The two reporters, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who broke the Harvey Weinstein scandal at the NY Times have a new book out about the scandal. Yesterday the Times published a story about the book including some new tidbits about attorney Lisa Bloom who represented Harvey Weinstein for a time. Apparently, Bloom was making good money trashing Weinstein’s accusers:

Allred’s daughter, the lawyer Lisa Bloom, a prominent victims’ rights attorney, was working behind the scenes with Mr. Weinstein — at a rate of $895 an hour — to quash the journalists’ investigation and thwart his accusers. In a confidential memo to Mr. Weinstein that Ms. Bloom wrote in December 2016, which is reproduced in “She Said,” she offered to help him damage the reputation of one of his accusers, Rose McGowan, and portrayed her background as a victims’s rights advocate as an asset.

“I feel equipped to help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them,” Ms. Bloom wrote, before laying out a multistep playbook for how to intimidate accusers or paint them as liars. One of Ms. Bloom’s suggested tactics for undermining Ms. McGowan: “We can place an article re her becoming increasingly unglued, so that when someone Googles her this is what pops up and she’s discredited.”

Ms. Bloom accompanied Mr. Weinstein on a surprise visit to the Times the day before the initial article was published, to present the journalists with information intended to portray several accusers — including Ashley Judd, the first actress to go on the record — as unreliable and mentally unstable.

Lisa Bloom resigned from her position as Weinstein’s adviser in October 2017. But the NY Times reported that just before she left her position she was urging Harvey to release photos of various accusers looking “chummy” with him as a way to discredit their stories:

As the board convened an emergency phone meeting on Thursday evening to address the allegations, published in an investigation by The Times, Ms. Bloom sent an email to board members attacking the article. She outlined a plan that involved “more and different reporting,” including “photos of several of the accusers in very friendly poses with Harvey after his alleged misconduct.”

If you’re wondering why Lisa Bloom, daughter of Gloria Allred and champion of victim’s rights, was so eager to badmouth Weinstein’s accusers, recall the two had a business relationship. Weinstein’s company had optioned Bloom’s book about Trayvon Martin. The deal resulted in the limited series titled “Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story” which was released last year. Here’s Bloom celebrating the deal in 2017:

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: My book SUSPICION NATION is being made into a miniseries, produced by Harvey Weinstein and Jay Z! https://t.co/Z4pu7y0TfX

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) April 7, 2017

Just speculating now, but I don’t think Bloom was so eager to discredit Weinstein’s accusers just for the $895 an hour she was earning. Sure, that’s a lot of money, but there were probably other places she could have gone to make similar money. I suspect it was more about her pipeline to Hollywood. If she were to vigorously defend Weinstein, he could potentially offer her more opportunities in tinsel town. In other words, I think Bloom had the same motive as all the other people who covered for Harvey over the years: She hoped he’d use his Hollywood clout on her behalf.