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Blackmail or movie deal? Letterman suspect wants charges tossed

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Prosecutors are calling it an attempt to extort $2 million from David Letterman, but the lawyer defending Robert Halderman says the TV producer was just executing a ‘hard-driven’ business deal to sell the rights to a screenplay concept, the New York Daily News reported.

The movie would, of course, be about a talk-show host who has affairs with staffers, creating an environment of sexual harassment.

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Court papers detail meetings between Halderman and Letterman attorney Jack Jackoway. Two of the meetings were secretly recorded by investigators.

‘Portions of the transcript read like a movie pitch,’ the Daily News said, ‘with Halderman trying to sell Jackoway on paying $2 million for the treatment, with notes he’d made on a yellow legal pad for a book he was thinking of writing thrown in for good measure.’

Halderman is arguing that he never believed what he was doing -- ‘optioning a screenplay,’ he called it -- was a crime. He was arrested the day after Jackoway gave him a bogus check for $2 million.

The defense is also questioning whether the grand jury had enough evidence to bring the charges in the first place, TMZ reports.

-- Christie D’Zurilla

Related self-loathing dispatch from the Ministry of Gossip:

In case you were wondering about David Letterman...

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