On April 20, 2015, the Filipina-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez sat in an office in midtown Manhattan with an eighteen-page legal agreement in front of her. She had been advised by her attorney that signing the agreement was the best thing for her and her family. In exchange for a million-dollar payment from Harvey Weinstein, Gutierrez would agree never to talk publicly about an incident during which Weinstein groped her breasts and tried to stick his hand up her skirt. “I didn’t even understand almost what I was doing with all those papers,” she told me, in her first interview discussing her settlement. “I was really disoriented. My English was very bad. All of the words in that agreement were super difficult to understand. I guess even now I can’t really comprehend everything.” She recalled that, across the table, Weinstein’s attorney was trembling visibly as she picked up the pen. “I saw him shaking and I realized how big this was. But then I thought I needed to support my mom and brother and how my life was being destroyed, and I did it,” she told me. “The moment I did it, I really felt it was wrong.” Weinstein used nondisclosure agreements like the one Gutierrez signed to evade accountability for claims of sexual harassment and assault for at least twenty years. He used these kinds of agreements with employees, business partners, and women who made allegations—women who were often much younger and far less powerful than Weinstein, and who signed under pressure from attorneys on both sides. Weinstein also hid the payments underwriting some of these settlements. In one case, in the nineteen-nineties, Bob Weinstein, who co-founded the film studio Miramax with his brother, paid two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, roughly six hundred thousand dollars today, to be split between two female employees in England who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault. The funds came from Bob Weinstein’s personal bank account—a move that helped conceal the payment from executives at Miramax and its parent company, Disney, as well as from Harvey Weinstein’s spouse. In an interview, Bob Weinstein acknowledged the personal payout but said that his brother had misled him about the reasons behind it. “Regarding that payment, I only know what Harvey told me, and basically what he said was he was fooling around with two women and they were asking for money,” Bob Weinstein told me. “And he didn’t want his wife to find out, so he asked me if I could write a check, and so I did, but there was nothing to indicate any kind of sexual harassment.” A former senior Miramax executive said that it was implausible that Bob Weinstein did not know about the nature of the allegations, which were reported to the company. It has become common practice to use nondisclosure agreements to resolve allegations of sexual misconduct. Some legal experts, including the victim’s-rights attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing some of Weinstein’s accusers, stress that victims may actually prefer such agreements. Allred told me that her firm had represented “thousands” of people who have entered into confidential settlements and said, “some people don’t want their parents, their friends, members of their community to know.” But recent revelations of sexual abuse by powerful men in entertainment, politics, journalism, and other fields have raised questions about whether the use of these agreements should be curtailed, particularly when there is a stark power imbalance between the accuser and the accused. In numerous cases, such agreements have allowed abuses to continue unabated, sometimes for decades. The comedian Bill Cosby and the television personality Bill O’Reilly both repeatedly used secret settlements to resolve allegations of sexual misconduct. Last week, Congresswoman Jackie Speier disclosed that the House of Representatives had paid more than seventeen million dollars to settle two hundred and sixty claims of harassment over the past twenty years (a figure that includes sexual offenses as well as harassment based on race, age, or other factors). Speier is working with a bipartisan group of politicians to introduce federal legislation that would overhaul the way Congress handles harassment claims, including offering better legal counsel to employees with allegations, and removing a long-standing requirement that they sign nondisclosure agreements. “The category of cases where I think we have a problem is the heavy hitters, the rainmakers,” Samuel Estreicher, a professor of law at New York University whose work focusses on employment issues, told me. In cases like Weinstein’s, Estreicher said, “repeat offenders are able to operate under a cloak of silence with the help of nondisclosure agreements.” Zelda Perkins, a former assistant to Harvey Weinstein, was one of the women involved in the sexual-harassment and assault settlement that was underwritten by Bob Weinstein. Even twenty years ago, when the settlement was signed, Perkins recognized that Weinstein was engaging in a pattern of behavior. She fought for—and obtained—requirements specifically intended to prevent Weinstein from continuing to victimize women. The settlement mandated that Weinstein receive treatment from a psychiatrist of Perkins’s choice and that Disney be notified of future harassment settlements made by him. Nonetheless, Weinstein’s misconduct continued, in secret, for decades. “What I want to talk about at this point is not what Harvey did,” Perkins told me. “It’s more about the system that protected him and that enabled him, because that’s the only thing that we can change. Money and power enabled, and the legal system has enabled. Ultimately, the reason Harvey Weinstein followed the route he did is because he was allowed to, and that’s our fault. As a culture, that’s our fault.” Harvey Weinstein’s criminal-defense attorneys, Blair Berk and Ben Brafman, said in a statement, “Because of the pending civil litigation and related investigations, it is inappropriate to respond specifically to each of the unsupported and untruthful insinuations contained in this article. Suffice it to say, Mr. Weinstein strongly objects to any suggestion that his conduct at any time has ever been contrary to law. Be assured that we will respond in any appropriate legal forum, where necessary, and fully expect that Mr. Weinstein will prevail against any claim of legal wrongdoing. Mr. Weinstein categorically denies ever engaging in any non-consensual sexual conduct with anyone and any suggestion that he acted improperly to defend himself against such claims is simply wrong.” 
 
