Hillary Clinton on Weinstein Conviction: ‘It Was Time for an Accounting’
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said at a press conference Tuesday that “the jury’s decision speaks for itself” in the conviction of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein for first-degree sexual assault and third-degree rape.
“It was time for an accounting, and the jury clearly found that,” Clinton said, speaking at the Berlin International Film Festival ahead of the release of her Hulu documentary series Hillary. She also attempted to downplay her 2016 campaign’s connections to Weinstein, saying that he “supported every Democratic campaign” before allegations of his sexual misconduct emerged.
Clinton has repeatedly defended her ties to Weinstein, asking in an interview last month “how could we have known” about Weinstein’s crimes.
“He raised money for me, for the Obamas, for Democrats in general,” she said. “And that at the time was something that everybody thought made sense. And of course, if all of us had known what we know now, it would have affected our behavior.”
FEC records show that Weinstein has raised over $2.3 million for Democratic causes in his career, and the former producer has deep ties to the Clintons, having had dinner with Hillary after her 2016 defeat, even after Clinton’s campaign had been reportedly warned by actress Lena Dunham and journalist Tina Brown of Weinstein’s history.
A Manhattan jury on Monday found Weinstein guilty of a criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree, and not guilty of first-degree rape and two counts of predatory sexual assault.
In October, journalist Ronan Farrow, who won a Pulitzer for his work exposing Weinstein, suggested that Clinton’s team attempted to cancel an interview with Farrow over concerns “about the reporting on Weinstein.”
“Harvey Weinstein was one of Hillary Clinton’s big Hollywood bundlers, he brought in a lot of money for her, they were friends, and it was a personal moment of gut punch to me, like so many of these plot twists in this book, where people that I thought would report that kind of reporting, actually were very leery of it,” Farrow said.
