Geelong’s Howard named in Weinstein ‘spy’ tale

A FORMER Geelong man has been embroiled in Harvey Weinstein’s “army of spies”.

Reporter Dylan Howard, pictured — who was sacked from Channel 7 amid a chequebook journalism scandal — was enlisted by the disgraced movie mogul to uncover information on those accusing him of sexual assault and harassment, according to The New Yorker.

On Tuesday, claims surfaced the former Western Heights Secondary College student — who is now based in the US and chief content officer at magazine giant American Media Inc — gave information obtained by one of his reporters to Weinstein in an attempt to disprove Rose McGowan’s allegation of rape.

Howard reportedly emailed Weinstein about an off-therecord interview with a woman called Elizabeth Avellan, whose husband left her to start dating McGowan.

In the email, Howard wrote: “I have something amazing ... eventually she laid into Rose pretty hard.”

According to The New Yorker, Weinstein said: “This is the killer. Especially if my fingerprints r not on this.”

In a statement, Howard insisted every action he took was to safeguard AMI.

“I had an obligation to protect AMI’s interests by seeking out — but not publishing — truthful information about people who Mr Weinstein insisted were making false claims against him,” he wrote to the paper.

“To the extent I provided ‘off the record’ information to Mr Weinstein about one of his accusers — at a time when Mr Weinstein was denying any harassment of any woman — it was information which I would never have allowed AMI to publish on the internet or in its magazines.”

He also claimed that he never let his relationship with Weinstein affect his editorial choices.

“I always separated those two roles carefully and completely — and resisted Mr Weinstein’s repeated efforts to have AMI titles publish fav- ourable stories about him or negative articles about his accusers,” Howard said in the statement.

Howard was a sports reporter for the Australian TV network in 2008 but was dumped over the notorious AFL medical records scandal.

Since the bombshell allegations against Weinstein were first published five weeks ago, more than 100 women have come forward and claimed they were sexually abused by him.