archived recording I was at a dinner in New York City one night with a bunch of friends, and I sat down at the table at an empty seat. And he came up behind me and said, I think you’re in my seat. And I recognized him immediately.

[music]

archived recording 1 I was a very young actor new to Los Angeles. archived recording 2 It was my first job also out of college, and I was 24 years old. My passion all my life was to work in the film industry. archived recording 3 And he was completely — I mean, he’s really charming when he wants to be. archived recording 4 We had been in touch about an audition for a Quentin Tarantino film, and that’s when I met with him at the Peninsula. archived recording 5 He had his assistant call me at the last minute and say, Harvey can’t meet you in the lobby. Harvey can’t meet you in the cafe. Can you go up to his office, his hotel suite? archived recording 6 That’s when he said, well, come and see me at my hotel. archived recording 7 And he told me, O.K., we’re going to my room now. archived recording 8 I opened the door, and he just went straight into my bedroom. archived recording 9 He wanted to know if I was cool and if we were friends, and he just wanted to relax with me. archived recording 10 After some normal conversation — archived recording 11 He said, how about you just give me a massage? archived recording 12 He asked me if I’d give him a massage. archived recording 13 He asked me to give him massage. archived recording 14 Which I declined. archived recording 15 And I thought it would end there, but that’s when he blocked the exit for me. archived recording 16 His whole affect changed, and he looked like a predator. archived recording 17 I just remember that feeling of having to fight off an invader. archived recording 18 If I would try to fight myself away from him, he would then move around to a place where he could block me in somewhere. And he’s a big individual. archived recording 19 He just is very dominant, persuasive. archived recording 20 He’s a very big guy. archived recording 21 He backed me into a dark room. archived recording 22 He led me to his bathroom. archived recording 23 He pushed me back against the bed. archived recording 24 Pleading that I just watch him masturbate. archived recording 25 He held me down, and he forced oral sex on me. archived recording 26 And I was petrified and terrified. archived recording 27 I pulled my arm away, finally, and headed to the door. He started following me and telling me that I could get a three-picture deal and that he would greenlight my script. But I had to watch him masturbate. archived recording 28 A nightmare — literally a nightmare.

[music]

michael barbaro

The story of Harvey Weinstein was a story of patterns. Dozens of women — more than 80 — all telling a very familiar and eerily similar story of abuse and harassment by the famed movie producer. But this week, two years after that pattern of allegations was first reported in The Times by my colleagues Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, there are just two women at the center of the criminal case against him as his trial opens in Manhattan. Today, in Part 1, Megan Twohey on how we got from 80 to 2. It’s Thursday, January 9. Megan, help us understand how, after these dozens of allegations against Harvey Weinstein, the charges that he’s facing in this trial center on just two women.

megan twohey

Well, after we broke our first Harvey Weinstein story, and then Ronan Farrow published his first story in The New Yorker, there were these dozens of women who came forward with accusations.

michael barbaro

Right.

megan twohey

And there were three jurisdictions —

archived recording Some major developments in the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal, New York —

megan twohey

— New York —

archived recording — police say they are now investigating rape allegations —

megan twohey

— Los Angeles —

archived recording The L.A. County district attorney’s office is determining if Weinstein should be charged.

megan twohey

— and London —

archived recording And the BBC is reporting police in England are now investigating an allegation against him as well.

megan twohey

— that responded by launching criminal investigations. And that’s because the vast majority of allegations that were coming out were centered in those three jurisdictions. But even as they launched these criminal investigations, there were questions about whether or not they would be able to bring criminal charges.

michael barbaro

And why would that be, given the overwhelming number of these allegations that are now surfacing?

megan twohey

Well, there are several reasons that explain that. First, a lot of these allegations were of inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment, which is illegal under civil law, but it’s not a sex crime. You’re never going to be prosecuted for it. Other allegations of actual sex crimes fell outside the statute of limitations for prosecution. And there were women who had really serious allegations who were reluctant to participate in a criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution. But from the beginning, New York, in particular, was very intent on bringing a prosecution.

michael barbaro

And why is that?

