The viral superstar has recently become the subject of online allegations, and is lawyering up to deal with it.
I’ll be honest: I have never watched Mr. Beast and I probably never will. His whole look-at-this-extreme-thing-I-just-did schtick just isn’t for me. That said, hundreds of millions of people are fans of him. His YouTube series has billions of views and is one of the most watched shows on planet earth. Yet while Beast (whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson) has managed to spawn a global following, he’s also managed to piss off a whole bunch of people. That may be why he recently hired a high-powered lawyer favored by the likes of Elon Musk to defend himself from allegations that he’s a “sociopath.”
The Daily Mail was first to report that Donaldson had recently hired Alex Spiro, a high-powered, $2k-an-hour attorney who has represented some of the world’s most successful and powerful people. Through a representative at Spiro’s law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Business Insider has confirmed the hire. According to the Daily Mail, the reason that Donaldson hired the flashy lawyer is to conduct an internal audit of his company, the likes of which has recently come under fire as the result of various scandals. Spiro will also allegedly be fending off allegations like those made by Dawson French, a former Mr. Beast employee who has claimed, in a series of recently posted videos, that the viral superstar is a “sociopath” and a “fraud.”
French runs a YouTube channel entitled DogPack404. that appears to be solely dedicated to criticizing Donaldson. In a video entitled “I Worked for MrBeast, He’s a Sociopath,” the former employee lays bare allegations against the superstar vlogger and his company, including that he fostered a toxic work culture. That video, which was only posted three weeks ago, has over 12 million views. In a video posted just yesterday, this same account detailed what the host claimed were sexual assault allegations related to people in Donaldson’s inner circle.
According to the Daily Mail, Spiro recently sent French a cease-and-desist letter in which he claimed that French had only worked for Mr. Beast for a period of “three weeks” before getting “fired for conduct even you have characterized as ‘inappropriate.’” Allegedly, the letter also accuses French of spreading “false and defamatory allegations” and states that he is in breach of a non-disclosure agreement he signed that barred him from disparaging the company.
It’s not as if Mr. Beast hasn’t had its share of controversies. Donaldson’s reputation recently suffered a hit after it came to light that one of his long-time friends (and a colleague on the show), Ava Kris Tyson, had been accused of having sexually explicit chats with a 13-year-old boy. Donaldson subsequently fired Tyson and put out a statement on X, claiming that he was “disgusted and opposed to such unacceptable acts.” He also promised to hire an independent investigator to conduct a probe into the misconduct. To be clear, the person that Tyson is accused of having inappropriate conversations with has defended her: “I am not a victim,” the person recently tweeted. “Nothing bad happened between me and Kris, people are creating lies around my name,” they said.
Gizmodo reached out to Spiro and to Quinn Emanuel for comment. We also reached out to Donaldson and French and will update this story if any of them respond.
