years in congress, chairman of house oversight, gone at the age of 68. that is our broadcast for this friday night and for this week. thank you so much for being here with us and good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. happy friday. happy to have you here. well, this sort of changes everything. one of the increasingly awkward dynamics in the impeachment proceedings against president trump is that even the president's most ardent supporters by and large, they have already given up arguing that the president's behavior was okay. and that is perhaps inevitable given this impeachment for this conduct. i mean, it is hard to argue that it is, you know, coolio with the constitution or with the american people, even just with republicans for a approximate the to solicit help from a foreign government in the form

of stuff he can use against his domestic political opponents. i mean, the president's supporters and the white house tried for a while to argue it was okay, that he asked for that stuff from a foreign government because he was asking for it for free? there was no quid pro quo. they tried that for a while. it was kind of a besides the point argument because it doesn't matter if you agree to trade for information to use against your political opponents at home. it doesn't matter if you give them something in exchange. you're just not loud to solicit that or ask for it at all whether or not there's a quid pro quo. even still, though, that besides the point no quid pro quo argument fell apart like a paper suit in the rain when we started to get mutually corroborating testimony in the impeachment inquiry that, in fact, yes there was a quid pro quo and the president had insisted on it personally. then, of course, the white house chief of staff just flat-out

admitted it to the press. so it's just been a mess. they have had to abandon any defense of the substance of what the president did. they really can't defend it. so they instead tried to argue that it maybe wasn't as bad as it seems. the white house has basically can we find to it being just as bad as it seems. so that is no longer operative. what they evolved into thereafter was this argument about the process of impeachment. inside congress that has taken the form of republicans complaining about how the impeachment committees have been taking depositions from witnesses, even what room they've been doing it, the room is the problem. in this cockamamy argument and why it's not okay for democratic-led committees to use closed-door depositions with witnesses, but it is okay for republicans to have done that, i mean, it's just been kind of weak. and i think that's why it's been kind of a circus.

there are usually is an inverse ratio at the volume at which an argument is made and the quality of its logic. now we've hit the end of the line for republicans and for the trump white house in terms of trying to argue the impeachment inquiry away. you might remember earlier this month the white house said officially in writing that the trump white house refuses to recognize the legitimatesy of impeachment. as the "new york times" succinctly tut it in their headline, quote, white house declares war on impeachment. it was an astonishing letter signed by the white house counsel, pat cipollone, telling congress the entire administration, the kpoel executive branch would be carrying on as if impeachment wasn't happening. they would not be responding to any document requests, they

would not be allowing any witness from any part of the administration to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry because the impeachment is illegal. it's unconstitutional or illegal or very bad or something. i mean, it started off, quote, i writ on behalf of president donald trump in response to your numerous legally unsupported demands made as part of what you have labeled contrary to the constitution, a scare, quote, impeachment inquiry. oh, dear. and then it's sort of downhill from there. president trump and his administration reject your baseless unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process, president trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry. the white house counsel went on in his letter to attack the, quote, lack of democratically

accountable authorization that makes the purpose of of this purported square quotes impeachment inquiry. they won't even admit it's an impeachment inquiry. they're saying you're calling it that, but we know it's not. i mean, it's one thing -- we're used to the president arguing that on twitter or standing in front of the helicopter. this is a lawyer, the white house counsel sent this off the hook cross-eyed letter to the house of representatives and then they released it publicly because they wanted to make clear that they intended this letter to be their final word on the subject based on this letter, nobody from any point in the administration should participate in the fake impeachment because the fake impeachment is fake. >> and the immediate reaction was, whoa, are you sure this was written by lawyer. it eaten even a legalish argument. but that is being put forward as the official position of the

white house. and that has been used by other government agencies in their efforts to block witnesses from testifying when they've been called to testify before the impeachment committees. for example, the department of defense referred to this crazy white house counsel letter this week when they warned the assistant secretary of defense laura cooper that she shouldn't show up and testify to the impeachment proceedings this week. the pentagon sent a letter to her lawyer the night before she was due to testify. quote, this letter informs you, the lawyer, and your client, ms. cooper, of the administration-wide direction that executive branch personnel cannot participate in the impeachment inquiry under these circumstances.

