Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ronan Farrow took the world by storm when he exposed Harvey Weinstein as the alleged sexual predator he’s been for decades.
This set off a chain of events of (mostly) women gathering the strength to finally come forward about being sexually assaulted or abused from some of Hollywood and liberal media’s most powerful people.
Farrow’s new book is one explosive accusation after another. And here are four takeaways and one of them includes Hillary Clinton.
Weinstein Tried and Failed to Silence NBC
Harvey Weinstein allegedly attempted to “bully” and “intimidate” NBC into killing the Farrow’s story and tried to leverage information about Matt Lauer’s alleged sexual misconduct.
Farrow writes, “Weinstein made it known to the network that he was aware of Lauer’s behavior and capable of revealing it. A period in which secrets at NBC were under threat of exposure. And it is very clear from the conversations I document how heavily those secrets weighed on their [reporting] judgment.”
NBC denies this claim saying, “The idea of NBC News taking a threat seriously from a tabloid company about Matt Lauer is especially preposterous, since they already covered him with great regularity.”
Farrow Names High-powered NBC Executives who may Have Aided Weinstein
The book alleges that Weinstein had personal interactions with NBC News and MSNBC chairman Andy Lack, NBC News president Noah Oppenheim and MSNBC president Phil Griffin about killing the story.
This essentially proves that Weinstein was using his connections aggressively and even alludes to some bribery.
Weinstein Used his Friendship with Hillary Clinton as Leverage to Kill the Story
Harvey Weinstein was like a rat backed into a corner and was willing to play whatever hand he had in order to stop the story. Farrow was scheduled to interview Hillary Clinton on a separate unrelated story, but the former Secretary of State’s publicist alerted Weinstein that he was working on a damaging story about the Academy Award winner.
Then suddenly Weinstein proposed a docuseries on Clinton in an email to ex-president of NBC News, Deborah Turness, as some sort of weird desperate tactic to prevent the story from being published. It was like Weinstein was floating the idea in order to use it as leverage.
Matt Lauer is Accused of Raping a Former NBC Colleague
Brooke Nevils was an anonymous NBC colleague whose accusations against Matt Lauer got him fired from the “Today” show. Nevil’s recounts to Farrow that he anally raped her in his hotel room during the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Nevils was admittedly drunk one night and Lauer forced her onto the bed and she recalled, “[I] was in the midst of telling him she wasn’t interested again when he ‘just did it. Lauer, she said, didn’t use lubricant. The encounter was excruciatingly painful. ‘It hurt so bad. I remember thinking, Is this normal?’”
There are other damaging allegations like how the book contradicts NBC’s internal review of Lauer’s sexual misconduct. Another is that Farrow claims he’s banned from NBC and MSNBC unless Rachel Maddow wields her power to have him on her show like the MSNBC host did in 2018.