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Hi, I'm Molly Jong Fast, and this is fast politics. You may know me from my old podcast, the new abnormal, or my articles in vogue, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or my newsletter at The Atlantic. I do my best to poke holes in political arguments with No Fear of critiquing any side of the political spectrum. Listen to fast politics with Molly Jong Fast on September 26 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's SPREA. Ker.com. Hello friends, and welcome back to behind the ******** 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 Hosnian, producer extraordinaire, cohost of the podcast ethnically ambiguous and all around woman about town, Anna, today we are talking about Harvey Weinstein. Something I knew. Yes, comedy my my guests for this show come in cold. But this is a case that it is impossible to come and 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 Ronan Farrow articles about him, some great articles. I'm a huge black cube fan, so, like, I was deep in there trying to get involved. Big fan of Israeli aligned spy agencies. Yeah, what can I say. I'm a Massad head. We'll be digging into some of that. A lot of that actually. Just as a heads up, this is going to be a 2 parter episode. So if you're one of those people who hates the number 2, you should be aware of that. It just wound 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 sit down to write 2, new ones would pop up. There's just so much on this case I 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. 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 spanning a period of time from the 1970s until just a couple of years ago, 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? I do believe his company with his brother was aware of his behaviour and and used 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 who are so high up, you know, they spend a lot of time traveling, moving around. They, you know, they have busy lives, not a lot overlaps. 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 going to give a brief overview of the case in October of last year. The New York Times and The New Yorker 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 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 85 women have come forward with accusations 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 is one of the things I thought was interesting. About him turning himself in is he was pictured with three books which he was there for like 2 hours. You don't bring three books to read to court while you're waiting to be arraigned, so he's holding a number of books, one of which was a biography of the director Elia Kazan and I 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 well regarded director in like the 40s and 50s whose career was derailed by the Red Scare. He was a member of the Communist Party. He was like, taken in by the House on American Activities Committee, and he named names which, like further disgraced him. And so this biography is like someone looking, trying to evaluate his legacy now and sort of redeem it 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 suite 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. Carrying this book into court that in 30 or 40 years people will look at me as a genius who is unfairly railroaded by a movement that. Yeah. Yeah. That's the message. He's client, 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 Elia 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 at being like, Oh yeah, I figure, like, this guy might be famous, but he didn't make any of the stuff that he's famous for. So, like, that's, I feel like, this guy in 50 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. He's going to be remembered for anything he did as a producer. Not in the long span of time. Umm. What a ***** ** ****. He's a real ***** ** ****. 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 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 ******* but he's not an interesting *******. He's a dog. Gross, boring little puddle of a man. I feel like you can't be that interesting if you're that interested in, like, ****** women. Yeah, there's just not much. To say about him other than the crimes he committed. Right. And a lot has been said about that. And so, and I also think that this is a case where he's going to get as much justice as a rich probable ****** 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 1020 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 a long way of me saying this episode of behind the ******** is not going to focus on Harvey Weinstein. He's not the ******* 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 and maybe even more to make his behavior possible. So my initial idea with this. Podcast was to sort of catalog all of the different people who helped him hurt so many other people. 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 the 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. Interesting. It feels like when you're that powerful, like, ohh 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 then 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 I guess what I'm thinking about is everyone. Yeah. Is that that's what I'm, I'm interested in here. There's a really famous Edmund Burke quote about the Nazis where he says that, you know, all that's necessary for evil to thrive is for good men 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, yeah, and no new to an extent what they were doing. So, uh, let's dig in. Harvey Weinstein was born on March 19th, 1952. 