Part One: It Takes A Village of Bastards to Make a Weinstein

about Harvey Weinstein. What. Yeah, I knew. Yes, my my guests for this show come in cold, but this is a case that it is impossible to come in entirely cold on because his whole saga has been one of the biggest stories in the last couple of years. Yeah. I couldn't help myself. I had to read all those Running Fair articles about him, some great articles. I'm a huge black cute fan, so like I was deep in there trying to get involved, a big fan of Israeli

aligned spy agencies. Yeah, what can I say, I'm a massad head. Um. We'll be digging into some of that, a lot of that. Actually, just as a heads up, this is going to be a two part of episodes, So if you're one of those people who hates the number two, you should be aware of that. Um. It just wounded up being a lot longer in terms of research than we had anticipated. It's one of those things where every time I would finish reading an article and set down to write, two new ones would pop up.

There's just so much on this case. I would go so far as to say I can't imagine one person's crimes being better reported than Weinstein's have. But it does mean that there's a lot to talk about. So yeah, we'll be dropping the second part of this on Thursday. UM. I just kind of wanted to get what is your

understanding of the culpability of the people around Harvey Weinstein. Obviously, Mr Weinstein has been accused at this point of dozens of sexual assaults, multiple rapes, UH, spanning a period of time from the nineties seventies until just a couple of years ago, UM, and probably going on before and after that, to be entirely honest, But what's your understanding of the

guilt of sort of the people around him? UM. I do believe um his company with his brother was aware of his behavior and use a lot of the resources to cover it up. I don't think his wife knew too much because I believe they lived somewhat separate lives because people I feel like in that sort of industry, we're so high up. You know, they spend a lot of time traveling, moving around, and you know they have busy lives and not a lot overlaps um. And I think he he had a lot of money and power

to cover up a lot of things. So I do think people knew, But I think it's also one of those things where you just don't touch it because you want to protect your own like interests, you know what I mean. That's exactly in fact what we're going to be talking about today. So for those of you who are a little bit less up to date on things, I'm just gonna give a brief overview the case. In October of last year, the New York Times and The New York Are both started publishing what would become a

long series of articles about sexual assaults by Mr Weinstein. Initially, more than a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment and assault. After the first New York Times article, more and more accusations came coming in, including accusations of rape. As of the recording of this podcast, at least eighty five women have come forward with accusations uh he was fired almost immediately from his job at the company that bore his name, and he's just turned himself into the NYPD.

Which one of the things I thought was interesting about him turning himself in is he was pictured with three books, um which he was there for like two hours. You don't bring three books to read to court where you're

waiting to be arraigned. So he's holding a number of books, one of which was a biography of the director Elliott kazan Um and I suspect he was trying to like signal a message by the books he was carrying, because kazan is or was a very popular and would regarded director in like the forties and fifties whose career was derailed by the Red Scare. He was a member of the Communist Party. He was like taken in by the House an American Activities Committee any named names, which like

further disgraced him. And so this biography is like someone looking trying to evaluate his legacy now and sort of demon because he made all these great movies and like it's a tragedy that he was railroaded by this moral movement that came around and wound up in the long sweep of history being seen as like horribly immoral, which

is clearly how Weinstein views himself. That's his hope is that he's going to get I think he's signaling by carrying this book into court that in thirty or forty years, people will look at me as a genius who was unfairly railroaded by a movement that yeah, yeah, that's the message. He's right. Why else would you carry that book? Would

argue not the same thing. Well, no, And also like one of the things about it that is, like Eliah Kazan, you can like say what you want about the morality of turning in people during the Red Scare, but he was like an actual creative person who made art. And it's kind of the same thing with Roman Polanski. Like Roman Polanski you can say, you know, the crimes he committed weren't worth the movies we got out of him,

but he made movies. Weinstein was never anything but like the money guy, Like he was good at picking scripts and good it being like, oh yeah, I figured, like this guy might be famous, but he didn't make any of the stuff that he's famous for, So like that's but I feel like this guy in fifty years. The most notable thing about him in the annals of history is that his the accusations against him, sparked this movement.

That's what he's going to be remembered for it. He's gonna be remembered for anything he did as a producer, not in the long span of time. Um. What a piece of ship. He's a real piece of shit. Um. And that's kind of why when we started working on this episode, I thought it was going to be more of a dive into Weinstein's life and uh, everything he'd done and sort of cut it apart piece by piece like that. But the more I've read about him, he's not an interesting guy. Like he's a bastard, But he's

not an interesting bastard. He's a dull, gross, boring, little puddle of a man. I feel like, you can't be that interesting if you're that interested in like raping women. Yeah, there's just not much to say about him other than the crimes he committed, and a lot has been said about that, um and so. And I also think this is a case where he's going to get as much justice as a rich, probable rapist can get in our society. Yeah, he'll be playing tennis in prison. He'll be playing tennis

in prison. But also like, it's not like Cosby where he's getting caught right as he's too old to really understand what's going on, and he's not losing any productive years. Harvey probably would have had another ten twenty years running a studio or you know, running his company if he hadn't gotten caught. So he's his career is being cut short, and that's a good thing. This is all along with me saying this episode of Behind the Bastards is not

going to focus on Harvey Weinstein. He's not the bastard that I think we're interested in right here, because when you read all the articles that have been published in the the interviews with everybody who was around him, it becomes clear that it took dozens, if not hundreds of people, um and maybe even more to make his behavior possible. Um So, my initial idea with this podcast was to sort of catalog all the different people who helped him

hurt so many other people, um and it it. Over the course of my research, I did find a lot of enablers, like buildings filled with people who made this possible. But I also found a sort of foggy layer of doubt floating over everybody involved. That makes me kind of uncomfortable and queasy. So it's one of I keep going back and forth about whether or not this episode is a good idea, but we're just going to dive into

it now. Um. That's interesting. It feels like when you're that powerful, like God, the concept of power is one of the most terrifying things you really think about it. It almost feels like just doing something very normal, like going to get coffee and and just hanging with your friends is just it's not good enough anymore. Like once you've lived that life, like the stakes have to be raised and now it's you know, now, you know, for fun, I invite women up to a hotel room and try

and get them to watch me shower naked. It's like, so you're thinking about the the impact that the power had on him, and I guess what I'm thinking about everyone? Yeah, is that That's what I'm I'm interested in here. There's a really famous Edmond Burke quote about the Nazis where he says that you know, all that's necessary for evil to thrive as for goodman to do nothing, And that's

a really famous quote. But I think that's almost comforting to imagine that terrible people succeed because good people don't do anything. The reality that you see in the Weinstein case is that he succeeded for so long because a lot of good people were willing to help him and no new to an extent what they were doing. So, uh, let's dig again. Harvey Weinstein was born on March nineteenth two. He and his brother Bob co founded Miramax. Bob has

also been accused of sexual harassment. Together, they produced a number of famous movies, including pulp fiction Goodwill, Hunting, The Lord of the Rings in the King's Speech. In total movies Harvey produced garnered more than three hundred Oscar nominations, which is a lot of Oscar nominations. His earliest recorded victim was Hope ex Dia More sometime in the seventies. She was an employee of a concert production company that he ran. At the time, they were doing a job

in Manhattan and staying in a hotel. Harvey allegedly told her there'd been a booking mix up and they'd have to share a room. Then he allegedly raped her. His most recent reported assault was in March fifteen, when he allegedly groped Ambro Battlana. That's the bird's eye view of Harvey Weinstein's career as both a production guy and a rapist. Yeah yeah, So in between those two assaults, possibly before and after, there were dozens and dozens of other women.