 Gutierrez told me that she had grown up watching her Italian father, whom she described as a “Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde person,” beat her Filipina mother. When Gutierrez tried to intervene, she was beaten as well. (Gutierrez’s father could not be reached for comment.) As an adolescent, Gutierrez became the caretaker of her family, supporting her mother and distracting her younger brother from the violence. “Because of trauma in my past, being touched for me was something that was very big,” she said. Her first concern, she said, was protecting other women from violence. She only signed her secret settlement after her options for criminal justice were shut down. After Gutierrez contacted the police, Weinstein drew upon a network of high-powered defense lawyers, former law-enforcement officials, and private investigators who help the wealthy try to thwart criminal investigations. Unbeknownst to her, Weinstein’s attorneys hired K2 Intelligence, a firm founded by the corporate-intelligence magnate Jules Kroll, and tasked its agents with insuring that the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, did not press charges against Weinstein. One of Weinstein’s defense lawyers, Elkan Abramowitz, whose clients include New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and who is a partner at the firm that formerly employed Vance, oversaw K2’s work. The intelligence firm hired Italian private investigators to dig up information on Gutierrez’s sexual history, according to three individuals with knowledge of its work. (A spokesperson for K2 said that the firm’s work in the Gutierrez case involved only online and public-records searches regarding her past.) The investigators discovered that, as a young contestant in the Miss Italy beauty pageant, in 2010, she had attended a “Bunga Bunga” party hosted by Silvio Berlusconi, who was then the Italian Prime Minister, where he was accused of having sex with prostitutes. The Italian investigators also claimed that Gutierrez engaged in prostitution. (Asked if she was comfortable with The New Yorker printing those allegations, Gutierrez said, “Absolutely.” She flatly denied ever engaging in prostitution. She said she quickly left Berlusconi’s party and later testified as a witness against him when Berlusconi was charged with abuse of power and having sex with a minor. He was acquitted on both charges but later was found guilty in a separate bribery case.) Current and former K2 employees, all of whom had previously worked at the District Attorney’s office, relayed the private investigators' information about Gutierrez in calls to prosecutors. Two K2 employees said that those contacts were part of a “revolving door” culture between the D.A. and high-priced private-investigation firms. Lawyers working for Weinstein also presented a dossier of the private investigator’s findings to prosecutors in a face-to-face meeting. (Joan Vollero, a spokesperson for Vance’s office, said that such interactions with defense attorneys are standard procedure.) When Martha Bashford, the head of the District Attorney’s sex-crimes unit, subsequently questioned Gutierrez, she grilled her about Berlusconi and her personal sexual history with unusual hostility, according to two law-enforcement sources. “They went at her like they were Weinstein’s defense attorneys,” one of the law-enforcement sources told me. (A source from the D.A.’s office who was present for the questioning acknowledged that the meeting focussed on Gutierrez’s past in Italy but said that Bashford was “professional” and not hostile.) Gutierrez remembers being baffled by the line of questioning. She had found the N.Y.P.D. supportive and, at the request of police investigators, had participated in a sting operation in which she met Weinstein and secretly recorded a conversation in which he admitted that he had groped her. “It was weird,” she told me. “I’m, like, ‘What is the connection? I don’t understand. Just listen to the proof.’ ” On April 10, 2015, two weeks after Gutierrez reported Weinstein to the police, the D.A.’s office announced that it wasn’t going to press charges. Two law-enforcement sources told me that the N.Y.P.D. was troubled by the decision, and, shortly afterward, the department’s Special Victims Division conducted an internal review of the last ten criminal complaints in Manhattan stemming from similar allegations, of groping or forcible touching. “They didn’t have a quarter of the evidence we had,” one law-enforcement official said of the other cases. “There were no controlled meets, and only rarely controlled calls.” Yet, the source said, “All of them resulted in arrests.” (Vollero said that many of the arrests cited in the review involved subway groping, including some that were witnessed by police. “Cases involving sex abuse on the subway typically have many more witnesses than other types of misdemeanor sexual abuse,” she said.) Before and after the D.A.’s decision not to press charges, several of Weinstein’s attorneys made donations to Cyrus Vance’s campaigns. All told, Abramowitz, who presented the K2 dossier to the D.A.’s office, has contributed $26,450 to Vance since 2008. In an interview, Abramowitz said that the donations were appropriate. “Cy and I were friends and partners long before Harvey Weinstein came into my life,” Abramowitz told me. “My contributions to his campaign were based on my belief that he is a solid choice for District Attorney.” David Boies, another member of Weinstein’s legal team, donated ten thousand dollars to Vance’s reëlection campaign in the months following Vance’s decision not to press charges. “The idea that my contributions to Cy Vance’s campaign had any relationship to that investigation, I think, is absurd,” Boies told me, adding that he had a close relationship with Vance but never called him about the Gutierrez case. Boies argued that Vance’s office had made a reasonable decision and accused Gutierrez of engaging in prostitution in Italy. “There were transcripts of Italian proceedings where it was described how for years she had performed various sexual acts for various specified amounts of money,” Boies told me. Gutierrez said that any records of the type Boies referred to were a product of her testimony against Berlusconi, who she said used his power to smear her and others involved in the case. “They said that I was a Bunga Bunga girl, that I was having affairs with sugar daddies,” Gutierrez said. “What the hell else were they going to say, that I killed someone? Anyone who knows me knows those things are completely fake.” Gutierrez said that the decision not to press charges shocked her. “We had so much proof of everything,” she recalled. “Everyone was telling me, ‘Congratulations, we stopped a monster.’ ” She began to worry about her future. “I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat,” she told me. New York tabloids, including the New York Post, to which Weinstein had fed stories in the past, had been publishing lurid reports about Gutierrez that mirrored the information in K2’s dossier. “What did I do wrong?” Gutierrez said. “The only thing I did was exposing something bad that happened to me.” The coverage sometimes included photos from Gutierrez’s modelling career. It was as if “just because I am a lingerie model or whatever, I had to be in the wrong,” Gutierrez said. “I had people telling me, ‘Maybe it was how you dressed.’ ” (Gutierrez had dressed in professional office attire to meet Weinstein, with thick tights because of the cold weather.) Gutierrez, who still supports her brother financially, began to worry that she wouldn’t be able to make a living. “My work depends on image, and my image was destroyed,” she said. Attorneys that Gutierrez consulted advised her to accept a settlement. “I felt pressured,” she told me. “I said no at first.” Eventually, however, she relented. “I was forced by the fact that newspapers completely bashed me, by the fact that I was alone, by the fact that I was twenty-two years old,” Gutierrez told me. “I knew if he could move the press in this way, I couldn’t fight him.” Gutierrez said that she knows that many people will judge her harshly for taking the money. “A lot of people are not empathetic,” she said. “They don’t put themselves in the situation.” Gutierrez’s settlement, a copy of which I reviewed, bears Weinstein’s signature and orders the destruction of all copies of audio recordings of Weinstein admitting to the groping. Gutierrez agreed to give her phone and any other devices that might have contained copies of the recording to Kroll, another private-security firm retained by Weinstein. She also agreed to surrender the passwords to her e-mail account and other forms of digital communication that could have been used to spirit out copies. A sworn statement, pre-signed by Gutierrez, is attached to the agreement, to be released in the event of any breach. It states that the behavior Weinstein admits to in the audio tape never happened. “The Weinstein confidentiality agreement is perhaps the most usurious one I have seen in decades of practice,” an attorney familiar with the agreement told me. After the contract was signed, Gutierrez became depressed and developed an eating disorder. Eventually, her brother, who was concerned, came to the United States. “He knew I was really bad,” she said. He took her to Italy and then the Philippines “to start again.” She told me, “I was completely destroyed.” 
 