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, Good Will Hunting, Lord of the Rings, and The King's Speech. In total movies Harvey produced garnered more than 300 Oscar nominations, which is a lot of Oscar nominations. His earliest recorded victim was Hope Xenar Demore sometime in the 70s. 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 of 2015, when he allegedly groped Ambra Betalina. That's the bird's eye view of Harvey Weinstein's career as both a production guy and a ******. 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 Sivan 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 *********** into a potted plant. As you do. As you do as one woman turns you down. Yeah. So, arman. Amiri 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, too, because, well, he hadn't seen that incident. He realized that he'd seen Harvey do something similar. There's a quote from him. What I remember about this incident is that my sous chef came into my office furious, telling me that quote some fat **** saying he's an owner. He didn't know the name had come into the kitchen with a woman and shoved $100 bill at him and told him to get out. So yeah. So even in kitchens with people around, yeah, yeah, yeah. God, people cook. People have to eat that food. Oh, it's about to get worse. If, if, that's if. That's what's kicking you out about this stone. It's about to get even worse. So according to Armin, Armin hears this from the chef. The chef is like, yeah, this fat **** just gave me 100 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 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 like in a pot. That in a pot and a potted plant at the same restaurant. You. I hope they burn that pot, cause that is the most unsanitary. I feel like you burned the restaurant at this point, because point if there are two stories of him ejaculating into random objects at this restaurant he owned, he he came on every square inch of that. Is that is that is that come, oh God, this whole place is covered. These tablecloths were black this morning. Everything. Yeah, I'm sorry. What's the restaurants name? Oh, geez. I never. I don't think it's walk by operational anymore. Better not be. Yeah. 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 doesn't sounds like it because Harvey was just shoving a money at him and saying get the **** out of here, right? But he, if he didn't know that, the woman. Was dragged in there because you don't really know when a situation. Exactly. Exactly. It's really unclear. And Armond 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 know idea what was going on. It was just some rich guy paying to masturbate in the pot that he technically owned, man. So yeah, it's a little messed up. Armin does claim that after Lauren Simmons 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 names Git Armin refused to do as he asked. But that was a time when it was easy to say that. RP Weinstein because at that point he was on his way down. Exactly. Which is nothing against Armin. 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 3030 years almost everyone that Harvey Weinstein asked to keep his secret was happy to help him do it. David J ****** is the CEO of American Media Inc. They are, you know. Yes. OK 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. Yeah, he's got friends in Saudi Arabia. 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 Enquirer, which just so happens that the studio we're in has a lot of issues of The Enquirer. And the one I'm looking at right now, the big title of the story is exhume Jon Benet's body now. So that's they're classy people. Inquire. Yeah, so David J ****** is the CEO of American Media, Inc. They own the National Enquirer, Weekly World News, etcetera. Harvey Weinstein and ****** have been good friends for years. Their friendship was so deep that Harvey became known as an FOP, or friend of ******. Which? They're not not great at acronyms. It's been friend of penis. Penis. I mean that's basically what friend of ****** means. Friend of David. You know, like, like why, why, why ******? Yeah, that's a status he apparently shared with President Trump. And when you are a friend of ****** you get special treatment from not just The Enquirer and the Weekly World News, but the whole tabloid industry. 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 Weinsteins Complicity Machine. Quote American Media was known to sometimes help out allies in trouble with the 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 and the clearest case of another person involved who's definitely a ******* because ******* ******. That's not helping Harvey for money. It's not helping him because you're afraid he'll **** ** your career. It's helping him because he's your buddy and you want him to keep his sexual assaults under wrap, Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker laid out a very active relationship between The Enquirer and Weinstein. He talked to a woman named Elizabeth Avalon, who is the former wife of Robert Rodriguez. Rodriguez left her for Rose McGowan, so obviously there's understandable kind of bad blood between the two ladies. Rose claims that Harvey Weinstein raped her in his hotel room. During the Sundance Festival and inquires, reporter figured Evelyn might have some dirt on Rose McGowan. And of course it was his job as an Inquirer reporter to dig up dirt on anyone accusing anything of Harvey Weinstein to try to discredit them. So we started calling Avalon. He called her over and over and over again, and then he started reaching out to people she knew, like friends and family, just kind of harassing them until she