Rose McGowan Sues Harvey Weinstein Over “Campaign” To Suppress Victims’ Claims

Rose McGowan has filed a lawsuit alleging that Harvey Weinstein and what the suit claims is his “team of fixers” — attorneys David Boies and Lisa Bloom and an Israeli private-security contractor — conspired to silence sexual assault victims.

Those accusers include McGowan, who wrote in her 2018 memoir Brave that Weinstein raped her at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. She was one of the first women to come forward with her story to Ronan Farrow, whose exposé in the New Yorker along with similar reporting in The New York Times in October 2017 opened the floodgates to other allegations against Weinstein, who is awaiting trial in New York on several sexual abuse charges. It also helped pave the way for the #MeToo movement.

The efforts to silence McGowan and other alleged victims have resurfaced in Farrow’s new book, Catch and Kill, which centers on the investigation. It details efforts especially from Black Cube, which reportedly sent operatives to collect and conduct surveillance on victims and reporters.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in California (read it here) claims that when Weinstein found out that McGowan was planning to write about the assault in the book, he launched a “campaign” that “involved some of the most powerful forces that money could buy” including Boies, Bloom and Black Cube, an “international spy agency.”

The suit, which seeks a jury trial, claims that Weinstein “relied on his co-conspirators, including Defendants, to seek and suppress information about other women who might reveal his misconduct, harm his reputation, and potentially report his sexual misconduct.”

Its 11 complaints include two counts of violating the civil RICO Act, the Bane Act, wiretapping and fraud.

Weinstein, who has been accused by dozens of women of sexual abuse, has denied any non-consensual acts.