 Harvey Weinstein had been using similar tactics with women for more than twenty years. Zelda Perkins, the assistant who signed a nondisclosure agreement with Weinstein twenty years ago, in the U.K., said that she also regrets her decision. In recent weeks, she has begun talking to the press, flouting an agreement that she now feels is unjust. “I think it’s a really important symbolic thing to do right now,” she said. “To stand up and question its legitimacy publicly.” Perkins said that while working for Weinstein she experienced nearly constant sexual harassment. “From my very first time left alone with Harvey, I had to deal with him being present either in his underpants or totally naked,” Perkins said. She told me that she had to buy condoms for him and clean up after his hotel-room encounters. “We had to bring girls to him,” she said. “Though I wasn’t aware of it at first, I was a honeypot.” Weinstein, she said, never succeeded in pressuring her into sex or any physical contact, but she called the barrage of advances “exhausting.” In 1998, Perkins hired an assistant of her own. She warned candidates for the job that Weinstein would make sexual advances, and rejected “very overtly attractive” applicants. In the end, she chose a “prodigiously bright” Oxford graduate, who asked not to be named in this story because she fears legal retaliation. In 1998, during the Venice Film Festival, the new assistant emerged from her first meeting alone with Weinstein distraught, saying that he had sexually assaulted her in his hotel room. “She was shaking and she was crying,” Perkins recalled. Perkins confronted Weinstein immediately. “He stood there and he lied and lied and lied,” Perkins recalled. “I said, ‘Harvey, you are lying,’ and he said, ‘I’m not lying; I swear on the lives of my children.’ ” The assistant was too frightened to go to the police, especially in a foreign country. After returning to England, Perkins notified Donna Gigliotti, a producer who worked with them on the Academy Award-winning film “Shakespeare in Love.” Gigliotti, who recalled Perkins coming to her about the incident, told me that she was an outside contractor and “could not report it internally.” Perkins and the assistant resigned from Miramax and sent notice of impending legal action to Weinstein. Their letter set in motion frantic meetings at Miramax, according to former employees, and a fusillade of calls directed at Perkins and the assistant. Perkins said that the night after she resigned she received seventeen calls from Weinstein and other executives with “increasing desperation.” Perkins played me some of the messages, recorded on her answering machine and preserved because she thought she “might need them as protection.” In them, Weinstein veers between anxious pleading and terse demands. “Please, please, please, please, please, please call me. I’m begging you,” he says in one. Perkins and the assistant hired lawyers from the London-based firm Simons Muirhead & Burton. Perkins said that, in hindsight, the attorneys seemed intent on foreclosing any outcome except a settlement. The lawyers told the women that because neither had gone to the police immediately after the incident, reporting the attack at that time was “very clearly not an option.” Perkins said that she asked about reporting the incidents to Michael Eisner, the C.E.O. of Disney, which at the time owned Miramax, because she knew that Weinstein’s relationship with Eisner was under strain. The lawyers dissuaded her from that, too. “They just said, ‘No way. Disney will crush you. Miramax will crush you. They will drag you, your family, your friends, your pets through the mud and show that you are unreliable, insane. Whatever they need to do to silence you.’ ” Perkins said that she felt trapped. “I was, like, ‘Right. O.K. So, we can’t go to police because it’s too late. We can’t go to Disney ’cause they don’t give a shit. So who do we tell? Where’s the grownup? Where’s the law?’ ” (Razi Mireskandari, the managing partner at Simons Muirhead & Burton, declined to comment on the negotiations or the final settlement, saying that the terms of the agreement barred him from discussing it.) Perkins initially pushed back on accepting what she called “blood money,” saying she wanted a donation made to a charity for rape victims. Her attorneys told her that the idea was a nonstarter. “I was a twenty-three- or twenty-four-year-old girl sitting in a room with often up to six men telling me I had no options,” she told me. (She did note that one of her own lawyers was a woman.) “That’s just downright wrong.” In the end, the women’s attorneys agreed on the settlement of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to be evenly split between the two former employees. Unbeknownst to Perkins, the money came from Bob Weinstein’s personal bank account. While Bob Weinstein said that he had no knowledge of the purpose of the payments and has previously maintained that he and the rest of the board found the allegations against his brother to be an “utter surprise,” several former employees said that they found the idea that he lacked any knowledge of the misconduct implausible. “Bob may not have done the things, but he was complicit in covering it up for years,” one said. (Last month, Variety reported that a female showrunner who worked on the Weinstein Company drama “The Mist” accused Bob Weinstein of sexual harassment in 2016. He denied the claim.) The agreement that Bob Weinstein underwrote with Perkins and the assistant required the women to have any of their lawyers, accountants, and therapists who might become aware of the settlement sign their own nondisclosure agreements. One clause required that they personally make calls “to tell people to shut up,” as Perkins put it. But Perkins also successfully demanded that provisions be added to the contract that she hoped would change Weinstein’s behavior. The agreement mandated the appointment of three “handlers,” one an attorney, to respond to sexual-harassment allegations at Miramax. Miramax was obligated to provide proof that Weinstein was receiving counselling for three years or “as long as his therapist deems necessary.” Perkins had to approve the therapist and attend the first session. The agreement also required Miramax to report Weinstein’s behavior to Disney and fire him if a subsequent sexual-harassment settlement was reached in the following two years. But Miramax, Perkins said, “stalled and stalled and stalled.” The company implemented the human-resources changes, but other parts of the agreement were not enforced. She pressed for months, then gave up. “I was exhausted. I was humiliated. I couldn’t work in the industry in the U.K. because the stories that were going around about what had happened made it impossible,” she said. In the end, Perkins moved to Central America. “I’d had enough,” she said. After Perkins decided to go public with her story, some law firms she approached for advice were reluctant to represent her, she told me. One said it worried that doing so would undermine confidence in its own nondisclosure agreements. “It appears fraternizing with me may put these other ‘big hitter’ law firms into a conflicted position,” she said. She has only been able to obtain a few pages of her own legal agreement. Both her former law firm and Weinstein’s continue to adhere to a stipulation that she never personally possess a full copy. Read Two Settlements that Harvey Weinstein Reached with His Accusers Weinstein’s agreements appear to have become more restrictive over time. Prior to his agreement with Perkins, Weinstein reached a hundred-thousand-dollar settlement with the actress Rose McGowan, who has publicly claimed that Weinstein raped her, in 1997, at the Sundance Film Festival. Notably, the agreement did not include a nondisclosure provision, but McGowan signed away her right to sue Weinstein. She said that she wanted to pursue charges at the time, but that her lawyer instead convinced her to sign the agreement. “That was very painful,” McGowan said. “I thought a hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money at the time, because I was a kid.” ||||| The Weinstein Co. exec insists he had no idea about "the type of predator that he was" and is sickened by Harvey’s seeming lack of remorse. "I want him to get the justice that he deserves." 
 