agreed for an interview. So Avalon sits down for an interview with this reporter and he repeatedly pushes her to say bad things about Rose McGowan. She wanted to make sure that the call was off the record and only for deep background, and the reporter said that it was. But he recorded the whole thing. And afterwards he handed recording to American 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 is, 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. The letter R not on this End Quote. Howard assured him that the fingerprints weren't on it and said this conversation is all caps recorded. OK, I'm sorry. He wrote just the letter R yeah, my fingerprints are not on this. That's more you type out chasing a pole word fingerprints in you, but you don't have time for the R that's stupid. I know there's a lot of reasons to hate the man. Howard's definitely culpable here. Yeah. 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 history. She has expressed a lot of regret about it and is obviously has solidarity for her for the whole being horribly abused by Harvey Weinstein thing. So yeah, that's that's like that's ****** ** 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 just use a bunch of women and dry them out and then hope it helps protect a man who, yeah, is trash. Yeah, it's almost like a work of art in terms of being ****** people. Like, it took a lot of garbage all coming together to make this landfill. So yeah, ****** 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. There are going to 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. And worked for, like, inquiry. Yeah. Yeah. It was an Inquirer reporter. Would she ever talk to an Inquirer reporter? Because he kept calling her family and friends. So she finally was like, fine, I'll talk. If you won't talk to anyone else, I will talk to you like that. That's that's like where it got. So yeah, there, there are. I mean, just when we're talking about just the press, there are dozens of people implicated in keeping Harvey secrets. And we're going to get into another one of those stories in a minute. But right now, we got to sell. Some stuff. You like stuff, right? Huge fan. You got wallets and money anyway. Go grab some money, grab as much money as you can, and then tune into these ads. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tiktok. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers. That people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you. For the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. A story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. The story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about or or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. 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 ********. In the Harvey Weinstein story. We just talked about two guys, ****** and Howard, who both ran the company that owned the National Enquirer, and The Enquirer essentially helped dig up dirt on Weinstein's accusers. Now we're going to talk about another story in that vein, and in 2014. 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 ****** him. Oh yeah, the old classical help your career if you **** me. I mean, he waited a good three or four hours, which is a lot of restraint for Harvey Weinstein. She turned him down and then he made her keep turning him down for more than an hour. Emily complained to her coworkers and they did the right thing. They reported it to management in a formal complaint thingy was made and this is the company he owns. So yeah, the Weinstein is just means nothing really. Well, there's other people. It's a big company, like there are other people. And as we'll get into, there was some resistance from within the corporate structure to Harvey, like the company bore his name, but he was not in absolute. It was too big a company to be an absolute. Control of help. So 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. He invited Nestor to breakfast right after that, and I'm going to quote from another Ronan Farrow New Yorker article here. Throughout the breakfast, she said Weinstein interrupted their conversation to yell into his cell phone, enraged over a spat that Amy Adams, star in The Weinstein Movie Big Eyes, was having in the press. Afterward, Weinstein told Nester to keep an eye on 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, Nester recalled. I was very afraid of him and I knew how well connected he was and how if I ****** him off then I could never have a career in that industry. God, 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 obviously if he's helping his buddy out with this, he's used his organs of press for the same sort of purposes, so 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 apart. 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. Is working at job like that, it just seems like so like you would be dead on the inside soul crushing to know that what you're doing you're interviewing someone. Not even for an article. You're interviewing someone so that some like greasy **** in a suit can exercise his power over what 20 year old woman who has 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 an 8 hour days for is so some. Dirtbag you've never met can feel powerful, right? 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 asked you 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 done 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 bombshell. 