In March 2015, the New York City Police Department set up an undercover sting operation against Harvey Weinstein after 22-year-old Italian model Ambra Battilana Guttierez reported that the film producer had groped her breasts and reached up her skirt during a business meeting.
Audio obtained by investigative journalist Ronan Farrow and released Tuesday on an episode of the Catch and Kill podcast features the meeting that came of that sting operation.
In the lengthy encounter, which was recorded the day after the incident, Guttierez and Weinstein meet at a high-end hotel in New York City. While Guttierez, who is wearing a wire, tries to extract a confession, Weinstein tries to convince her to go up to his hotel room.
“I will tell you something that I think you would be good for, but we’re going to have to teach you a little bit,” says Weinstein, in the audio recording. “If you want to spend time with me, whatever, I will mentor you, I teach you, whatever. But you have to, you know, relax with me, have fun, enjoy,” Weinstein told Guttierez, who responds by saying that she isn’t feeling well.
After Guttierez mentions that “yesterday was kind of a hard thing,” Weinstein tells her not to “worry about it.” Later in the conversation, Guttierez again tries to pivot to the events from the previous day.
GUTTIEREZ: I’m not really like that, I need to know more the person.
WEINSTEIN: Right, I understand, well we won’t do that. We’ll do other things, but not that, okay. Don’t worry.
GUTTIEREZ: What things?
WEINSTEIN: Nothing, just relaxing, jeez. A massage, something fun.
GUTTIEREZ: No, I’m shy.
WEINSTEIN: I know, but a massage, something nice.
GUTTIEREZ: No, I mean like, not today maybe.
WEINSTEIN: Don’t be foolish. A little bit.
GUTTIEREZ: Please, no, I don’t want to.
WEINSTEIN: Alright, we’ll see. We’ll see.
The conversation continues, but is then interrupted by an undercover police officer posing as a TMZ reporter, who wants to prevent Weinstein from bringing Guttierez up to his room. The undercover officer is sent away, and the conversation continues.
GUTTIEREZ: I know, but yesterday was too much for me.
WEINSTEIN: I will never do another thing to you. Five minutes: Don’t ruin your friendship with me for five minutes.
GUTTIEREZ: I know, but it’s kind of like, it’s too much for me.
A two-minute excerpt of the exchange was previously released in The New Yorker in 2017, and features Weinstein seemingly admitting to groping Guttierez the previous day.
GUTTIEREZ: Why yesterday you touched my breasts?
WEINSTEIN: Oh please, I’m sorry, just come on in, I’m used to that.
GUTTIEREZ: You’re used to that?
WEINSTEIN: Yes, come in.
GUTTIEREZ: No, but I’m not used to that.
WEINSTEIN: I won’t do it again. Come on, sit here. Sit here for a minute, please?
According to The New Yorker, although Weinstein was later interviewed by police, prosecutors declined to pursue charges against him for the incident saying that “a criminal charge is not supported.”
The podcast also features audio from an original interview, from before the Weinstein story broke in The New Yorker, between former aspiring actress Lucia Evans and investigative journalist Ronan Farrow. In the recording, Evans recounts a business meeting in the mid-2000’s where she says she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein in his office.
“He forced me to have oral sex with him,” she tells Farrow on a phone call while sobbing. “He just literally just took his dick out of his pants and got himself hard, and then grabbed my head and stuck it down on it. In grabbing my head, at that point I’m sure, I was like ‘no stop, I don’t want to do this.’ It was a forcible encounter.”
“I tried to struggle away, I remember trying to get up and struggle away, but he’s a big guy. He overpowered me,” says Evans. “I think I just sort of gave up, and that’s where I feel where if it had been like, ‘Oh no, he one thousand percent forced me, and I was like screaming and fighting him to the death,’ I would feel like, a little more proud of this whole situation. But I think I just gave up.”
“I just said, I’m just going to do this, this is apparently what I have to do, and that’s the most horrible part of it. That’s why he’s been able to do this for so long…when [somebody] gives up they feel like it’s their fault,” says Evans.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Weinstein has been on trial for the last three weeks for predatory sexual assault. Prosecutors say he forced a woman to let him perform oral sex on her in 2006, and raped another woman, who has not been named by the court, at a hotel in 2013.
Donna Rotunno, a lead attorney for Weinstein, has maintained that the charges against her client “don’t rise to the level of rape.”
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