Rose McGowan Is Suing Harvey Weinstein And His Former Attorneys Lisa Bloom and David Boies

Rose McGowan, who in 2017 publicly alleged that Harvey Weinstein raped her, is now suing Weinstein, his former attorneys Lisa Bloom and David Boies, and the intelligence firm Black Cube for their role in what her lawsuit describes as “a diabolical and illegal effort by one of America’s most powerful men and his representatives to silence sexual-assault victims.”

More on the lawsuit, from Variety:

The lawsuit lays out the story of McGowan’s efforts to come forward in 2016 and 2017, and of Weinstein’s efforts to contain the potential damage. The suit alleges that the “Weinstein Protection Enterprise” included a web of attorneys, book agents, spies, and others who worked together to thwart McGowan.

McGowan was working on her memoir, “Brave,” in which she planned to publish her allegations against Weinstein for the first time. The suit alleges that Weinstein and his attorneys [David Boies and Lisa Bloom] were able to obtain much of the book in advance, using a Black Cube spy who gained her confidence by pretending to be an advocate for women.

The suit alleges that the spy, whom McGowan knew as Diana Filip, illegally recorded their conversations, and accessed a draft of the book on McGowan’s laptop.

Much of what McGowan alleges in her lawsuit has been uncovered in reporting by the New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey as well as the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow. In Kantor and Twohey’s book She Said, Bloom is revealed to have sent a very damning memo to Weinstein in December 2016, in hopes of retaining him as a client, in which she offered him advice on how to damage McGowan’s reputation. “I feel equipped to help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them,” Bloom wrote in the memo, before writing that they could “place an article re her becoming increasingly unglued, so that when someone Googles her this is what pops up and she’s discredited.”

As for McGowan’s claims about Black Cube, in November 2017, Farrow extensively laid out how Weinstein and Boies contracted with Black Cube to discredit McGowan and extract information from her: having operatives pose as women’s rights advocates and potential funders for McGowan’s production company and enlisting a freelance journalist to interview McGowan and then report back to Weinstein.

Meanwhile, Weinstein’s attorney Phyllis Kupferstein, not surprisingly, is attempting to paint McGowan as a celebrity finagling a pay out.

“Once and for all, Rose McGowan will be shown to be what she is; a publicity seeker looking for money,” Kupferstein said to TMZ. “From the moment she sought a multi-million dollar payout in return for not making these baseless allegations, which we rejected, we knew that she was waiting for an opportune time to begin this. We will demonstrate that this case has no legal merit.”

McGowan states in the lawsuit that Weinstein, his former attorneys, and Black Cube have “devastated McGowan’s career,” forcing her to sell her house in Hollywood in order to “pay fees and costs associated with recovering from the trauma.” She is seeking unspecified damages, as well as a jury trial.