More social media videos featuring Channel 7 Spotlight staff involved in securing an interview with Bruce Lehrmann have been made public, with the latest showing executive producer Mark Llewellyn wringing a towel out to a popular Boney M song.
Justice Michael Lee is preparing to hand down his judgment in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation battle against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson.
Mr Lehrmann sued over The Project segment in February 2021 in which Brittany Higgins made rape allegations against him.
At the time, Mr Lehrmann had pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting Ms Higgins in the ACT Supreme Court.
The trial was later aborted due to juror misconduct before the charges were subsequently dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
In a surprising turn of events, the case was reopened after Easter when Network 10 applied to the Federal Court to hear evidence from former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach.
Mr Auerbach was instrumental in locking down Mr Lehrmann for a series of exclusive interviews for the Channel 7 program.
As part of the latest proceedings in court, a video was played of Mr Auerbach of him snapping a set of golf clubs belonging to his former Spotlight colleague Steve Jackson.
Mr Auerbach told the court he was parodying a video of his former boss Mr Llewellyn when he broke all of Mr Jackson’s clubs on camera.
The 18-second clip of Mr Llewellyn was made public by the Federal Court on Monday.
Mr Llewellyn can be seen close to the camera, wringing out a towel to the tune of Boney M’s hit song Rivers of Babylon, where the lyrics “by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion” can be heard as the video plays.
At the end of the clip, Mr Llewellyn can be seen giving a thumbs up to the camera.
On Thursday, the court was played the alleged parody video of Mr Auerbach from October last year, which showed the 32-year-old smiling while destroying the golf clubs that belonged to Mr Jackson.
The court heard Mr Jackson left the clubs at Mr Auerbach’s house in 2022 before he posted the video of him destroying them.
The video was titled: “Merry Christmas, sue me.”
Mr Auerbach admitted he “hated” Mr Jackson, but denied he was displaying hatred in the video.
“During that video you displayed absolute hatred for Mr Jackson,” Mr Richardson asked.
“No,” Mr Auerbach said, explaining that it was a “parody” of a video which Mr Llewellyn had posted to the internet.
During the questioning, Justice Michael Lee added “the shorter the iron the more difficult it is” while the court was played the golf club video.
Mr Auerbach claimed Mr Lehrmann supplied producers with several pieces of evidence from Mr Lehrmann’s ACT Supreme Court criminal trial.
Mr Lehrmann has previously denied providing documents to the program.
Last year during the five week defamation trial, the former political staffer testified during the defamation trial that he only gave the network an interview.