Ex-Clinton Employee Farrow Says Hillary Changed as Weinstein Scandal Threatened Her Money
The red hot story of sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein led Hillary Clinton to give him the cold shoulder, according to journalist Ronan Farrow.
During an interview published by the Financial Times, Farrow noted the change that came over Clinton, for whom he worked beginning in 2011 when she was secretary of state and whom he said he knew “for years.”
“It’s remarkable how quickly even people with a long relationship with you will turn if you threaten the centers of power or the sources of funding around them,” he said, according to the Washington Examiner.
“Ultimately, there are a lot of people out there who operate in that way. They’re beholden to powerful interests and if you go up against those interests, you become radioactive very quickly,” he said.
“It’s remarkable how quickly even people with a long relationship with you will turn if you threaten… the sources of funding around them.” @RonanFarrow says his relationship with @HillaryClinton changed after his investigation of Harvey Weinstein. https://t.co/jvcsAngs4U
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 29, 2019
Farrow has said before that Clinton kept her distance as Farrow closed in on allegations that Weinstein used his position and power in ways that spawned the #MeToo movement against sexual abuse.
“She attempted to withdraw from an interview that she had committed to for a foreign policy book that I was working on, for which I interviewed every other living secretary of State,” Farrow told Fox News.
“And, before doing so, her staff raised concerns about the fact that I was working on this story about one of her most significant donors — a big bundler of Hollywood money,” he said referring to Weinstein.
The Hollywood executive was a major donor to Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, giving more than $25,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and another $25,000 to the Democratic National Committee, according to The Daily Caller.
According to Insider, Farrow’s book “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators,” includes a 2017 email Farrow reportedly received from Nick Merrill, Clinton’s publicist.
In the email, Merrill wrote that the “big story” he was working on was a “concern for us,” according to the book.
In an interview with Insider, Farrow said he was not seeking to trash Clinton.
“The allegation here is not that Hillary Clinton was seeking to squash the Weinstein story, but the conversation did happen. I do think people can interpret the fact how they will, whether she was nervous about associating with someone who was reporting on a friend of hers who held a lot of power and held the strings to a lot of fundraising,” Farrow said.
As to what level of detail Clinton knew, Farrow said, “there is no reason to believe that Hillary Clinton was aware of the worst and most specific allegations.”
He added that Clinton’s camp knew there were concerns about Weinstein.
“However Lena Dunham and Tina Brown and others have given on the record interviews saying that they specifically warned Clinton’s staff about Harvey Weinstein’s reputation for predation in at least general terms. And said that he would likely be a liability,” he said.
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