Court TV Host: We're chatting with The Smoking Gun's Andrew Goldberg. A six-week investigation by The Smoking Gun reveals that James Frey's bestselling Oprah Book Club selection, A Million Little Pieces, which purports to be a non-fiction autobiographical account of the author's drug-addicted life of crime, is riddled with lies, fabrications and exaggerations.

Court TV Host: Read the Smoking Gun's exclusive story about the book at http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html

Court TV Host: Welcome, Andrew, thanks for being our guest today.

Andrew Goldberg: Hello...nice to be here. FYI, I am a two finger typer so I will try to keep up.

Question from Allie: How will these new facts affect this book...how does it change that it is a best-selling book?

Andrew Goldberg: Well, the publisher has just announced that they will be offering refunds to people who want them. They were getting a lot of calls from people wanting their $$ back and feeling duped. All the good will Oprah produced is gone. The nonfiction bestseller list may also knock it off, and they will have to look at how these books are evaluated for content.

Question from Misfit: What prompted TSG to investigate Frey in the first place?

Andrew Goldberg: After he was on Oprah we got an email from someone wondering what his mug shot looked like... when we went to find it we ran into all sorts of walls, and everything went from there.

Question from RED: How much of the book is lies?

Andrew Goldberg: That is tough to know. We believe he was in rehab but that's about all I would believe. I don't believe Leonard was a Mafia guy from NYC and have a lot of questions about all the other characters in the book.

Question from uma: Do you think he will lie tonight on Larry King Live?

Andrew Goldberg: Well, from what we have heard he will be sitting there with his mother so I hope she doesn't let him keep lying... but you go on Larry King b/c you want someone who will NOT ask hard questions. I think he is going to fall on the sword and talk about all the people he has helped.

Question from whome: Do you think Lilly was real? Or a made up character?

Andrew Goldberg: Lilly is named after one of the women's housing units at Hazelden (called Lilly). There may have been a woman there he had a crush on but... if there was a real Lilly then what kept him from saving her when she killed herself? In the book it was jail, but we know he was not in jail. So I'd say it is unlikely.

Question from lola: Have we had any comments from Oprah on this subject?

Question from kirby: Oprah hasn't commented on this yet, right? What do you think her reaction was?

Andrew Goldberg: Oprah is mum so far...she was planning a second show, and that has been removed from her site. I have to imagine she is pissed off seeing video of herself being fooled by this scam artist who had the balls to threaten to sue us for millions of dollars.

Question from Lucky: Any word if Oprah will address this on her show?

Question from dknj: Do you think Oprah will address this issue on her show at some point?

Andrew Goldberg: Right now she is scheduled to pick a new book on Monday (the 16th, I believe) It would be amazing to me if she totally ignored it, and I think she'd lose credibility.

Question from Misfit: Are you at all concerned with the threat of a lawsuit?

Andrew Goldberg: Nope -- any punk who threatens to sue someone reporting facts would be laughed out of court. I have no idea what his grounds would be, and we have not heard from his lawyers since we got the letter from them.

Question from whome: What about Miles? Did you ever find him?

Andrew Goldberg: I think someone like Miles exists. Not a federal appeals court judge but a state judge who was in rehab with Frey. We have not spoken to him.

Question from Lucky: Andrew, do you think it's wrong for a 'non-fiction' writer to 'embellish'?

Andrew Goldberg: No. I would not say that it is wrong for them to embellish. Frey's problem was that he took on the story as his own, and went out and sold it as such. He would answer questions about his time in jail and his badass past and may have begun to believe it. But book writing is not reporting, and there need to be some artistic license in books. Frey took it way too far since the life did not come close to the story.

Question from indy123: Did you personally interview Frey for TSG? What was he like?

Andrew Goldberg: Yes, we spoke to him three or so times (depends on whether you consider hang ups more times -- I don't). Sometimes just me and sometimes me and Bill Bastone and Frey. The conversations totaled about 90 minutes and he went from friendly to not so happy (see hang up part)...at no time did he yell, but he did say that our second conversation left him "rattled"... and had never had to talk to reporters about this stuff before.

Question from Lawless: Andrew, do publishing companies do any research on the accuracy of non-fiction books before publishing them?

Andrew Goldberg: Can't really answer that since I have no knowledge of it. But Frey did say over and over he had shown the publishers all the docs he used in the book and they had interviewed people.