but that is being put forward as the official position of the white house. this is an odd strategy. it's all odd strategy. this is the trump white house asserting the impeachment inquiry doesn't exist. it's illegal and unconstitutional, so we're not going to allow you to use the word. it's one thing for the white house to assert that. it's another thing for the white house counsel to assert that. but now we are seeing that crazy argument cited in writing as the basis for other government agencies telling their own officials that they shouldn't show up and testify because the white house says the impeachment isn't real. it's a little bit nuts. i should say, federal agencies have not had great luck in trying to stop their officials from testifying to the impeachment proceedings. we've already seen eight witnesses that we know of show up to give depositions or transcribe testimony including a bunch of current administration officials who went and gave that testimony despite the stern letters from the white house saying, no, we said this doesn't exist. but here's the other part of this. the justice department, led by

bill barr, has also been trying its own version of this in the courts. alongside the white house's crazy letter arguing that the impeachment isn't real, it's not a real impeachment, it's not legal, it's not constitutional, we're pretending like it's not happening. alongside from the white house counsel's office, the actual justice department has been argsds the same thing in -- arguing the same thing in court. the court filings version of the white house letter. the justice department trying to argue in court that like the white house says, this impeachment isn't real. it isn't legal. it's not really happening. well, that was ultimately destined to run into a brick wall and tonight, it has run into a brick wall. as of tonight, we have a ruling from the federal judge saying quite bluntly that what the justice department is trying to argue here is wrong. literally that's on page 2 of the ruling, it's the shortest sentence i've seen a federal judge write. the entire sentence is it doj is wrong.

it's a long ruling, 75 pages from judge howell, but it really rings clear as a bell. permit me. the department of justice claims that existing law bars disclosure. to the congress of grand jury information. doj is wrong. in carrying out the weighty constitutional duty of determining whether impeachment of the president is warranted, congress need not redo the nearly two years of efforts spent on the special counsel investigation, nor do they need to risk being misled by witnesses who may have provided information to the grand jury and the special counsel that varies from what those witnesses may tell the judiciary committee. the committee's application for an order authorizing the release of certain grand jury materials related to the special counsel investigation is granted. so this is congress winning and the justice department, the position of the trump administration losing. and there's two major findings here.

one is that the judge finds that the impeachment proceeding is a real thing. it's legal. it exists. she says, quote, contrary to the doj's position, an impeachment trial is, in fact, a judicial proceeding under rule 6e. the reference to rule 6e means one of the major consequences of the ruling is all the stuff redacted from the mueller report as grand jury material, that's all given to the impeachment proceedings now. that's all going to be given to congress. the actual redacted words from the report, what's behind the black boxes and also, the underlying transcripts of grand jury testimony and exhibits that underlie those redacted portions. you might remember from watergate, the way the watergate investigation evolved, right? there were special prosecutors for watergate, and then

ultimately the judiciary committee in the house drew up articles of impeachment based on what the special prosecutors found. how did that work? how did the evidence get from one place to the other? in watergate, the justice department famously told the court that all the grand jury material that had been collected by watergate special prosecutors, right, all the evidence that they had gotten from witnesses talking to the grand jury about the president's behavior, about the whole watergate scandal, all of that grand jury material collected by archibald cox and the watergate special prosecutors, justice department agreed that material collected in that grand jury investigation needs to go to congress. because congress needs to decide if this is a basis for impeaching president nixon and in fact, that grand jury material was packaged up into what's now called the watergate road map and that watergate road map of grand jury material is what the judiciary committee used to draw up the impeachment articles against richard nixon which ultimately led to his resignation.

