Dead Beat Paul Jenkins is on lawyer # 3 after stiffing his second attorney!
WHAT’S NEW:
Paul Jenkins was fired as a client by Elie Wolfe, the lawyer who wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on useless motions and bought into Paul’s campaign of lies and harassment. Meanwhile, Paul claims he is broke, and is being sued by his FIRST law firm, Thomas Horstmeyer, for $300,000 in unpaid legal fees. (Thomas Horstmeyer’ attorney Andrew Crain, probably violated legal ethics by filing a fraudulent copyright on behalf of Jenkins.) Paul claimed his owes $650,000 in legal fees, so that means he owes Elie Wolfe, his second attorney, $350,000. But this is most likely another Jenkins lie, as even a lawyer so willing to waste his clients money, probably would have cut Paul off before running up that kind of bill. (Axanar Stalker Dean Newbury, who has been an accomplice in two physical assaults, claims Jenkins owes $750,000).
After Andrew Crain dropped Jenkins for non-payment, Elie Wolfe picked up the scum-wrapped baton and then spent 2 years filing frivolous motions (he lost every single motion, but wasted a lot of money). Wolfe was the perfect attorney for Paul. A misogynist like Paul, Elie Wolfe harassed and tried to embarrass Crysstal Hubbard, who Jenkins had been highly inappropriate with, and called Crysstal Alec’s “slave”. Paul, in his twisted, perverted brain, tried to claim that Alec and Crysstal were in some sort of BDSM relationship, and Crysstal was Alec’s sex slave. Anyone who knows Crysstal would laugh at that notion, but Paul, being the misogynistic bully he is, thought it was appropriate to go after Crysstal. Like a lot of narcissists, Paul doesn’t like strong women and is known with surrounding himself with younger women. Of course all the while, Paul is claiming “Alec sued my family!”, which is just one more Paul Jenkins lie, since Alec has never even mentioned Paul’s wife and kids.
So now Paul is on attorney # 3. We assume it was hard for Paul to find an attorney after his track record of non-payment of attorneys, but Paul got a solo practitioner named Francis Dixson to take his case (probably took the $20,000 from his GoFundMe). Francis is representing Paul in defending his $300,000 claim by his first attorney AND defending him against the copyright fraud claim by Alec. With a trial on the latter is sure to cost at least $50,000, hopefully Francis is smart enough to know he will never get paid by Paul.
Being that Alec went back to the script for Axanar that he had before Paul Jenkins came on board, Alec has given up on the script changes he wrote with Paul. “The script was fine before Paul ever came on board, and so that is what we shot.” said Peters. And judging by the comments by those who have seen the full edit of the next two episodes, Peters is right.
Francis already had his first call with Alec’s attorney, experienced litigator Dave Messer. As Alec has sought to do for the past two years, Alec wants to settle the case, Peters doesn’t want to spend hundreds of thousands on legal fees against someone who is so far in debt, even if you win you will never collect. But Dixson is dealing with an arrogant, narcissistic bully for a client, and Jenkins has said the whole purpose of dragging out the lawsuit was to get Alec into court for his “documentary”.
CATCHING UP:
Paul Jenkins had the chance to just walk away from Axanar like a professional when he was fired as director in 2019 for unprofessional behavior and inappropriate behavior towards women. “Don’t burn your bridges” is the unwritten rule in Hollywood, and why you hear so many actors and directors leave projects for “Creative differences”. Professionals don’t throw others under the bus.
Well, his lack of professionalism is exactly why, rather than leave Axanar on good terms, Jenkins decided to go scorched earth and throw a massive tantrum about being let go from a fan film. Jenkins had lied to Alec Peters about his experience directing movies, and given a huge budget for the 2019 shoot, the first Axanar shoot in 4 years, Jenkins bungled the shoot, pissed off a lot of people, and showed he was no director. Jenkins even admitted that the shoot was a bust during shooting Interlude, the Axanar fan film that shot on the Ares Studios sets. JG Hertzler thought Jenkins was a joke, especially because of Jenkins insistence on intruding on the actors process. The security team thought he was an ass for the way he screamed at people and walked around like he was a diva. Worse yet, Jenkins and his Meta Studios producer, Scott Conley, lost footage of 3 actors, and then covered it up from Producer Alec Peters and blamed Geoff Fagien, who was a camera operator at the time but eventually rose to be the Director of Photography. The loss of the footage was discovered during the shoot and the actors could have re-shot their scenes, but Conley made the decision to not tell anyone.
The truth came out and so Alec had little tolerance for Paul’s bullshit when he sent Alec an unhinged email in may 2020. Alec gave Paul a month to come to his senses and apologize, but all Alec got was static, making firing the failed director, an easy call.
Jenkins was offered a generous walk away agreement, but he was more interested in burning Axanar down than being a professional. So he filed a fraudulent copyright on the Axanar script, hoping to scuttle Axanar. That is right, comic writer Paul Jenkins, who makes his living writing comic books, took credit for someone else’s work.
Alec Peters had no choice but to sue him. “Paul lied on a Federal copyright application.” said Peters. “We gave him the chance to walk away, but he couldn’t take that we were making Axanar without him. So he filed a fraudulent copyright claiming that he was the sole author of the edits to the Axanar script, hoping to scuttle Axanar, but he was such a bad director, what he shot was mostly useless, and the script changes, unnecessary. So we just walked away from it and went back to my original script.”
You can see Alec’s gracious email to Paul’s then “CEO” of Meta Studios and the generous separation agreement that gave Paul a co-writer and co-director credit in this article about why Alec sued Paul.
ANOTHER PAUL JENKINS GRIFT?:
It should be noted that Paul claimed he raised $180,000 for his “documentary”, but the money disappeared. Paul has never released any financials and clearly didn’t spend the money on his attorneys. Mike Bawden, a principle in Bawden, Lareau, an Iowa PR firm has been Paul’s partner in the “documentary” and the fraudulent copyright. Bawden, a principal in an Iowa PR firm, who has desperately been aligning himself with any project he can in order to break into Hollywood, worked on Axanar, before facilitating Robert Meyer’s theft of over $30,000 in donor funds and $50,000 in equipment from Axanar fans.  Bawden then conspired with Jenkins to facilitate the copyright fraud as well. He is unsurprisingly now Burnett’s partner in an audio drama trying to raise $30,000 on Kickstarter.
With the $180,000 unaccounted for, and no documentary in sight, questions about if Paul Jenkins is scamming donors are unanswered.  Paul’s “documentary”, which is basically filming convicted stalkers like Shawn O’Halloran and grifters like Rob Burnett defaming Alec, has been in process for four years. But with the trailer taken down and Paul claiming he is waiting for the trial to finish the film, it is pretty clear that Paul will never release anything. Meanwhile, Jenkins faces bankruptcy from the over half a million dollars in legal bills he has willingly taken on and loss of his house.
Stay tuned for more updates as the case against Paul Jenkins for copyright fraud goes to trial.