And another one down...
Harvey Weinstein's Lawyer Gave $10,000 To Manhattan DA After He Declined To File Sexual Assault Charges
Harvey Weinstein's Lawyer Gave $10,000 To Manhattan DA After He Declined To File Sexual Assault Charges
BY
DAVID SIROTA @DAVIDSIROTA AND
JAY CASSANO @JCASSANO ON 10/05/17 AT 6:36 PM
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer delivered $10,000 to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. in 2015, in the months after Vance’s office decided not to prosecute Weinstein over sexual assault allegations, according to an International Business Times review of campaign finance documents. That contribution from attorney David Boies — who previously headlined a fundraiser for Vance — was a fraction of the more than $182,000 that Boies, his son and his law partners have delivered to the Democrat during his political career.
Boies has done legal work for Weinstein since at least
2005, and his
website at his law firm says his clients include The Weinstein Company.
“David Boies did not represent Harvey Weinstein in 2015 during the criminal investigation,” Joan Vollero, communications director for Vance, told IBT in an email when asked about Boies’ campaign contributions.
Edward Evans, a spokesperson for the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, said in an emailed statement: “David Boies has been a supporter of the District Attorney since long before 2015, including before he was first elected, and has never spoken to him about Harvey Weinstein.”
The revelations about the dropped Weinstein investigation come on the heels of a recent report documenting how Vance declined to prosecute Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. after Trump’s attorney Marc Kasowitz
gave Vance’s campaign $25,000. According to a report by ProPublica, WNYC and The New Yorker, Kasowitz made the donation, then met with Vance directly and then Vance dropped the case, overruling his own prosecutors.
In an email to IBT, Vance's campaign spokesperson Steve Sigmund said that just before Kasowitz met with Vance about the case, Vance's campaign returned the $25,000 donation. Kasowitz subsequently made an
even larger donation to Vance after the district attorney decided not to prosecute the Trumps, but Sigmund said both the original donation and the second donation came when Kasowitz “had zero involvement in any cases before the District Attorney's office.”