that's the relevant, most recent precedent here. clear as day. when it came to this special counsel investigation though, the bob mueller investigation, the justice department under bill barr decided they didn't like that precedent and they flipped and decided they wouldn't support that kind of position anymore. they would not support the grand jury material collected by special counsel mueller being handed over to congress for potential impeachment the way that happened in watergate. the justice department said, yeah, we know we did this that way before but we're not going to do it this time. well, judge howell addresses that in a sort of kidney punch of a footnote here. quote, when queried about for recognize use in impeachment inquiries, doj responded its position has, quote, evolved. the judge continues, no matter how glibly presented, the evolved legal position may be

estopped. and consider yourself estopped. so attorney general bill barr tried to make it so congress couldn't see the evidence that was collected by robert mueller. this judge in this ruling today says, actually, congress gets that. now, the other important implication here is that there's been this attempted argument among the supporters of the president in congress and you've seen it picked up some in conservative media. there's been this argument, this sort of pseudo-legal argument that maybe the house could have a more legal impeachment proceeding. maybe the house could be doing something more proper if they took a full vote authorizing the impeachment. right? that's been part of what the president's defenders have argued. unless the house takes a full vote supporting this impeachment inquiry, then it's not a real impeachment inquiry. it's been a weird claim all

along because honestly if nancy pelosi organized that, a full house vote on impeachment inquiry, she would get a full house vote on it. it's weird they're arguing she must do it or it's not real. the judge today sort of dispatches that one. she said the argument in favor that it's not a real impeachment unless it's a real house vote, chicago calls that, quote, cherry picked and incomplete and says more significantly, this so-called test has no textual support in the u.s. constitution or the governing rules of the house or rule 6e, which is the rule that concerns handing over grand jury materials to congress. more broadly, she says the white house has brought this on itself. quote, the white house's stated policy of non-cooperation with the impeachment inquiry weighs heavily in favor of disclosing these materials. congress' need to access grand jury material relevant to potential impeachment conduct by a president is heightened when the executive branch willfully obstructs channels for accessing

other relative evidence, meaning the case for letting this stuff going on go to the congress wouldn't be nearly so strong if you weren't completely obstructing everything they're trying to do in this lawful impeachment inquiry. you could say you're beating your chest and calling it fake, all of these things you're going to do, but ultimately this is a court order and you're not helping yourself and that material is going to congress for them to consider as part of your impeachment. now, in terms of what the impeachment committees are actually going to get when they get this material, judge howell ordered it be handed over by october 30th, presumably there could be an appeal that stops that from happening on such a tight time frame but if they do get what judge howell is ordering them to get, judge howell goes out of her way to highlight a number of subjects that are addressed in this material that congress doesn't yet have that she's now ordering they should get. she goes out of her way to address subjects in this

material that would seem to be quite relevant to these impeachment proceedings against president trump. including, as she describes it, quote, evidence suggesting that then-candidate trump may have received advanced information about russia's interference activities. she also describes indications that, quote, then candidate trump may have had advanced knowledge of damaging leaks of documents, illegally obtained through hacks by the russians. she's like, that's what's in the grand jury material. evidence about trump having advanced knowledge about what the russians were doing. so if you're thinking about impeaching him in terms of foreign election interference, you're going to want to see this. so, i mean, there's some major takeaways from this ruling. the first, you can see clear as day, plastered on the front page of "the new york times" tonight, the impeachment inquiry is legal, judge rules. which means that republicans were already reduced to these process arguments about how the impeachment inquiry is somehow unfair to them.

they're now going to have to try to find something else, just arguing that this isn't a real impeachment. that's going to be, that's no longer going to fly. it's no longer going to fly in congress but no longer going to try for the white house to use this as justification to try to o block executive branch officials from testifying in response to o duly authorized congressional subpoenas. the judge says, no, this is legal. this is a real impeachment. but on the substance, this also means all the redacted grand jury material from mueller's report is now turned over to congress and i mean, the judge does a good job pointing out some of that material and how it may be quite explosively related to the impeachment proceedings already under way. i don't want to put too fine a point on it because we'll see this stuff when we see it, but if you're only interested in what the impeachment committees mike about to get on ukraine specifically, its sketchy dealings with ukraine, since that's the heart of what trump is impeached

for, in volume i of the mueller report, there is stuff in that report that is clearly about sketchy dealings in ukraine. i commend you to page 141, volume i of the report and now if those grand jury redactions are going to go away, congress is about to get all of that stuff about whatever these sketchy dealings are described in having to do with ukraine, that mueller investigated and got material about but hasn't yet told congress because it's redacted for grand jury purposes. those redactions are going to go away and congress is about to get all of that stuff in the midst of the impeachment inquiry that it turns out has been legal all along, and is chugging along at quite a pace. not only was the house impeachment of president trump declared absolutely legal by the special judge today, it looks like the investigators running the inquiry about to get access to a lot of very germane potentially very explosive information in those efforts.

