Report: NBC News Passed on Ronan Farrow’s Bombshell Report of Weinstein Rape Allegations

Ronan Farrow
Monica Schipper/Getty Images for NYFW: The Shows

NBC News passed on a story by contributor Ronan Farrow that it allegedly possessed in August about three separate rape allegations against Harvey Weinstein that eventually appeared in the New Yorker Tuesday, according to a report.

According to the Huffington Post, Farrow’s bombshell Tuesday report — in which three women, including actress Asia Argento, accused the movie mogul of rape — “was in NBC’s hands as recently as August, according to multiple sources both inside and outside the network.”

The Huffington Post reported:

By then, Farrow, an NBC contributor and investigative reporter, had already obtained damning audio of an encounter Weinstein had with a woman, in which Weinstein admits to having groped her… Instead, Farrow’s story — and the audio, from a 2015 New York Police Department sting — appeared Tuesday on the website of The New Yorker.

According to the outlet, NBC had “concerns” with the way Farrow’s story was sourced.

The New Yorker report contained a two-minute audio clip reportedly taken from a 2015 NYPD sting against Weinstein, in which the producer is heard begging a model to enter his hotel room, and appearing to admit to groping women in the past.

After the allegations against Weinstein were made public, Democratic Party politicians, as well as the Democratic National Committee (DNC), have pledged to give away Weinstein’s contributions to charity.

In a statement, the DNC claimed they would give away just $30,000 to left-wing organizations, despite the fact that Weinstein donated nearly $250,000 to the organization since the 1990s.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton issued a statement Tuesday on the allegations against Weinstein, five days after the New York Times first published the story about decades of sexual harassment allegations against him. Weinstein hosted a $33,000-per-plate fundraiser for Clinton at his Manhattan home last year, though it was not immediately clear if the former candidate would return or donate any of the money, as other Democratic politicians have done.

“I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein,” Clinton said in a statement issued through her spokesman, Nick Merrill. “The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior.”

A number of celebrities also spoke out Tuesday about the allegations against Weinstein, including Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck.

In another bombshell report from the New York Times published Tuesday, actresses Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Rosanna Arquette, among others, disclosed their own encounters with Weinstein during the early part of their careers.

 


Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington and Gab @Nash, or like his page at Facebook.

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