megan twohey

Well, that’s because they had actually investigated Harvey Weinstein once before in 2015. That was the year that a model from Italy walked into a New York City police precinct and reported that Harvey Weinstein had groped her breast and tried to force his hand up her skirt during a work meeting at his office. And she worked closely with the police at that time. She actually wore a wire into a follow-up meeting with Weinstein that captured what sounded like a confession to at least some of what she had alleged.

archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) What do we have to do here? archived recording (harvey weinstein) Nothing. I’m going to take a shower. You sit there and have a drink, water. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I don’t drink. Can I stay on the bar? archived recording (harvey weinstein) No, you must come here now. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Please? archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No, I don’t want to. archived recording (harvey weinstein) I’m not doing anything with you, I promise. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I know. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Now you’re embarrassing me. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I’m sorry. I cannot. archived recording (harvey weinstein) No, come in here. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No, yesterday was kind of aggressive for me. archived recording (harvey weinstein) I know. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I need to know a person to be touched. archived recording (harvey weinstein) I won’t do a thing. Please. I swear I won’t. Just sit with me. Don’t embarrass me in the hotel. I’m here all the time. Sit with me. I promise — archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I know, but I don’t want to. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Please sit there. Please. One minute. I ask you — archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No, I can’t. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Go to the bathroom. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Please, I don’t want to do something I don’t want to. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Go to the bath — hey, come here. Listen to me. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I want to go downstairs. archived recording (harvey weinstein) I’m not going to do anything, and you’ll never see me again after this, O.K.? That’s it. If you embarrass me in this hotel where I’m staying — archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I’m not embarrassing you. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Just walk — archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) It’s just that I don’t feel comfortable. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Honey, don’t have a fight with me in the hallway. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) It’s not nothing, it’s — archived recording (harvey weinstein) Please, I am not going to do anything. I swear on my children. Please, come in. On everything. I’m a famous guy. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I’m feeling very uncomfortable right now. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Please come in now. And one minute. And if you want to leave when the guy comes with my jacket, you can go. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Why yesterday you touch my breast? archived recording (harvey weinstein) No, please. I’m sorry. Just come on in. I’m used to that. Come on — archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) You’re used to that? archived recording (harvey weinstein) Yes, come in. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No, but I’m not used to that. archived recording (harvey weinstein) I won’t do it again. Come on. Sit here. Sit here for a minute, please.

megan twohey

But in spite of that recording and the woman wanting them to prosecute, the district attorney’s office declined to bring charges against Weinstein at that time. They said that they felt like a shifting account that she had provided about an alleged sexual assault in Italy years earlier would make her seem not credible on the witness stand. So then, in 2017, as the Harvey Weinstein story is exploding, this case comes back into public focus.

archived recording D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr. was mobbed by reporters, who asked whether Weinstein’s wealth and fame influenced his decision not to press charges.

megan twohey

There are so many questions about Cy Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, and why he didn’t prosecute Harvey Weinstein in 2015.

archived recording D.A. Vance, did you not have the evidence you need? Was this not a slam-dunk case? archived recording (cyrus vance jr.) If we had a case that we felt we could prosecute, and my experts felt we could prosecute, against Harvey Weinstein, we would have.

megan twohey

A lot of people are accusing him, saying that he had succumbed to the power and influence of Weinstein —

archived recording Critics say financial contributions by Weinstein’s lawyers to Vance’s campaign could have played a role in the D.A.‘s decision.

megan twohey

— and had allowed this alleged predator to slip through the cracks.

michael barbaro

And so that is what left New York in a position, I guess, where, by 2017, they feel all this pressure to aggressively pursue these new allegations against Weinstein?

megan twohey

They’re feeling a lot of pressure. And so even with all of those challenges to bringing a sex crimes charge, they are on the hunt for an allegation that will allow them to make an arrest.

megan twohey I’m going to put my headset on. lucia evans Oh, yeah. Megan, I just have some notes on my phone I’m just going to, like, keep open if I need them. megan twohey Sure, totally.

