Reality TV star-turned-talk show host Bethenny Frankel took the stand in a bitter custody trial with her estranged husband on Wednesday after her celebrity attorney bashed her soon-to-be ex in opening statements, claiming he spied on his wife, hacked into her email and “sought to obsessively control her every move through their daughter.”
Frankel’s lawyer Allan Mayefsky, who repped Katie Holmes in her split from Tom Cruise, said the Skinnygirl’s husband went “to war” when their marriage deteriorated in 2012.
“He threatened to destroy her,” Mayefsky said. “He had her followed and spied on along with their daughter. He hacked into her most private personal email.”
”He has consciously placed his desire for revenge … over the best interests of this family and particularly the child,” Mayefsky concluded. “He has sought to obsessively control their every move through their daughter.”
Frankel wants primary custody and sole decision-making authority for 4-year-old Bryn, while Jason Hoppy is arguing for shared custody.
Mayefsky said his client is a “very, very involved mother” whose success will benefit the child.
Hoppy showed no emotion during the attack.
His attorney Bernard Clair, who has also repped boldface clients like Lauren Silverman, said that Frankel shared her husband’s taste for revenge.
She moved out of the family’s Hudson Street condo earlier this year and stripped the home of all their daughter’s favorite things.
“The clothes were gone, the favorite stuffed animals gone, the favorite dollhouse gone,” Clair recounted, saying the removal propelled little Bryn into a tailspin of confusion and disappointment.
When Hoppy went to cook his daughter a meal to calm her, he was shocked at what Frankel had allegedly done.
“He found that every single utensil had been taken but replaced with plastic knives, forks and spoons like you would pick up from a takeout place. One pot was left,” Clair said.
Clair also criticized Frankel for using “the child as a prop … in the pursuit of her own career and her own brand.”
He said she “embarked on a secret endeavor to have a children’s book published” this coming September about Bryn’s life.
“Ms. Frankel even arranged for the illustrator to come to her home to follow this child around so that every likeness and every sense of the child could be presented,” Clair said.
“And that’s not all: This children’s book has the Skinnygirl logo, Skinnygirl being the brand of Ms. Frankel, throughout its pages,” Clair said.
Frankel appeared in at least three reality TV shows including “The Real Housewives of New York, “Bethenny Getting Married” and “Skating with the Stars.”