Federal judge orders Mariott to release video of Michael Irvin’s hotel encounter

A federal judge has ordered Marriott to release all video and audio recordings related to Michael Irvin’s alleged improper encounter with a Phoenix hotel employee prior to Super Bowl LVII.

Per a Dallas Morning News Report, U.S. District Judge Amos Mazant lambasted Marriott for violating his order give Irvin and his attorney’s the recordings by last Tuesday.

He then ordered them to release the recordings by 5 p.m. Friday, unredacted with no protective order, allowing public viewing of the footage.

“That’s the penalty you face,” Mazzant said Friday to a Marriott attorney, per the report.

Irvin and his attorney Levi McCarthern have said the video will help support the $100 million defamation suit for the former Dallas Cowboys star has filed against Marriott, stemming from a Feb. 5 incident at the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown hotel.

A hotel staffer accused Irvin of an appropriate behavior during lobby interaction, prompting the former Dallas Cowboys star to be removed from the hotel and pulled from Super Bowl coverage by the NFL Network and ESPN.

Irvin has said that no inappropriate physical conduct occurred between him and the woman during their brief conversation.

During a press conference on Wednesday, Irvin compared the situation to a lynching of a Black man with no evidence because his life and career has been put on hold by the incident.

“This sickens me because in this great country, this takes me back to a time where a white woman would accuse a Black man of something, and they would take a bunch of guys that were above the law, run into the barn and put a rope around them, drag him through the mud and hang them,” Irvin said. “This just blows my mind that in 2023 we are still dragging and hanging brothers by a tree.

“That blows my mind that I have no opportunity to defend myself. I don’t even know what I’m defending. To listen to the court, Marriott is above the law. I still haven’t seen this tape. I haven’t seen this case. I want to see what I’m being accused of that put my whole life on hold, why my family had to endure it.”

McCarthern has seen the video and said the allegations against Irvin are nonsense. He Marriott owes Irvin an apology and Irvin needs to be allowed to go back to work.

He filed an emergency motion on Wednesday, which resulted in Friday’s ruling.

“Everybody who views [the video] will see what I’ve seen and what the witnesses who were there have seen,” McCathern said Friday. “Michael didn’t do anything wrong.”