megan twohey

And so they quickly zoom in on this account of a sexual assault from 2004 that had been made in Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker article by a woman named Lucia Evans.

megan twohey Just please — lucia evans O.K. megan twohey — please feel free to read at your — lucia evans Lucia Stoller, now Lucia Evans, was approached by Weinstein at Cipriani Upstairs, a club in New York, in 2004, the summer before her senior year at Middlebury College. Evans, who is now a marketing consultant, wanted to be an actress, and although she had heard rumors about Weinstein, she let him have her number. Weinstein began calling her late at night, or having his assistant call her, asking to meet. She declined, but said that she would do readings during the day for a casting executive. Before long, an assistant called to set up a daytime meeting at the Miramax office in Tribeca, first with Weinstein and then with a casting executive, who was a woman. “I was, like, Oh, a woman. Great. I feel safe,” Evans said. When Evans arrived for the meeting, the building was full of people. She was led to an office with exercise equipment in it and takeout boxes on the floor. Weinstein was there, alone. Weinstein told her that she’d be great in “Project Runway,” — the show, which Weinstein helped produce — but only if she lost weight. “At that point, after that, is when he assaulted me,” Evans said. “He forced me to perform oral sex on him.”

megan twohey

What happened next, according to Lucia, is that Weinstein pulled his penis out of his pants, that he pulled her head down onto it. She said that she said over and over she didn’t want to do this, to stop. And she said that Weinstein overpowered her.

lucia evans I just sort of gave up.

michael barbaro

So a clear allegation of a sex crime.

megan twohey

A clear allegation of a sex crime and also one that falls within the statute of limitations — exactly what New York is looking for. And so within hours of that story being published, New York detectives are trying to find Lucia.

lucia evans So a lot of different things happened very quickly, and it was very overwhelming. The N.Y.P.D. showed up at my parents’ house. They live in upstate New York. And they said, Lucia has a prosecutable charge. And they were like, what are you talking about, you know? They were just kind of overwhelmed anyway, you know? And they said, we’re worried about her safety, and we — where does she live? We want to talk to her.

michael barbaro

Wow.

megan twohey

Yeah.

lucia evans And so they actually drove through the night to come to D.C. and showed up at my door the next morning. I was still in my pajamas, I think. So I just stayed in my pajamas that whole time and just drank a whole pot of coffee — a whole pot to myself. I just kept drinking coffee and —

megan twohey

She says that they told her immediately that they wanted her to participate in the criminal investigation.

lucia evans They immediately wanted me to go on the record, because they said I was the only one that could put him in jail. megan twohey And how are you feeling in this moment? Are you feeling scared? Are you feeling nervous? Are you feeling — what is it like when, you know, several detectives show up at your door and come into your living room? lucia evans Yeah, I mean, it was the most surreal thing. I never conceived of this happening. I was one of the few, or maybe the only, people in that article that wasn’t an actress, you know? And it was frightening to me, because I didn’t do this for the press, obviously. I didn’t do this for any kind of fame or fortune. And so I think I was scared for a few reasons. I was nervous about what it could do to my family, to — you know, I mean, I know what criminal proceedings can be like. I’ve seen a bunch of movies, and I’ve watched a lot of court TV. It’s like, I know how this could go. And I think that the narrative has always been that victims are torn apart on the stand. And why would you do that to yourself? Why would you put yourself or your family through that? And all these things are kind of just running through my mind. And they were positioning it as a very empowering thing — like, oh, you can change society forever. You can change the laws. And of course, that made me a little excited, too. I was like, wow, you know, I would absolutely love to influence the law, and to empower victims, and to put him in jail. Like, that would be an incredible feeling, but also tempering that with my more rational side. Like, are you serious? First of all, I can’t be the only one that can put him in jail. And also, you need to give me time to process this, you know? megan twohey So you finish your pot of coffee. lucia evans Yes. megan twohey You finish this conversation with them. How does it end? How do you guys part after that? lucia evans So they told us — my husband, who was there, and myself — to get out of town for a few weeks.

megan twohey

They tell her that they think that she’s in danger and that Harvey Weinstein and any of his kind of associates could potentially come after her. So they really want to relocate her — officially relocate her to a safe location.