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 the maybe part of the mistake is with me and feeling like the the ******* **** in these rags was ever kind of light hearted. Like you think about like, oh bat boy, you know they're talking about kooky fun. Like it's that was my mom's explanation to me as a kid when I would see these insane things and I'd be like, mom, is Saddam Hussein really going to murder our president? And he's like, no, it's the National Enquirer, everything. And it is a lie. Why does it exist? Oh, because people think it's fun to read. Yeah, now I I guess, yeah. When I was young and they used to have a lot of, like, Catwoman on. Yeah, that Lady would be wacky stuff. Yeah, yeah. ******* moon Nazis. Yeah. So Nester, 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's going to drag my name through the mud and the press, right? Did they make her take an or sign an NDA? Yeah, I'm sure they did. This story is full of NDA's, like almost everybody that you're going to run into. Word of settlement or even who's speaking out now had an NDA at one point like I I guess it's one of those things that at this point the NDA's aren't worth that much, but they clearly held the damn together for a while. Yeah. So, uh, Weinstein had with the New York Times described as a network of friendly journalists, gossip columnist, magazine writers, editors and authors that he knew would help him by publishing articles that attacked his enemies. These aren't all all through the National Enquirer. They're not all through Howard. Like he he's he's a high place 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. 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 the story, like all hobbies 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 you. Yeah, crazy somewhere. You know, whatever he's made-up. Yeah. So do you even that, like, that's where the complicity gets hard for me. Like, it's easy in a case like the the e-mail exchange between The Enquirer 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 and gossip writers who are just figuring like, Oh my God, how many of the stories that I I wrote based on scoops that he or his 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 ******. 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 I feel like if you're so far removed from him, like you're working at a a paper and Harvey calls and he's got teams or 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 going to 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 it's a scooter. 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. Yeah, but even if you've heard the rumors. I mean, I don't know, but what are the rumors you're hearing? They're they're probably not Harvey Weinstein's ****** especially if you're a male reporter. That's probably not what you're hearing. Harvey Weinstein's a womanizer. Harvey Weinstein's an ******* with a temper. Maybe I'm just. Maybe I just hate men. So I'm just out here 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. So Weinstein owned a publishing house 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 shitloads 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 and be like, hey, I got this story about so and so, you know, 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 AJ Benza. So Weinstein invited Benz 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 P 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 **** on the down low and AJ. Mens assessed 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, AJ, it's got to be good stories. And AJ 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 over 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 has friends at other rags of similar. So he knows, oh, this guy's working on a story that might implicate Weinstein, an affair or some other bad behavior. What if I promise to give him two or three stories about somebody else? Like, that's the, that's what bins is offering to do for Weinstein. And that's how a lot of this gets done. Now, Binza claims he didn't know about any of the rape acts, accusations or the sexual assaults. And that that's possible. Most of the people in the story who enabled Weinstein in one way or the other are folks like Benza. They're people whose defense to moral culpability is that they just thought Harvey Weinstein was a gross person, not a ******. So, and benzo 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 going to get you like a ******* 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 in the 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 OK because you've got something to say. Or what it always be this ickiness in the back of your mind, thinking you didn't fully get it from your own worth ethic. And that's. That's what I wonder with and we'll we'll talk about Ben Affleck in a little bit, but about the the people who legitimately have to credit a lot of their fame and success to Harvey Weinstein and they really 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 frog, knows a lot of things that are slowly killing him? Man, that actually does make him a great candidate to play Batman. Yeah, dark pass. Yeah, he might be the most appropriate casting of Batman that we could have gotten. Poor Benny. Yeah. Well, no, not not not in any way, shape or form. OK, now that we've talked about AJ Benza, so, yeah, I don't know, like, what's your viewing on benz'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? Ohh, 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 I 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 like someone wanted you because you're so great at writing. And 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. It doesn't sit right. OK what do you have any student loans? No. OK. Did you ever, at some point, was that like a thing that was that like a cross you had to bear? No, I, my parents do well for themselves. OK. Sorry. I didn't mean to get super personal. I had a bunch of student loans that were cleared off when I got a book deal. 