ABC News will air a new documentary on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein next month, but it will not feature an interview with one of his accusers that the network previously squashed.
The film, dubbed Truth and Lies: Jeffrey Epstein, will air 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 9 and does not include Amy Robach’s interview with Virginia Roberts Giuffre from 2015, according to a person familiar with the documentary. The unaired interview became public knowledge last month when Project Veritas released a video of Robach from this summer expressing her frustration with the network’s refusal to air her interview.
“I’ve had the story for three years. I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts [Giuffre]. We would not put it on the air,” Robach said in the video. “First of all, I was told, ‘Who is Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.'” She also suggested that Prince Andrew’s role in the story led to Buckingham Palace threatening ABC News “a million different ways” and suggested the network didn’t air the story because it was afraid “we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will.”
ABC News defended its decision not to air the interview because “Robach and the investigative team was unable to verify key facts” of Giuffre’s story, a network executive previously told the Washington Examiner.
Robach, who claimed that her comments were “caught in a private moment of frustration,” will not be featured in the documentary at all, the person familiar with the doumentary told the Washington Examiner. Although the Giuffre interview with Robach will not appear in the documentary, Giuffre’s interview with the BBC from earlier this month will be featured.
In addition to the two-hour special, ABC News will launch a podcast, hosted by Mark Remillard, meant to chronicle “the powerful story of the women who survived his crimes and fought back to reclaim their lives,” according to a network press release. “The ABC News special features material from a 2003 interview in which Epstein discusses his life; deposition tapes of Epstein and his alleged co-conspirators; police interviews with the young girls; and their personal reactions today to seeing Epstein appear in court last summer.”
Epstein, who died in August of an apparent suicide in his New York jail cell, was awaiting multiple sex trafficking charges at the time of his death. His ties to disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, Andrew, President Trump, and Bill and Hillary Clinton have all received additional scrutiny since then.
Giuffre, who has alleged that she was Epstein’s sex slave, has accused Andrew of raping her three times, despite his repeated denials. She claims that they met at a nightclub in London in 2001. Giuffre characterized him as “profusely sweating” at the time they met. In a recent BBC interview with Emily Maitlis, Andrew pushed back on those claims saying that: “I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falkland War when I was shot at … it was almost impossible for me to sweat.”
He also claimed that he couldn’t have assaulted her on one of the dates Giuffre alleges because he was at a chain pizza restaurant with his daughters, while also saying he had “no recollection of ever meeting her.”
Following the backlash from the interview, Andrew announced his withdrawl from public duties, citing the “major disruption” his associations with Epstein had caused.