the lesson is when you have bad arguments, you tend to lose the argument and when your bad argument is intended to keep the truth from coming out, the truth in the end always has a way of coming out. much more to get to tonight. stay with us. too shabby! too much! too perfect! i can rent this? for that price? absolutely. what is this, some kind of fairy tale? it's just right! book your just right rental at thrifty.com. oh! baby bear!

it has been two years since the stories of sexual predation by harvey weinstein from jodi kantor and megan touhy at the "new york times" and shortly thereafter by ronan farrow at "the new yorker" magazine. and whether or not weinstein's predatory behavior was an open secret in hollywood or not, most of us don't live in hollywood, what we, the public, have now seen unspool over time has had a different layers of impact. first, harvey weinstein predation itself. the scale and scope of the allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault and rape stretching over decades. and it all follows 2i78 "t" same pattern, alleged isolating young

we do getting them alone, women in a position of directly working for weinstein or being professionally dependent on him as a big hollywood producer. and then the alleged behaviors just textbook sexual harassment up to and including serious allegations of serious sexual assault. the same description from all these different women over and over again, him taking off his clothes and exposing himself, demanding sex, demanding sexual contact of various kinds, refusing to take no for an answer and then him allegedly retaliating against young women who managed to get away from him. managed to escape, managed to rebuff what he was trying to do. and because there was such a distinct pattern in the allegations, because the allegations stretched over a long period of time because it was supposedly this open secret in hollywood, the reporting was really, really disturbing, right? i mean, it's a horror show in terms of the individual encounters that have been recounted by these women but it's a story about america too, right? this rot in the culture right at

this apex of american culture that allow this very powerful guy in the american movie business to allegedly commit these acts over and over again with the complicity of so many people, victimizing even women well known and seemingly powerful in their own right. even if you didn't care about hollywood, this was a riveting story with all kinds of very upsetting implications. the second part of the weinstein the second part of the story was the reporting about what he did to keep his alleged behavior secret or at least shielded from the media or from legal scrutiny for so long. the high powerhouse hold name famous lawyers and the very expensive pr firms. making legal threats for him, arranging financial payouts to his accusers that came with non-disclosure agreements so that the accusers couldn't talk, organizing smear campaigns when they did talk to make him seem crazy to undermine their claims. and then beyond that, there was this other layer of stuff we've

really never heard about before. which is about, i guess what you'd call the more baroque tactics that he brought to bear. ronan farrow reported vividly on weinstein hiring a foreign private intelligence firm staffed by the agents of the israeli intelligence service. these agents adopted a viefrt fake identities pretended to be all sorts of different people to get close to weinstein's accusers to gain trust and find out what this accuser might plan to say about weinstein and gather dirt to undermine accusers to make them, again, seem nuts, seem unreliable. and it wasn't just the people who weinstein had allegedly attacked who might speak about their experiences with him. the reporters going after the weinstein story were also targeted by these intelligence operatives. while reporting on the story,

farrow talks about the suspicion he was being followed to later uncover evidence that he was, he had been indeed been the subject of a surveillance operation. ultimately, he met and then interviewed one of the men who had been following him on foot and surveilling him through his phone. so weinstein deployed all of these intimidation tactics against the women and reporters and media outlets digging against him. he also deployed himself personally making calls and sending emails to news executives, a lot of whom he knew through the business. according to farrow's reporting, sometimes these calls were belligerent. weinstein demanding information, insisting stories be submarined, trashing the women accusing him, but also in emails farrow obtained, it was clear weinstein could be ingratiating and slippery, talking about deals he was really looking forward to doing with those executives. ultimately, though, the stories weinstein tried to stop from coming out did come out.

