The Plan to Make Harvey Weinstein a Hero

“You should be the hero of the story, not the villain. This is very doable.”

In December 2016, the lawyer Lisa Bloom sent a memo to Harvey Weinstein. Written as an audition of sorts—Bloom signs it with a polite request that Weinstein put her on retainer—the document offers a point-by-point insight into the mechanics of reputation-laundering. It includes breezy suggestions about the philanthropic projects Weinstein might engage in to shield himself from accusations of sexual misconduct (including a particularly ironic proposal to establish a Weinstein Foundation dedicated to gender parity in Hollywood). It proposes that Bloom conduct an interview with Weinstein “where you talk about evolving on women’s issues.” The memo’s bulk, however, is reserved for ideas about how the producer might discredit the women who had, and who might still, come forward to accuse him of abuse. Primary among them in a 2016 tweet and whose story Bloom’s memo proposed to neutralize—ostensibly with the help of compliant media outlets—as the ravings of an unreliable narrator.