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 bins ahead. Nothing like that going on. But I can see how that would be almost impossible to tell when you put it that way. It's like my that's why 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 him who he had maybe had to pay medical bills for someone or for himself, like. I I can say I can say in AJ Benza's defense, and I don't know if he actually knew about the like, maybe he knew more than he says he did. But if he didn't know about the assaults and the rapes, I can imagine myself being in a situation where I would help a creepy rich guy cover up an affair for enough money to pay for my romantic partner to get healthcare or whatever kind of **** like deal with some crippling like, I I want to condemn him. And like, to an extent, you got it because Harvey Weinstein raped dozens of people. Probably. That's the problem. It's like, yeah. In the long run, though, yeah, things that came out would weigh heavy on him. If if he must. He feels empathy. Yeah. I don't know. 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. But I don't know, like, 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 coworkers at The Weinstein Company, or I should say employees. So in in 2004, Lucia Stoller, now Lucia Evans. No relation to did she change her name or she just get married? She got married. OK, yeah. I'm gonna call her Lucia Evans just because that's what she goes by now. It'll be less confusing. She met Harvey Weinstein at a club when she was a sophomore in college. 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. Making all the right 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 college says, OK, you have a meeting going and going to talk to Harvey, and then you're going to talk to someone. So and so this lady who is a casting director, which seems legitimate, 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 going to 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 just looking at Harvey Weinstein. World, you just eat and then maybe work out, but maybe it's just there to look at. So you think at some point you'll work out. I feel like most of that equipment never got used. There's no way. Yeah, but that's the kind of thing you can do when you're that rich. In addition to having people cover up your solitude, like bring the exercise bike into the meeting room. I'm going to. I'm going to get in shape. ******* Harvey Weinstein. Going to jog, *******. 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 drop in 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 his other employees could not know what was going on after that meeting. We did meet with a female casting director who sent her 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. 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. God, the casting director. That's too hard to believe, that they have no sense of what's going on, you know, because don't people exit and look frazzled? Like, Ohh, 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 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 20 or 30 years. And I'll say this from everything I can read, there's a couple of things you find out #1A good number of them would have been consensual. You know, obviously there's the ****** ** power dynamic of he's got a bunch of money and he holds the key for your career. But he didn't have to physically force them. They were they. There were a lot of them were people who were like, OK, the deal is I **** you and then I get a part in a movie and there are people who were down for that. So that happened. I think a lot of this would be telling yourself that that's what's happening 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 gonna get a role doing something. 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 traumatized, died a little. Yeah. 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 are just legitimate business partners of Harveys who condemn him and stuff, like, right now, now also say, like, that's what he did with everybody. Like if you were working with Harvey with you. You meet with him at random 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. There's not too much suspicion. There's not too much suspicion. Although, again, like it happened so often that it's some point they had to know they were lying to themselves a little bit. And Speaking of lying to yourselves a little bit, it's time to break for ads. 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 ****** dozens of people, I would like to sell you guys some cool. Products that was smooth. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tiktok. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions sometimes. Their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. The story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. The story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about, or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people. Isn't that funny? That's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. OK, so we just talked about how Lucia Evans met him in 2004, and he tricked her into meeting her alone in a conference room and then forced her to give him oral sex. And we're kind of wondering about complicity because there was part of why she felt safe in going there as 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, but it's. Definite that some of his assistants Weinstein's assistants were complicit and knew more or less what was going on. I'm going to 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 acquired to procure his penile injections for erectile dysfunction. End Quote yeah, yeah, yeah. Did these assistants know Harvey was a ******? It's hard to say. 