jodi kantor and megan touhy were first at "the new york times." ronan farrow reported after in "the new york times." those reporters would win the freaking pulitzer prize for the stories. for his part, harvey weinstein is currently awaiting trial on several charges including predatory sexual assault and denied all allegations of non-consensual sex. but the last part of the harvey weinstein story, the part that's being told right now is the story of how the story got told at all. the story of great journalism and how it gets done. and in the last few weeks, we've had two of these journalistic thrillers published. jodi kantor and megan touhy on "she said" and now ronan farrow is telling his reporting story in "catch and kill." in his book, he describes the pressure brought the bear on him and his sources and his employers and everyone around him as he tried to report this story. the private detectives following

him around, the legal threats, constant approaches from people representing themselves as fellow journalists or emissaries from decent-sounding non-profit organizations, people it would later emerge were, in fact, intelligence agents working on behalf of the israeli private intelligence firm. it was also the alliance between weinstein and executives at the national enquirer that farrow said published smear pieces about him when he reported unflattering news. farrow reported that the "enquirer" gathered dirt on weinstein's accusers and explored paying one of them, to bury it. if that sounds familiar, it's because it's a carbon copy of the relationship the "enquirer" had with donald trump, michael cohen currently in prison involving trump and the enquirer during the 2016 campaign. one of the central allegations of ronan farrow's book is that

amidst this atmosphere of creative indemnification and pressu amidst this creative intimidation and pressure, the story he was working on weinstein almost didn't get told and farrow said that's because his employer for the first several months of his reporting, slow walked and even at times, tried to stop his reporting. farrow said he was repeatedly told to, pause any new reporting while reviewed by increasingly higher-level executives at nbc, that some executives seemed to feel the weinstein story was not newsworthy or worth the trouble and yes, that's while nbc executives were getting repeated calls from weinstein himself mention the his lawyers. it was only when nbc news allowed him to take his reporting elsewhere. worked at nbc for seven months when went to the new yorker in august 2017, seven weeks after ronan left nbc, "the times" published their weinstein story and five days after that, farrow

published his weinstein story, the piece he had started at nbc but ran in the new yorker magazine, and included the most serious allegations from weinstein to that point. three allegations of rape. nbc news has strengthenously denied the allegation that it intentionally stymied his reporting. but said it was not ready for network tv in august 2017. they said the network was prepared to continue working working on the story to get it into shape, but that ronan wanted to move more quickly and so they allowed him to go to a print outlet instead. according to nbc, when ronan farrow left, he had no weinstein accusers on the record. farrow said when he left nbc, he had, quote, an explosively reportable piece that should have been public earlier. nbc news said his new yorker article bore little resemblance to his nbc news reporting. but again, that new yorker piece was less than two months after

he left this reporting at nbc and took it somewhere else. nbc letting this story get away is, i think, the best way i can put it is, when you take nbc's word for it, nbc letting that story get away is a shame. but in ronan farrow's telling, it's not a shame, it's a scandal. nbc is saying, essentially, it's too bad that story got away. we were really hoping to get it to air once it was ready. ronan farrow saying, no, you were stopping me from getting it to air and that's why i had to leave. but that's not the only allegation ronan farrow alleges in his book. about seven weeks after his reporting appeared in "the new yorker" in 2017, nbc abruptly fired the longtime host of the "today" show, matt lauer, after what it called inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace that was brought to the company's attentions. the company never detailed what the specific allegation was that led to matt lauer's firing. but "the new york times" and "variety" quickly had multiple

allegations against matt lauer. in his book, ronan farrow interviews the woman who made the complaint to nbc human resources that resulted in matt lauer getting fired. she tells farrow that it was reading the accounts of weinstein's accusers that convinced her to make her complaint about lauer in 2017. and now, in farrow's book for the first time, we learn what she alleges happened between her and lauer. she says while covering the olympics in sochi, matt lauer raped her in his hotel room while she was too drunk to consent and she says she repeatedly told him "no." matt lauer vehemently denied and said the encounter was consensual and farrow alleges in his book that this woman was one of several nbc employees with sexual misconduct allegations against matt lauer who received big payouts, a company by nondisclosure or nondisparagement agreements. nbc said the payments, the agreements all standard.

