Ronan Farrow, who participated in the unsuccessful takedown of Justice Kavanaugh, exposed Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct in 2017. According to Farrow, who has a new book out, Weinstein tried to get NBC News to kill the story using Matt Lauer’s sexual misconduct as leverage:
BUSINESS INSIDER – Harvey Weinstein tried to pressure NBC News into killing Ronan Farrow’s investigation of his sexual misconduct by threatening to reveal similar behavior by former “Today” show host Matt Lauer, Farrow writes in his explosive new book.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about the release of his book, Farrow also highlights the role that Lauer may have played in hindering his investigation.
Lauer, who was fired from the “Today” show in 2017 over sexual misconduct allegations, is accused of raping a staffer while they were working at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, according to Farrow’s book.
Farrow writes that Weinstein learned of Lauer’s history of alleged sexual misconduct during a 2017 meeting with Dylan Howard, chief content officer of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer. Weinstein used his alliance with AMI to pressure NBC News executives into killing Farrow’s story, in order to protect Lauer, according to Farrow.
“Weinstein made it known to the network that he was aware of Lauer’s behavior and capable of revealing it,” Farrow writes in his book, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Farrow based his allegations on conversations with anonymous sources at NBC and AMI.
Harvey Weinstein threatened to expose Lauer, and that’s why NBC spiked Ronan Farrow’s story.
NBC is complicit and tried covering up these horrific crimes. Entire place needs to be gutted with people fired for enabling this. https://t.co/by2Ytm6b94
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) October 9, 2019
Remember, at the time Farrow worked for NBC News. When NBC News wouldn’t let him publish the story, he took it to the New Yorker and published it there.
As BI points out, Farrow details how Matt Lauer raped a staffer at the Sochi Olympics in 2014:
THE HILL – In the book, Farrow writes that Nevils ended up going to Lauer’s hotel room twice. The first time she went to retrieve her press pass, which Lauer had taken as a joke. The second time she went at his invitation and, writes Farrow, had no reason to think Lauer would be anything but friendly.
She then told Farrow that once she was in the hotel room, Lauer pushed her against a door and kissed her and then pushed her on to the bed, “flipping her over, asking if she liked anal sex,” Farrow writes.
Nevils said she had consumed six shots of vodka before going to Lauer’s room and that she was in no condition to give consent to a sexual encounter. She also explicitly declined anal sex several times to Lauer, according to Farrow’s book, but Lauer “just did it.”
Nevils tells Farrow in the book that the experience was physically painful and that while she stopped saying “no” she wept silently into a pillow.
“It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” Nevils told Farrow, according to the book seen by Variety. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.”
When Nevils and Lauer were back in New York City, Nevils said she had more sexual encounters with Lauer. Sources close to Lauer said she initiated some of the contact.
“What is not in dispute is that Nevils, like several of the women I’d spoken to, had further sexual encounters with the man she said assaulted her,” Farrow writes.
“‘This is what I blame myself most for,’” Nevils tells Farrow in the book. “It was completely transactional. It was not a relationship.”
Nevils also told Farrow that she was terrified over the control that Lauer held over her career, the Variety report stated.
Nevils reportedly told her supervisors and bosses what happened to her and even told Meredith Vieira, who encouraged her to take it to human resources. In other words, NBC knew about Lauer’s sexual misconduct.
Of course, they released a statement saying they didn’t know about it before they fired him. And AMI released a statement saying Farrow’s new accusations are inaccurate.
But if Farrow is right, NBC is complicit in trying to cover for both Weinstein and Lauer, which is absolutely despicable.