We are learning more disturbing allegations involving Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein and how their stories are, in some ways, connected. It’s all part of Ronan Farrow’s new book “Catch and Kill,” which will be released next Tuesday. Variety writes:
Farrow’s most explosive interview in the book is with Brooke Nevils, the former NBC News employee whose complaint about Matt Lauer led to the co-anchor’s firing from the “Today” show in 2017.
At the time, NBC News kept Nevils’ identity anonymous from press reports at her request. The full details of her allegations have not been made public until now.
In the book, obtained by Variety, Nevils alleges that at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Lauer anally raped her in his hotel room.
The Today show addressed the news this morning with an emotional Hoda Kotb remarking, “these are not allegations of an affair, they’re allegations of a crime.”
The Hollywood Reporter writes that Harvey Weinstein knew about Matt Lauer’s alleged behavior and wanted to use it as “leverage” to “bully NBC News into killing” the story Farrow was working on “about the powerful producer’s long-rumored sexual predations:”
This tawdry alliance between AMI (National Enquirer’s parent company) and Weinstein and their alleged collusion to pressure NBC is just one of the bombshell revelations dropped by New Yorker correspondent Farrow in Catch and Kill. Part memoir, part spy thriller, the book is an engrossing account of the dark arts employed by the powerful to suppress their stockpiled bad behavior as well as the cover-up culture that pervades executive suites — many of them at Farrow’s former employer, NBC News.
Variety says it obtained a letter from Lauer’s attorney:
Lauer denies any wrongdoing. “In a new book, it is alleged that an extramarital, but consensual, sexual encounter I have previously admitted having, was in fact an assault,” Lauer says. “It is categorically false, ignores the facts, and defies common sense.”
And Variety quotes this statement from NBC News
“Matt Lauer’s conduct was appalling, horrific and reprehensible, as we said at the time.. That’s why he was fired within 24 hours of us first learning of the complaint. Our hearts break again for our colleague.”
