Fired CBS Employee Ashley Bianco Speaks Out on Robach/Epstein/ABC Scandal

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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47 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    In the interview, Ashley Bianco drops the bombshell that she only clipped the clip in the first place for office gossip. She did *NOT* distribute it and doesn’t know who did. She’s upset that she might not ever work in the industry that she loves ever again.

    And if she had known that this would happen, she *NEVER* would have made that clip.Report

    • Which means just about everyone at ABC knew about this. The only question is will this be the lone outlier or will the dam break. I suspect the Media In-Club Omerta will win out.Report

    • PD Shaw in reply to Jaybird says:

      It’s a sad clip that juxtaposes a young woman’s great sadness at losing a career with her steady assurance that she would never betray her employer by whistleblowing.

      She should get a lawyer.Report

      • George Turner in reply to PD Shaw says:

        Almost as sad as two major news outlets up in arms and conducting purges because there is still an unidentified “journalist” in their employ who is willing to let the public know the truth.

        It’s surreal.Report

        • JoeSal in reply to George Turner says:

          Might make people question all that #IBelieveHer movement and the crickets/lack of any support currently emanating from those folks.

          Did they really ever exist? Did that really ever happen?

          It’s just a complete mystery.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to PD Shaw says:

        Yeah, the abject abjectedness of her willingness to toe the corporate line – any corporate line – was pretty believable. Not the slightest trace of “I was wronged, but ABC was wronger.”

        If she’s lying, she’s pretty good… and certainly not concerned about being well thought of. Pitied, yes, but admired? No.Report

    • JoeSal in reply to Jaybird says:

      Did I mention we would have problems with social truth?Report

  2. Marchmaine says:

    Dang… she didn’t leak it. The weirdness continues.

    For clarity, the timeline is (I think)
    2016 – 3-yrs ago Robach has story on Epstein based on Virginia Roberts interview
    NOV 2018 – Miami Herald Publishes first Epstein Story based on Virginia Roberts testimony
    JUL 06 2019 – Epstein Arrested
    JUL 23 2019 – Epstein Dead
    AUG 2019 – Court releases documents on Epstein/Court dismisses case.
    AUG 2019 – Robach makes her hot mic comments
    AUG 2019 – Bianco “clipped/marked” the tape, but didn’t copy or download
    NOV 2019 – Footage leaked to O’Keefe

    It seems ABC could see who “clipped” the moment, but Bianco claims she didn’t have a copy and that the clipped moment stayed in the system… someone else leaked the actual footage. So she claims.

    Not sure what to make of all that… its just weird… the speed at which they shitcanned Bianco – across corporate lines no less – is curious, if what she says about not leaking the tape is true. Maybe she’s lying…Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    Some disjointed thoughts:

    1. A lot of people on the left (including me) think that a big problem with journalism especially at the traditional outlets (aka MSM) favor access above anything else. This gives people with power, fame, prestige, etc a vast amount of sway over what gets said and not said. One of the reasons people on the left liked sites like Deadspin is that it preferred to say fuck that shit and went against access journalism.

    2. The higher-paid end of the journalistic sphere does look like well-paid sycophants for the powerful. Sure Barbara Walters might ask Putin what seems like a tough question but everything was approved before hand and probably as well rehearsed as a Broadway play on both ends.

    2a. On the other end of the spectrum, some lower-end media just looks like a cut and paste from a press release because those organizations lack time and money.

    3. Project Veritas is still a far-right wing propaganda and ratfucking institution that purposefully distorts video and audio to suit its purposes. Jeffrey Epstein hanged out with very powerful people and it seemingly impossible to resist using him to smear the other side. Mainly on the right here. The whole thing here is to smear the “left-wing media” as enabling a pedophile. Project Veritas is not doing this out of the goodness in their hearts. So the fact that their beloved Donald also partied with Epstein is seemingly lost to them.

