ABC News has had a change of heart on reporting on former President Bill Clinton after squashing a story that a former anchor said she had back in 2019.
On Sunday, the network became the first to report that Mr. Clinton and such other high-profile names as Britain’s Prince Andrew would be seen in the documents pertaining to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
In 2019, footage leaked by Project Veritas showed then-ABC News anchor Amy Robach talking about all the information she knew about Epstein and his sex trafficking ring from reporting she did back in 2015.
She had interviewed Virginia Giuffre, a victim of the ring who had sued Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
“I’ve had the story for three years. I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts [Giuffre]. We would not put it on the air,” Ms. Robach is heard saying in the Veritas video. “First of all, I was told, ‘Who is Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is stupid story.’”
The newly unredacted court document made public on Wednesday revealed Hollywood and Washington elite who traveled in Epstein’s orbit including former President Donald Trump, magician David Copperfield, model Naomi Campbell and actors Cate Blanchett, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz and Bruce Willis.
None were implicated in criminal activity.
The late physicist Stephen Hawking was also linked to Epstein, who attempted to refute allegations Hawking participated in an “underage orgy.”
The British royal family also was able to quash Ms. Robach’s reporting, she said, using access to Prince William and Kate Middleton, the presumed future king and queen.
“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 that we, that also quashed the story,” she said.
Ms. Robach also mentions that Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz was involved through his name appearing on flight logs.
“It was unbelievable what we had — Clinton, we had everything,” she said. “I tried for three years to get it on to no avail. And now it’s all coming out, and it’s like these new revelations, and I freaking had all of it. I’m so pissed right now.”
In the video she is also heard saying that Brad Edwards, the lawyer who represented over 70 victims of Epstein and Maxwell, had said “there will come a day when we will realize Jeffrey Epstein was the most prolific pedophile this country has ever known.”
The video was allegedly recorded in August 2019 after Epstein had been found dead by apparent suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York while he awaited his federal trial for sex trafficking.
The release of the video shocked the media world and the country. Reports came out criticizing the media for dropping the ball on Epstein.
In a statement after the video came out, Ms. Robach said she was “caught in a private moment of frustration,” but defended ABC for not running her story.
“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,” she said.
ABC’s statement was similar: “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.”
On Wednesday, a federal judge made hundreds of pages of court documents public. The documents, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, were part of a settled lawsuit filed by Ms. Giuffre against Epstein and Maxwell, who is currently serving a federal prison sentence for her role.
The released list includes names that were previously revealed in flight logs kept for the disgraced financier’s private jet named, the “Lolita Express.”
While ABC’s Sunday story said they had no indication that the records showed any illegal conduct by Mr. Clinton, the unsealed documents didn’t paint him in the best light.
One female witness said that she was told by Epstein that Mr. Clinton “likes them young, referring to girls.”
But Maxwell has testified that Mr. Clinton never visited Little Saint James, the Epstein island where some of the abuse took place.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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