lucia evans They didn’t think I was safe there, just because I was easily traceable. And they were worried about my safety at that point, since I was the only one that could put him in jail, quote, unquote, that we knew of.

megan twohey

And so she and her husband packed their bags and moved into this house for two weeks, closer to New York City, as they decided what they were going to do next.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm. And what did she do?

megan twohey

Well, she started weighing her options. She starts meeting with a variety of lawyers. And as she tells it, many of those lawyers are actually discouraging her from participating in the criminal case, telling her that she would be much better off just seeking to strike an out-of-court — like, basically a private out-of-court civil settlement with Weinstein in which she would receive money.

lucia evans I met with lawyers who said, forget the criminal case. Just file a civil suit, you know what I mean? And that didn’t feel right to me. And I didn’t even know what that would entail at the time.

michael barbaro

And why are the lawyers telling her that the civil route is better than this criminal prosecution?

megan twohey

They basically tell her that it’s going to play out the way that she’s seen it depicted on all those TV shows.

michael barbaro

And that means it’s going to be really ugly.

megan twohey

Yeah, it’s going to be really ugly.

lucia evans The narratives I heard the most often were, it’s going to be a long, drawn-out, painful process. They’re going to tear apart your background, your life. They’re going to talk to everyone you’ve ever worked with, everyone you’ve ever been in a relationship with, find anything they can to discredit you. And it’s hard on you. It’s hard on your family. They’ll go through your trash and find every single thing you’ve ever done in the past, and blow it up out of proportion, and shame you, and just ruin your life, basically. I just had this vision of myself just being left with nothing on the street. That’s the narrative that I think still exists, but also that I was hearing at the time. It’s really scary to hear over and over, and it starts to kind of become part of you. And you start to think, oh, this is what will happen if I do this, you know? How can you not feel like that?

megan twohey

So she’s put off by these lawyers. And as she tells it, they’re not the only people who are counseling her against participating in the criminal case. She says that she has friends and family members who are saying the same thing.

michael barbaro

Don’t do it.

megan twohey

Don’t do it.

lucia evans The narrative that I heard a lot was, you’ve already done enough — and in a good way, not a negative way at all. But you’ve already done so much. Look at — the movement was starting to pick up steam at that point. Like, look at what you helped to reignite?

megan twohey

You did your part. You participated in the journalism, some of these first stories that are helping to ignite the #MeToo movement. You’ve done enough. But as Lucia tells it, something keeps pulling at her.

lucia evans The criminal case was really kind of calling my name in a way right from the beginning, and I wanted to understand what that would be like. And I just wanted to be able to have the option to pursue it without having a lawyer say, it’s not right for you. Don’t do it. megan twohey And when you say that the criminal case was calling to you from the beginning, what do you mean? lucia evans I wanted this to continue to mean something to me and to mean something for other people. And it always kind of felt right to me deep down. And even though I struggled with it for so many months, and it was so hard to decide what to do, I just felt like it was the right thing to do, ultimately.

megan twohey

So she decides to meet with the prosecutor’s office, which is a significant step, because the prosecutors are ultimately the ones who will decide whether or not to bring charges. And the lead prosecutor on the Weinstein case at the time was a woman named Maxine Rosenthal. And as Lucia tells it, she did not have a good experience with her.

michael barbaro

Why?

lucia evans I didn’t feel comfortable talking to her, and I didn’t have a lot of confidence in it. megan twohey What do you mean by that? What was — lucia evans I just remember there was one thing that she said that made me very uncomfortable. She referred to me and the other survivors as “Harvey’s girls.” And at that point, I think I was just so blown away by that statement and just horrified that she could ever say that about — it doesn’t even need an explanation about why that’s so horrifying to say.