Some claim they were groped, some claim they were raped. The allegations of Lauren Seven are pretty standard. She's a journalist who claims Weinstein lured her into an empty restaurant he part owned and then hit on her. She says that when she turned him down, he put his body between her and the exit, told her to quote stand there and shut up end quote, and then masturbated into a potted plant. As you do, as you do because

one a woman turns you down. Yeah. So Arman and Miriy was the manager of that restaurant at the time when this happened, and when Seven came forward with her story last October, he came forward to because Will he hadn't seen that incident. He realized that he seems Harvey do something similar. Um, it was a quote from him.

What I remember about this incident is that my sux chef came into my office, furious telling me that quote some fat fox saying he's an owner he didn't know the name, had come into the kitchen with a woman and shoved a hundred dollar bill at him and told him to get out. So yeah, so even in kitchens with people around, Yeah, yeah, yeah, God, Marvy, people cook, people have to eat that food. Oh, it's about to get where if that if that's if that's what's kicking

you out about this story, it's about to get even worse. Um. So, according to Armand Armand hears this from the chef. The chef is like, yeah, this fat fuck just gave me a hundred bucks and shoved me out of the kitchen. So he goes back into the kitchen with the chef and he witnessed Weinstein quote fixing his belt. Um and then said quote. The chef picks up a pot that had been placed on the stove. It had been defiled.

It was so bizarre, we couldn't believe it happened. He like, is he just did a pot and a potted plant at the same restaurant. You. I hope they burn that pot because that is the most unsanitary. I feel like you burned the restaurant at this point, because if there are two stories of him ejaculating into random objects at this restaurant he owned, he came on every square, is that is that come? This place is covered, These tablecloths were black this morning. Everything. Yeah, I'm sorry. What's the

restaurant's name? Oh jeez, I I just forgever. I don't think it's walk by operational anymore. So that's kind of a good microcosm of the sort of things he got up to. But it also gives you an idea of how many people are involved when you start talking about complicity, because is that sous chef a little complicit that particular case.

It doesn't sounds like it, because Harvey was just shoving a money at him and saying, get the funk out of here, right, But he if he didn't know that the woman was dragged in there, because you don't really know in a situation exactly exactly, it's really unclear, and Armand said something like that, It's like I didn't say anything about it because I didn't know anything about the woman involved. I had no idea what was going on.

It was just some rich guy paying a masturbate in a pot that he technically owned, So yeah, it's a little messed up. Armand does claim that after Lauren sibbons plant story went viral, Weinstein called him and asked him to deny that he'd ever done anything like that. Of course, by that point, the Harvey Weinstein name was as muddy

as name's get. Armand refused to do as he asked. Um, But that was the time when it was easy to say that Harvey Weinstein because at that point he was on his way down exactly, which is nothing against Armand maybe he would have done the right thing if he'd known something was wrong in the moment. I don't know the guy, but what is important is that for more than thirty thirty years, almost everyone that Harvey Weinstein asked to keep his secret was happy to help him do it.

David J. Pecker is the CEO of American Media, Inc. They are you know, okay, what does that mean? You're with him? I'm familiar that he's also on Trump's team and has some friends in Saudi Arabia. He's got friends

in Saudi Arabbi. He's on Trump's team, and he is American Media, Inc. Is the company that's responsible for a number of magazines, including the National Inquirer, which it just so happens that the studio we're in has a lot of issues of The Inquirer, and the one I'm looking at right now, the big title of the story is Exhumed John Bennet's Body. Now, so that's they're classy people to the Inquirer. Yeah. So David J. Pecker is the CEO of American Media, Inc. Uh. They own the National Choir,

Weekly World News, etcetera. Harvey Weinstein and Pecker have been good friends for years. Their friendship was so deep that Harvey became known as an f o P or friend of Pecker, which they're not not great at acronyms. Uh. Itsually have been friend of Penis, fread of Pain. I mean that's basically what friend of Pecker means, friend of David, Like, like, why why white Pecker? Um? Yeah, that's a status he

apparently shared with President Trump. Uh. And when you are a friend of Pecker, you get special treatment from not just The Inquirer and the Weekly World News, but the whole tabloid industry. Um. So I'll be listing all the sources for this this podcast on our website, this info right now, comes from a New York Times article entitled

Weinstein's complicity machine. Um quote. American media was known to sometimes help out allies and trouble with a strategy known in tabloid newsrooms as catch and kill, acquiring exclusive rights to damaging stories and then not publishing them. So basically like this is the first in the clearest case of another person involved who's definitely a bastard, because fucking pecker. That's not helping Harvey for money. It's not helping him

because you're afraid he'll funk up your career. It's helping him because he's your buddy and you want him to keep his sexual assaults under wrap. Rodan Pharaoh and The New Yorker laid out a very active relationship between the Inquirer and Weinstein. He talked to a woman named Elizabeth Avalon, who is the former wife of Robert Rodriguez. Rodriguez left her for Rose McGowan. UM, So obviously there's understandable kind

of bad blood between the two ladies. Uh. Rose claims that Harvey Weinstein raped her in his hotel room during the Sundance Festival. UM and inquires reporter figured Evalon might have some dirt on Rose McGowan, and of course it was his job as an inquiry reporter to dig up dirt on anyone accusing anything of Harvey Weinstein to try to discredit them. So he started calling Avalon. He called

her over and over and over again. Uh. And then he started reaching out to people she knew, like friends and family, um, just kind of harassing them until she agreed for an interview. So Avalanne sits down for an interview with this reporter and he repeatedly pushes her to

say bad things about Rose McGowan. Um. She wanted to make sure that the call was off the record and only for deep background, and the reporters said that it was, but he recorded the whole thing and afterwards he handed according to a mayor Can Media's chief content officer, Dylan Howard, who emailed it to Harvey Weinstein and said, quote, I have something all caps amazing. Eventually she laid into Rose pretty hard, which again that's a that's American Media's chief

content officer talking. Weinstein replied to him, quote, this is the killer, especially if my fingerprints are just the letter are not on this end? Quote. Howard assured him that the fingerprints weren't on it and said, this conversation is all caps recorded. Okay, I'm sorry he wrote just a letter R. Yeah, my fingerprints are not on this. That's more yet the whole word fingerprints and but you don't have time for the R. That's stupid. I know. There's

a lot of reasons to hate the man. Um Howard's definitely culpable here um Like, that's that's gross behavior and for what it's worth, Like Avalon during the call said some not pleasant things about Rose McGowan because understandably, like they had, they had a history. She has expressed a lot of regret about it and is obviously as solidarity for her for the whole being horribly abused by Harvey

