Boies’ firm was fired by the New York Times on Tuesday after revelations of his involvement in helping Harvey Weinstein hire private investigators to spy on and discredit accusers and journalists.
David Boies, the celebrated lawyer at the center of a growing ethical controversy over his simultaneous representation of Harvey Weinstein and the New York Times while the newspaper was investigating the disgraced producer, has defended some of his hardball tactics in an email to staff obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.
Boies’ firm was fired by the Times on Tuesday and a strongly worded statement from the company suggested Boies Schiller and Flexner had helped to create a “secret spying operation aimed at our reporting and our reporters,” which the Times described as “reprehensible.”
In the email to his colleagues at Boies, Schiller and Flexner, Boies confirms that Weinstein was a client of his but was no longer a “client of mine or of the Firm.”
The email reveals that in the first half of 2017 the Weinstein learned that the Times was “considering publishing a story alleging that many years ago Mr. Weinstein had raped an actress.”
Boies says that he told Weinstein “Weinstein that the Times story could not be stopped through threats or influence; the only way that the story could be stopped was by proving it was not true.”
Boies said that neither he nor the firm could represent Weinstein, but as detailed in a New Yorker report published Monday, the firm helped the producer execute a contract and helped arrange payment for private investigators who would then go on to spy and attempt to discredit accusers, including Rose McGowan and journalists investigating the sexual harassment including Times reporter Jodi Kantor.
Boies felt help executing the contract for the private investigators wasn’t unreasonable.
“While I told Mr. Weinstein that I was not in a position to represent him on these issues, his request to contract with investigators seemed at the time, like a reasonable accommodation for a longtime client.”In hindsight, Boies said his decision to help was a mistake. “I regret having done this. It was a mistake to contract with, and pay on behalf of a client, investigators who we did not select and did not control.”
He added: “I…
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