a friend Jane Hall, who were students at the same high school as Frey, were both killed when the car they were riding in was struck by a locomotive. Frey eliminates the other victim from his recounting, and, according to the Smoking Gun, fabricated a close friendship with Sanders in order to dramatize his early life in small town Michigan.^[6]

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Smoking Gun website
• The Smoking Gun Presents... website on TruTV.com
• Smoking Gun Editor William Bastone interview with Gelf Magazine
• The Dog Dialed 911
• "CNN WILLIAM BASTONE, EDITOR, THESMOKINGGUN.COM: He was arrested 13 or 14 times"
• "VH1: The Smoking Gun admits FBI documents were fabricated"

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The term "smoking gun" was originally, and is still primarily, a reference to an object or fact that serves as conclusive evidence of a crime or similar act. In addition to this, its meaning has evolved in uses completely unrelated to criminal activity: for example, scientific evidence that is highly suggestive in favor of a particular hypothesis is sometimes called smoking gun evidence. Its name originally came from the idea of finding a smoking (i.e., very recently fired) gun on the person of a suspect wanted for shooting someone, which in that situation would be nearly unshakable proof of having committed the crime. A piece of evidence that falls just short of being conclusive is sometimes referred to as a "smoldering gun."

Origin of phrase[link]

The phrase originated in the Sherlock Holmes story, The Gloria Scott (1893). The origin and development of "smoking gun" was described by William Safire^[1] in his column, "On Language," as follows:

When did that phrase first become the favorite figure of speech meaning incontrovertible incrimination? The answer is elementary, Watson. In an 1893 Sherlock Holmes story, The Gloria Scott, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of a grisly murder by a sham chaplain aboard a prison ship: We rushed into the captain's cabin . . . there he lay with his brains smeared over the chart of the Atlantic . . . while the chaplain stood with a smoking pistol in his hand at his elbow. A good copy editor would have fixed Doyle's awkward in his hand at his elbow, and Sir Arthur chose pistol rather than gun, but that Holmes citation seems to be the start of the cliché that grips us today.

It was made famous during the Golden Age of Political Coinage. The Watergate era coined or popularized Saturday night massacre, stonewalling, cover-up, dirty tricks, straight arrow, expletive deleted, third-rate burglary, plumbers, Deep Throat, Big Enchilada, enemies list and twisting slowly in the wind. That was when Doyle's smoking pistol, which had changed in occasional usage over 80 years to smoking gun, blazed its way into dictionaries.

It first appeared in The New York Times on July 14, 1974, in an article by Roger Wilkins: The big question asked over the last few weeks in and around the House Judiciary Committee's hearing room by committee members who were uncertain about how they felt about impeachment was 'Where's the smoking gun?' The question was rooted in a Nixon defense strategy, to narrow the grounds for impeachment to a provable crime. On July 31, Representative Jack Brooks of Texas told the impeachment panel that he thought Nixon was guilty of income-tax evasion: Millions of Americans will view this evidence as a so-called smoking gun. With insufficient proof, that charge did not stick.

On Aug. 5, the committee released a transcript of a recording of the meeting held two years earlier, on June 23, 1972, in which the White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, asked President Nixon, You think the thing to do is to get them, the F.B.I., to stop? and Nixon replied, Right, fine. Representative Barber Conable of New York promptly said that looked like a smoking gun, and the recording became known as the smoking-gun tape.

See also[link]

Look up smoking gun in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Chekhov's gun
• Legal burden of proof
• Watergate scandal

References[link]

1. ^ Safire, William. "On Language: The Way We Live Now". The New York Times, 26 January 2003

Michael Voltaggio (born September 29, 1978) is an American chef residing in Pasadena, California. Voltaggio is the winner of the sixth season of Top Chef, Bravo's cooking competition reality show,^[1] where he competed with his brother, Bryan Voltaggio. The two ended in the finale, alongside Kevin Gillespie, with Michael winning the contest. Top Chef Head Judge Tom Colicchio said of Voltaggio, “Out of all the cooks that have come through the show, Michael is the most talented—both from a sensibility and technical standpoint. He has the chops to pull off what he’s trying to do.”^[2]

Voltaggio did not have the money to attend culinary school, so he did a long apprenticeship at The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia^[3] under master chef Peter Timmins.^[4] He later held jobs at the Ritz Carlton in Naples, Florida under chef Arnaud Berthelier^[5] and Charlie Palmer's Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg.^[6] During his tenure as Chef de Cuisine at The Bazaar by Jose Andres, the restaurant was nominated for the James Beard Foundation Award for Best New Restaurant in 2008.^[7]

Voltaggio was the Chef de Cuisine at The Dining Room, Langham Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena,^[8] which is the recipient of several culinary awards, including the AAA Five Diamond Award, the Mobil Five-Star Award, and a Michelin Star, one of the few held by restaurants in the US.

Voltaggio left The Dining Room in 2010 and announced plans to open his own restaurant in West Hollywood, CA in a space owned by former Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz.^[9] After several delays, the highly successful ink. opened on September 21, 2011.^[10] Voltaggio's goal with the restaurant was to create what he called "modern Los Angeles cuisine."^[11] The restaurant seats 60 in the dining room with a private room that can accommodate an additional 10 guests.^[12] It was named America's best new restaurant by GQ Magazine in March 2012.^[13]

While publicly developing and readying ink. for its highly-anticipated debut, Voltaggio was quietly planning a smaller restaurant around the corner, a sandwich shop called ink.sack.^[14] Voltaggio designed and built the shop himself ^[15] and surprised the culinary world when he opened the small restaurant with little notice or fanfare on August 11, 2011.^[16]

Voltaggio appeared in September, 2010 on the finale of season seven of Top Chef.

Michael is divorced from Kerri Adams, with whom he has two daughters, Olivia and Sophia.^[17] His daughters live in Florida with their mother.

External links[link]

• Voltaggio Brothers website
• ink. Restaurant website

References[link]