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 30 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 and silence women. We had an idea that he was a womanizer who had extramarital affairs. We did not know he was a violent aggressor or an alleged ******. So that's kind of their defense to moral culpability. It's, again, it's the same as benzos. I knew he was a ***** ** ****. I didn't think he was ****** 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. 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 got this job. 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. 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 was 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, trust me. Just don't. Yeah. That was the executive trying to trying to nicely keep her away from this job. And then when that didn't work, they were like, OK, get the lady who had the job and have her be like, don't ******* do that. 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. Yeah, 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. Mind you, don't warn someone away from a job like that unless you know. Oh, you're gonna get ******* assaulted if you get close to him. That is the word that they really. That's the unfortunate thing. I wish they'd use that language instead of trying to, like, protect the situation. Just be like, honey, take this job. He will try and have sex with you, and that is that. He will try. He will find a way to have sex with you if it 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, yeah. There's a lot of people in this story who, I have to assume, have spent the last 20 years drinking themselves to sleep. In his first big article on Weinstein, Ronan Farrow noted that 16 former and current executives and assistants who'd worked with or for Weinstein had told him about, quote, unwanted sexual advances and touching, UN quote, that they'd witnessed at work. So again, that's not closed door stuff. That's people telling a journalist. I saw him touch a lady and she wasn't having it. She did not want it. It was clearly not OK. That number included employees who were, quote, enlisted in a subterfuge to make the victims feel safe. These are referred to in a lot of the reporting as honey pots, which is like a spy term for like, I feel like that this is Ronan Farrow's great, incredible journalism deserves a pellizzer and all that. I feel like honey pot is the wrong term for this because that's a term you use for like a sexy lady spy seduces the guy to get him. Exactly. Needs from him. And these the women that Harvey uses to lure other women into feeling safe of getting close to? Hardly honey. Not honey pots. Yeah, I don't know what terms. Just like emotional manipulation. Using women's camouflage. Yeah, it's ****** camouflage. Yeah. Be like, look, you can trust another woman. There's another lady in here. Nothing bad has ever happened in a room with two ladies in a creepy man, several female employees, assistants and executives would sometimes join meetings with Weinstein and a woman. He was interested in 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, Umm, 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. Which that's culpability right there. Your party to a crime. Not that I think any of these people ever going to get charged, but if they were, they deserve it. I guess. Like, I I don't even feel good like I want to. I would even they could have just walked behind him and like, God, God, oh God, yeah. OK, so the 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 Ronan Farrow to admit to being used as a honeypot. 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. 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. It doesn't sound like these were just we're being camouflaged, we're being camouflaged, and we're trying to help our boss hit on strangers. Them they they're like wing manning 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. Yeah. 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 ******. That former employee, the one who was a honey. Scott said that he's been systematically doing this for a very long time. And she said that she often thinks about one time when Harvey whispered to himself, as far as she could tell, after he'd, like, shouted at a bunch of people and, you know, just just had one of his, like, temper tantrums. There were things I've done that nobody knows. Like, he started like, shouting and screaming and then like, at the end of it was just like repeating that to himself. I heard that. That's a wrap. That is a rap. That's a crazy person. He's saying that after you. You know some of the things he's done. Yeah. Like you, if you don't know every word, you know that team. That's some of it. self-awareness that he knows *** **** well that he is ruining people. Yeah. And he does not give a ****. And then that that that saying that to almost be like, don't **** with me. I've done things. Yeah, well, and he there's stories. He's threatened to kill people. I and I. In fact, I think it was Salma Hayek who said that he made like some sort of comment, like I could have you killed during an argument. She, like, stood up to him. Yeah. She wouldn't have sex with him to make the Frida Kahlo movie. And he made, like, a bunch of ridiculous demands. And he was like, well, OK, well, if we're still gonna make this, you have to find $10 million in funding on your own and this. And then 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. Because you know what? But anyway. Like that and and he would regularly, when you read any of these articles about him there's people talk about the threats he would make and he 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, we're also like terrified of him and I don't know how much that reduces their guilt. It doesn't make it fun to judge things. 