(Mediaite) Journalist and prominent #MeToo investigator Ronan Farrow says that his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “cooled” after it became clear he was looking into sexual harassment and abuse accusations against disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, a big-time Clinton donor.
“It’s remarkable how quickly even people with a long relationship with you will turn if you threaten the centres of power or the sources of funding around them,” Farrow told the Financial Times, in an interview published on Friday.
FT Associate Editor, Life and Arts Horatia Harrod sat down for lunch with Farrow to discuss #MeToo and “the perils of taking on the powerful.” It is a remarkable look into the pressure felt by Farrow as he pursued men of power, abusing that power, who were working hard to stop him.
Harrod offers a succinct but gripping summary of Farrow’s experiences, told to her in a members only bar in London’s Soho. He felt he was being followed: he was, by an Israeli private intelligence firm. He went to a gun range, having taken advice to arm himself. His concern eventually became so great that he “deposited key recordings and transcripts of his interviews in a Bank of America vault,” writes Harrod. She describes the note atop the evidence pleading it be released in the event something happens to him…
“Things were more personal when it came to Hillary Clinton,” Harrod writes. “In 2011, when Clinton was secretary of state, she appointed Farrow as her special adviser for global youth issues; the pair worked together ‘for years’, he says. But when word got around that Farrow was looking into the Weinstein story, he felt that his relationship with the politician — a beneficiary of donations from the producer — started to cool.”
Harrod asked Farrow whether that was a “painful revelation”.
“It’s remarkable how quickly even people with a long relationship with you will turn if you threaten the centres of power or the sources of funding around them,” Farrow answered.
On Saturday, the Washington Examiner pointed out how this story recalls comments made by Farrow in 2018, in an interview for Good Morning America.
“Hillary Clinton had scheduled an interview while it was at the height of the Weinstein reporting and her folks got in touch and said, ‘We hear you’re working on a big story,’” Farrow told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos. “[They] sounded very concerned and tried to cancel that interview.”
“Over the Weinstein stuff?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Over the Weinstein stuff,” Farrow confirmed.
“Oh, I’m surprised at that,” added Stephanopoulos, who has donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
