Lisa Bloom — the women’s rights advocate and high-profile attorney who swiftly resigned from advising Harvey Weinstein — was unaware of the severity of allegations surrounding Weinstein when she signed on to work with the Hollywood mogul, an insider exclusively tells Variety.
Bloom was only aware of accusations of verbal remarks, behaviors, and temper tantrums when she began working with Weinstein, according to a source, who says she was “totally lied to” by Weinstein and kept in the dark of physical accusations such as sexual assault and rape.
When contacted by Variety, Bloom’s office declined to comment, citing attorney client confidentiality.
Earlier on Tuesday, a self-described “email prankster,” who has fooled many White House officials in the past, fooled Bloom, pretending to be Weinstein. The prankster emailed the attorney, “Lisa, I’ve had time to think, and I do understand why you felt unable to remain on my team.” Under the impression she was responding to the real Weinstein, Bloom wrote back in the email, “Thank you Harvey…The new round of far more serious allegations were not made known to me so I could not have realized. But I am not revealing any of that publicly because that’s between you and me.”
A source confirms to Variety that the email in response to the prankster was in fact sent by the real Bloom — who, as seen above — wrote to the prankster, thinking it was Weinstein, that she could not remain on his team because of “the new round of far more serious allegations.”
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Elaborating on Bloom’s knowledge at the time she was advising Weinstein, a person familiar with discussions between Weinstein and Bloom says that Bloom was only aware of “verbal remarks” he had made in the workplace, noting that the producer “apologized profusely” during meetings with Bloom. “When it’s this whole other level, that’s when she had to go out,” the insider explains.
Bloom only became aware of the more serious allegations a few days ago, according to this source, when the New Yorker contacted Weinstein’s legal team for comment on accusations of raping multiple women — and that’s around the time she resigned. Bloom was also not aware of a TV reporter’s account of Weinstein masturbating in front of her years ago, which was published by HuffPost this past week.
When news broke that Bloom was advising Harvey, social media was quick to criticize the lawyer who has made a career of defending women and took down Bill O’Reilly, representing many of his accusers. When she initially posted a statement, explaining why she was representing Harvey, Bloom made no mention of physical or sexual abuse, but did acknowledge his “words and behaviors,” writing to her Twitter followers, “He is deeply bothered by some of his emotional responses. He has been working on his temper for over ten years and is chagrined the issue still plagues him.”
Bloom resigned from Weinstein’s team the day before he was forced out of his own company by the board of The Weinstein Company.
Today, in addition to The New Yorker’s detailed report that includes rape and harassment allegations from accusers including Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette, actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Heather Graham came forwarded, alleging they have also been harassed by Weinstein.
