Celebrated Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been sexually harassing women for decades, paying out at least eight settlements to women who accused him of sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact, the New York Times reported Thursday in a bombshell story.Weinstein has since announced plans to sue the Times, his lawyer, Charles Harder, told the Hollywood Reporter, calling the story “saturated with false and defamatory statements.“It relies on mostly hearsay accounts and a faulty report, apparently stolen from an employee personnel file, which has been debunked by 9 different eyewitnesses,” Harder, best known for representing Hulk Hogan in the lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker, explained in an email to the publication. “We sent the Times the facts and evidence, but they ignored it and rushed to publish.”But Weinstein may soon be fending off suits of his own.“Women have been talking about Harvey amongst ourselves for a long time, and it’s simply beyond time to have the conversation publicly,” actress Ashley Judd told the Times.Judd said she was sexually harassed by Weinstein, detailing for the paper an encounter where Weinstein asked her to meet with her in his hotel room after a night of shooting. There, Judd says, Weinstein tried to give her a massage and her to watch him take a shower. Judd says she refused.“I said no, a lot of ways, a lot of times, and he always came back at me with some new ask,” Judd told the Times. “It was all this bargaining, this coercive bargaining.”The Times’ report is based on interviews with dozens of former and current employees who say they knew of Weinstein’s behavior — though few confronted him about it — and legal records, internal documents, and emails from Weinstein’s two businesses, the Weinstein Company and Miramax. Eight women told the Times that Weinstein had either asked for a massage, starting massaging them without permission, gotten naked in front of them, or bathed in their presence.According to the Times, Weinstein’s behavior over the years worried some board members of the Weinstein Company, but an attempt to launch an internal inquiry into one allegation died after the woman settled, withdrawing her complaint. That woman, Lauren O’Connor, also declined to speak with the Times.Sources told the Times that Weinstein often paid women no more than $150,000 to settle disputes. Others colleagues told the Times they had never seen Weinstein behave that way and were unaware of the rumors.“I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it. Though I’m trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go,” Weinstein told the Times in a statement, in which he also apologized for “the way I’ve behaved in the past with colleagues.”His statement also quoted lyrics from Jay-Z’s latest album and mentioned that Weinstein is “making a movie about our President, perhaps we make it a joint retirement party.”There’s already been some fallout from the Times’ report: Instead of using the $2,700 that Weinstein donated to his re-election committee, Vermont’s Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy has announced he will give it away to charity. Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, will also be donating the entirety of Weinstein’s $2,700 contribution to his re-election campaign, a spokesperson for Blumenthal told VICE News. That contribution — all of the money Blumenthal has ever received from Weinstein — will go to the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence.
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