 For nearly 30 years, Bob Weinstein has lived in the shadow of his older brother Harvey. While Harvey, 65, was the very public face of Miramax and then The Weinstein Co. from Sundance to Cannes to Hollywood, palling around with stars and schmoozing Oscar voters, Bob, 62, has served on TWC's board and tended to Dimension, their genre label, turning out movies like the Scream and Scary Movie franchises that routinely made more money than all but Harvey's biggest hits. 
 
 Now, in the wake of the dozens of allegations charging Harvey with three decades of sexual harassment, abuse and even rape, he is out, fired from the company he co-founded with Bob in 2005. And Bob, thrust into an unaccustomed limelight, is forced to try to pick up the pieces amid the growing chaos. He insists that the company — which is expected to undergo a name change — can survive. But four of his fellow board members have resigned, and his COO David Glasser and other key members of his 150-employee staff have yet to commit to stay with the company. Amid widespread predictions that The Weinstein Co. will be forced to shut down or sell all or parts, Bob maintains, "There is a plan to come out on the other side." 
 
 But right now, even as he struggles to right the company (of which he and Harvey each own about 20 percent), Bob is also coping with his own sense of shame and betrayal, expressing sympathy for Harvey's victims while also questioning whether he should have done more in the face of Harvey's alleged abusive behavior. Bob, who worked mostly in Los Angeles while Harvey presided over TWC's New York offices, says he's barely spoken to his brother over the past five years. "I could not take his cheating, his lying and also his attitude toward everyone," he says. While Bob says he knew his brother was unfaithful to wife Georgina Chapman, he insists he had no idea about "the type of predator that he was" and is sickened by Harvey's seeming lack of remorse. "I have a brother that's indefensible and crazy," says Bob, adding, "I want him to get the justice that he deserves." 
 
 Amid the chaos and uncertain future at TWC, Bob agreed to a 45-minute phone interview with The Hollywood Reporter. During the talk, he often became emotional when discussing his brother and the company they co-founded. He refused to discuss certain specifics, such as the claim in The New York Times that he and the board were aware of Harvey's settlements with women during Harvey's most recent contract negotiation, or the fate of certain TWC movies, such as the year-end title The Current War. But he opened up on the personal aspect of the scandal and said he believed the Film Academy should expel his "sick and depraved" brother. 
 
 How do you assess what has happened? 
 
