“We learned today that the law firm of Boies Schiller and Flexner secretly worked to stop our reporting on Harvey Weinstein at the same time as the firm’s lawyers were representing us in other matters,” the NYT said in a statement Tuesday evening. “We consider this intolerable conduct, a grave betrayal of trust, and a breach of the basic professional standards that all lawyers are required to observe. It is inexcusable and we will be pursuing appropriate remedies.”
“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. Such an operation is reprehensible,” NYT spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said. “Whatever legalistic arguments and justifications can be made, we should have been treated better by a firm that we trusted.”
Boies has donated millions to Democratic candidates and causes over the years, including a donation of more than $1 million to former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, and hosted a fundraising dinner for Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 election.
Black Cube would get $300,000 for providing “intelligence which will directly contribute to the efforts to completely stop the Article from being published at all in any shape or form,” Farrow reported.
Boies said he did not oversee Black Cube’s work directlly, and regretted the decision to contract with the intelligence firm.
“We should not have been contracting with and paying investigators that we did not select and direct,” Boies told The New Yorker. “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.”
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