One of the women included in the New York Times report on three decades worth of sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, Italian model Ambra Battilana, pressed charges with the New York Police Department, accusing Weinstein of groping her at his apartment in March 2015. The next month, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. declined to prosecute Weinstein, saying that "after analyzing the available evidence, including multiple interviews with both parties, a criminal charge is not supported." A few months later, in August, International Business Times reports, a longtime Weinstein lawyer, David Boies, donated $10,000 to Vance's campaign.
Vance was just in the news over his decision not to file felony fraud charges against Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. in 2012, overruling his prosecutors, right after Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz donated $25,000 to Vance's campaign. (Vance returned the $25,000 before meeting Kasowitz, who then raised $50,000 for Vance after he dropped the Trump case.) In this instance, Vance spokeswoman Joan Vollero told IBT, "Boies did not represent Harvey Weinstein in 2015 during the criminal investigation." A spokesman for Boies' law firm noted that Boies has donated to Vance's campaign since at least 2005, and said Boies "has never spoken to him about Harvey Weinstein." According to Variety, Boies is one of Weinstein's lawyers to fight the new claims from The New York Times.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Qatar luxury jet gift clouds Trump trip to Mideastspeed read Qatar is said to be presenting Trump with a $400 million plane, which would be among the biggest foreign gifts ever received by the US government
-
Trump taps Fox News' Pirro for DC attorney postspeed read The president has named Fox News host Jeanine Pirro to be the top federal prosecutor for Washington, replacing acting US Attorney Ed Martin
-
Trump, UK's Starmer outline first post-tariff dealspeed read President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Kier Starmer struck a 'historic' agreement to eliminate some of the former's imposed tariffs
-
Fed leaves rates unchanged as Powell warns on tariffsspeed read The Federal Reserve says the risks of higher inflation and unemployment are increasing under Trump's tariffs
-
Denmark to grill US envoy on Greenland spying reportspeed read The Trump administration ramped up spying on Greenland, says reporting by The Wall Street Journal
-
Supreme Court allows transgender troop banspeed read The US Supreme Court will let the Trump administration begin executing its ban on transgender military service members
-
Hollywood confounded by Trump's film tariff ideaspeed read President Trump proposed a '100% tariff' on movies 'produced in foreign lands'
-
Trump offers migrants $1,000 to 'self-deport'speed read The Department of Homeland Security says undocumented immigrants can leave the US in a more 'dignified way'
