Britney Spears Allegedly Secretly Met Journalist In A Bathroom To Sign Court Documents In 2009 To Get A New Lawyer
Britney Spears has been fighting to reclaim her life for years now, and a journalist recently revealed she snuck into a bathroom stall at the beginning of the pop star's conservatorship to help her sign court documents in an attempt to make her voice heard.
In Netflix's Britney vs Spears documentary, released Tuesday, September 28, Rolling Stone contributing editor Jenny Eliscu claimed she tried to help the "Toxic" singer get a new attorney by taking part in a top secret mission.
Spears' former manager Sam Lutfi and rogue paparazzo ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib reached out to Eliscu, as she explained in the film, about delivering the mother-of-two a petition stating she had a “lack of confidence” in Samuel D. Ingham III — the lawyer appointed to her case amid her involuntary psychiatric hold in February 2008.
Eliscu recalled Lutfi explaining the plan to her, saying Spears would meet her in the bathroom upon her arrival at a hotel. “Sam explained to me that I would need to go to the Montage [hotel in Beverly Hills] and she would be waiting for me and she would know to come meet me in the bathroom,” claimed Eliscu.
“I just walked in thinking, ‘Pretend I’m a guest.’ I took the elevator up and I walked out and I saw Edan [Yemini], her security guard, up there and maybe one other security-looking dude," the editor continued of the mission that took place in January 2009. "But she was just in the pool by herself, and she was just leaning on the edge of the pool, and I kind of gave her a little side-eye and saw her see me and went into this small bathroom."
In the recently released doc, the reporter — who wrote Spears' 2001 and December 2008 Rolling Stone cover stories — recalled preparing the paperwork while she waited for Spears to meet her in the stall. “I showed her the spots where she needed to sign, and she signed. She just sort of looked at me and said, ‘Thank you.’ And I said, ‘I’ll see you again. Go!’” she remembered.
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“She definitely seemed scared," Eliscu emotionally continued through tears. "It was hard to tell ’cause I was so scared, but she was appreciative."
Despite the crew's best efforts to get Spears a new lawyer, nothing came of the secret mission after the petition made its way to court. “It had been ruled that she lacked capacity to choose her own lawyer and that they had cast enough doubt on to whether that was her signature,” Eliscu shared, noting: “I never heard anything of it again. No one ever talked about it again."
But 12 years later, Spears, 39, was granted permission to hire her own lawyer after she spoke out about her controversial conservatorship for the first time over the summer. The blonde beauty chose former federal prosecutor Mathew Rosengart — who has represented Spears since July and has fiercely gone after her estranged father, Jamie Spears, for his role as her conservator.
The next court hearing in Spears' highly-publicized case is set for Wednesday, September 29, during which the judge is expected to rule on whether Jamie should be removed as her conservator or if the conservatorship should end altogether.
Jamie filed a petition to end his daughter's conservatorship in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, September 7, one month after he agreed to step down as conservator of her estate. Spears and her lawyer formally requested to end the songstress' 13-year-long conservatorship last week.
