Call & Times

Leaked video: ABC News buried 2015 story exposing Epstein, others

- AP Media Writer

NEW YORK - ABC News faced questions Tuesday about its refusal to air a story exposing alleged sexual misconduct after a leaked video emerged of reporter Amy Robach complainin­g about how her bosses handled an interview with a Jeffrey Epstein accuser.

The media watchdog web site Project Veritas released video of Robach venting that “every day I get more and more pissed” that her 2015 interview with 9irginia Giuffre never made the air. Robach made her remarks late in August while sitting in a Times Square studio with a microphone but not on the air.

ABC claimed Tuesday that the interview didn’t meet its standards because it lacked sufficient corroborat­ing evidence. Robach, co-anchor of ABC’s “20/20” newsmagazi­ne, said the leaked video caught her “in a private moment of frustratio­n.”

The episode was remindful of Ronan Farrow’s accusation­s that NBC News discourage­d his reporting on ollywood mogul arvey Weinstein’s misconduct. Farrow then took his Pulitzer Prize-winning story to the New Yorker magazine.

ABC sought to minimize the comparison, saying it has pursued and aired other stories about Epstein, the New York financier who died Aug. 10 while in police custody on sex traffickin­g charges.

Project Veritas is known for its efforts to expose mainstream media bias, often sending undercover reporters to catch employees making statements that display an anti-conservati­veE bent. But it needed no such help with the Robach video, which Project Veritas said came from an “ABC insider” it would not identify.

The correspond­ent was visibly exasperate­d as she complained that “I tried for three years to get the interview on to no avail and now it’s coming out and it’s like these new revelation­s’ and I freaking had all of it.”

Giuffre, whose maiden name is Roberts, alleged that as a teen, she was forced by Epstein to have sex with prominent men, including Prince Andrew. The prince and Epstein both denied the charges.

In the video, Robach said she was told “who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.”

Robach also revealed in the video that lawyer Alan Dershowitz and the British Royal Palace applied pressure to ABC not to air the interview with Giuffre. She suggested that the network feared that airing the interview would hurt its ability to get interviews with Prince William and . ate Middleton.

She also said the story implicated former President Bill Clinton.

ABC denied that outside pressure had anything to do with its decision to bury the story for four years.

“At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we have never stopped investigat­ing the story,” ABC News said in a statement Tuesday.

Giuffre first outlined her allegation­s against Epstein anonymousl­y in a lawsuit filed in 2009, and she did her first on-the-record interviews about them with the aily Mail in 2011. At the time of ABC’s interview, Giuffre’s lawyers were battling with Dershowitz, who was fighting back against her claim that he was among the men who had sex with her when she was a minor.

While her allegation­s received widespread attention, some news organizati­ons have refused to cover her story because the list of prominent men she accused was long and her allegation­s difficult to independen­tly confirm.

ABC says it plans to air a documentar­y and podcast on the Epstein case some time next year.

It’s still unclear whether Robach’s Giuffre interview will be part of it.

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