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Several days after being arrested and charged with DWI, popular musician and actor Justin Timberlake finally broke his silence and addressed his run-in with law enforcement.
The 43-year-old was arrested at 12:37 a.m. on Tuesday, June 18 in Sag Harbor, a port village near the Hamptons on the Eastern side of Long Island in New York.
Surveillance video of Timberlake driving his 2025 BMW was taken by Hamptons.com shortly before he was arrested. He was held overnight, arraigned later that morning, and released.
Following his arrest, Justin Timberlake’s mug shot was released and almost immediately became a meme on the internet.
This past Friday night while performing at the United Center in Chicago for his Forget Tomorrow World Tour, Timberlake addressed his recent legal woes.
“It’s always amazing to be in the house that the GOAT built,” Justin Timberlake told the fans in attendance, referring to Michael Jordan.
“But I wanted to say something to you guys. We sort of started on the West Coast and made our way through the South to the Midwest, I’ve had this amazing experience and as we move around the world I look around and I see faces that I’ve seen before and, you know, it really washes over me.
“We have such a special thing, I mean, we’ve grown up together. There’s so many of you that have come up to me in the past and said, ‘I’ve grown up with you.’ And I just want you guys to know that I reciprocate that. I mean, I’ve grown up with you.
“We’ve been together through ups and downs, lefts and rights. And, uh, it’s been a tough week, but you’re here and I’m here, and nothing can change this moment right now.
“I know sometimes I’m hard to love, but you keep on loving me and I love you right back.”
On Saturday, People reports, Timberlake told another packed house at the United Center, “This [tour] is just something that keeps watching over me, more so on this tour than any other. And that’s that mostly all of us here in this room tonight, in this arena tonight, have grown up together. So many of you come up to me and say, ‘I grew up with you, man.’
“… I want each and every one of you to know I’ve grown up with you. You have been such a big and beautiful part of my life and sometimes I can’t find the words to show my gratitude that you guys just keep riding with me and riding with me.”
Justin Timberlake, despite looking rather glassy-eyed in his mug shot, denied being drunk at the time of his arrest and told police, according to his arrest report, “I had one martini and I followed my friends home.”
The arrest report claims otherwise, stating, “A strong odor of an alcoholic beverage was emanating from his breath, he was unable to divide attention, he had slowed speech, he was unsteady afoot, and he performed poorly on all standardized field sobriety tests.”
This past weekend, a bartender at Sag Harbor’s American Hotel, where Timberlake was before being arrested, confirmed the singer’s “one martini” claim and another employee told People, “If he was drinking more, it wasn’t here.”
Timberlake is due back in court to face his DWI charges on July 26.