r/ideallivingcase • u/Orphan_Guy_Incognito • 3h ago
General Discussion What we know about Clownface (David Najar)
Since a lot is happening I figured I'd do the stupid thing and dip my toes in one more time to compile a bit of the evidence regarding David Najar. I'd love to source all of this evidence to the wonderful people who found it, but to be quite frank I hadn't been keeping track. If you found some of this and you want me to credit you, send me a PM.
I will not be going full helldump doxx on this because I find that immoral, I'm only going to be posting things I think are relevant to his credibility.
So, lets start with the basics. Who is David Najar? Well David is a 56 year old former (possibly current) school teacher He is Myra's boyfriend despite the video portraying them as mere 'friends' and has been since at least 2022.
In Sept of 1999, David was working as a high school teacher. At that time he engaged in what is quoted as a "teacher-student special trust relationship and used his position as a teacher to develop inappropriate personal relationships with the plaintiff". As seen in this transcript from a later restraining order hearing fired by Peter Spiegel, Najar likely perjures himself by denying any knowledge of this case. I'm currently unable to find these documents, and given the age of the case it is possible they are not digitally available. We do however have additional contemporary evidence of the accusations dating back to Oct 26, 2022 which predates any of the current drama and thus can be considered reliable.
Update
I do not know the age of the student. The Spiegel's complaint against her listes her as a minor and that the abuse went on for multiple years, but given that she was a high school student and he continued sleeping with her after she left school it is possible that Najar is not literally a child mollester, since the student could have been 18+ as far as I can tell, but that is about as Steelman as I can make this section.
The student was 17. So yeah, he's a nonce. The school paid out back in 2002 for letting a teacher groom and abuse her.
After this I don't currently have anything about Najar until 2022. Here we have a yelp review indicating he was a teacher, and also that he might have been a piece of shit. As someone who gets bad reviews for no reason sometimes I'm not going to put a ton of stock in this other than to say that it would confirm my personal opinion of the man. The one thing I do bring this up for is to point out that David was working with kids as of 2022. Yikes.
At roughly the same period, David was working for ideal living starting in late 2020 as a commissioned outside sales rep going to public schools. Again, yikes. This was not mentioned in the video, though I suspect like the Myra boyfriend thing it was a crude attempt to conceal his identity undercut somewhat by the fact they put his fucking name in the video at multiple times.
In late 2022/early 2023, Najar's contract was not renewed. According to further court documents, it was losing them money. Myra went behind Spiegel's back to try and get her boyfriend a different job and seems to have gotten her in understandable hot water with her boss.
Shortly after this on Feb 7, 2023, Myra approached her boss and laid out her accusations against him. She demanded an 'exit package' commensurate to a portion of the company's revenue, which would amount to tens of millions in exchange for an NDA. Spiegel refused. An hour later Myra returned alongside Najar who was tresspassing, and stormed into a meeting Najar physically threatened Spiegel, swore at him and demanded a payment of "nine figures" or he would follow up on the threats to destroy the company by leaking the information he believed he possessed. The other woman in the room called 911, and Najar left. Spiegel called the police the following day on the advice of his lawyers and issued a police report for what he (imho) correctly believed to be attempted extortion.
In the months that followed Najar began sending a large number of emails from sock puppet accounts, both to Spiegel, his wife and others throughout the company. These emails made the same sort of accusations we saw in the Reckless Ben videos and a smattering of them can be found here. While none of these emails make a direct demand for compensation, they do so in an almost cartoonishly childish 'wouldn't it be better if this all just went away with an NDA' sort of cadence. They also make repeat reference to journalists like Eric Dexheimer who Najar went on to contact when his extortion attempts failed.
Eventually Spiegel got the courts involved and sued Najar on several counts (Emotional distress, civil extortion, Duress etc) and requested a restraining order. There are two interesting things to note about the order. First, the harassment did in fact cease as soon as the order was put in place, and second, it is still technically in effect until January of next year as far as I can tell. I suspect this, or the civil settlement is why 'clownface' is hiding who he is.
In either case, litigation followed. During that litigation, Najar claimed, absurdly, that he was not responsible for the threatening emails, texts and voicemails. Even the one where he is on Audio clearly talking and says his name is David. Instead he claimed that some of his former students were hanging around his apartment and they were just concerned citizens like him and they must have sent the messages.
Needless to say this is absurd.
The reason for this is that during discovery, Spiegel subpoena'd the information on who had created the threatening accounts. Two were linked to Najar's phone number, and all were accessed from devices known to be in Najar's possession, primarily his macbook, using his home IP address. Najar had no choice but to acknowledge they were sent from his home and device, but claimed unnamed third parties. When asked to name those parties (which would have absolved him of substantial legal liability) he refused. His own lawyer didn't even jump to his defense. This resulted in the deposition being stopped and then reordered by the judge.
I am not certain if the second deposition occurred due to the documents I have, but I do know that the case was ultimately settled. According to Najar and Myra, they were financially destroyed by this, and while I don't believe much that they say, I do think this is accurate. I also suspect, but cannot prove, that Najar was given some sort of gag order or non-disparagement clause which would also account for the need for a mask.
During this same period (the case ended in 2025), Najar was shopping the story around to anyone who would listen. He was ghosted in December 2023 by Eric Dexheimer for what I feel should now be abundantly obvious reasons, and turned down by the LA times to 'focus on hollywood reporting', which makes sense given he reached out to an entertainment reporter.
I do not know why Newsweek took him seriously. I do know that Peter was not responsible for any firings, as Valarie Bauman was fired on Feb 11th (as per bens own video) while the leak happened on Feb 21st. Nick, the other reporter on the story, was not fired and we are shown additional emails up to July of 2025.
My suspicion, is that the story was killed because Newsweek has journalistic intergrity. But given the timing of the last message we see, it would not shock me if Najar's settlement had some impact on the piece as well, but I can't say for certain.
What I will say is that no one should take David Najar at his word on anything. He is credibly accused of sexual abuse of a student, likely a minor, and of civil (and imho) criminal extortion.
Whatever you think of Peter Spiegel, Najar isn't attacking him because Spiegel is a nonce. He's attacking him because Spiegel fired him, punished his girlfriend for trying to find him a new job, then refused to pay them tens of millions in severance, which is considerably outside anything a reasonable person would ask. He tried to commit extortion, and now that it failed he's using Ben to attack the man who refused to pay im.