— RICH, POWERFUL, AND DISGUSTING —
HARVEY WEINSTEIN
🔘 In 2017, The New York Times broke the story that Harvey Weinstein, one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood, had for decades been paying off women who accused him of sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact.
The article, written by the investigative reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, was the first of many that exposed decades of abuse perpetrated by Mr. Weinstein, as well as the system in Hollywood that helped cover up his actions and silence the accusers.
Their groundbreaking reporting led to Mr. Weinstein’s ousting in Hollywood and eventual imprisonment, helped ignite the #MeToo movement, and inspired reporting on sexual abuse and cover-ups across many industries — including television, the tech industry and academia.
Within weeks of the first revelations, nearly 90 women had come forward accusing Weinstein of inappropriate behavior and sexual violence in incidents that date back to the 1970s. Today, the former mogul has been publicly accused by more than 100 women.
Weinstein has been incarcerated since February 2020, when a New York jury convicted him of rape in the third degree for his assault on one woman and a criminal sex act in the first degree for forcing oral sex on Miriam Haley, a former Project Runway production assistant. A judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison.
Great job — they deserved it — Jodi and Megan, together with a team of colleagues, won the Pulitzer Prize for public service. I admire and credit them profusely.
10/12/2022 — Harvey Weinstein trial on second state further sexual assault charges begins in Los Angeles — Jury selection began in trial for former Hollywood producer, 70, who faces 11 counts for alleged attacks on five women
The trial of Harvey Weinstein began in Los Angeles on Monday, marking the second time the former Hollywood titan is in a courtroom on accusations of sexual assault.
Weinstein, now 70, is facing 11 sexual assault charges for alleged attacks against five women between 2004 to 2013 in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. The accusations include forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual battery by restraint and sexual penetration by use of force.
Authorities extradited Weinstein to California last year to face 11 additional sexual assault charges for alleged attacks that took place between 2004 to 2013.
While Weinstein is already likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, Jamie White, an attorney who has represented survivors of Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor whose serial sexual abuse of girls and young women has shaken the gymnastics world, said it was important that there be accountability for all victims.
— OTHERS WHO FOLLOWED —
🔘 In his world what Harvey did was OK, Donald T-RUMP as you will read, makes the late Weinstein almost a beginner with a track record of his own, with Porn Queens, Russian Hookers, Misogamy, and other escapades. We have T-RUMP on tape and in print — witnesses and trials —
Almost forty-five years worth being a cheater, grifter, traitor, his treasonable actions very apparent unless you are ignorant and a Trumpest. — And a whole hell of a lot coming down the legal turnpike, about to catch up to him.
We also had the opportunity to meet other men of power who took advantage of people and circumstance namely the Murdocks of Newspaper Publishing and the propagandist obstruction writers of the T-RUMP and the GOP at Fox. Like the former Jewish person turned NAZI Stephen Miller who made immigration and the wall, a curse word of prejudice.
This is why T-RUMP silenced the written newspapers, denigrated the real press, called them fake news and started his own propoganda on FOX and other fascist sources pretending to be newsworthy — He was now controlling the narrative.
— ANOTHER SUPER PERVERT PLAYER —
JEFFREY EPSTEIN
🔘 It also led to the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein, another man of wealth and power who together with Ghislaine Maxwell was an American sex offender and financier. Epstein, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, began his professional life by teaching at the Dalton School in Manhattan, despite lacking a college degree.
He was arrested in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking. He was denied bail ahead of his trial. Epstein died while in jail, and his death was officially ruled a suicide by the New York City medical examiner.
Epstein, a convicted sex offender who previously served 13 months in a Palm Beach county jail, had a high-profile social circle. His former associates include Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Queen Elizabeth's son Prince Andrew.
He was seen with Bill Gates, Melissa Gates warned him about Jeffrey did not care for him. And Price Andrew of England — it was a very rich relationship with the who’s and what’s. He got pitched by the Queen —
In July 2020, his ex-girlfriend and longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested on charges relating to Epstein's sex trafficking operation. She was found guilty of 5 out of 6 charges, and in June 2022, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He died by suicide in jail, but questions about his life and crimes still remain.
