A video of an ABC News anchor’s unguarded remarks surfaced that has put a spotlight on the network’s coverage of the late Jeffrey Epstein. It has put ABC on the defensive.
In a leaked video by the right-wing activist group Project Veritas, news anchor Amy Robach expresses her frustration to a colleague over ABC’s failure to broadcast her interview with a key accuser of Epstein.
The ABC anchor complains that the network “quashed” her interview, suggesting that ABC had yielded to threats from powerful forces, including Buckingham Palace. Prince Andrew one of those men whom the accuser alleges Epstein trafficked her to for sex. The prince’s representatives have denied that claim.
ABC News executives defended their position saying that journalists were simply not able to corroborate the details of the reporting sufficiently for broadcast.
“We would never run away from that,” Chris Vlasto, head of investigations for ABC News, told NPR. The network has filed about two dozen digital and broadcast stories on Epstein since early 2015. That is when ABC started talking to the accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Robach’s comments in late August 2019 came just two days after an NPR story disclosed the existence of Giuffre’s interview and ABC’s failure to broadcast it. In the video, Robach is sitting on a chair at a studio set for ABC’s Good Morning America.
“I’ve had the story for three years,” Robach says in the video. “We would not put it on the air. Um, first of all, I was told, ‘Who was Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.’ Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways.”
Robach went further to say that Giuffre alluded to others in the interview, including former President Bill Clinton, Harvard University law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz and Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre has made similar accusations against all of them also in court documents. All those involved deny any wrongdoing or involvement in Epstein’s sex trafficking.
“I tried for three years to get it out to no avail, and now these new revelations and — I freaking had all of it,” Robach says on the tape. “I’m so pissed right now. Like, every day I get more and more pissed, ’cause I’m just like, ‘Oh my God! It was — what we had, was unreal.’ “
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