Weinstein thing. So yeah, that's that's like, that's sucked up for a lot of reasons, because you're not just trying to bury the accusations of a woman who was harmed. You're like playing on somebody's heartbreak and pain in order to like it's just it's almost impossible to like look at something like a sexual assault and be like how can I make this worse? But use a bunch of women and dry them out, and then I hope it

helps protect a man who yeah trash. Yeah, it's almost like a work of art in terms of being shitty people like it took a lot of garbage all coming together to make this landfill. So yeah, Pecker and Howard are both pieces of crap, as well as the reporter who did that hatchet job. I feel like that's that's also a bad guy. They're gonna be a lot of terrible reporters in this story. But so we're already up

to at least three or four other complicit people. Plus was this reporter someone who worked for like Inquiry, Yeah, it was an Inquirer reporter? Would she ever talk to an inquire reporter? Because he kept calling her family and friends. So she finally was like, fine, talk if you won't talk to anyone else, I will talk to you like that.

That's that's like where it got um. So yeah, there there are just when we're talking about just the press, there are dozens of people implicated in keeping Harvey's secrets. And we're going to get into another one of those stories in a minute, but right now, we gotta sell some stuff. You like stuff right hugely. You got wallets and money, anyway, go grab some money, Grab as much money as you can and then tune into these ads.

We're back and we are talking about Harvey Weinstein, or rather the people who enabled him to do the things that he did. All of the other bastards and the Harvey Weinstein story. We just talked about two guys, Pecker and Howard, who both ran the company that owned the National Inquirer, and the Inquirer essentially helped dick up dirt on Weinstein's accusers. Now we're gonna talk about another story

in that vein. UM. In two thousand fourteen, Emily Nestor was working as a temporary employee for the Weinstein Company. She'd been there a day when Weinstein promised to help her career if she fucked him. Um. Well, yeah, the old classic I'll help your career if you fuck me. I mean he waited a good three or four hours, which is a lot of restraint for Rvy Weinstein. Uh. She turned him down. Um, and then he made her

keep turning him down for more than an hour. Um. Emily complained to her coworkers and they did the right thing. They reported it to management in a formal complaint thing. And this is the company he owned. Just means nothing. Really, well,

there's other people. It's a big company, like there are other people and as well, we'll get into there was some resistance from within the corporates structure to Harvey, like the company bore his name, but he was not in absolutely was too big a company to be an absolute control of UM, although obviously he had a lot of power. Anyway, other people reported a formal complaint. Thing is made, and

eventually the matter does get to Harvey. Uh. He invited Nestor to breakfast right after that, and I'm going to quote from another Running Pharaoh New Yorker article here. Throughout the breakfast, she said, Weinstein interrupted their conversation to yell into his cell phone and raged over a spat that Amy Adams, a star in the Weinstein movie Big Eyes, was having in the press. Afterward, Weinstein told Nestor to keep an eye in the news cycle, which he promised

would be spun in his favor. Later in the day, there were indeed negative news items about his opponents, and Weinstein stopped by Nestor's desk to be sure she'd seen them. By that point, Nestor recalled, I was very afraid of him, and I knew how well connected he was and how if I pissed him off then I could never have

a career in that industry. That's heartbreaking. Well, yeah, it's it's heartbreaking, And I wonder how knowledgeable the people who are so like I feel like a guy like Howard, who owns American or who who's the CEO of American Media, has to know with this because because obviously if he's helping his buddy out with this, he's used his organs of press for the same sort of purposes. He knows what this looks like on a human level, and he

probably gets off on the power of that too. I don't know about a guy like Howard who directs the reporter to like find the dirt. I don't know about the reporter like if they really like maybe you don't let yourself think about it, like what you're up. I'm sure there's some level of disassociation from what you're really doing in order to get your job done. But even so, like,

I couldn't imagine working a job like that. It just seems like so like you would be dead on the inside, so crushing to know that what you're doing, you're interviewing someone not even for an article. You're viewing someone so that some like greasy fuck in a suit can exercise his power over what twenty year old woman who has a one billionth of the wealth that he has, So this guy can feel powerful in front of her, Like that's that's what you're putting in eight hour days for?

Is so some dirt bag you've never met can feel powerful? Like how do you do that? And like is that when it comes to like what would be justice is the fact that you had to be that guy and probably have to drink being that guy away every night of your life. Is that punishment? I don't know, I wonder or I don't know. Maybe they just hire like a group of like sociopaths who don't feel empathy to

work for them. Like in the interview, they just ask you a series of questions to kind of nail down the type of person you are and if you're willing to do the work that needs to be done to get the information that needs to be gone. Well, and as I look at this National Enquirer article in front of me, one of the other article titles is I'm not your real father. Harry Prince Charles drops a wedding bombs. Actually, if you look deep into that, there are some points

they make that are quite convincing. So I mean it is one of those things though, like obviously anyone these these people were calling them reporters, but you should put quotation marks around the word reporter because they work for

the Inquirer. But like, I don't know, maybe maybe part of the mistake is with me and feeling like the fucking ship in these rags was ever kind of lighthearted, like you think about like, oh, bat boy, you know they're talking about cookie fun like it's that was my mom's explanation to me as a kid when I would see these in the sane things and I'd be like, Mom, is Saddam Hussein really going to murder our president? And you think, no, it's the National inquir everything, and it

is a lie. Why does it exist because people think it's fun to read? Yeah, now, I guess. Yeah. When I was young, they used to have a lot of like Catwoman on Yeah, that would be wacky stuff. Yeah, yeah, fucking moon Nazis um So Nestor you know, took a settlement and left the company and didn't didn't pursue the matter any further because she was like, if I make a deal about this, then Harvey Weinstein is going to drag my name through the mud and the press. Right

