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

Harvey Weinstein is a dull, gross, boring little puddle of a man who sexually assaulted at least 85 women, but it took dozens, perhaps even hundreds of people to make his behavior possible. In episode 5, Robert is joined by Anna Hossnieh (Ethnically Ambiguous) and they discuss the evil acts of Harvey Weinstein and the people that were involved.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, friends, and welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the
show where we tell you everything you don't know about
the worst people in all of history. I'm your host,
Robert Evans, and this week my co host is Anna Hasnia,
producer extraordinaire, co host of the podcast Ethnically Ambiguous and
all around woman about Town. Anna, Today we are talking

(00:22):
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

(00:43):
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,

(01:04):
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

(01:25):
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

(01:48):
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

(02:08):
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

(02:30):
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,

(02:53):
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.

(03:15):
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

(03:38):
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

(04:00):
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,

(04:21):
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

(04:43):
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

(05:03):
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.

(05:25):
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

(05:47):
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,

(06:08):
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

(06:30):
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.

(06:52):
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

(07:14):
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

(07:37):
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

(07:59):
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

(08:21):
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

(08:43):
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

(09:04):
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

(09:25):
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

(09:46):
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.

(10:07):
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

(10:28):
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

(10:50):
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

(11:14):
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

(11:37):
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.

(11:58):
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

(12:20):
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,

(12:41):
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.

(13:05):
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

(13:25):
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

(13:47):
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

(14:09):
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

(14:33):
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

(14:53):
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

(15:14):
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

(15:35):
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,

(15:56):
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

(16:18):
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

(16:41):
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

(17:01):
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

(17:23):
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

(17:45):
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

(18:06):
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

(18:27):
stories in a minute, but right now, we gotta sell
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(18:49):
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

(19:11):
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,

(19:32):
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,

(19:53):
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

(20:14):
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

(20:34):
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

(20:56):
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

(21:17):
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

(21:40):
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

(22:03):
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

(22:25):
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

(22:46):
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

(23:08):
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

(23:29):
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

(23:50):
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

(24:10):
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

(24:31):
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

(24:53):
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.

(25:15):
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.

(25:38):
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

(25:59):
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.

(26:21):
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

(26:42):
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

(27:05):
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

(27:27):
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

(27:48):
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.

(28:09):
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,

(28:30):
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

(28:51):
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

(29:13):
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,

(29:33):
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

(29:55):
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

(30:15):
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

(30:38):
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

(31:01):
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

(31:21):
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

(31:42):
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

(32:02):
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

(32:24):
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

(32:46):
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

(33:07):
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

(33:29):
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.

(33:50):
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

(34:10):
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

(34:31):
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.

(34:54):
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

(35:15):
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,

(35:35):
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.

(35:56):
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

(36:20):
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

(36:42):
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

(37:04):
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

(37:25):
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

(37:47):
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

(38:11):
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

(38:32):
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,

(38:54):
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.

(39:14):
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.

(39:35):
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.

(39:57):
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

(40:19):
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,

(40:39):
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

(41:01):
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

(41:21):
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

(41:42):
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

(42:06):
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

(42:28):
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,

(42:50):
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

(43:11):
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.

(43:33):
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

(43:55):
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

(44:19):
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

(44:41):
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.

(45:02):
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

(45:24):
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

(45:44):
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

(46:06):
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,

(46:29):
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

(46:49):
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,

(47:12):
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

(47:33):
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,

(47:55):
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

(48:18):
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,

(48:40):
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

(49:00):
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

(49:23):
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

(49:43):
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,

(50:07):
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

(50:28):
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

(50:51):
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

(51:14):
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,

(51:36):
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.

(51:58):
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

(52:21):
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

(52:42):
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.

(53:03):
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

(53:25):
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,

(53:46):
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

(54:09):
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,

(54:33):
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

(54:56):
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

(55:17):
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

(55:40):
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,

(56:03):
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

(56:24):
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

(56:44):
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

(57:05):
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

(57:25):
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

(57:48):
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

(58:09):
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

(58:31):
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

(58:52):
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

(59:15):
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,

(59:35):
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,

(01:00:00):
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

(01:00:21):
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

(01:00:44):
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,

(01:01:05):
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.

(01:01:26):
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

(01:01:47):
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,

(01:02:07):
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,

(01:02:27):
I'm Robert Evans, please keep feeling like you're covered in grease,
because that's how I feel right now. M