 I find myself in a waking nightmare. My brother has caused unconscionable suffering. As a father of three girls, I say this with every bone in my body — I am heartbroken for the women that he has harmed. I'm a fighter. For my entire adult life, I fought for the films I want to see the light of day. I have fought for my employees, who have dedicated their lives to achieving the vision of this company that me and my brother founded. But I cannot fight what is indefensible. 
 
 The members of the board, including myself, did not know the extent of my brother's actions. I know him on a personal level better than anyone. It's hard to describe how I feel that he took out the emptiness inside of him in so many sick and depraved ways. It's a sickness but not a sickness that is excusable. It's a sickness that's inexcusable. And I, as a brother, understood and was aware as a family member that my brother needed help and that something was wrong. 
 
 I was also the object of a lot of his verbal abuse — at one time physical abuse. And I am not looking for one bit of sympathy from anyone. I do not put myself in the category at all of those women that he hurt. But it's a complicated situation when it's your brother doing the abusing to you as well. I saw it and I asked him to get help for many years. And that's the truth. He avoided getting the help. We begged him. 
 
 This hurts, but I don't feel an ounce of remorse coming from him, and that kills me, too. When I heard his written, lame excuse … Not an excuse. When I heard his admission of feeling remorse for the victims and then him cavalierly, almost crazily saying he was going to go out and take on the NRA, it was so disturbing to me. It was utter insanity. My daughters all felt sick hearing this because we understood he felt nothing. I don't feel he feels anything to this day. I don't. 
 
 One question that is on everybody's mind: He is your brother — how in the world did you not know this was going on? 
 
 First of all, let me tell you something that people don't know. For the last five years, I've probably talked to my brother 10 times on any personal level. That's the fracture that's gone on. Since Dimension started, we ran two separate companies. So many of the people that he does business with — actors, actresses — I've never even met and they know it. I wanted to lead a separate existence. So we were leading two separate divisions. 
 
 I actually was quite aware that Harvey was philandering with every woman he could meet. I was sick and disgusted by his actions. But that's the extent of what [I knew]. I said, "Harvey, you're just cheating. Why do you constantly cheat?" I could see it. But I wasn't in the room with him. 
 
 For me, I thought he was literally just going out there cheating in a pervasive way. It wasn't like he even had a mistress. It was one after another and that I was aware of. But as far as being in a room and hearing the description in The New York Times? No way. No F-in' way was I aware that that was the type of predator that he was. And the way he convinced people to do things? I thought they were all consensual situations. 
 
 I'll tell you what I did know. Harvey was a bully, Harvey was arrogant, he treated people like shit all the time. That I knew. And I had to clean up for so many of his employee messes. People that came in crying to my office: "Your brother said this, that and the other." And I'd feel sick about it. 
 
 Why did you tolerate his behavior? 
 
 Because it didn't rise to a certain level. I would often counsel people and say, "You know what, you have a choice here. Leave. Leave, please leave." I don't know why some of them stayed. So I would just try to mend a broken fence. There is no mending this. This is not a broken fence. [But] I will not quit and leave the business that I built, rightfully so, and leave the films and filmmakers that I was involved in. 
 
 When you guys were negotiating Harvey's 2015 employment contract … 
 
 That I'm not gonna [discuss]. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna be litigated in this article. There is an investigation going on, let that investigation take its course. 
 
 Do you think Harvey should be kicked out of the Academy? 
 
 Yes, I do. I was gonna actually write [to the Academy]. And I will do it. I am gonna write a note to them saying he definitely should be kicked out of the Academy. 
 
 You issued a statement earlier today saying that the company is not for sale despite reports that it could be shut down or its parts sold off. If it's not for sale, what is the plan to salvage this company? 
 
 We are thinking about how to do that. We had an employee meeting the other day, all 180 of the employees. And me and David Glasser addressed them all. Talk about emotions cascading. These innocent people are hurt, so many of them not knowing anything about my brother's behavior. 
 
 But I was touched because — and I did not know this was coming — they said, "We don't want Harvey to have the last word on this company. We want to stay. We believe in the films, we believe in you, Bob, David Glasser, we believe in ourselves. And we definitely don't want to let him win." And that's a part of the human story that nobody is hearing. 
 
 I know they're saying, "Shut this company down." Well, they didn't shut Fox News down, they didn't shut NBC down. My brother is the one that should pay with everything. And I mean literally — whether it's criminal or otherwise — I will be supportive of all of that. But I don't think the people that are the employees of this company or the company itself should pay. 
 
 Harvey was the face of the company. That's what he loves. It's actually part of his whole thing, being famous. This brother is not that brother. This brother made just as much money, ran a successful division, more successful financially than Harvey's. But I'm a different guy and I run it differently and people know it and they know I can be successful and we don't need to do any of the Harvey stuff. And there is a plan. All I'm trying to do right now is go forward, figure out a plan, me and David Glasser and the board members have an idea of what we'd like to do, that we think would be the responsible thing to do for all the critics, rightfully so, with regards to the TWC side and yet for people to keep their jobs. And the pieces of the business that still can be resurrected and continue, we think that they should. 
 
 Do you have a new name for the company? 
 
 We're coming up with one. And it won't be familial, I promise you that. 
 
 Any effort to keep the company going will depend on financial backing. Aren't the finances of this company in trouble? 
 
 We have good enough finances, the banks gave us their support today. 
 
 What does that mean? 
 
 With scandal, sometimes people can just say, "We don't want to be associated." They're supporting us. And in terms of surviving, we have enough good product and things on our slate. We are moving quickly, and there are people interested in participating financially on the condition, rightfully so, that Harvey Weinstein is out for good. 
 