did they make her taken or sign an Ndia? Yeah, I'm sure they did. This story is full of India's. Like almost everybody that you're going to run into he had a settlement or even who's speaking out now had an India at one point, Like I, I guess it's one of those things that at this point the Indias aren't worth that much. But they clearly held the damn

together for a while. Yeah. Um So, Weinstein had with The New York Times described as a network of friendly journalists, gossip columnists, magazine writers, editors and authors that he knew would help him by publishing articles that attacked his enemies. These aren't are all all through the National Enquirer. They're not all through Howard Like he he's he's a high

placed guy in the film industry. So he's dealing with press all the time because that's an important part of his legitimate job, is like building up interest and whatnot in the projects he's working on. Um So, he just knew a lot of people that he could call and plant stories to like if he if he wants to make someone look bad, whether because they're accusing him or

because he just wants to punish them. Well, he's got probably hundreds of guys on the line, and you have to wonder how many of them even knew what they were a part of. Like Harvey Weinstein calls you and he's got a legitimate scoop about another famous person. Do you think, why is he leaking this to me? Or do you just run with a story? Hobby's on the line. Yeah, Harvey's on the line. He's got another scoop about Rose McGowan. People want to read about Rose McGowan doing something like

maybe yeah, crazy somewhere, but not whatever he's made up. Yeah, So do you even like? That's where the complicity gets hard for me? Like, it's easy in a case like the the email exchange between the Inquirer guys that we talked about, where it's someone being like, go after this person, get dirt on Rose McGowan, bring it back so that we have something to hold over her head. That seems clear.

But a lot of these there's probably people who are right now journalists and gossip writers who are just figuring like, oh my god, how many of the stories that I wrote based on scoops that here is people gave me were part of this? And that's why I don't understand. It's like, I mean, maybe I didn't know about it, because I don't in my life, I have not ever come across Harvey Weinstein outside of just knowing he's a

movie producer. But I don't understand how if anyone even heard rumors about him being like a creep and a rapist and just like overall power mongering psycho. I don't know. It's hard for me to understand like not stepping away and be like, oh, I've heard a lot of bad things about this person, like maybe I shouldn't be involved.

And I guess that's what you're talking about. It's like because I feel like if you're so far removed from him, like you're working at a paper and Harvey calls and these whatever, Yeah, yeah, like there's doesn't feel like he could affect you that much. I mean, maybe he can, but I feel like you should be able to just step away and be like, you know what, this is not a story I'm gonna work on, but maybe you don't like He's not coming to you saying like, hey,

I need to make this lady look bad. Here's here's some dirt on her. He's saying like, hey, you want a story, and as yeah, you're always like that's your job. You're always short on stuff to write about. You're always looking for the next thing to cover. This well connected

guy comes to you with a story. But even if you've heard the rumors, I mean, but what are the rumors you're hearing, they're they're probably not Harvey Weinstein's a rapist, Especially if you're a male reporter, That's probably not what you're hearing. You're hearing Harvey Weinstein's a womanizer. Harvey Weinstein's an asshole with a temper. Maybe I'm just maybe I just hate men. So I'm just out here. I'm not

trying to help anybody. Well, this story, this, this is not a story that will increase your faith in men or your faith in journalists. Um. So Weinstein owned a publishing house. Uh. And one of the things you run across in just sort of the stories of how he would manipulate people is he offered and in some cases gave shiploads of people book deals like that was a common way if you were a reporter that he really wanted to get to do some work for him, and

the work that was definitely going to be questionable. This is how he would get over your professional scruples or over your reticence to work with him. So, like, it's one thing for Harvey to give you a call, uh and be like, hey, I got this story about so and so you maybe you write it. And it's another thing for him to be like, I want you to help me gather dirt on this person, which is what happened to a New York Daily News columnist named A. J.

Bens Up. So Weinstein invited Ben's out to dinner in West Hollywood and told him, in short, that he needed help in keeping his mistress secret when he divorced his wife. Benza was on board for this and recalled to The New York Times that Harvey had said, quote, I could supply your pr or that he said to Harvey. So this is Harvey's like, Hey, I've got I'm divorcing my wife, but it's not set up yet. I've got a mistress. I need to keep this ship on the down low.

And A J. Benza says to him I could supply your pr girls with a lot of gossip, a lot of stories, and if people come at them with the Harvey's having an affair story, they can barter. Mr Benza says, Weinstein replied a J it's got to be good stories, and a J said, don't you worry about it? So that's like, that's how these conversations are apparently, so they're basically like, hey, instead of publishing this, why don't you look at this here? Wow? So it's a lot of like,

is red herring the correct Yeah? Yeah, I think that's the correct term. So it's a lot of yeah. And so he's finding people who are well connected because like a guy like Benza, he knows what people in the daily news, and he probably his friends at other rags of similar so he knows, oh, this guy's working in a story that might implicate Weinstein in an affair or

some other bad behavior. What if I promised to give him two or three stories about somebody else, Like that's the That's what Ben's is offering to do for Weinstein, and that's how a lot of this gets done. Now. Benza claims he didn't know about any of the rape

backs accusations or the sexual assaults, and that that's possible. Um, most of the people in this story who enabled Weinstein in one way or the other are folks like Ben's that they're people whose defense to moral culpability is that they just thought Harvey Weinstein was a gross person, not

a rapist. So and Ben's again, there was like a book deal on the line, like that was that was what Harvey was giving him, is he was like, I'm gonna get you like a fucking book out of this, which I can say when I think about like what I would do in his situation, it's easy to say, like, no, of course I wouldn't take that deal. But back before I'd had a book deal, like part of me wonders, if I just thought this guy was trying to keep his affair and they're under wraps, maybe you do it.

Maybe you do it and you cringe and you tell yourself that getting the book out will make it okay because you've got something to say or what it would always be this achiness in the back of your mind thinking you didn't fully get it from your own worth. No,

And that's that's what I wonder with. And we'll talk about ben Affleck and a little bit but about the people who legitimately have to credit a lot of their fame and success to Harvey Weinstein and they really is like how they because a lot of them knew something was up and didn't do it. And again, like is there that feeling of like is that why Ben Affleck has a terrible back tattoo and drinks too much because he knows that he's he's a ben Affleck knows a

lot of things that are slowly killing him. Man. That actually does make him a great candidate to play Batman Dark Pass. Yeah, he might be the most appropriate casting of Batman that we could have gotten poor Benny. Yeah, well no, not not in any way, shape or form. Um. Okay, now that we've talked about A. J. Benza, So yeah, I don't know like what you're viewing on Benza's moral culpability here, Like is that how gross is that? If if he really just thought he was helping a man

hide an affair. I mean that's something I would not be interested in. So it's hard for me to separate my own like dislike of that kind of situation from him. So that that's my problem, is like taking this book deal. You know why you got that book deal. It's not because you're the like someone wanted you because you're so great at yeah you have this story or whatever. It's because you helped a man cover up an affair. Like that doesn't feel right to me, doesn't sit right. Okay,

what do you have any student loans? No? Okay? Did you ever at some point was that like a thing that was that like a cross you had to bear? No? I parents do well for themselves. Okay, sorry, I didn't mean to get super I had a bunch of student loans that were cleared off when I got a book deal. Um, And so it was one of those things there was like a there was obviously like a creative like that's something I always wanted to have a book in the library. That was a huge thing for me from like a kid.

