The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow reported Monday that lawyer David Boies, working on behalf of Weinstein, contracted with a team of private investigators, including former Mossad agents, to try to kill a negative New York Times story about Weinstein. Boies firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, has represented the newspaper three times in the last 10 years. The firm was reportedly defending the Times in a libel suit at the same time it was hiring private investigators to target its journalists.
“We never contemplated that the law firm would contract with an intelligence firm to conduct a secret spying operation aimed at our reporting and our reporters,” the Times said in a statement obtained by Politico’s Michael Calderone.
“Such an operation is reprehensible ... we should have been treated better by a firm that we trusted,” the statement continued.
NYT terminates relationship with David Boise over his “reprehensible” work for Weinstein to spy on paper’s reporters pic.twitter.com/sjiUPpyxeF
Boies ― best known for representing Al Gore in the disputed 2000 presidential election and for fighting California’s same-sex marriage ban all the way to the Supreme Court ― told Farrow that working on the two matters did not present a conflict of interest. But contracting with private investigators was a mistake, he said.
“We should not have been contracting with and paying investigators that we did not select and direct,” Boies told Farrow. “At the time, it seemed a reasonable accommodation for a client, but it was not thought through, and that was my mistake. It was a mistake at the time.”
In a statement released on Tuesday obtained by the Times, Boies clarified his relationship with Weinstein, whom he no longer represents. He said he executed the contract with the investigators, but he did not select them or direct their work, nor was he formally representing Weinstein in this matter.
“Had I known at the time that this contract would have been used for the services that I now understand it was used for, I would never have signed it or been associated in any way with this effort,” Boies said.
Though the Times signed a broad waiver acknowledging that Boies’ firm could do work for other clients adverse to the paper’s interest, the hiring of agents directed to surveil their reporters was crossing a line, the newspaper’s statement made clear.
Farrow’s New Yorker story detailed how one of the agents, posing as a women’s rights advocate named Diana Filip, emailed Times reporter Jodi Kantor in an effort to learn about a story she was writing about Weinstein’s accusers. Kantor, along with Megan Twohey, first reported that Weinstein had been settling sexual harassment and assault claims for decades.
The most chilling detail about "Diana Filip," the Harvey spy who tried to trick me, Rose and Ronan: she posed as a women's rights advocate.
Affluent Americans may want to double-check how much of their bank deposits are protected by government-backed insurance. The rules governing trust accounts just changed.
Former NBA guard Darius Morris has died at the age of 33. He played for five teams during his four NBA seasons. Morris played college basketball at Michigan.
Jason Fitz, Charles Robinson and Frank Schwab talk about which quarterback rooms concern them and which they find interesting heading into the 2024 NFL season.
Teams have made their big splashes in free agency and made their draft picks, it's time for you to do the same. It's fantasy football mock draft time. Some call this time of year best ball season, others know it's an opportunity to get a leg up on your competition for when you have to draft in August. The staff at Yahoo Fantasy did their first mock draft of the 2024 season to help you with the latter. Matt Harmon and Andy Behrens are here to break it all down by each round and crush some staff members in the process.
It’s key to note that we’re not saying the “best team” or “best roster.” Instead, we’re talking about the best confluence of factors that can outline a path for survival and then success.
With free agency and the draft behind us, what 32 teams look like today will likely be what they look like Week 1 and beyond for the 2024 season. Matt Harmon and Scott Pianowski reveal the post-draft fantasy power rankings. The duo break down the rankings in six tiers: Elite offensive ecosystems, teams on the cusp of being complete mixed bag ecosystems, offensive ecosystems with something to prove, offenses that could go either way, and offenses that are best to stay away from in fantasy.
Jake Mintz & Jordan Shusterman discuss the Padres-Marlins trade that sent Luis Arraez to San Diego, as well as recap all the action from this weekend in baseball and send birthday wishes to hall-of-famer Willie Mays.
In the most anticlimactic way possible, Nintendo on Tuesday confirmed years of rumors: The Nintendo Switch 2 console is on the way. "We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year," wrote Shuntaro Furukawa, the president of Nintendo, on X. Rather, Furukawa wanted to warn users not to expect the actual announcement in next month's Nintendo Direct livestream.