After threatening to sue The New York Times for their piece on Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual harassment, Charles Harder has left the disgraced producer’s legal team, joining Lanny Davis and Lisa Bloom as the third lawyer to exit, according to several news reports.
Janice Min, strategist for Eldridge Industries, confirmed Harder and Weinstein’s parting in a tweet on Sunday. While other outlets have since confirmed Harder’s exit, he has not responded to a request for comment from TheWrap.
Harder, who has earned a reputation for taking on media outlets after his successful lawsuit against Gawker that led to the New York blog’s bankruptcy, sent a defiant statement promising a lawsuit just hours after the NYT piece was published.
“The New York Times published today a story that is saturated with false and defamatory statements about Harvey Weinstein,” Harder said. “It relies on mostly hearsay accounts and a faulty report, apparently stolen from an employee personnel file, which has been debunked by 9 different eyewitnesses. We sent the Times the facts and evidence, but they ignored it and rushed to publish.”
But as more and more women have come forward to the press with their own accounts of being sexually assaulted by Weinstein, the lawsuit has now been dropped.
Weinstein was fired from The Weinstein Company and is under criminal investigation in New York and London after several women came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct, including harassment and rape. A representative for Weinstein has stated, “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”