they weren't specific to anybody making any allegations against lauer. the company said management was up aware of any allegations against matt lauer at all before the one allegation for which they fired him. nbcuniversal did an internal investigation last year that said as much, that concluded. but i'll tell you, there has been consternation even inside this building, inside msnbc and nbc news that that matter was handled with an internal investigation, with the company, in effect, investigating itself rather than hiring external firm to do it. now, nbc news is obviously our parent company here at msnbc. the allegations about the behavior of harvey weinstein and matt lauer are gut wrenching, at baseline, no matter who you are or what your connection is to this story. but accusations that people in positions of authority in this building may have been complicit in some way in shielding those guys from accountability? those accusations are very, very

hard to stomach. and i can tell you that inside this building, this issue, the weinstein story, having to leave the building in order to get told and combine that with another previous gigantic story on a related subject, the "access hollywood" tape with billy bush, leaving this building to get told. the amount of consternation here function rank and file who work here would be almost impossible for me to overstate. i've been through a lot of ups and downs in this company since i've been here. it would be impossible to overstate the consternation in this building around this issue. since ronan farrow's book published, i've been trying to get answers about the key allegations. as to whether or not ronan farrow was told to hit pause on new reporting at a time when nbc didn't think there was enough to go to air with. we have independently confirmed that nbc news did that. that did happen. he was told to pause his reporting. in light of farrow's assertions there was a pattern of the

company of women making allegations against matt lauer and being paid off and signing away their rights to speak about it, all before matt lauer was ever fired? well, we've doubled back with nbc and they confirmed their denial that that ever happened before matt lauer was fired but as far as we can tell, there has never been an independent investigation of that. so until there is an independent investigation of that, if there is ever going to be one, that remains nbc's word versus ronan farrow's reporting and assertions. in terms of the specific question of women signing away their right to speak about any such incidents, well, there we actually have a little bit of news tonight. nbc news is now telling us on the record that there is nothing in any non-disparagement or non-disclosure agreement anyone may have signed with the company that can legally prevent you from talking about your experience. here's the statement from nbcuniversal. this is from a spokesperson from nbcuniversal.

quote, any former nbc news employee who believes that they cannot disclose their experience with sexual harassment as a result of a confidentially or non-disparagement provision in the separation agreement should contact nbcuniversal and we will release them from that perceived obligation. so that's new. that's news. as to whether or not any external review will be done of the handling of the weinstein story and why that story couldn't be broken here, but it later broke with another news organization? whether the company would submit itself to an external journalistic review to try and restore some confidence that the company isn't just further investigating itself and clearing itself on issues like this? well, again, we did get a statement on this, this time from nbc news. short form, i'll tell you, the answer is no, that's not going to happen. over a year ago, nbc released a 12-page transparent accounting from the weinstein reporting. that's another internal investigation. they told us tonight, quote,

once again, we stand by it. so since ronan farrow's weinstein reporting and the saga to get it to print described in his book, you should know that he has gone on to break stories about decades worth of allegations of sexual harassment and assault by the chairman of cbs, les moonves, one of the most powerful in the history of the country. led him to resign last year. ronan farrow reported the story of four women who accuse new york's attorney general ed sneiderman of physical abuse. he resigned three hours after the story broke in "the new yorker." the director of the media lab stepped down less than a day after ronan farrow reported on emails and documents he obtained showing the lab more deeply involved than admitted with billionaire pedophile jeffrey

epstein and accepted lots of money from him after they knew he was a convicted sex offender. ronan farrow's reporting changed on how we understand predation by powerful men in the country and how we understand the vast resources they can bring even on powerful institutions to shield themselves from accountability. that's worth talk about anywhere and anytime. ro in an farrow joining us here next. ing us here next trucks... and suvs. four years in a row. since more than 32,000 real people... just like me. and me. and me. took the survey that decided these awards. it was only right that you hear the good news from real people... like us. i'm daniel. i'm casey. i'm julio. only chevy has earned j.d. power dependability awards across cars, trucks and suvs. four years in a row.

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joining us now for the interview is ronan farrow, who won the pulitzer prize for decades of sexual predatory his reporting in "the new yorker" on harvey weinstein predatory misconduct. his book about reporting that story and the vast resources weinstein tried to employ to stop it and why that story didn't make it out the door at nbc news, that book is called "catch and kill" leads spies and conspiracy to protect predators. it's everywhere. ronan, thank you for being here. >> pleasure. thank you for doing this. >> i sort of summarized the context of this story, how i think your book fits into it and what i've learned. let me ask you if i got that wrong. or if you want to push back. >> i think that was very accurate, very fair summary. >> and i do believe that it is new, this statement from nbcuniversal tonight that anybody who believes they're constrained from talking about sexual abuse or sexual harassment by non-disparagement or non-confidentiality clause, if they come forward to nbcuniversal, they're released for that.

