Weinstein Recordings Show Hollywood, Corporate Media Love Sexual Predators—Until They’re Caught

A recording has been released that gives insight into the accusations that led to the resignation of media mogul and producer, Harvey Weinstein, and it casts a dark shadow on the celebrities, media outlets, politicians and members of law enforcement who covered up his despicable actions.

In an in-depth report published by the New Yorker, Ronan Farrow details a 10-month investigation, in which 13 women gave accounts of sexual harassment or assault by Weinstein, and three of them claim that he raped them.

One of the most telling revelations comes from a case in 2015, when 22-year-old Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, a finalist for Miss Italy, met Weinstein during a reception for a show he was producing at the Radio City Music Hall. The report’s account claimed that her agency reached out after the event and said that Weinstein “wanted to set up a business meeting as soon as possible.”

“Gutierrez arrived at Weinstein’s office in Tribeca early the next evening with her modelling portfolio. In the office, she sat with Weinstein on a couch to review the portfolio, and he began staring at her breasts, asking if they were real. Gutierrez later told officers of the New York Police Department Special Victims Division that Weinstein then lunged at her, groping her breasts and attempting to put a hand up her skirt while she protested. He finally backed off and told her that his assistant would give her tickets to ‘Finding Neverland,’ a Broadway musical that he was producing. He said that he would meet her at the show that evening.”

Gutierrez went to a New York Police Department precinct and reported the assault. In response, investigators suggested she plan to meet Weinstein the following day and wear a wire with the mission of attempting “to extract a confession or incriminating statement.”

Advertisment

During a meeting at the Tribeca Grand Hotel in which Gutierrez was wearing a wire, Weinstein invited her to come up to his hotel room while he took a shower. She refused, and he appeared agitated. Weinstein told Gutierrez that she was embarrassing him, and she insisted that she just wanted to leave. She then asked him why he groped her breasts the day before.

READ MORE:  Cop Arrested for Raping Domestic Assault Victim and Forcing Her to Drink His Urine

“Oh, please, I’m sorry, just come on in,” Weinstein responded. “I’m used to that. Come on. Please.”

“You’re used to that?” Gutierrez asked.

“Yes,” Weinstein said, adding, “I won’t do it again.”

Weinstein, in conversation with Gutierrez, admits to groping her. Here’s the audio: https://t.co/zSQbK5NV0c pic.twitter.com/vmrrSUp43w

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) October 10, 2017

The report from the New Yorker claimed that two sources close to the investigation said “they had no reason to doubt Gutierrez’s account of the incident.” However, there were a number of tabloid stories that emerged after the incident, showing that this was not the first time she had made allegations of sexual assault.

Manhattan Attorney General Cyrus Vance Jr. eventually dropped the investigation. Weinstein thanked him by sending him a $10,000 campaign contribution by way of David Boies, Weinstein’s attorney.

“We had the evidence,” a police source involved in the operation told Farrow. “It’s a case that made me angrier than I thought possible, and I have been on the force a long time.”

After dealing with threats from Weinstein’s robust legal team, Gutierrez reportedly agreed to a financial settlement, and signed “a highly restrictive nondisclosure agreement with Weinstein, including an affidavit stating that the acts Weinstein admits to in the recording never happened.”

Weinstein’s unwanted advances, which led to sexual assault in many cases, were not uncommon in Hollywood. Prominent actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie have testified to being harassed by Weinstein when they were in their early 20s.

While some actresses are now saying that their initial experiences with Weinstein made them avoid working with him in the future, there are some actors and even media outlets who covered up his crimes.

READ MORE:  Innocent Rape Victim Thrown in Jail and Beaten -- To Make Sure She"d Testify Against Her Rapist

The allegations have been ongoing for years, and in 2004, New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman claimed she attempted to reveal the truth about Weinstein. She flew to Italy to investigate claims of a man who was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to schedule Russian escorts for Weinstein.

“The story I reported never ran,” Waxman wrote. “After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted. I was told at the time that Weinstein had visited the newsroom in person to make his displeasure known.”

The hypocrisy has included a number of prominent politicians, and in a surprising editorial, CNN’s Chris Cillizza noted that, “Five days after the New York Times broke the news that Weinstein, the head of Miramax and a major Democratic donor, faced a series of allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women over a several-decade span, neither Bill or Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama has said a single word about the incidents.”

From editors at the New York Times, to prominent celebrities and politicians, to local elected officials and members of law enforcement, it took a village to cover up Harvey Weinstein’s crimes. But the fact is that he is not the only one, and while he will inevitably become the new poster-child for sexual harassment in Hollywood, it is still an on-going epidemic.

New York Times Hypocrisy Exposed: Former Reporter Says Paper Killed Weinstein Expose In 2004

After it publicized former Fox News host Bill O"Reilly’s history of harassing female colleagues earlier this year, prompting Fox to dismiss the longtime primetime host, the New York Times claimed the scalp of another powerful media titan last week when it published a bombshell story exposing Harvey Weinstein’s lurid history of sexual harassment and coercion. After the story was published, Weinstein’s career crumbled as he quickly became persona non grata in an industry that he had dominated for nearly 30 years. Lawyers and advisers denounced him. Politicians returned campaign contributions. Humanitarian awards were rescinded. And the legendary producer was fired from his own company.