But it was also like I can get under the weight of this crushing debt in one fell swoop if I get someone to buy my book. I don't know that Benza had something like that going on, but I can see how that would be almost impossible to When you put it that way, it's like, my that's what I'm saying. It's like it's hard for me to put myself in that person's position. So immediately I have this disdain, like why would you do that? But of course I

don't know where that person's background is. I don't know if he had a mother in the hospital. I don't

know anything about who he had. Maybe he had to pay medical bills for someone or for himself, like I I can say, I can say in a J benses defense, and I don't know if he actually knew about the Maybe he knew more than he says he did, but if he didn't know about the assaults in the rapes, I can imagine myself being in a situation where I would help a creepy guy cover up an affair for enough money to pay for my romantic partner to get healthcare or whatever kind of ship, like deal with some

crippling Like I want to condemn him and like, to an extent, you got it. Because Harvey Weinstein raped, does his people? Probably um problem. It's like in the long run, though, things that came out would weigh heavy on him, if it must. He feels empathy, Yeah, he is. He does work for the New York Daily News, so maybe he's had the empathy burned out of him by this point. Um,

but I don't know. Yeah, I like I said, I got into this one, and you just condemn a whole list of people, and it's it's hard with almost every one of these, which brings me organically to Harvey Weinstein's co workers at the Weinstein Company, or I should say employees. Um. So in two thousand four, Lucia Stoler now Lucia Evans. Uh, no relation to does she change her name or she just get married. She got married. I'm gonna call all her Lucia Evans just because that's what she goes by

now less confusing. She met Harvey Weinstein at a club when she was a sophomore in college. Uh. He called her in the middle of the night and suggested that she meet him in his office to talk about her career. She did the very savvy smart thing and said she only did readings during the day and for a casting director. Right, So she's she's making all her round moves at this point. So Harvey has his assistant call her and set up a daytime meeting, first with Weinstein and then with a

female casting director who worked for him. So this assistant colleges. Okay, you're gonna have a meeting. You're gonna come and you're gonna talk to Harvey, and then you're going to talk to some so and so this lady who was a casting director, which seems legitimate. Um, and that's what she was like, Oh a woman, Great, I feel safe. Like

you're not just meeting with Harvey. This isn't. He wants you privately in his room, like he's going to talk to you, probably to let you know how the process works. And then he's gonna put you with a casting director who's a lady. This all feels legit. I feel so nervous. So she arrives at the meeting and it's just Harvey Weinstein alone in a room full of exercise equipment and

take out food boxes, which I'm assuming didn't smell great. Um, just looking at Harvey Weinstein the world you just eat and then maybe work out, but maybe it's just there to look out, so you think at some point you'll work out. I feel like most of that equipment never got used. Yeah, but that's the kind of thing you can do when you're that rich. In addition to having people cover up your solitary bring the exercise bike into the meeting room. I'm gonna I'm gonna get in shape.

Fucking Harvey Weinstein go on a jog, asshole. So she gets into this creepy room, and Weinstein immediately starts alternating between praising and insulting her. He'll make comments like, you know, you'd be great for this role if you'd lose some weight, that sort of thing. So he's like he's doing the dropping, the negging, or whatever you call it. He told her that he had two projects in mind for her, and then he forced her to give him oral sex, overpowering

her physically. When she told him to stop, Harvey acted like the encounter was no big deal. Evans wondered how was other employees could not know what was going on. After that meeting, she did meet with a female casting director who center scripts and watched her do a read several weeks later. Evans doesn't think the casting director was

in on it, but it's hard to say. Um so, yeah, like that's one of those things like she might not have She might have been helping him do this without even knowing it, because she wasn't in that initial meeting. She was just being used. Essentially, as cover and he had her do the work, got the casting director. That's too hard to believe that they have no sense of what's going on, you know, because when people exit and look frazzled, like yeah, and there must have been people

who saw her. And that's why I assume she says she can't imagine they didn't know what was going on, because she probably walked out of that room horrified and traumatized and like people wouldn't meet her eye. But it's one of those the sheer weight of encounters like this, and it sounds like there might have been hundreds over the time that he was you know, over the twenty or thirty years. And I'll say this from everything I can read, there's a couple of things you find out.

Number one, a good number of them would have been consensual. You know. Obviously there's the fund up power dynam Meca. He's got a bunch of money and he holds the key for to your career. But he didn't have to physically force them. They were they There were a lot of them where people who are like, Okay, the deal is, I fuck you and then I get a part in the movie. And there are people who were down for that.

Um So that happened. I think a lot of this would be telling yourself that that's what's happened in order to feel better about it. But you work for Harvey, you don't say, oh, he's assaulting another woman. You say, that's Harvey Weinstein. He's sleeping with somebody else and she's going to get a role doing something. Um So, maybe that's part of what was going on in their head. But I do feel like some of these women clearly

came out looking trauma, died a little. Yeah, it's it's rough, and it's another one of the like it obviously is messed up, like asking random people to meet you in hotel rooms and apartments, But people who were just legitimate business partners of Harvey's who condemn him and stuff right now now also say like, that's what he did with everybody, Like if you were working with Harvey, you would meet with him. It ran the hours of the night in his hotel or his apartment. That was just like the

style of predator he was. But I'm going to guess that evolved naturally out of the kind of person he was, rather than he's not just inviting these people because obviously he's willing to assault them at the office. But that's also camouflages it because then nobody thinks it's weird that Harvey has these young actresses meeting him at whatever hotel, because everybody meets him at the hotel. Um, there's not

too much suspicion. There's not too much suspicion. Although again, like it happened so often that at some point they had to know they were lying to themselves a little bit. And uh, speaking of lying to yourselves a little bit, it's time to break for ads. Uh. And So rather than ranting about the evils of money, which is really easy to do on a podcast about Harvey Weinstein, a man who bought his way into raping dozens of people, I would like to sell you, guys and cool products,