>> it's new and nbc executives deserve praise for that. as of today, i've spoken to multiple women who knew i was going to be talk about this more and expressed agony to be constrained by this. rebuttals including the claim this was all a coincidence, that if he were paying out these women who had these complaints about lauer and others. that said, these women considered these days to be payouts to silence them. executives involved told me they were payouts to silence them. the fact they're ending that and releasing these women is significant and should be a model for other companies. >> let me ask you about that specifically. because i have been trying to track this down myself. it's such a specific claim. so empirical that i feel like i naively believe i should be able to get to the bottom of this by the time i had you on the show tonight independently. >> sounds like you made some headway. >> but on the issue of whether or not enhanced severance of the

other types of payment deals and the types of language people sign when they leave, whether women who had allegations against matt lauer were treated any differently other than other people who left the company under circumstances that didn't have anything to do with claims of sexual misbehavior, i feel like that's, those are two data sets you could compare. did you actually get access to normal severance to compare this to? >> yes, and it's laid out clearly in the book. you can judge for yourself. but there was described as atypical, not the general process of people leaving the company by just about everyone involved in the transactions, except for the spokespeople putting out the statements now, on the inside, not only the women who received these payouts and their agents but also senior executives on the nbcuniversal side who brokered these agreements described them openly as sexual harassment settlements. >> okay. in terms of this change that's been announced tonight right here from nbcuniversal saying that these nondisparagement or

confidentiality clauses don't constrain women from talking about these things. based on your reporting from what you just described an ongoing reporting since the book, it sounds like you think that women will come forward now once they've been released. >> that will be their choice but women felt constrained, they were agonized over that and i think this will go a long way towards making them feel that they can discuss this openly. >> why do you think that you were told to pause for the reporting on your weinstein story at nbc news? i was able to independently verify this. nbc news confirming to me that happened but they say it was due to concerns about your reporting and a breakdown of trust between you and the investigative unit. why do you holistically, not in one of one of these instances in particular but holistically why do you think they told you to pause your reporting? >> important to note this past several rounds of legal and standards reviews, no breakdown of trust. i was told specifically there were no issues with the reporting again and again and over the course of the reporting we laid out here, there is a paper trail of the shutting down

of the story, including noah oppenheim, the president of nbc news, on six occasions ordering us to stop reporting. the head of the investigative unit underneath him eight times to stop reporting that eventually escalated to ordering us to cancel interviews. you can judge for yourself it's laid out in the book whether what we had was enough. we had a tape of weinstein admitting to sexual assault and multiple named women in every version of the story but that's actually not the point. the order to stop was unjournalistic and that's not just my account but working level producer's count. he recently wrote a piece for "vanity fair" saying it was an inappropriate shutdown of explosive reporting we had, and we were concerned that people were going to continue to get hurt. what the book lays out is that this was a set of executives making these decisions all the way up to our parent company who were cornered on some very difficult issues within the company. and if, indeed, they are moving towards more transparency, releasing women from nda's, maybe this independent review

people in the building have called for again and again, those would be positive steps. >> in terms of cancelling interviews, the interviews that you say nbc cancelled, were those interviews in shadow, interviews on camera or were those interviews off camera? what kinds of interviews were they cancelling? >> that includes fully on the record offers to go on camera full-faced, just wonderful brave woman, emily nester whose gone on record in recent days and in the book how she offered the story on nbc. rose mcgowan on face, getting intimidating legally and frustrated with nbc slow rolling the story for months. pulled out. the moment that happened, emily nestor said i will record my interview again. she had previously been in shadow. full face, the executives here were not interested in that. so it included a combination of interviews in shadow, which we do very often in our investigative stories including ones i've aired on this network and also full-face on the record record accounts that were very explosive and ultimately part of "the new yorker" story. >> when nbc news told us