But while the Times gloated over its latest triumph of holding the powerful to account, one former NYT reporter revealed that America’s paper of record had, for more than a decade, helped shield Weinstein, going so far as to kill a story about Weinstein’s history of paying off women whom he’d sexually harassed.

Sharon Waxman, the founding editor of The Wrap and formerly an entertainment industry reporter at the Times, revealed in a blog post published Sunday that she had reported out a similar story back in 2004, only for it to be quashed by top editors at the paper, who, instead of encouraging her to pursue the story, questioned its value and relevance after Weinstein had reportedly made a personal appeal demanding that it not be run.

Waxman applauded the two reporters who broke the story, saying she knows how difficult reporting on powerful industry figures like Weinstein can be. But she could only scoff at a column written by Times’ media columnist Jim Rutenberg blasting Weinstein’s “media enablers”, who had rerportedly turned a blind eye to his problematic behavior for decades. After all, she said, when it comes to keeping stories about Weinstein’s disturbing behavior from seeing the light of day, the Times was as complicit as anyone.

I applaud The New York Times and writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for getting the story in print. I’m sure it was a long and difficult road.

But I simply gagged when I read Jim Rutenberg’s sanctimonious piece on Saturday about the “media enablers” who kept this story from the public for decades.

“Until now,” he puffed, “no journalistic outfit had been able, or perhaps willing, to nail the details and hit publish.”

That’s right, Jim. No one — including The New York Times.

In an essay published on the Wrap, Waxman recounted her own efforts to expose Weinstein’s history of sexual harassment more than a decade earlier, saying she verified that at least one woman had reached a settlement with Weinstein that involved the signing of an NDA.

In 2004, I was still a fairly new reporter at The New York Times when I got the green light to look into oft-repeated allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein. It was believed that many occurred in Europe during festivals and other business trips there.

Her reporting took her to two foreign countries as industry insiders alerted her to the existence of Fabrizio Lombardo, the head of Miramax Italy whose only real job at the company was procuring “girls” for Harvey to see when he was in Europe.

I traveled to Rome and tracked down the man who held the plum position of running Miramax Italy. According to multiple accounts, he had no film experience and his real job was to take care of Weinstein’s women needs, among other things.

As head of Miramax Italy in 2003 and 2004, Fabrizio Lombardo was paid $400,000 for less than a year of employment. He was on the payroll of Miramax and thus the Walt Disney Company, which had bought the indie studio in 1993.

I had people on the record telling me Lombardo knew nothing about film, and others citing evenings he organized with Russian escorts.

At the time, he denied that he was on the payroll to help Weinstein with favors. From the story: “Reached in Italy, Mr. Lombardo declined to comment on the circumstances of his leaving Miramax or Ricucci, saying they were legal matters being handled by lawyers. ‘I am very proud of what we achieved at Miramax here in Italy,’ he said of his work for the film company. ‘It cannot be that they hired me because I’m a friend."”

Waxman shared how she had convinced one of Weinstein’s victims to overcome her fears about violating an NDA to discuss her history with Weinstein. 

I also tracked down a woman in London who had been paid off after an unwanted sexual encounter with Weinstein. She was terrified to speak because of her non-disclosure agreement, but at least we had evidence of a pay-off.

But despite Waxman’s best efforts, the story about Weinstein that she had reported never ran; instead, allegations of sexual harassment were removed from the piece, which was eventually buried in the culture section, after Weinstein launched a wide-ranging campaign to pressure the paper’s editors and owners – a campaign that involved personalized phone calls from celebrities like Matt Damon, who vouched for Weinstein’s character.

Weinstein was even allowed to visit the Times’ newsroom to make his appeal – a shocking violation of journalistic ethics.

I was told at the time that Weinstein had visited the newsroom in person to make his displeasure known. I knew he was a major advertiser in the Times, and that he was a powerful person overall.

But I had the facts, and this was the Times. Right?

Wrong. The story was stripped of any reference to sexual favors or coercion and buried on the inside of the Culture section, an obscure story about Miramax firing an Italian executive. Who cared?

The Times’ then-culture editor Jon Landman, now an editor-at-large for Bloomberg, thought the story was unimportant, asking me why it mattered.

Eight years after Waxman left the times, the shifting cultural climate created the conditions for Weinstein to be deposed, as rumors circulated that his brother may have been behind the Times story.

Also, with the New Yorker reportedly researching its own Weinstein expose, the Times was effectively forced to act lest it miss out on one of the biggest entertainment industry scoops of the year.

However, the Times isn’t the only media outlet that caved to pressure Weinstein. As Page Six reported Sunday, New York Magazine fumbled its own Weinstein exposed after Weinstein reportedly had the story killed.

Even after news broke, Saturday Night Live – which has made countless cheap jokes about allegations of sexual harassment pertaining to President Donald Trump – was conspicuously mute about Weinstein.

Unsurprisingly, journalists blasted Waxman for her column, questioning why she didn’t publish the story herself after founding the Wrap in 2009. Waxman clarified that five years had passed, and many of her original sources had disappeared. Furthermore, she was preoccupied building and running her own media business – an endeavor that soaked up all of her free time, and then some.

If nothing else, Waxman’s disclosure is a valuable primer in influence peddling by powerful figures. More importantly. It’s also an important reminder that, when the collective decision was made by a cohort of powerful media interests to turn a blind eye to Weinstein’s misdeed, the Times was just as complicit as its peers.