 But you have people like Lin-Manuel Miranda trying to get In the Heights extricated from the company. You have Disney dropping you guys from producing Artemis Fowl. Apple and Amazon have scrapped big TV projects. Collaborators are turning their backs on you. How do you survive that? 
 
 We will, is my answer, and there are a lot of things in process with regards to a lot of those kinds of things that will get resolved in an amicable way and a good financial way. I really don't want to get into the particulars of any one situation. All I can say is that there is a plan to come out on the other side. And also the other side that makes the public rightfully feel happy that what Harvey stood for exists no longer. The public deserves that. The victims deserve that. Everybody deserves that. 
 
 Those bankers, they look at my slate and they know that I've made them money for many, many years. And lately I have had a cold hand, there is no two ways about it, on the Dimension side, but I have a fuckin' great slate coming up and they're aware of it. And this is a business where all the sudden you walk into Stephen King's It one day. And things change. It is that kind of business. I have Six Billion Dollar Man, I'm closing a deal on it. I have Paddington 2, Paddington 3 is coming two years later. I'm back in the wheelhouse of what I've done. 
 
 And when I'm back on, there is money to be made, there's jobs to be had. Harvey knew how to take credit, win his awards. But for me, there are no Academy Awards. Bob's not going to the Golden Globes or the Oscars unless somebody invites me. 
 
 There have been reports that Jay Z might buy Harvey's stake in the company … 
 
 I'd love nothing more than that, but as far as I know, that is not a fact. 
 
 There are predictions for a raft of civil litigation against the company and against Harvey personally. How can the company withstand that? 
 
 That's for lawyers and people like that to go deal with. That's what they do. And things end up getting resolved, they do. My hope is that the community will allow us the time to get it right for those that deserve to continue on. That's all I can say and that's what I'm trying to do. But it's going to take time. I cannot do it in a week. 
 
 Has anyone in Hollywood reached out to you with support? 
 
 Yes, they have. David Glasser had a meeting with David Hutkin, who is the CFO, and the banks have been supportive. They want to see us succeed and they see that there is a product line of many movies on my side, TV shows that have been done. That they say this company can still be viable. And there have been other people that have been supportive, other companies that are doing business with us, that are sticking by us. 
 
 What about the talent agencies? They are going to be key to any company going forward. Have they expressed support? 
 
 There have been men and women, actresses, actors, directors, but especially women I would say, who are so properly disgusted with my brother's actions. Their attitude is when there is finally the entire divorce, when there's the plan in place, when there is the separation in place … 
 
 I have a reputation that's different than Harvey, obviously, and I work differently than him. And David Glasser is his own man. We have our own status in the industry. And they're saying we will give the two of you a chance. You have to make the separation. [With] my brother having contractual financial rights in this company, the divorce is going to be as speedy as we can make it. It's in process. 
 
 But Harvey's going to fight his firing. 
 
 Anybody can do what they want to do. I cannot control other people's actions. But he was fired by the board, okay? I was on that board. I fired him. He can fight. It will be a losing fight. 
 
 He may be fired but he still maintains his ownership interest in the company, correct? 
 
 That is correct and we are going to seek to sever that. It can't be done that quickly. But I am on it 24/7 and so is David Glasser and so is the board of directors that remain and so are the shareholders. This is being dealt with. 
 
 Given your relationship with Harvey, there is a contingent out there who believe that you were responsible for the leak of this information, especially the internal HR memo that made it to The New York Times. Is that true? 
 
 That's totally untrue. I could take a lie detector test on that. I didn't and, you know, Harvey is suspicious of everybody. People that are liars — lying to his wife, to his children, to everyone — well, they have to turn around and say, "Who stabbed me?" It's unbelievable that even to this moment he is more concerned with who sold him out. I don't hear concern or contrition for the victims. And I want them to hear that. Harvey has no remorse whatsoever. I have spoken to him two times [since news broke], hoping to hear, "Oh, my God, what have I done?" I didn't hear that. 
 
 What did you hear? 
 
 I heard a guy who still was fighting to get back and I was disgusted by it. Do you know how disgusted I am? I divorced my brother five years ago. Literally. And those that know me personally in this company understood how I could not take being around him on any level. And certainly my daughters and my family knew it. I could not take his cheating, his lying and also his attitude toward everyone. I had to divorce myself to survive. Nobody is perfect. I'm not perfect. If I made mistakes, I apologize to everyone for not standing up stronger and sooner. But if you want to take my head and the company's and everybody else's. … If I lose at the end of the day, then I lose it. But I'll fight for what I believe is right. And I'll apologize for my own lack of strength at times. 
 
 Do you believe that the 2015 incident with model Ambra Battilana and the NYPD investigation derailed the deal for ITV to acquire the company's TV division? 
 
 Again, this is where I draw the line in terms of getting into a specific. I don't want to comment on that kind of specific. 
 
 I'll ask a general question then: Do you believe that Harvey's antics hurt the business in the past? 
 
 I'm being honest. I don't know what hurt or didn't. I haven't had a relationship with him as a brother for many, many years. But I'm ashamed that he is my brother, to be honest, and I am ashamed that these are his actions. I'm not thinking at this moment about dissecting what may or may not have affected any past situation. I'm so in the here and now and feel sick. 
 
 Mira Sorvino came out and told her story [in The New Yorker]. I have been a personal friend of Mira for the last several years. We reconnected when I rented a house in Malibu. Mira, her husband and her kids have come over and spent many hours together with us. [But] she never told me. And now I literally was texting with her, and she said, "Are you mad at me?" And I said, "Mad at you? I'm so proud of you, but I feel sick that you had to hold that kind of thing in." 
 
