President Joe Biden has links to multiple Democratic operatives and a private security firm that served as "fixers" for convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein.
One of Biden’s White House advisers is Anita Dunn, a longtime political operative who advised Weinstein ahead of a bombshell story in 2017 about his sexual misconduct. Biden’s campaign last year hired a private intelligence firm, K2 Intelligence, that years earlier collected dirt on one of Weinstein’s accusers in order to block a criminal investigation of the producer.
David Boies, a prominent Democratic attorney who represented Weinstein, gave $130,600 to the Biden Victory Fund, a pro-Biden political action committee, and $5,600 to Biden’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Once one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison in March 2020. Dozens of women have accused him of sexual assault and other misconduct.
Boies, Dunn, and K2 Intelligence have all been accused of helping Weinstein either smear women who accused him of sexual abuse, or avoid negative publicity for his misdeeds.
The New York Times, which Boies represented, cut ties with the super-lawyer in November 2017 after a report revealed that he hired a private intelligence firm, Black Cube, to spy on Weinstein accusers. One of the objectives of the Black Cube contract was to kill a Times investigation into Weinstein’s sexual misconduct.
Biden has another link to Boies. Hunter Biden worked from 2011 to 2018 as an adviser to Boies’s firm, Boies Schiller Flexner. Biden brought in the firm to help represent Burisma Holdings in 2014, shortly after he had joined the Ukrainian gas company’s board of directors.
Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop show that he and Boies Schiller partners discussed a campaign to lobby U.S. policymakers on behalf of Burisma, whose owner was the subject of a bribery investigation at the time. Boies Schiller did not disclose its lobbying activities to Congress, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
K2 Intelligence worked for Weinstein to discredit one of his accusers. A lawyer for Weinstein, Elkan Abramowitz, hired K2 to dig up dirt on the sexual history of Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, an Italian model who accused Weinstein of raping her in 2015. K2 then allegedly fed the information, which included an allegation that Gutierrez worked as a prostitute, to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Abramowitz contributed $6,600 to Biden’s campaign and the Biden Victory Fund.
The Biden campaign paid K2 more than $7,700 late last year for digital services and technology consulting. Only one other political campaign has hired K2 Intelligence. Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) has paid K2 more than $425,000 for security services since December, according to FEC records.
Dunn, who serves as senior adviser to Biden, advised Weinstein in September 2017, prior to the publication of the Times report about his sexual misconduct. Dunn insisted that she was not paid by Weinstein, and that she spoke with the disgraced mogul at the request of a friend.
Dunn has more recently been accused of evading federal ethics rules for failing to file financial disclosures. The Revolving Door Project, a government transparency group, accused Dunn of taking a low salary in order to avoid having to file an annual financial disclosure. The filing would require Dunn to give details of her clients at SKDKnickerbocker, the Democrat-connected public relations firm where she was a partner.