megan twohey

So listen, I can’t speak to this particular prosecutor’s conduct. What I can tell you is that she’s a veteran sex crimes prosecutor who’s known for being very hard-nosed and that Lucia wasn’t the only person who was complaining about her. There were complaints coming from the police, from victims’ rights advocates that she was not sensitive and that she was moving too slowly. I can’t speak to whether or not those complaints were valid, but Rosenthal’s boss is Cy Vance, the Manhattan prosecutor, the same one who had been criticized for not prosecuting Weinstein in 2015. And he decides that he’s going to take Rosenthal off the case. And he puts in her place a veteran homicide prosecutor. Her name is Joan Illuzzi, and she’s also known for being tough.

lucia evans Joan would ask me tough questions, but I still felt good about it.

megan twohey

But Lucia says that she feels like she’s on her side, that she’s being tough to toughen her up.

lucia evans She was definitely the bad cop, and I think she had to be, because she wanted to prepare me, right? But I felt like she respected me in a way that I didn’t feel like I felt from Maxine. And I knew what she was doing. I was like, well, I want to be prepared for this trial. So if you think you have to be tough on me, that’s totally fine.

megan twohey

So that’s important for Lucia. And in another significant development, a new woman, a new accuser, is added to the criminal case.

lucia evans Another thing that made me feel comfortable was the fact that there would be one other person who was involved. And that made me feel a lot more comfortable. Initially, it was just me for a long time. It just gave me a little more sense of community and just like I wasn’t doing it alone.

megan twohey

And so finally, at this point, Lucia is ready to make a decision.

lucia evans I went back home to D.C. And a while earlier, I made this list of all the reasons why I should do it and all the reasons why I shouldn’t do it. And all the reasons why I shouldn’t do it — I mean, there were so many reasons — fear for my safety, fear for my family, my reputation, my career — everything. All these things would just be ruined. And then on the other side, I had just written, because it feels right. I didn’t really have much else to write on that side. It did feel like I could, at the very least, hopefully, put him in jail, this person that had assaulted so many people and harassed so many people. And I couldn’t say no to the chance to do that, ultimately. This is the right thing to do. I’m going to do it.

megan twohey

She’s in. She’s willing to be part of criminal charges.

michael barbaro

So at this point, New York is able to do what it’s been trying to do ever since these allegations first came out.

megan twohey

Yes.

archived recording (speaker 1) Are you sorry, Harvey? archived recording (speaker 2) Harvey, Harvey! archived recording (speaker 3) — who’ve accused you, Mr. Weinstein? archived recording (speaker 4) Harvey, you got anything to say?

megan twohey

In May of 2018, seven months after the police had first shown up on the door of Lucia’s home, prosecutors bring charges here in New York against Harvey Weinstein. They charge him with a criminal sex act stemming from the encounter with Lucia. And they also charge him with rape stemming from the encounter with the second woman in the criminal case.

[music]

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. So Megan, what happens after these charges against Weinstein are actually filed?

megan twohey

Law enforcement officials continue to build out this case, as they start to prepare to go to court. And Lucia says that she is, for the most part, feeling good about the process. But even with this new prosecutor in place, she says that she’s confused about some aspects of what’s going on.

lucia evans They didn’t ask me for a full list of people I had told until months and months in. I would think that you kind of start with, who have you talked to? Who knows about this? And I told them some people that either I had told, or knew of me going to the meeting with him, or something to that respect.

megan twohey

She says that she is confused by the fact that law enforcement officials are not reaching out to more of the potential witnesses for her charge — she says that she had provided them with a list of names, people in whom she had confided about the alleged attack — and that, even at this stage of the investigation, that they have not reached out to all of those people to talk to them. This is also a case that involves both prosecutors and the police. And she says that she’s struck by the fact that they don’t seem to be in sync.

lucia evans So it seemed to be a very disjointed process with the D.A. and the N.Y.P.D. And they didn’t seem to communicate very well right from the beginning and all the way through my time with them. So — megan twohey What do you mean by that, that the police and the prosecutors weren’t communicating — lucia evans Yeah — megan twohey — effectively? lucia evans It just seemed like some things I had told to the police, the prosecutors weren’t aware of or didn’t remember when they would talk to me. They didn’t even interview my husband until — they never did, actually. They never talked to my husband.

michael barbaro

Megan, what’s the significance of them not talking to her husband, exactly?