so smooth, Okay. So we just talked about how Lucia Evans met him in two thousand four. Uh, and he tricked her into meeting her alone in a conference room and then forced her to give him oral sex. Uh. And we're kind of wondering about complicity because there was part of why she felt safe and going there as a female casting director was promised to be there. So it's hard to say if that casting director knew what was going on. Evans doesn't think she did. Um, but

it's definite that some of his assistance. Weinstein's assistants were complicit and knew more or less what was going on. I'm gonna quote here from the New York Times article Harvey Weinstein's complicity machine. Quote some low level assistance were pulled in. They compiled bibles that included hints on facilitating encounters with women, and were required to procure his penile injections for rectile dysfunction. End quote. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did

these assistants know Harvey was a rapist? It's hard to say. Uh. Most of the Weinstein company people who have talked will insist that they just thought Harvey was an abusive creep and not a sex predator. A group of like thirty of them sent a statement into The New Yorker, which I'm going to read now. We all knew that we were working for a man with an infamous temper. We did not know that we were working for a serial

sexual predator. We knew that our boss could be manipulative, We did not know that he used his power to systematically assault in silence. Women. We had an idea that he was a womanizer who had extra marital affairs. We did not know he was a violent aggressor or an alleged rapist. So that's kind of their defense to moral culpability. It's again, it's the same as benz As. I knew

he was a piece of ship. I didn't think he was raping women, right, because I guess once that door closes, your position in the company doesn't really allow you to know too much more. But still, it's just God, I would lose my mind if I was one of those assistants today. Well, and some of them definitely knew what was going on behind that closed door. There is a story in a New Yorker article by Dana Goodyear that makes me heavily doubt that they weren't sure what was

going on. Um. It's from a woman who went to work at the Weinstein Company and applied for a position that would have put her very close to Harvey. I think she was going to be one of his assistants if she did this job. Um. And she recalled to The New Yorker that a female executive took her aside and said that she was too pretty to work for

Weinstein because she would embarrass him. Um, she continued to push for the job, and so a former Weinstein assistant took her to lunch and said, quote, do not take this job. You will see things you will never be able to unsee, and you will do things you will never forgive yourself for. Wait, so what's she kind of being like, you're too pretty for him, You'll embarrass him.

To just be like that was like an excuse to be like just don't Yeah, that was the executive trying to try to nicely keep her away from this job. And then when that didn't work, they were like, Okay, get the lady who had the job and have her be like don't pretty, he will come for you. Yeah.

That is terrifying. So it's clear from that that the people who worked with Harvey both knew he was a predator and and we're aware enough of how dangerous he was that they would protect people when they could, or if they if they liked you and knew you, they would try to keep you away from him. And that I mean, it's nice that this lady was saved from a bad situation, but it's kind of damning for a lot of these people on a moral level, because then

they weren't unsure of what was happening mine. You don't warn someone away from a job like that unless you know, oh, you're gonna get fucking assaulted if you get close to That is the word that they really that's the unfortunate thing. I wish they'd use that language instead of trying to like, yeah, protect this situation. Just be like, honey, to take this job, he will try and have sex with you. And that is that not he will try. He will find a way to have sex with you if any means holding

you down. That's what he does. We all know it, and we still work here. Please don't judge it. Which is that's a harder conversation to say, Yeah, there's a lot of people in this story who I have to assume have spent the last twenty years drinking themselves to sleep.

In his first big article on Weinstein running, Pharaoh noted that sixteen former and current executives and assistants who had worked with or for Weinstein had told him about quote unwanted sexual advances and touching unquote that they'd witnessed at work. So again, that's not closed door stuff. That's people telling a journalist like I saw him touch a lady and she wasn't having it. She did not want it. It was clearly not okay. That number included employees who were

quote enlisted in a subterfuge to make the victims feel safe. Uh. These are referred to and a lot of the reporting as honey pots, which is like a spy term for like, I feel like that this is running Pharaoh is great, U incredible journalism deserves the Pulitzer and all that. I feel like honeypot is the wrong term for this, because that's the term you use for like a sexy lady spy and she like seduces the guy to get him exactly. And these the women that Harvey uses to lure other

women into feeling safe of getting close to heart honeypots. Um, I don't know what terms just like emotional manipulation using women. It's camouflage, it's rapist camouflage, Like, look, you can trust another one. There's another lady in here. Nothing's bad has ever happened in a room with two ladies in a creepy man. Uh. Several female employees, assistants, and executives would sometimes join meetings with Weinstein and a woman he was

interested in. Uh, and then at some point midway through the meeting, Weinstein would dismiss them and they would all leave him alone with his victim. One female executive explained quote, there was a large volume of these types of meetings that Harvey would have with aspiring actresses and models. He would have them late at night, usually at hotel bars or in hotel rooms, and in order to make these women feel more comfortable, he would ask a female executive

or assistant to start these meetings with him. So, um, that's so at one point they would just excuse themselves, yeah, exactly, or Harvey would make it clear that it was time for them to excuse themselves, and then they'd all leave. Um. Which that's culpability right there. Your party to a crime. Um. Not that I think any of these people ever gonna get charged, but if they were, they deserve it. I guess, Like, I don't even feel good, like I wanna even They

could have just walked behind him and like, oh god, yeah, okay. Um. So, the woman who related that last quote insisted that she never participated in any of these honeypot meetings, although she said she was asked to do so, but at least one former employee did come forward to Ron and Pharaoh

to admit to being used as a honeypot um. She reported that in one of these meetings, like she would, she was sitting down at a meeting with Weinstein and some lady Weinstein wanted to get with uh, and midway through the meeting, Weinstein turned to her while he'd been flirting with this lady and said, tell her how good of a boyfriend. I am so like, that's that's again. It's it doesn't sound like these were just we're being camouflage. It's we're being camouflage and we're trying to help our

boss hit on strangers like wingman him. They had, they're like wingmanning him into sex crimes. And so again, I really want to get judgmental about these people, and maybe I should be really like I came into this podcast wanting to do that, but they all when you when you read anyone who worked with him now their comments on it, they all seemed like they were so scared, which makes it harder for me to have that kind of righteous anger you want in a story about a

bunch of people enabling a mass rapist. That former employe, the one who was a honey pot, said that he's been systematically doing this for a very long time. Uh. And she said that she often thinks about one time when Harvey whispered to himself as far as she could tell, after he like shouted at a bunch of people and you know, just had one of his like temper tantrums. There are things I've done that nobody knows. Like he

