#MeToo Heroine Kirsten Gillibrand’s Top Donor Is Law Firm Headed by Long-Time Harvey Weinstein Consigliere
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/03/metoo-heroine-kirsten-gillibrands-top-donor-is-law-firm-headed-by-long-time-harvey-weinstein-consigliere/
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O’Connor told the New York Times that she believes the settlement was a way of attempting to make her accusations disappear after she persisted with the charges. “The first time I spoke out, the message from H.R. was, ‘This is not our problem,’” she told the newspaper. “The second time I spoke up the response was, ‘How can we quickly make this go away?’”
Boies is more deeply tied to Weinstein. The lawyer reportedly met Weinstein in 2001 and discussed the possibility of writing a memoir for Weinstein’s imprint Miramax Books. The memoir, Courting Justice, was published by Weinstein’s company in 2004.
In 2005, Boies helped Weinstein and his brother Bob separate from the Walt Disney Co. He also provided counsel for the Weinsteins after they first formed the Weinstein Co.
The relationship extended well beyond legal advice. Weinstein and Boies co-hosted a private screening in New York for liberal activist Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. The two were seen together having dinner with Hillary Clinton days after her loss against Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election and immediately thereafter Clinton began discussions with Weinstein regarding a TV documentary about her presidential bid. Weinstein was on the invite list for Boies’s 75th birthday bash held at the Wynn Las Vegas in 2016.
Boies’s daughter Mary Regency got one of her first acting credits for her role in Silver Linings Playbook, a film produced in 2012 by the Weinstein Co. Weinstein also acquired the U.S. rights for a Western that was to be executive produced by Boies and produced by his daughter via the Boies/Schiller Film Group, which was formed by Boies and the son of his legal partner, Jonathan Schiller. Boies also reportedly invested a total of $10 million in two Weinstein Co. movies.
Boies finally dropped Weinstein as a client in early November 2017.
Speaking to Ronan Farrow, Boies admitted that he had seen enough red flags that should have alerted him to Weinstein’s treatment of women. “Although he vigorously denies using physical force, Mr. Weinstein has himself recognized that his contact with women was indefensible and incredibly hurtful,” Boies said.
Boies added: “In retrospect, I knew enough in 2015 that I believe I should have been on notice of a problem, and done something about it. I don’t know what, if anything, happened after 2015, but to the extent it did, I think I have some responsibility. I also think that if people had taken action earlier it would have been better for Mr. Weinstein.”
Boies Schiller Flexner has faced accusations of its own related to gender discrimination.
Bloomberg reported:
In 2002, Rachel Baird, a former Boies Schiller Flexner attorney, along with a colleague, sued the firm for gender discrimination. In one incident, Baird describes Boies telling her, the only female attorney in the room, to go downstairs and pay for his cab. At the time, the firm said the claims were without merit; eventually, the women settled for $37,500 each.
Marguerite Hogan, an associate who left the same year as Gilbert, says: “There weren’t a lot of women for me to look up to. When you’re in that situation and there is nobody else around you that’s like you, it can feel a little isolating.”
Around 2005, three attendees reportedly recalled going on the law firm’s weekend retreat in Jamaica, where attorneys were, as Bloomberg described it, greeted “at an evening reception by a woman splayed out on a buffet table with her body covered in chocolate.” Gillibrand was working with at Boies Schiller Flexner at the time, although her campaign did not reply to a Breitbart News question about whether she attended the Jamaica event.
The firm’s general counsel Nick Gravante Jr. said that Boies’s wife Mary, who is also an attorney at the firm, was not amused by the woman on display at the Jamaica event. “Mary right away directed that the woman get off the table,” recalled Gravante, who blamed the hotel for the episode.
Following the negative publicity about his ties to Weinstein, Boies’s law firm upped the number of attorneys on its executive committee from 7 to 11, while Boies was reelected chairman last December.