megan twohey

Well, I mean, think about it. If you are trying to build a case, if you’re trying to shore it up, presumably, you’re going to want to talk to the people closest to that alleged victim, the people who have the most knowledge about her. So for law enforcement officials to have not talked to her husband at this point seems a little weird to her. But she says that she’s not giving it that much thought. And then, one day in October 2018, Lucia is on a work trip in Hong Kong when she gets a call from her lawyer.

lucia evans I was about to give a huge marketing presentation to a group of executives, and then I get a call from my lawyer saying that they were going to drop my charge.

megan twohey

The prosecutor’s office contacted her attorney and said that there was new information that had come to light, and that they were preparing to drop her charge.

michael barbaro

Wow.

megan twohey

Yeah. And she says that she can’t even process it right at that point, because she’s got to give that work presentation.

lucia evans I just had to shut off my emotions and just try to just pull myself together right after that, and pretend that it didn’t happen. I told my family, and then I got on a flight back home with no Wi-Fi, thank goodness, and fell asleep. And when I woke up, I was being destroyed in the press. archived recording 1 We begin with one of the sex assault charges against disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, tonight, dropped. archived recording 2 Lucia Evans claims Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004. But new information revealed yesterday casts doubt on Evans’s story. archived recording 3 The single charge was dropped after the Manhattan district attorney’s office recently discovered new evidence from a witness that discounts Lucia Evans’s previous accusations —

megan twohey

And so as Lucia is learning about her charge being dropped, so, too, is the public. And in a lot of those news stories, it’s presented as contradictory evidence that’s come to light, evidence that undermines her allegation. Not surprisingly, Weinstein and his defense team seize on this new twist.

archived recording His attorney, Benjamin Brafman, says he believes Evans lied about what happened. archived recording (benjamin brafman) Lucia Evans, who you will see from the documents released, has clearly, in our opinion, committed perjury on several occasions.

megan twohey

For months, they’d been arguing that all of these women were lying. And now, they’re going out and making the claim that this entire criminal case is tainted, that it’s completely unfair.

archived recording (benjamin brafman) The case is not over, but I think it is permanently and irreparably damaged.

megan twohey

They’re gleeful.

michael barbaro

So her story seems to be falling apart.

megan twohey

That’s how it appears.

megan twohey How did that affect you? Did you have to have conversations with your friends and family, and anybody that you work with? lucia evans Yeah. megan twohey Was this something that you had to talk about or address? lucia evans I mean, it was interesting, because before this happened, I had been meeting with lots of actresses who — I became a very popular figure for a month in there in the summer, because I was kind of representing all of Hollywood that wanted to send him to jail, but they were too afraid to do it themselves — some of them. I’m not speaking for all of them. But the actresses I spoke to all had very credible potential charges. But they had families and careers, and they couldn’t do it. So I was kind of doing it for them. After my case is dropped, my friend group and that group whittled down to very few people who actually cared and wanted to know the truth and reached out to me. Some of them didn’t know me personally, so I don’t blame them for not reaching out. But some very clearly kind of severed ties with me, which was really hard and really hurtful. And I don’t care if an actress comes into my life, and then she leaves again. I never fooled myself into thinking I was close with these women, these famous actresses, necessarily. But the ones — the women that have been with me since the beginning — that was really, that was really tough.

michael barbaro

Megan, what happened here, exactly? What happened to this case? Because you’ve been describing law enforcement officials who, from day one, have been telling Lucia she’s their best chance at bringing criminal charges against Harvey Weinstein. She finally signs on. She risks all that that entails. And then they handle it in this confusing way, and then they drop it.

megan twohey

Well, what we now know is that prosecutors have spoken to a friend of Lucia’s, actually the friend who was with her the very first time she met Weinstein. Lucia said that when she went to that work meeting at Harvey Weinstein’s office after meeting him, that he sexually assaulted her, that he forced her to perform oral sex on him against her will. And this friend says that after that work meeting, Lucia told her that she had actually consented to perform oral sex on him, that she did that in exchange for the promise of acting jobs.

michael barbaro

Wow. So a very different version of the story.

