In an interview with The Financial Times, journalist Ronan Farrow claimed his relationship with former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cooled during his investigation of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein for The New Yorker magazine in 2017.
Farrow had served as a youth adviser to Clinton from 2011 to 2012, when she was secretary of state.
In the interview, Farrow stated that the turn in his relationship with Clinton was affected by his investigation into Weinstein's sexual misconduct allegations. Weinstein was reported to be a Democratic supporter and donor of Clinton.
"It's remarkable how quickly even people with a long relationship with you will turn if you threaten the centres of power or the sources of funding around them," Farrow said. "Ultimately, there are a lot of people out there who operate in that way. They're beholden to powerful interests and if you go up against those interests, you become radioactive very quickly."
In his book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and Conspiracy to Protect Predators, Farrow recounted receiving a phone call from Weinstein. He said in The Financial Times interview that Weinstein "went as below the belt as possible in terms of trying to dig up anything personal that he could to shake me in those moments." According to Farrow, Weinstein had called him and referenced his sister Dylan Farrow's accusations against their father Woody Allen.
"You couldn't save someone you love, and now you think you can save everyone," Farrow said the Hollywood producer told him. "Every story I work on, there is an effort to weaponize anything and everything," Farrow said.
Farrow had recently stated that NBC News created a blockade to his reporting on Weinstein. On The Rachel Maddow Show, Farrow said that higher-ups at NBC ordered the investigation to be cancelled. "Noah Oppenheim, president of NBC News, on six different occasions, ordering us to stop reporting," he said. "The head of the investigative unit underneath him ordering eight times to stop reporting. That eventually escalated to ordering us to cancel interviews."
Farrow's investigations into Weinstein were published on October 10, 2017, five days after The New York Times first published their findings about Weinstein.
The title of Catch and Kill refers to the media practice of an outlet purchasing exclusive rights to a story, only to guarantee that it will not be published. On The Late Show, Farrow told host Stephen Colbert that The National Enquirer had purchased and killed about 60 stories about President Donald Trump.