When Jeffrey Epstein died, he left behind an estate with an estimated value of $600 million. There were vast financial holdings, a private jet, and palatial properties including an island hideaway, a grand Manhattan mansion and a 7,600-acre New Mexico ranch.
But taxes, property upkeep and temperature-controlled storage for his art collection — as well as $121 million in settlements to more than 135 women who accused him of sexually abusing them when they were young — have since cut into the size of Mr. Epstein’s estate. It’s now worth about a third of its value when the financier, 66, hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges two and a half years ago.
The biggest continuing expense is legal costs: $30 million so far to law firms brought in to clean up Mr. Epstein’s affairs. Lawyers have helped hand out settlements, liquidate assets and sift through the complicated holdings of a man who once set up his own offshore bank.
The work won’t be over anytime soon. The estate must still resolve a civil fraud lawsuit, brought by the attorney general of the Virgin Islands, who claims Mr. Epstein used the territory to facilitate a criminal enterprise by bilking it out of more than $70 million in tax revenue. And Ghislaine Maxwell, the former associate of Mr. Epstein who was convicted of sex-trafficking charges last month, has sued the estate to recoup her legal fees. Maybe in twenty years when she gets out of jail for trafficking minors for sex.
Not until all that is over will the estate dispense whatever is left, according to the terms of a secret trust that Mr. Epstein set up and named in a will drawn just two days before he died.
The details of the trust are not public. But Karyna Shuliak, Mr. Epstein’s girlfriend and the last person he spoke to on the phone before killing himself, will be one of the main beneficiaries, The New York Times previously reported. Ms. Shuliak, a native of Belarus, is a dentist who shared an office on the island of St. Thomas with Mr. Epstein’s Southern Trust Company. A lawyer for Ms. Shuliak declined to comment.
ROGER EUGENE AILES
THE MAN WHO MADE FOX NEWS AND THEN TORE IT APART
🔘 Roger Eugene Ailes (May 15, 1940 – May 18, 2017) was an American television executive and media consultant. He was the chairman and CEO of Fox News, Fox Television Stations and 20th Television.
Ailes was a media consultant for Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, and for Rudy Giuliani's 1989 New York City mayoral election.
In July 2016, he resigned from Fox News after being accused of sexual harassment by several female Fox employees, including on-air hosts Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Andrea Tantaros.
NOTE: Ailes had hemophilia, a medical condition in which the body is impaired in its ability to produce blood clots. He died on May 18, 2017, at the age of 77 after a subdural hematoma that was aggravated by his hemophilia.
WHO BROUGHT ROGER AILES DOWN?
Within two weeks, Ailes, who had built Fox News into a money-gushing powerhouse, was gone in a corporate coup engineered by two bitter Ailes rivals, Lachlan and James Murdoch, the sons of Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch. Now a film has been made.
Roger Ailes may be at the center of the film, but another man surrounded by sexual misconduct allegations looms: Donald Trump. Kelly, then a host at Fox News, held the then-presidential hopeful accountable for his very public displays of sexism and treatment of women at the first Republican debate. “You’ve called women you don’t like, ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ slobs, and disgusting animals,” she told Trump, to which he responded, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,”
Behind the glossy allure of Bombshell's A-list cast—which revolves around the trifecta that is Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, and Margot Robbie—lies the true story of the fall of Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chief executive and chairman who left the network in 2016 after anchor Gretchen Carlson sued him for sexual harassment and multiple women later came forward with similar allegations.
Although the premise of the film feels painfully relevant in a post-#MeToo world, the events onscreen actually began in 2015, a year before the last presidential election and two years before the Weinstein scandalbroke. Here’s what to know about the real moments that inspired Bombshell.
In the aftermath of the debate, Trump disparaged Kelly for being tough on him. He retweeted a user who called her a "bimbo" (though in January 2016, he tweeted that he wouldn’t personally call her that word because it “would not be politically correct”) and continued to speak out on CNN.
He said of Kelly, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” The now-president came under fire for the seemingly menstrual comment, but he tried to justify the remark by tweeting that he meant to say blood was coming out of Kelly’s “ nose.”