megan twohey

Right, this friend is providing an account of an encounter with Weinstein that, if true, turns it back into a variation of one of the common stories about Weinstein, but one that cannot be subject to criminal charges.

michael barbaro

Why is this only now coming to light?

megan twohey

Well, one possibility is that this is an example of what can happen when there is a rush to prosecute. Well, we also now realize what we now know is that the lead detective in the case had apparently talked to this witness months before Weinstein was charged, and that she had shared this information with him. And prosecutors say that that detective did not share that information with them, the prosecutors.

michael barbaro

Suggesting maybe he didn’t want to bring them information that might hurt the case.

megan twohey

Suggesting that he purposely withheld potentially complicating information from the case. Now, the detective says that he did tell the prosecutors this information. So that could also speak to what Lucia had complained about herself, that this entire investigation seemed to be plagued by the fact that the police and prosecutors were not in sync and communicating well with each other.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm. But if the detective had told prosecutors, it seems like that would only be further evidence of this desire to get this done, to bring these charges and overlook complicating information.

megan twohey

Right, so that is another interpretation of this, that both the police and the prosecutors were aware of this complicating information and moved forward with bringing charges anyway.

michael barbaro

Well, in that case, what would explain them dropping this case when they did?

megan twohey

Well, with all of the finger-pointing that’s gone on, it’s hard to know, for certain, the answer to that question. But what seems likely is that prosecutors have realized, at this point, that this information is going to come to the attention of the defense and that it’s likely to undermine the entire criminal charge. But I should say that Lucia insists that she never consented to oral sex with Weinstein, that she never told this friend otherwise, and that she explained that to the detective when he asked her about it months and months before.

michael barbaro

Megan, what should we make of Lucia’s experience?

megan twohey

For all the people who have been watching so many women come forward with allegations against Harvey Weinstein, watching what seems to be this overwhelming evidence of a pattern of predatory behavior, it shows how difficult it is to turn stories into criminal charges. Her account fell within the statute of limitations, it was alleging criminal conduct, and she was willing to participate.

michael barbaro

Right, to brave the spotlight and the scrutiny.

megan twohey

Exactly. And still, her charge was dropped.

michael barbaro

So this is October of 2018. Where does that leave the case against Harvey Weinstein?

megan twohey

So in the lead-up to Lucia’s charge being dropped, there was actually a third woman who was added to the criminal case here in New York. So after Lucia’s charges dropped, there are still two women. But one of those women, one of those accusers, appears to also come with some potential complicating factors.

michael barbaro

Like what?

megan twohey

Weinstein’s legal team has produced emails between Weinstein and this woman that went on for years after the alleged attack. These emails appear extensive. They appear friendly. They even appear romantic at times.

michael barbaro

Tomorrow, in Part 2, how the case against Weinstein moved forward after Lucia.

megan twohey Do you wish that you were still part of this case as we head into trial? lucia evans Honestly, yes, I do. I do wish I was. I put so much into this. And when it comes down to it, I do wish I was a part of it. And I also just don’t want people to be discouraged from coming forward and doing it. So I would just hope people don’t — people, despite all the things I’ve said about how hard it is, still decide to come forward, because that’s literally the only hope that we have.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today.

archived recording (donald trump) Good morning. I’m pleased to inform you the American people should be extremely grateful and happy. No Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime.

michael barbaro

On Wednesday, in a televised address to the nation, President Trump backed away from further military confrontation with Iran, saying that Iran’s retaliation for the U.S. killing of General Qassim Suleimani appeared to be over.

archived recording (donald trump) Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned, and a very good thing for the world.

michael barbaro

That retaliation, about a dozen missiles that inflicted minimal damage to two U.S. bases in Iraq, seemed designed to satisfy Iran’s desire for revenge without provoking a military response from the Trump administration. In his speech, Trump vowed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but in a gesture of conciliation said he was prepared to make peace with the country’s leaders.

archived recording (donald trump) Finally, to the people and leaders of Iran, we want you to have a future, and a great future — one that you deserve, one of prosperity at home and harmony with the nations of the world. The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.

michael barbaro