 [Harvey] should never be allowed back, ever. Ever. He lost his rights. He didn't lose his rights to be rehabilitated as a human being. But as far as being in this town again? I mean, give me a break. 
 
 What do you think Harvey will do with the rest of his life? 
 
 He lived for this business and he lived for the outside [persona]. There were no insides to this, as far as I can see. So unless there becomes an inner person inside there, I have no idea what he'll do. 
 
 Will you cooperate with any police investigation? 
 
 A hundred percent, if it came to that. If I had anything to offer, I would. A hundred percent. 
 
 There have been stories that once, when Harvey got physical with you, he broke your nose? 
 
 He didn't break my nose, but he got physical and there were several people there, and he assaulted me. And I should've done something then. 
 
 Why did you not? 
 
 All I can tell you is it's like asking any other victim why they didn't stand up. I regret that beyond all measure. I live with that. That was a defining moment for me of cowardice on my own part. Not easy to live with. It doesn't absolve me of my own cowardice, but this is the thing that happens, this is the nature of that whole syndrome. And it's disgusting on every level. But hopefully, the more it's talked about — I was happy when people started to come out. It made other people braver. 
 
 Well, you've had some anger issues in the past as well … 
 
 Yes, but I've done my work. Without getting into details, I've done enough work, and I've faced my own self. There are those that do the work and those that don't. I did it. I'm not that guy and that's not the way I operate. 
 
 Any last thing you'd like the entertainment community to hear from you with regard to this situation? 
 
 I'm mortified and disgusted by my brother's actions. And I am sick for the victims. And I feel for them. I feel for them. ||||| A female showrunner who worked on the Weinstein Co. drama “The Mist” has accused Bob Weinstein of sexual harassment during the production of the Spike TV series. 
 
 Amanda Segel, an executive producer of “Mist,” said Weinstein repeatedly made romantic overtures to her and asked her to join him for private dinners. The harassment began in the summer of 2016 and continued on and off for about three months until Segel’s lawyer, David Fox of Myman Greenspan, informed TWC executives — including COO David Glasser — that she would leave the show if Bob Weinstein did not stop contacting her on personal matters. 
 
 “ ‘No’ should be enough,” Segel told Variety. “After ‘no,’ anybody who has asked you out should just move on. Bob kept referring to me that he wanted to have a friendship. He didn’t want a friendship. He wanted more than that. My hope is that ‘no’ is enough from now on.” 
 
 A representative for Bob Weinstein denied that he engaged in any inappropriate behavior in a statement to Variety. 
 
 “Bob Weinstein had dinner with Ms. Segel in LA in June 2016. He denies any claims that he behaved inappropriately at or after the dinner. It is most unfortunate that any such claim has been made,” the statement said. 
 
 Related Ben Brafman Drops Out of Harvey Weinstein Rape Case Harvey Weinstein's Defense Attorney Ben Brafman to Withdraw 
 
 Bert Fields, a lawyer for Bob Weinstein, also issued a strong denial on Weinstein’s behalf. 
 
 “Variety’s story about Bob Weinstein is riddled with false and misleading assertions by Ms. Segel and we have the emails to prove it, but even if you believe what she says it contains not a hint of any inappropriate touching or even any request for such touching,” Fields said. “There is no way in the world that Bob Weinstein is guilty of sexual harassment, and even if you believed what this person asserts there is no way it would amount to that.” 
 
 A rep for the Weinstein Co. denied that Glasser was contacted by Segel’s lawyer, a source close to Glasser said in fact the COO had communicated with Segel but his involvement in addressing the situation was minimal. 
 
 Spike TV in a statement said: “We take all allegations of this nature very seriously, and are investigating.” 
 
 Segel’s revelation about her experience with Bob Weinstein comes on the heels of explosive allegations of sexual assault and harassment by his older brother and longtime business partner, Harvey Weinstein. More than 30 women have come forward with allegations that paint a pattern of behavior by Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual predator. The scandal resulted in Harvey Weinstein being fired by the board of the Weinstein Co. and has sent the company into a tailspin, with creative partners and networks working to distance themselves from the company. 
 
 Meanwhile, this week, Bob Weinstein has publicly decried his brother’s actions and claimed that he was unaware of the severity of the allegations, which include at least two allegations of rape. But the disclosure from Segel raises serious questions about Bob Weinstein’s comportment with female colleagues. Segel’s experience on “The Mist” left her shaken and angry. 
 
 The intense media focus on disturbing allegations surrounding Harvey Weinstein sparked renewed frustration for Segel. She knows from previous experience that sexual harassment and discrimination against female writers is widespread in television. After much consideration of the potential risk to her career, Segel decided to go public with her Bob Weinstein experience in an effort to help raise awareness of the extra burden that women often face and to encourage the industry to put a stop to behavior that has too often been seen as part and parcel of the high-pressure business of producing a TV show. 
 
 Segel’s discomfort with Bob Weinstein began in June 2016 when he invited her out to dinner in Los Angeles, at Dan Tana’s restaurant. Segel had been told by coworkers that Bob Weinstein had inquired with them whether she was single. She agreed to go to dinner with him in an effort to establish a professional relationship with the head of the company behind “The Mist.” 
 
 During the dinner, Weinstein asked Segel highly intimate questions and made romantic overtures to her, according to Segel. He wanted to know her age because he told her he didn’t want to date anyone younger than his daughter. He told Segel that he was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel because his daughter was staying at his home in Los Angeles. 
 