In late August, as Trump’s criticisms of Kelly continued, Roger Ailes defended the news anchor, calling her performance at the debate “tough but fair,” according to The Washington Post. After nine months of feuding, Trump did sit down with Kelly for a one-on-one interview where they addressed tensions from that first debate and his online jabs at her. Dec 18, 2019
MORE GRIEF HAD SURFACED
Now the network is defending itself against yet another lawsuit alleging a climate of sexual misconduct. These suits have been coming ever since Gretchen Carlson sued Ailes for sexual harassment in July of 2016 and opened the floodgates for numerous other allegations against him. They raise the question: Four years later, how much has really changed at Fox News?
Not much, according to former Fox Business producer Jennifer Eckhart, one of the plaintiffs in the new suit. “It’s safe to say I was paralyzed by fear when I was working there,” she told CBS News in an interview that aired Tuesday. “I don’t know how you could continue to cultivate and foster an environment that rewards sexual predators consistently year after year.”
When Eckhart made a misconduct claim against Fox anchor Ed Henry on June 25, Fox called in an outside law firm and less than a week later decided to fire Henry. Fox executives say the swift action is evidence that the climate at the network has, in fact, changed for the better. The network has worked to reform its culture.
But outsiders continue to harbor doubts. And the complicated legacy of Ailes continues to cast a shadow more than three years after his death.
Ailes launched Fox News in 1996 and ran the network like a mob boss would, rewarding those who were loyal and punishing those who strayed. Employees, who both admired and feared the man, believed he was invincible. When Carlson sued, they expected he would destroy her reputation and keep on running the network.
But the allegations of sexual abuse against Ailes could not be covered up, despite his denials. Once the Murdoch family hired a law firm and started looking around, they found evidence of misconduct everywhere. They forced Ailes out – and it all came to a head on one extraordinary day, July 21, 2016, while the Republican National Convention concluded in Cleveland, Ohio.
The exit negotiations between the Murdochs and Ailes were so tense that the two sides even disagreed on Ailes’ consolation prizes. Ailes claimed in a letter that he would be a “ consultant” to Rupert Murdoch. The Murdoch camp disputed that, and said Ailes would simply “be available to advise Rupert during the transition.” Even that was an exaggeration. Murdoch wasn’t keeping Ailes around in any capacity. But he agreed to pay Ailes $40 million on the way out.
ENTER THE KAHUNA OF BULLSH*T AND LIES
On the afternoon of the 21st, Ailes surrendered control of the Republican party’s top TV channel. In the evening, Donald Trump formally took control of the GOP by accepting the party’s presidential nomination.
The gloomy speech Trump gave that night spoke specifically to Fox’s America – the audience that Ailes cultivated for decades. Trump hit all the “Fox & Friends” themes: Immigration, terrorism, law and order.
“The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end,” Trump declared. “Beginning on January 20th, 2017, safety will be restored.” He also made the laughable claim that “ There will be no lies” at his convention. “ We will honor the American people with the truth, and nothing else,” he said.
One bully boss of the GOP was gone. A new bully boss was in charge. Fox News staffers were in disbelief that Ailes had been deep sixed. They wondered if he would launch a rival network or join the Trump campaign. “When Roger gets knocked down, he wants to get up and swing right back,” a Fox host remarked at the time. But Ailes didn’t have much fight left in him. And Trump didn’t really need his help anymore.
Fox’s first Ailes-free day. Rupert Murdoch led the network’s morning meeting. He managed to sidestep questions about how much he knew, or didn’t know, about Ailes’ mistreatment of employees.
The rot at Fox started at the top, with Ailes, but it didn’t end there. In the months that followed, other men accused of sexual misconduct were also sent packing, including 8 p.m. star Bill O’Reilly.
Most everyone else stayed in the house Ailes built while management tried to clean up his mess. The fallout kept Fox’s lawyers busy for years and cost the company tens of millions of dollars in settlements.
The Murdochs and the management team made some tangible changes: New human resources leadership. A workplace council to address sexual harassment. A new procedure for sexual harassment complaints. A 24/7 hotline. A makeover of the New York newsroom that replaced Ailes’ old bunker of an office.
