Following The New Yorker’s latest bombshell exposé detailing Harvey Weinstein’s efforts to suppress his sexual-assault accusers, on Tuesday, the New York Times fired David Boies’s law firm, which had reportedly aided Weinstein in procuring his “army of spies.” The damning New Yorker report claims that Boies, while working for the Times, helped Weinstein write a contract with a private-investigation firm that attempted to block articles revealing the producer’s history of sexual misconduct in the Times and New Yorker. The shocking methods used by the firm include allegedly digging up information about accuser Rose McGowan, and lying to journalists to discover who else the reporters were talking to.
The Times called Boies’s actions in a statement “reprehensible.” The paper wrote, “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.”
Before this scandal, Boies rose to fame for his work in front of the Supreme Court in the legal battle for marriage equality and for defending Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election. According to the Times, Boies attempted to minimize his contribution to Weinstein’s efforts by characterizing his involvement as dealing with a “billing dispute.” However, the contract his firm helped write for Weinstein stated that the objective of the private investigators was to “stop publication of a new negative article in a leading NY newspaper.”