 About halfway through the dinner, Weinstein asked Segel if she would drive him back to the hotel so that he could let his driver go for the night. Segel agreed. When she took him to the Sunset Boulevard hotel, he asked her to come up to his room. She declined. 
 
 After that night, Weinstein began sending emails to Segel with questions that were outside the scope of work on “The Mist.” He said he wanted them to be friends. She said that was possible but in a non romantic way, and reiterated that she was not open to dating. 
 
 In a scenario that echoes some of the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Segel asserts that during this period Bob Weinstein invited her to a house he’d rented in Malibu for a party. When he called Segel to tell her the address of the house, she gathered that it was not a party but an invitation for the two of them to be alone. She did not attend. 
 
 Bob Weinstein continued to ask Segel out to dinner between June and August of 2016 joking at times that he was her boss and could fire her if she didn’t agree. Segel agreed to another dinner with him in which she was accompanied by “Mist” executive producer and writer Christian Torpe. Weinstein was clearly unhappy with Torpe’s presence at the dinner, according to Segel. 
 
 Eventually, Weinstein stopped the unwanted attention toward Segel. During a notes conference call with network executives about the show, Segel says Weinstein became angry and screamed at Segel over a production issue that she says was out of her control. When questioned about the outburst by others on the call, Segel expressed her view that she had been sexually harassed by Weinstein for three months. After that incident, Segel had her lawyer contact TWC executives with the ultimatum that she would leave the show if Weinstein did not stay away from her. 
 
 After much back and forth between Segel, her lawyer and TWC executives, an agreement was reached that Segel would continue her work on the show but arrangements were made that she was never to be in the same room as Weinstein or on telephone calls with him, an agreement that was honored by Weinstein. It was also agreed that TWC would let Segel out of its option to keep her on the show if it was picked up for a second season. 
 
 Fox declined to comment, citing “the possibility of litigation involving the Weinstein Company.” 
 
 “The Mist,” a fantasy thriller based on the Stephen King novella, had a 10-episode run that wrapped in August. The show was not renewed by Spike TV for a second season. 
 
 At present, Segel is working on a new series, in a work environment she described as pleasantly low-key, and focused on developing her own projects. ||||| The deal by Maria Contreras-Sweet announced late Thursday to buy assets of the Weinstein Co. means that the banks that are holding $225 million in debt will take a haircut — but it could end up saving most of the studio’s 200 jobs. 
 
 The deal was made while a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will continue against the company and disgraced cofounder Harvey Weinstein. 
 
 Terms of the deal — the specifics of which were still being finalized at press time — were not disclosed, but some of the cash to be paid by the Contreras-Sweet-led group will go to set up a fund to compensate victims of Weinstein’s alleged sexually predatory behavior. 
 
 Weinstein resigned from the company but insisted the multitude of claims of sexual harassment and assault from Hollywood stars to lowly staffers were unfounded. 
 
 An earlier deal to sell the entire TWC to Contreras-Sweet for $500 million, which blew up when Schneiderman filed his lawsuit, called for a compensation fund of around $50 million, sources said. 
 
 The fund in the latest deal was increased to around $90 million, sources said. 
 
 “As I made clear from the start, our office will support a deal that ensures victims will be adequately compensated, employees will be protected moving forward, and those who were responsible for misconduct at TWC will not be unjustly rewarded,” Schneiderman said in a statement. 
 
 “As part of these negotiations, we are pleased to have received express commitments from the parties that the new company will create a real, well-funded victims compensation fund, implement HR policies that will protect all employees, and will not unjustly reward bad actors,” the statement continued. “We will work with the parties in the weeks ahead to ensure that the parties honor and memorialize these commitments prior to closing. Our lawsuit remains active and investigation remains ongoing at this time.” 
 
 If no deal was reached to sell TWC, it was likely headed to Chapter 11 where the bank creditors were likely to have gotten a more drastic haircut and, perhaps, a much smaller compensation fund would have been established, sources said. 
 
 David Glasser, the studio’s former chief operating officer, who was tipped to become CEO in a restructured company, was singled out in Schneiderman’s suit for not protecting the company’s employees from a hostile work environment. 
 
 His ouster from the company could have paved the wave for Contreras-Sweet reaching a deal with the AG. 
 
 Glasser was said to be close to Yucaipa Cos.’ Ron Burkle , a backer of the Contreras-Sweet bidding group.
– Ronan Farrow continues his investigation into Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault and harassment settlements with a new piece in the New Yorker, offering the strongest evidence yet that Weinstein's brother and Weinstein Company partner was in the know. Though Bob Weinstein has denied prior knowledge of allegations from more than 75 women, Farrow reports roughly $600,000 paid to two British accusers 20 years ago came from Bob's personal bank account. Bob, who was operating Disney's Miramax with Harvey at the time, confirms the payment but says he only agreed because Harvey said "he was fooling around with two women" who wanted money "and he didn't want his wife to find out." The payment was also hidden from Disney, but Bob says "there was nothing to indicate any kind of sexual harassment." While Bob Weinstein remains as head of the Weinstein Company, a $275 million bid for its assets led by Maria Contreras-Sweet, former head of the US Small Business Administration, would see 51% of the company controlled by women, reports Deadline. Such a change might be necessary, according to the Weinstein Company's remaining board members, financier Tarak Ben Ammar and director Lance Maerov. They tell Fortune Weinstein should've been fired in 2015 for alleged misuse of company funds but was protected by billionaire friends and board members, including James Dolan and Dirk Ziff. That same year, Filipina-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez says she received a $1 million settlement after Harvey groped her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt, per the New Yorker. Three other accusers discuss allegations of their own, with each other, at Slate.