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 them 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 Weinstein had assaulted, Ashley Matthau. She was a dancer in one of his films, and she said that his assistant 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 the bed and *********** on her. She has a much colder picture of how all of the people around him acted. Let's thing I feel like they're so disassociated. Yeah, she says that she was crying and the his female assistant wouldn't even acknowledge her, 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, a lot of them are 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 Harvey assaulted who were on the other end of this machine that he constructed. And it seemed to him that just a bunch of people following orders coldly, not willing to look you in the eye. Which again, makes me think I'm yeah, and I'm too sympathetic for these people to do this. That's so evil to not even acknowledge a woman crying that you clearly put in that situation is. God, yeah. Deserve nothing that's so terrible. And again, you might come back around here with what I'm about to talk to 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 Sandeep Rehal. Part of her job was to keep him. Applied with the injectable erection drugs caverject and alprostadil. Connectable. So you just shoot up real quick. You gotta shoot him. In most of these, I think you have to shoot into **** **** to it. Like the veins. I know that some of them. I've talked to a lot of **** industry people who will use trimex, which is a gel that you shoot right into **** **** because it's like, 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, is that like, well, I'm not in good health. It's. I can't even get erections like he had people paying you to shoot **** ****. Yeah. So anyway, getting Harvey *** **** drugs was part of Mr 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. And he offered her an extra $500.00 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 Hall was. I don't I don't know how the time frames. Wake up. But she would have been one of these women, probably not looking in the eyes of another woman who Harvey had just assaulted. Right. Does the fact that she thought, like, her sister might get kicked out of school or Harvey could **** ** her financial life, like, see it and then I come back around to, like, they're obviously more victims. I guess the question is, like, how much how bad are they to? 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 ******* roofies 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 minds. Yeah, and Mr Hall says that, like, part of her job was to clean semen stains off of 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 are you that's so crazy? To me, yeah, it's ******. It's totally ******. Anyone ever touched me in the workplace? I make it very clear right now to all my coworkers listening. I will burn this place to the ground. That's crazy. To me. Cleaning semen, that is. Oh my God. Yeah. And think about like, I I'm trying not to delve too much into Harvey's mind in this because **** that guy. But, like, the kind of entitlement it is to get come 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 ******** 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. Hold DA's office. Well, everyone who's involved in this part. So in the Bill Cosby podcast, we talked about how bill status as 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 going off to Bill Cosby. Harvey Weinstein is kind of the opposite case. He's always had a reputation as being a rich, sleazebag liberal, so the police were happy to go after him. In March of 2015, Harvey invited Amber Battilana to his office in Tribeca. Ambra is a model and a Miss Italy finalist who was at that .21 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. Which? There you go. She was angry. Yeah, like you'd like you'd be. And she went immediately to the NYPD, and the NYPD was great about it. They said, yeah, that sounds like a ******* crime. Yeah, let's do some police ****. So the special victims 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 the suspect or whatever, and talks to them on a recorded line in the hopes that they'll confess to whatever it is that they did. They never got a chance to do a controlled. All 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. Wow. So the SUV 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. They were able to convince you to do it and they gave her, I think, 2 cell phones to record the conversations with. They met at the bar in the Tribeca Grand Hotel and Weinstein told her about all the women whose careers he'd helped and 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 wound up like going to the bathroom and talking with the cops, and they convinced her to go up with him. 