Viewer who accessed group chat in Paltrow case says opening link was just “common sense”

The online sleuth who uncovered a group chat later submitted as evidence in the Gwyneth Paltrow ski slope trial said infiltrating the texts took “probably like two minutes” — even though it confounded courtroom attorneys.

Michael Fletcher — the CourtTV viewer who cracked the code and sent the Meetup group messages to Paltrow’s defense team — told the network’s Julie Grant that breaking into the group chat wasn’t that complicated at all.

“It’s comical how easy it was,” an incredulous Fletcher said.

“They kept repeating that it’s the most important piece of evidence, and they couldn’t figure it out. They had no idea how to open the link.”

The eagle-eyed viewer uncovered messages in a link that supposedly contained GoPro footage of the 2016 ski-slope collision between Paltrow and Terry Sanderson, a 76-year-old retired optometrist.

The messages showed Craig Ramon — a skier who claims to be the accident’s only eyewitness — knew that the “Shakespeare In Love” actress was the other party to the crash.

Sanderson, who claims the crash left him with permanent brain damage, insisted that neither he nor his key eyewitness was aware that Paltrow was the skier who struck him.

But, the chat between members of Terry Sanderson’s ski group says otherwise.

“You could not make this up. Gwyneth took out Terry last week,” Ramon wrote in the chat.

“Last Saturday, her son broke his arm skiing at Park City. Gwyneth was staying at the Montage. She took her plane out of Millionaire Airport. What makes me mad is Gwyneth took out Terry and then took off.”

The chat made clear that Ramon thought Paltrow hit Sanderson long before Sanderson filed his lawsuit. And it shows that Sanderson and his compatriots knew the actress was the woman involved in the crash.

During the Court TV interview, Fletcher seemed amazed that attorneys were so bamboozled by the sign-in screen to which the link led.

“Like, I can’t believe they didn’t do this already. It’s almost a joke,” he added.

“All I did was create a login for the website. If it’s a website that requires a login, you can’t access anything on it without a login … then the link works. It’s simple.”

Grant was floored by the revelation.

“So it wasn’t like the link was bad, or faulty or something like that?” she asked.

“No,” answered Fletcher, who works as a tech investigator but said he has no particularly special skills. “There’s nothing wrong with the link … maybe [I had] just a little common sense.”

Sanderson is suing Paltrow for more than $300,000, claiming she skied recklessly that day at the ritzy Utah ski resort.

With Post wires