“You should be the hero of your story, not the villain. This is very doable.”

Lisa Bloom, whose Twitter bio describes her as “Trial lawyer fighting for victims of discrimination, harassment and abuse,” and who is also the daughter of well-known sexual-abuse attorney Gloria Allred,

was working behind the scenes with [Harvey] Weinstein — at a rate of $895 an hour — to quash the journalists’ investigation and thwart his accusers. In a confidential memo to Mr. Weinstein that Ms. Bloom wrote in December 2016, which is reproduced in “She Said,” she offered to help him damage the reputation of one of his accusers, Rose McGowan, and portrayed her background as a victims’s rights advocate as an asset.

“I feel equipped to help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them,” Ms. Bloom wrote, before laying out a multistep playbook for how to intimidate accusers or paint them as liars. One of Ms. Bloom’s suggested tactics for undermining Ms. McGowan: “We can place an article re her becoming increasingly unglued, so that when someone Googles her this is what pops up and she’s discredited.”

[Alexandra Alter, New York Times; Yashar Ali (text of full memo, including “You should be the hero of the story” quote)]

One Comment

  • This is why people (justifiably) hate lawyers, of which I am one. Evil, do-whatever-it-takes whatever-side-is-paying-me tactics. Ethics and right and wrong be damned. “This is what the client wants” is not a defense against immorality.