When “SoHo Karen” Miya Ponsetto spoke to Gayle King on Thursday, just hours before his arrest, the Ventura County resident was wearing an accessory rarely seen in an “CBS This Morning” interview: a black cap with the word ” Daddy”.
It turns out that the only person who wanted Ponsetto with that hat was Ponsetto herself.
“The hat was definitely not chosen by me,” the 22-year-old’s lawyer, Sharen H. Ghatan, told the Daily Beast. “My office gave advice on what to wear. We asked her to wear a professional outfit. When she came for the interview, I said that the baseball cap would not be something that we could use in the interview. One because of the lighting, two because of the logo. She was very challenging and insisted that she use it. “
Ghatan said he asked his client “specifically” to take off his hat before the interview.
The 22-year-old woman captured by the camera allegedly physically attacking a 14-year-old black teenager and falsely accusing him of stealing his phone was arrested in California.
In an exclusive interview, Miya Ponsetto and her lawyer talked to @GayleKing hours before she was arrested. pic.twitter.com/ezaGkcWZ8j
– CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) January 8, 2021
“She said it’s her story, it’s her hat and she wants to wear it,” said the lawyer. “She is a very challenging customer.”
King noted, speaking to his fellow anchors after the promotional interview broadcast on Friday, that Ghatan encouraged his client to take his hat off. The full interview will air on Monday.
Ponsetto earned the nickname “SoHo Karen” when he physically assaulted a 14-year-old black boy at a hotel in New York City after falsely accusing him to steal your cell phone. His lawyer said the attack was motivated by anxiety, not racism, as was claimed. Ponsetto was in town to visit his father for Christmas.
The cell phone, I discovered, had been left in a shared vehicle.
Ponsetto was arrested Thursday night in California after New York Police Department detectives crossed the country to question her. The arrest came after days of intense media coverage of the riot at the hotel and demands from the teenager’s family and activists to face criminal charges.
TMZ reported on Friday that Ponsetto was charged with four crimes related to the incident: attempted theft, endangering a child’s well-being, attempted theft and attempted assault. A Piru resident, she will remain in custody in Ventura County until she is extradited to New York.
Ghatan told the Daily Beast that he had to cancel several national interviews after the first turned out to be a train disaster. “Miya did not realize the seriousness of her circumstances. She is expressly disregarding the advice and has become rebellious,” she said.
“She just isn’t doing well. I am not a psychiatrist. … She’s not well, that’s all I can say, “said the lawyer to the outlet, noting that she wasn’t sure if she would continue to represent Ponsetto.” She needs help, and it’s not the kind of help I can to give.”
Ponsetto had already been arrested twice on suspicion of DUI.
Ponsetto admitted to King during the “CBS This Morning” interview that she “could have approached the situation differently … or maybe she didn’t yell at him like that and make him feel … somehow inferior and doing it feel like I was, like, hurting his feelings because that’s not my intention. “
The preview of Friday’s interview went viral for a particularly terse exchange in which Ponsetto interrupted King: “Okay, Gayle! Enough,” she said, dismissing the veteran anchor with a wave of the hand. The moment took Ghatan, who was sitting next to Ponsetto, to instruct his client to “stop”.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.