tonight, again, i think this might be an unprecedented statement from them. we very much wanted to break this story, which is why we assigned it and supported it editorially and financially for seven months. we are profoundly disappointed we weren't able to do so. that might just sound like expression of feelings. i say inside the building, the expression of profound disappointment is meaningful to me because i feel like i've been waiting to hear that but i want to put it to you and ask you how that strikes you and whether you share this sense of that as a significant impression. >> the book in a way is a love letter to fellow reporters, including great reporters across the building at income taxes. many of them are sources that allowed me to tell this story. they are anguished over this. they were lied to. the general counsel said we had no settlements in this period where we ultimately lay out a paper trail of seven settlements. there's a feeling in the building that coverage is being distorted and good journalists have a problem with that. i think the transition from

almost trumpian response of we dig in, we reiterate the talking point that there wasn't a there there to the story, to something that more forthrightly acknowledges disappointment and a need to release people from non-disclosure agreements, that is immensely positive and i can only imagine will be received well here. >> there's one other aspect of this, ronan, that i want to ask you about. that actually i'm going to ask you about both as a lawyer and a reporter. but you stick with us after the break. author of new tlebest seller "ch and kill." we'll be right back. and kill." we'll be right back. ♪

you have power over pain, so the whole world looks different. the unbeatable strength of advil. what pain? we're back now live with ronan farrow, author of "catch and kill: lies, spies and a conspiracy to protect predators." it's an account of his reporting on allegations of predatory sexual behavior by harvey weinstein and why farrow says that pended in "the new yorker" magazine instead of nbc news. thank you for doing. >> thanks for having me.

>> it's fraught to be here, and it's -- i feel like talk about this in this context like makes it feel like i can feel the music behind us. >> there's a scene in great portent where you do the same brave thing after the story breaks and confront things forthrightly. and people speaking against their own bosses is an important part of how we can have an honest conversation about this. >> let me ask you about what it's like in this building, confronting your reporting and knowing as much as i do trying to figure it out and verify some of this stuff, i feel like in a a lot of different kinds of institutions, one that keeps coming to me is u.s. attorneys office, but a lot of institutions and news organizations and legal institutions, different places, there are moments when improper external pressure will be brought to bear and it's up to integrity of the outfit that that external pressure not be a

shock to the system that it actually blows up the product of that entity, but rather it's expected. so there's aair lock, an insulation, an anticipation for that and a way to structure the work of that entity in a way that it isn't effected by external pressure. i feel like it ought to be that way. i feel like we have dwopd developed that in a small way on my show. do you feel like a big news organization like nbc news, especially when it's integrated into this much larger nbc family, can effectively do that? is it possible to do that structurally? or do you have rely on individual braver. >> i think it requires both. we need to push our great news organizations, and i put nbc news in that category, to be transparent and accountable, and as you say, to have a firewall between the executive suite, when it receives this kind of pressure, and repertorial decisions. that did not happen here. executives descended and at a point where the normal process was playing out and a request was issued to the president of the news organization to go to

comment, to seek comment from harvey weinstein, that process was stopped. the point of this book and the reporting in it and the fact that we fact checked it so carefully is to make it clear this isn't about a tit for tat or me, it's a set of facts laid out there was a lack of a firewall. that shouldn't happen at cbs or ami with "the national enquirer" and all the reporting about that that's in the book, and it shouldn't happen at nbc news. i think you're seeing a lot of great journalists asking great questions. it's not for me to say what should happen in response to all of that. i'm not an activist, i'm a journalist, but i'm happy people like you are asking those hard questions. >> ronan farrow, "catch and kill: lies spies and a conspiracy to protect predators." thank you so much for being here. >> thank you, rachel, for all you do. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. >> we'll be right back stay with us performance comes in lots of flavors.

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powered by our gig-speed network. because beyond technology... there is human ingenuity. every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected. to do the traordinary. take your business beyond. >> where does the time go. have an excellent weekend. it's time for "the last word." i'm katy tur in for lawrence o'donnell. the butt dial heard around the world. we have details about rudy giuliani's accidental calls to an nbc reporter including his attacks on the bidens and his apparent need for a lot of cash. a former "apprentice" contestant who accused donald trump of sexual assault in 2007 presented evidence to back up