ABC bosses scramble after Amy Robach’s comments about Jeffrey Epstein leak
By Sara Nathan, New York Post, November 5, 2019
https://pagesix.com/2019/11/05/abc-bosses-scramble-after-amy-robachs-comments-about-jeffrey-epstein-leak/?_ga=2.143824885.1515189941.1572890199-1434731131.1559411319
Amy Robach and Jeffrey Epstein, Getty Images.
ABC bosses are battling to deal with the fallout from comments made by “Good Morning America” reporter Amy Robach, who was caught on a hot mic claiming network brass scrapped her interview with a Jeffrey Epstein accuser to appease the royal family.
The “GMA” reporter could be heard complaining that she spent three years trying to get the interview with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges she was forced to sleep with Prince Andrew while she was kept as Epstein’s sex slave, on air.
ABC news chiefs swiftly moved on Tuesday to have Robach issue a statement, in which she backtracked on her initial claims.
The anchor said she was “caught in a moment of private frustration” on the video, which was released by the conservative website Project Veritas Sunday and believed to have been taped this July.
In her statement, Robach said she was “disappointed” that her interview with Giuffre, taped in 2015, did not run as it failed to meet ABC’s reporting standards, while insisting that she had never been told to stop reporting on the Epstein scandal.
ABC sources told Page Six Tuesday there was “zero truth” that the interview was held to court favor with the royals, and particularly, as Robach said on camera, to get an interview with Prince William and wife Kate Middleton.
An ABC source said: “A lot of broadcasters can probably empathize. We do have to run everything past standards and practices and there are times when interviews can’t air.
“We needed time to corroborate details, and we were unable to verify a lot of Virginia’s claims.”
This does not, however, answer why ABC did not run the interview at any time after 2015. Giuffre has now made her claims to a variety of media outlets.
In September, she sat down for an exclusive with “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie on rival NBC, alleging that she had sex with Prince Andrew aged 17.
The royal, a former pal of Epstein, has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them “false” and “without foundation”.
“He denies that it ever happened, and he’s going to keep denying that it even happened — but he knows the truth and I know the truth,” Giuffre told Guthrie, adding that the prince was “an abuser, he was a participant.”
In June, The Post reported that ABC news president James Goldston sat at President Trump’s table alongside Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, at a glitzy dinner in London.
Trump and first lady Melania threw the dinner at US Ambassador Woody Johnson’s residence to reciprocate for a lavish state banquet at Buckingham Palace hosted by the queen.
Goldston, who has dual American and British citizenship and is married to BBC anchor Laura Trevelyan, also procured a prestigious invite to the state banquet — which only had 170 guests.
In the comments captured by Project Veritas, Robach can be heard talking to an unnamed colleague on a secretly filmed video about how she thought the Giuffre interview was scraped to due to royal pressure.
“I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air,” she could be heard saying. “First of all, I was told, ‘Who’s Jeffrey Epstein?’ … Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways. … We were so afraid we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will, so I think that had also quashed the story.”
Clearly frustrated, Robach added: “[Virginia] told me everything … She was in hiding for 12 years, we convinced her to come out. We convinced her to talk to us.”
Robach also said that Giuffre connected Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz to Epstein: “It was unbelievable what we had. Clinton. We had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail.”
Both Dershowitz – Epstein’s lawyer – and Clinton were passengers on Epstein’s private jet, logs show.
Giuffre — who claims she was lent to the firebrand attorney for sex by Epstein —is suing Dershowitz after he publicly denounced her as a “serial perjurer,” a “serial liar” and a “serial prostitute.”
ABC said in a statement, “At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we have never stopped investigating the story. Ever since we’ve had a team on this investigation and substantial resources dedicated to it. That work has led to a two-hour documentary and a 6-part podcast that will air in the new year.”
Robach, who also co-anchors “20/20”, said in her statement released Tuesday that she didn’t expect her comments to air, adding: “As a journalist, as the Epstein story continued to unfold last summer, I was caught in a private moment of frustration. I was upset that an important interview I had conducted with Virginia Roberts didn’t air because we could not obtain sufficient corroborating evidence to meet ABC’s editorial standards about her allegations. My comments about Prince Andrew and her allegation that she had seen Bill Clinton on Epstein’s private island were in reference to what Virginia Roberts said in that interview in 2015. I was referencing her allegations — not what ABC News had verified through our reporting.”
Robach continued, “The interview itself, while I was disappointed it didn’t air, didn’t meet our standards. In the years since no one ever told me or the team to stop reporting on Jeffrey Epstein, and we have continued to aggressively pursue this important story.”
In an interview with NPR in August, Giuffre said she was confused about why her 2015 interview with ABC was not broadcast. “I viewed the ABC interview as a potential game-changer,” she said.
“Appearing on ABC with its wide viewership would have been the first time for me to speak out against the government for basically looking the other way and to describe the anger and betrayal victims felt.”
Dershowitz told NPR that he pressed ABC not to publish the interview.
The Robach incident comes after Ronan Farrow alleged that NBC news chief refused to air his reporting on the Harvey Weinstein scandal after the disgraced movie boss complained to bosses.
Project Veritas said on Tuesday that the Robach video was provided by “an ABC insider.”
An ABC source stressed the network continually reported on Epstein before and after Robach’s interview with Giuffre.
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