started like shouting and screaming and the like. At the end of it was just like repeating that to himself if I heard that, that's a rap, that is a rap, that's a crazy person. He's saying that after you know some of the things he's done, like you're if you don't know every word, you know that team self awareness that he knows god damn well that he is ruining people. Yeah, and he does not give a fuck, and then that that that's saying that to almost be like, don't funk

with me. I've done things. That's yeah, you well, and he there's stories he's threatened to kill people. Um I and I. In fact, I think it was Selma Hayak who said that he made like some sort of comment like I could have you killed during an argument because she stood up to him. Yeah, she wouldn't have sex

with him to make the Freedom Callo movie. Um, And he made like a bunch of ridiculous demands and he was like, well, okay, well, if we're still going to make this, you have to find ten million dollars in funding on your own and this, and she like met all of these demands and so then he made her do a topless sex scene with another woman in the movie, which she said she did because she didn't want to

see everybody else's work put away. Um, because you know, but anyway like that, and he would regularly when you read uh, any of these articles about him, there's people will talk about the threats he would make. And it was most more common for him to make threats like I can destroy your reputation, I can get like I know people, I can get you in the news like this will be We've already covered a lot of that.

So these women who are acting as honeypots, who knew that they were luring other women into a dangerous man's embrace, were also like terrified of him. And I don't know how much that reduces their guilt. It doesn't make it fun to judge them. You just have no choice or

your life will be over. And that's what sucks. It's like you can't you can't judge him because because of his power, But part of you also kind of wishes they did a little bit more to make it clear, like they certainly had a chance to be heroes and they didn't take it. I don't know how much of a villain that makes them, but people got hurt because of their actions. One of the women. It's probably worth noting that The New York Times interviewed who want Seeing

had assaulted Ashley math Ow. She was a dancer in one of his films, and she said that his aston kind of pushed her into a car and told her that she was going to have a meeting with Weinstein for business purposes in a hotel room, and when she got to the room, Weinstein pushed her on a bed and masturbated on her um. She has a much colder picture of how all of the people around him acted.

Let's think I feel like they're so disassociated. Yeah. She says that she was crying and the his female assistant wouldn't even acknowledge her um and that it all seemed like a well oiled machine. So when you dark, yeah, and again when you when you listen to these women are in a lot of them women, But like any of the people who worked with him, they all point

out how scared they all were. But then you talk about the experiences the women that heart be assaulted, who were on the other end of this machine that he constructed, and it seemed to him and just a bunch of people following orders coldly, not willing to look you in the eye, which again makes me think, yeah, and I'm too sympathetic for these people willing to do this. Um, that's so evil to not even acknowledge a woman crying that you clearly put in that situation is God, Yeah,

I deserve nothing. That's so terrible. And again you might come back around here with I'm about to talk to you. Because some of Weinstein's assistants did resist. Michelle Franklin confronted Weinstein about his behavior, He told her that her opinion didn't count, and he fired her. It seems like most of the employees who went along with Harvey's behavior did so out of a mix of a need and a desire for money. And I feared that he could destroy their career forever. A good case study in this is

an assistant named send Deep with a Hall. Part of her job was to keep him supplied with the injectable erection drugs cabbaget and i'll prostadil so you can just shoot up real quick. You got to shoot him. Most of these I think you have to shoot into yours.

I know that some of them. I've talked to a lot of porn industry people who will use Trimex, which is a jail that you shoot right into your dick, because it's like it's it's like guaranteed, like if you have to perform for a camera, like it'll make it happen. And if I'm remembering correctly, one of his initial defenses to why he couldn't have raped some of these women as that like, well, I'm not in good health. It's I can't even get irrect. I was like, you people

paying you to shoot your different Yeah. So anyway, getting Harvey his dick drugs was part of Ms. Ro Hall's unofficial duties, and when she talked to The New York Times, Mr Hall recalled that Harvey had an in depth knowledge of her personal life. He'd regularly bring up her student loans. He mentioned that he knew her younger sister where she went to school and that he could have her kicked out of that school. Uh, and he offered her an extra five dollars every time she's applied him with his

erection drugs. So he really he had info on everybody. Yeah, and it's it's entirely possible. Mr ra Hall was I don't I don't know how the time frames link up, but she would have been one of these women, probably not looking in the eyes of another woman who Harvey had just assaulted. Does the fact that she thought, like her sister might get kicked out of school or Harvey could funk up her financial life like see, And then I come back around to like there are obviously more victims.

I guess the question is like how much? How bad are they too? That's the thing is they're victims of the industry of like a system that is uncontrollable. Yeah, and that's part of Weinstein's evil was building a machine to help him do this. Rather than like Cosby, there were some people who sort of helped keep it under wraps, but it wasn't anything like this, like for the most part it was one guy and some fucking rufi's assaulting a ton of women. Weinstein built an engine, but also

the pieces of that engine are culpable. Yeah, it feels like almost every part of that engine could have fallen apart at any point though, because people were probably losing their mind. Yeah, And Mr Hall says that, like part of her job was to clean semen stains off his couch, and he would grope her constantly. Like while she would do pretty much anything, she's i think suing him now, so she's clearly a victim, but like she's also helping this, Like,

what do you that's so crazy to me. Yeah, it's fucked. It's totally fucked. Anyone ever touched me in the workplace. And make it very clear right now, all my coworkers are listening, I will burn this place to the ground. That's crazy to me. Cleaning cement that is, oh my god. Yeah, and think about like I'm trying not to delve too much into Harvey's mind in this, because funk that guy. But like the kind of entitlement it is to get cum stains on a couch and then make your employee

clean them. Yeah, Jesus christ Man it's super gross. So now that we've entered the realm of really unclear bastards, let's swing back to somebody who is clearly a bad person in this or a bad group of people. I should say, the Manhattan District Attorney's office. Oh yeah, yeah, the whole d a's office. Well, everyone who's involved in

this part. So in the Bill Cosby podcast, we talked about how Bill status is America's dad and most beloved entertainer, probably contributed to the police I think also in New York choosing to ignore early reports of predatory behavior about him just because they were like, no, we're not gonna go after Bill Casby. Harvey Weinstey is kind of the opposite case. Um, He's always had a reputation and as being a rich sleeves bag liberals to the police were

happy to go after him. Um. In March two fifteen, Harvey invited Amber Battellana to his office in Tribeca. Ambra is a model and Miss Italy finalist who was at that point twenty one and looking to start an acting career. She met with Weinstein and surprise surprise, claims he lunged towards her, grabbed her breasts, demanded to know if they were real, and tried to put his hand up her skirt. Then he gave her tickets to a Broadway show and told her he'd meet her that evening. Uh, which, there

you go. Um. She was angry like you'd like you'd be, and she went immediately to the n y p D. And the NYPD was great about it. They said, yeah, that sounds like a fucking crime. Let's do some police ships. So the Special Victim Squad took the case and they asked Amber if she'd be willing to do what's called a controlled call. That's where the victim calls the suspect or whatever and um talks to them on her accorded line and the hopes that they'll confess to whatever it

is that they did. They never got a chance to do a controlled call because while she was talking to the cops, Weinstein called Ambra. He apologized for his behavior and then asked her to meet with him again in his hotel room. Um. So the s VU guys convinced her to meet with him again, and she was kind of freaking out about this. She didn't really want to meet with him, but they were able to convince her to do it, and they gave her I think two

cell phones to record the conversations with Um. They met at the bar in the Tribeca Grand Hotel and Weinstein told her about all the women whose careers he'd helped an offered to pay for a dialect coach. Then he asked her to go up to his room while he showered. She said no one number of times and want up like going to the bathroom and talking with the cops, and they convinced her to go up with him. Um still recording, but then she stopped outside of the door

to his room and refused to go any further. And that's where this conversation happened. And you can find the tape on the New Yorker. But this is an NYPD tape, so UM, we're just gonna play that in full. It will give you a chance to hear what Harvey Wanton actually sounded like when he was trying to get a woman into a room with him. I'm telling you right now, what do we have to do being I an't gonna take a shower. You sit there and have a drink water, don't drink, and I stay on the bar. No, you

must come here now. Please, I don't want I'm not doing anything you like embarrassing. I'm sorry. I think yesterday I was kind of aggressive for I need to know a person. I want to do a thing. I don't I would think. Please, I swear I won't just sit with me. Don't embarrass me in the hotel. Here all the time to promise to please sit there. Please one minute go to the bathroomlease. I don't want to do something. I don't want to go to the pack. Come here,

listen to me. I want to go downstairs. I'm not going to do anything. You'll never see me again. Acts if you if you embarrassed me in this hotel, I'm not embarrassing you. It's just that I don't I don't feel comfortable. I mean, you don't have a thing with me. Please, I'm not going to do anything. I swear my children, please come in on everything. I'm a famous guy. You're being very uncomfortable. He's coming now and one minute and if you want to leave when the guy comes with

my used today you touch my grace. Please, I'm sorry. Just come on. I'm used to that. Are you're used to that? No? But I'm not used to that if you please, no, I don't want to do you'll call me again. I'm sorry, I know, but yes, there was too much. I mean, I will never do another thing to you five minutes. Don't ruin your friendship with me for five minutes. I know, but it's kind of like it's too much for me. I kind of please. You're making a big scene here, but I want to fun

thank you. Yeah, that was terrifying. Yeah, it's horrifying. And you heard that line where he says, I swear in my children's lives. I was just reading again another article today where someone pointed out I think it was one of his assistants actually was being interviewed, and she said that was his go to line if need to bring his kids up well, to to say whenever he wanted someone to trust him that he hadn't meant something or that he hadn't done anything bad, I swear on my

children that I would never do anything. They would never do it. Like that was, like she said, he was constant, like that was. There was so much to unpack on that. Yeah, like one five minutes, I won't do anything, Like clearly you're just a crazy You're lying. I can't even the police wanted to go in and basically catch him on

tape trying to assault her. Yeah. Yeah, they want to get as much as they can on to which is which is a little messed up on their end too, because like, I feel like they probably had enough at that point, because how would she escaped, you know, like, what were they planning on busting through the door and stopping it? I don't think So. There's so much there that it's just so fucked up, it's about to get fucked her. Uh So, Amber had had too much at

that point. She left immediately after that call. She didn't go into the room with him. The police felt like they had enough evidence to press charges, so they pressed charges. They took it to the Manhattan d A's office. The d a's office spent two weeks, which is a really long time for this sort of thing, investigating the case, and then decided not to prosecute. Now, this may have had something to do with the avalanche of articles that came out in the meantime. So as soon as about

Ambra yep in a bunch of magazines. Yeah, yeah, it turned out she'd be in a witness in a bribery case against Italian President Silvio Berlisconi and an unwitting invatide to one of his Bunga Bunga parties. You've heard of that part. Silvio Berlusconi is a creepy funk who would have sex parties. She wound up at one of those, not knowing what it was and I think like left, but anyway, she was like a witness in a bribery

case against him. Um. She had also previously accused an Italian businessman who she had had a relationship with, I think of sexual assault, and I guess the d A decided she wasn't credible enough, that it was just beyond the pale that an Italian supermodel would have had three inappropriate interactions with men in her life, which is like, it seems like if those are the only three times that she's been around creepy guys, I'm surprised. Oh God,

people really don't get a ship about women. No, And it's likely that the d A probably got cold feet because of a prior profile case where Dominic Strauss Khan, who was a big wig with the I m F and a French politician guy had gotten charged with the rape of a Hotel maid Um. They had to drop the charges against him because of issues with the witness's credibility.

It's an interesting story, you should read into it, but for this our purposes, the d A was scared of a repeat um and so, like everybody else in this story who enabled Harvey Weinstein, they were frightened for what going up against him could do to their careers, and so they backed down. Ambra understandably lost any kind of faith in the American legal system. She settled privately with Weinstein.

As part of the settlement, she was acquired to hand all of her personal electronic devices over to a company called Kroll. Now. Kroll is a security services company. Their website claims that they're the quote leading global provider of risk solutions. Before Yeah, what they are is rent of spies, and that brings us to the end of today's podcast and is where we're going to start at part two, which is the army of spies that Harvey Weinstein hired

and utilized in order to keep his secrets. These are probably the clearest monsters other than some of the people at the inquirer of this story, outside of Harvey Weinstein, and it is um. It is quite a thing to unpack. So if you want to join us on Thursday, we'll be getting into all that and finishing up the saga of all the mini bastards of Harvey Weinstein. Until then, I am Robert Evans and my guest has been I

am an a host nan I am horrified. You want to tell the people where they can find you on the interweb. Sure, you can follow me on Twitter at at anna host n A N N A h O S S N I e H. You can listen to my podcast Ethnically Ambiguous on Apple podcast or wherever you find your podcasts, and you can follow my podcast on Twitter at A Nickelly am a m B on Twitter, where we post a lot of information about Middle Eastern news. You can find me on Twitter at at I right okay,

where I also post a lot about Middle Eastern news. Uh. You can find this podcast on Twitter at Bastard's pod. You can find our website at behind the Bastards dot com, which we'll have some terrible pictures of Harvey Weinstein looking like a schlub and as well as the sources if you want to do more reading for yourselves. So until Thursday, I'm Robert Evans, please keep feeling like you're covered in grease, because that's how I feel right now. M