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 we're just going to play that in full. It'll give you a chance to hear what Harvey Weinstein actually sounded like when he was trying to get a woman into a room with him. And right now, what do we have to do here? I'm going to take a shower. You sit there and have a drink, water and drink, and I stay on the bar. No, you must come here now. No, please. No, I don't want. I'm not doing anything with you embarrassing me. I'm sorry. I don't know. Yesterday was kind of aggressive. I need to know a person. Everything. Please. I swear I won't just sit with me. Don't embarrass me in the hotel. I'm here all the time. I sit with me. I promise. Please sit there. Please. One minute. I asked to go to the bathroom. Please. I don't want to do something. I don't want to go to the bathroom. Come here. Listen to me. I wanna go downstairs. I'm not gonna do anything. You'll never see me again after this. And that's it. If you don't, if you embarrass me in this hotel. Not embarrassing you. It's just that I don't. I don't feel comfortable. I mean, don't have a thing with me. Please. I'm not gonna do anything. I swear. My children, please come in on everything. I'm a famous guy. I'm very uncomfortable when he's coming now and one minute. And if you wanna leave when the guy comes with my jacket, you can you touch my breast, please? I'm sorry. Just come on. I'm used to that. You used to that? Yes. Come in. No, but I'm not used to that. It won't do it again. Same here for a bit, please. No, I don't want to do this now you wanna marry? You will call me again. OK. Sorry. Nice. I promise you I won't do anything. I know. But yes, there was two guys. I mean, I will never do another thing to you. 5 minutes. Don't ruin your friendship with me for 5 minutes is. I know, but it's kind of like it's too much for me. I can't. Please. You're making a big scene here. But I wanna leave. OK. Bye. Thank you. Yeah, that was terrifying. Yeah, it's horrifying. And you heard that line where he says, I swore in my children's lives. I was just reading again another article today where someone pointed out I think was one of his assistants actually was being interviewed and she said that was his go to line, if any, 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. Like they would never do it. Like that was like she said he was constant. Like that was. Action pack on that, yeah, like 1-5 minutes. I won't do anything. Like, clearly you're just a 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 tape, 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 have escaped? You know? Like what were they planning on busting through the door and stopping it? I don't think so. But it there's so much there that is just so ****** **. It's about to get ****** her. 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 DA's office. The DA'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 mean time. So as soon as about Ambra? Yep. And a bunch of gossip magazines. Yeah. Yeah. It turned out she'd been a witness in a bribery case against Italian President Silvio Berlusconi and an unwitting invitee to want to have his bunga bunga parties. You've heard of that Bunga bunga parties? Silvio Berlusconi is a creepy **** who would have sex parties? And she wound up at one of those not knowing what it was. And I think, like, left. But anyway, she was like a a witness in a bribery. Case against him. She had also previously accused an Italian businessman who she'd had a relationship with, I think, of sexual assault. And I guess the DA 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. I feel like, oh God, people really don't give a **** about women. No, and it's likely that the DA probably got cold feet because of a prior high profile case where Dominique Strauss Kahn, who was a big wig with the IMF and a French politician Guy, had gotten charged with the rape of a hotel maid. They had to drop the charges against him because of issues with the witnesses credibility. It's an interesting story. You should read into it. But for this, our purpose is the DA was scared of a repeat. 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. Amber, understandably, lost any kind of faith in the American legal system. She settled privately with Weinstein. As part of the settlement, she was required 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 heard that before, yeah. What they are is rental spies, and that brings us to the end of today's podcast and is where we're going to start at Part 2, 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 inquire of this story outside of Harvey Weinstein. And it is, 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. Dagger of all the mini ******** of Harvey Weinstein. Until then, I am Robert Evans and my guest has been I am Anna Hosni and 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 Anna Hosner ANAHOSSN i.e. H You can listen to my podcast, ethnically ambiguous, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your podcasts. And you can follow my podcast on Twitter at ethnically am Amb. On Twitter, where we post a lot of information about Middle Eastern news, you can find me on Twitter at at Iriti. OK, where I also post a lot about Middle Eastern news, you can find this podcast on Twitter at ******** pod. You can find ourwebsite@behindthebastards.com, which will 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. Hi, I'm Molly Jong Fast, and this is fast politics. You may know me from my old podcast, the new abnormal, or my articles in vogue, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or my newsletter at The Atlantic. I do my best to poke holes in political arguments with No Fear of critiquing any side of the political spectrum. Listen to fast politics with Molly Jong Fast on September 26 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research. With you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. 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