David Boies, a Westchester giant that garnered global attention after representing Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, the case that determined the winner of the 2000 election, and his law firm have been fired by the New York Times for allegedly attempting to silence a negative Times article covering movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s numerous sexual harassment allegations. Below, find the most up-to-date information on Boies’ involvement in this still-unfolding story.
• On Monday, the New Yorker reported that Armonk resident David Boies, chairman of the law firm Boies, Schiller and Flexner, contracted with a team of private investigators from intelligence companies Kroll and Black Cube, the latter largely run by former Mossad agents, to try to kill a negative New York Times story about Weinstein. He was working on behalf of Weinstein.
• Boies personally signed the contract with Black Cube to uncover information that would stop the publication of the story.
• One of the private investigators posed as a women’s rights advocate named Diana Filip, emailing Times journalist Jodi Kantor, who along with Megan Twohey first reported that Weinstein had been settling sexual harassment and assault claims for decades, to learn about a story she was writing about Weinstein’s accusers.
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• Boies’ firm has represented the Times on three occasions in the last 10 years, and was defending the publication in a libel suit at the same time it was hiring the private investigators to target its journalists on behalf of Weinstein.
• According to the New Yorker, Boies expressed that working on the two matters did not present a conflict of interest, but contracting with private investigators was a mistake. “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,” said Boies.
• Boies no longer represents Weinstein, according to a statement released on Tuesday.
• The Times had signed a broad waiver acknowledging that Boies’ firm could do work for other clients adverse to the paper’s interest, but acknowledge the action of surveilling their reporters was crossing the line.
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