Rust Armorer’s Lawyers Suggest 'Disgruntled' Crew Members Sabotaged Set - While Alec Baldwin DENIES Safety Complaints

Did we say the Rust blame game was getting complicated? Because based on the latest news, we ain’t seen nothing yet…

The focus of the investigation into Halyna Hutchins’ death should be preventing such a tragic accident from ever occurring again, but right now, the focus seems to be pointing fingers. On Tuesday, we reported where first assistant director Dave Halls (who reportedly falsely called “cold gun” before the shooting) stands on the matter. Now, armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers are proposing their own wild theories.

Attorneys Robert Gorence and Jason Bowles appeared on Today (below) to defend the 24-year-old. Bowles questioned:

“How did a live round get on set, and who put that live round on the set? … There was a box of dummy rounds, the box is labeled ‘dummy.’ … She loaded rounds from that box into the handgun, only later to find out — she had no idea, she inspected the rounds — that there was a live round. Now, we don’t know, however, whether the live round came from that box. We’re assuming somebody put the live round in that box.”

He then dropped the bombshell:

“The person that put that live round in that box of dummy rounds had to have the purpose of sabotaging the set. There’s no other reason you would do that.”

WTF?! We’ve all been operating under the assumption that this was a terrible accident due to negligence and/or unsafe conditions. Active sabotage would be a HUGE twist.

So who does Hannah’s team think would have conducted this? Bowles proposed:

“I believe that somebody who would do that would want to sabotage the set, want to prove a point, want to say that they’re disgruntled, they’re unhappy. And we know that people had already walked off the set the day before, and they’re unhappy.”

He went on:

“[I] think you can’t rule anybody out at this point. Because we know a couple of facts. We know there was a live round in a box of dummy rounds that shouldn’t have been there. At least one live round. We have people who had left the set, who had walked out because they were disgruntled. We have a time frame between 11 [a.m.] and 1 [p.m.], approximately, that day, in which the firearms at times were unattended, so there was opportunity to tamper with this scene.”

So… the crew members who walked out citing safety concerns, are now suspected of causing intentional safety problems?! We’ve gotta say, this theory seems really unlikely to us.

Innerestingly, though, Bowles and Gorence weren’t the only ones to cast aspersions on the “disgruntled” crew members. The film’s producer and star Alec Baldwin (who fired the fatal shot) re-posted a long message on his Instagram from someone claiming to have worked on Rust, denying the conditions that had reportedly caused the walkout in the first place. (You can read the full post below.)

This production source, Terese Magpale Davis, wrote that the film rarely worked more than 12 hour days, and that camera crew were simply bothered that their hotels weren’t “fancy enough.” And in fact, that they thought they “deserved more money and NICER hotels than the rest of the crew because they were BETTER than the rest of the crew… They only cared about themselves.”

The post also defended both Gutierrez-Reed and Halls, the “approachable and warm” producers, and even the non-union crew that had been brought in after the walkout. She also explained away previous misfires as “accidental discharges,” which are supposedly “more common than you think.” (We find that a bit hard to believe.)

The post the actor shared doesn’t go as far to suggest active sabotage, but it does give credence to the lawyers’ “disgruntled crew member” theory. It also conveniently sheds any responsibility on the part of the producers in this incident.

Whether or not any of it is true remains to be seen, and should presumably come up in an investigation. One thing seems clear, which is that the key players in this tragedy are really feeling the heat.

Scroll on to read the statement co-signed by Baldwin, below: