Harvey Weinstein Allegedly Hired Spies to Get Info on His Accusers
Ronan Farrow revealed new details surrounding the massive Harvey Weinstein scandal in a second New Yorker exposé published Monday, alleging that the now-disgraced producer had an entire network of individuals helping him to suppress allegations of sexual misconduct.
In his 5,300-word piece, Farrow alleges that Weinstein enlisted the help of private security agencies as far back as fall 2016 in an effort to quash any women or journalists looking to expose his alleged wrongdoing.
According to Farrow, two private investigators from Black Cube, one of the world’s largest corporate-intelligence companies, met with actress Rose McGowan under false pretenses, using fake identities, in order to obtain information from her. (McGowan made headlines last month after her Twitter account was temporarily suspended when she accused Weinstein of rape.)
“One of the investigators pretended to be a women’s-right advocate and secretly recorded at least four meetings with McGowan,” Farrow writes. “The same operative, using a different false identity and implying that she had an allegation against Weinstein, met twice with a journalist to find out which women were talking to the press.”
McGowan recounted to Farrow how she had met with a woman who identified herself as Diana Filip, from a made-up London-based wealth-management firm Reuben Capital Partners, back in May 2017. The actress said that she and “Filip” met several times over the course of a few months to chat about McGowan’s possible participation as a speaker at a gala kickoff later in the year.
Later on, however, Rowan discovered that “Diana Filip” was apparently an alias for a former officer in the Israeli Defense Forces who was now working for Black Cube, and had been tasked with extracting information from McGowan in relation to Weinstein.
Farrow also detailed how Weinstein reportedly hired law firms to help with the investigations, most notably that of David Boies, who admitted to Farrow that in retrospect, “we should not have been contracting with and paying investigators that we did not select and direct.”
“At the time, it seemed a reasonable accommodation for a client, but it was not thought through, and that was my mistake,” Boies continued. “It was a mistake at the time.” According to Farrow, working with private investigators through law firms was a calculated move on Weinstein’s part, because the investigative materials would then presumably be protected by attorney-client privilege.
Weinstein, Farrow alleged, also recruited journalists to help him get intel on McGowan and other women who might possibly come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. In the New Yorker piece, director Robert Rodriguez’s ex-wife Elizabeth Avellan tells Farrow that one reporter called her repeatedly in order to get her to give “unflattering statements” about McGowan, whom Rodriguez had left her for.
Of Farrow’s latest story, a rep for Weinstein told the New Yorker in a statement: “It is a fiction to suggest that any individuals were targeted or suppressed at any time.”
In a Good Morning America interview Tuesday, Farrow told GMA anchors George Stephanopoulos, Michael Strahan and Robin Roberts that there is a “seismic shift” happening in Hollywood with more victims coming forward.
“Some of it [is] very, very troubling and some of it, I think, [is] checking out,” he said. “It is not over and look, that is down to the bravery of the women that are still coming forward, and men that are coming forward as victims. This is, as you say, a movement.”