Question from eag: So is it true that you really came upon this information simply by looking for his mug shot? Did you ever have any other suspicions?

Andrew Goldberg: You starting to look into my credibility? lol. Yeah, it is true. In fact, I had not read the book at the time I started calling for the mug. I had picked it up once before and not finished. (I am not a memoir fan.)

Question from Time4Truth: Andrew, and are they liable other than simply saying "oops" and giving a refund?

Question from paddy: Can he be sued for lying to the public?

Andrew Goldberg: Interesting questions...I made the joke in the office the other day that Oprah readers are going to file a class action suit. But I am not a lawyer--but you know (see the letter threatening us on the site) that you can find someone to take anything. We will see.

Question from eag: Why did you want his mug shot?

Andrew Goldberg: Someone sent in an email to the site after seeing him on Oprah...we knew he was a bestseller and just figured we'd add it to the mug shot section of our site. Really simple reason. The whole exercise was supposed to take an hour and then I figured I'd move on to finding a real story for the site.

Question from curiousonlooker: Many people claim Frey's book changed their lives. Have you talked with any of these people, and what are they saying now?

Andrew Goldberg: We have gotten an amazing amount of email from people. Some calling us the vomit that came out of Frey and stuck to his shirt--and those are the nice ones... many stand by Frey and he has said as recently as yesterday that we will be running an apology. It is great that their lives were changed, but it doesn't change the fact that Frey is a liar...I just don't believe the ends justify...(well, you know)... and for Frey this is about money. He could have taken that position (the one I think he will tonight on CNN)... but instead he chose to send his lawyers after us. We have also heard from a lot of people in recovery and recovery experts who feel he was hurting them with his anti-AA position and his "hold on" stuff.

Question from Allie: Will the author need to give up his money he got from the book?

Andrew Goldberg: I don't know. It looks like the publisher is abandoning him by offering refunds. But that's a very good question. We'll have to see.

Question from lola: I did find it convenient that almost everyone but Frey died at the end of the book. Were you able to locate anyone from the book to interview?

Andrew Goldberg: We didn't seek out people from the book for a few of reasons: 1) we don't think most of the exist. 2) we were talking directly with Frey... 3) we wanted to prove thing independent of Frey and his buddies...a few times he offered up people for us to talk to, and we always turned him down.

Question from whome: I heard AMLP will be a movie? Is this true?

Question from curiousonlooker: Any word on whether the movie is still a go? (I hope it's not!)

Andrew Goldberg: There is a movie deal...Jennifer Anniston and Brad Pitt's company bought it (I don't know who got it in the divorce)... Last week they announced a director, and on Oprah he mentioned a few actors up for the role of him... Joe who I work with thought Jon Lovitz would be good. I think it would be hard to do it now b/c a lot of the power of the film is him promoting it, and that'll be hard. But you never know. He already wrote one movie that was in theaters -- maybe this one will be there too someday.

Question from Lawless: Is the TSG team planning on continuing their research into the legitimacy of other parts of this book?

Andrew Goldberg: We aren't done looking at him, to be honest. Since doing the story people from his past have gotten in touch to fill in some blanks...but I don't know how much more we'll do since our real passion is posting mugs of teachers having sex with students.

Question from eastcoastbaby: Are you afraid he might come after your staff physically?

Andrew Goldberg: I don't think that's going to happen but we all live in NYC and so does he. He knows where we live -- no secret but the answer is nope.

Question from curiousonlooker: I didn't read his book but did see him on Oprah a bit. His claims seemed to be pretty far out there, and his demeanor was quite dispassionate, especially considering what he'd been through. Why do you think people so easily bought a story that was so far out there?

Andrew Goldberg: My wife said the same thing when I showed her the Oprah tape. She thought he had passion about rehab but nothing else... Oprah's stamp on a book means a lot to people and that's why people feel so angry at him and why she will need to address it.

Court TV Host: Any closing thoughts?

Andrew Goldberg: Sure...no matter how sad he seems tonight on Larry King, remember you're watching a wealthy author who is looking to save what is left of his empire, and when we went to publish the truth, he came after us. I am sure his "people" are prepping him for tonight, and the most upsetting part to me is... it is up against a new episode of "Lost," finally back after all those reruns... Thanks for chatting. Hope to do it again soon.

Court TV Host: Thank you!

Court TV Host: Come back soon!