    So it wouldn’t surprised me if ABC did do this but it also wouldn’t surprise me if Project Veritas fucked with the video and audio. Certainly its motive is less than stellar.Report

    • KenB in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      “it it also wouldn’t surprise me if Project Veritas fucked with the video and audio”

      At this point that would surprise me a lot — if there was material tampering, that would’ve been a major part of ABC’s response. Instead they’ve just defended the decision not to run it and fired the presumed leaker.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to KenB says:

        Agreed… all the principals have admitted the content is valid.

        Their story is that they have higher journalistic standards than the Miami Herald… who’s lax standards got Epstein arrested.Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to KenB says:

        Same deal with the DNC emails, as I recall. Nobody said “this is bullshit, and god damn you for ever believing it”. They just said “how dare you steal this and publish it”.

        Which does make sense, in the New Politics. The point is not to get the swing voters on your side, because there aren’t enough swing voters to matter. The point is to get your base to the polls. And you don’t do that by nattering on about the truth or falsehood of this-or-that attack because if people are fired-up enough to vote then they don’t really give a shit what you might have done. They figure whatever the other guys say is lying bullshit because of course they’d lie, and even if it were true, well, I’m sure our guys had good reasons for doing whatever it was they did, and nobody really knows anything anyway. And you fire these voters up by painting it as a conflict of The Good Guys (you) versus the Evil Cheating Sneak Thieves who go out rifling through trash and dirty laundry looking for something they can smear you with, and it’s important that people vote for you to make sure those rotten cheaters lose like they deserve to do. But if you go out and start trying to apologize, to complain, to whine and quibble, then you’re a wimp, you’re no good, you won’t fight, and the voters figure they’ll just stay home and watch Judge Judy.

        The New Politics is dominated by the idea that you Never Apologize For Anything.Report

        • greginak in reply to DensityDuck says:

          Hot take. Using information that has been stolen is morally questionable. There may be times it is on the good enough side. But there are many many times when it is well on the wrong side.

          There is also a continuum with what is leaked and stolen. If someone breaks into your physical house, takes fugly letters you wrote and publishes them to attack you that would be clearly seen as a majorly problematic. Sort of the same thing for electronic break in’s.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a CGI Amy Rorbach in the video, and nobody has alleged that she didn’t say what Project Veritas put out there.

      Sure, people on the left claimed O’Keefe altered the abortion clinic footage, and the media, the same people covering up for Epstein, spent a lot of time pushing that claim, constantly telling us that the footage was “heavily [and] deceptively edited.” The Fifth Circuit rejected such claims as false, saying “that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited.”

      All O’Keefe has to do is record the tapes and play the tapes. Further editing would be pointless.Report

      • Philip H in reply to George Turner says:

        It wasn’t just people on the left claiming he altered stuff – he was convicted criminally in one case and had a civil judgement for defamation handed down in another. But hey, thanks for playing I guess.Report

    • JoeSal in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      It’s pretty rich that in the midst of this, your position is to point to the right as the rat coitus folk.

      Just epic.

      Never change Saul.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      So the fact that their beloved Donald also partied with Epstein is seemingly lost to them.

      This sounds to me like one hell of an opportunity for an enterprising journalist to take down the worst president we’ve had since Dumbya.

      She’d be the new Woodward/Bernstein.Report

      • dragonfrog in reply to Jaybird says:

        I don’t think that any news bombshell would take down Trump. At this point there are:
        1) People who already know Trump is a serial sex abuser, and were already not going to vote for him.
        2) People who already know Trump is a serial sex abuser, and will vote for him regardless or perhaps even because of this.
        3) People already know that anything negative about Trump in the media is “fake news”.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to dragonfrog says:

          This strikes me as a reason to condemn Trump voters if they vote him back in despite the news coming out.

          But the Epstein story also strikes me as being big enough that I changed “when” to “if” in the above sentence.Report

          • dragonfrog in reply to Jaybird says:

            There are 23 separate sexual assault accusations against Trump at this point, none to my knowledge even linked to Epstein. He bragged on a hot mic about committing sexual assault. He is well known to have deliberately burst into women’s change rooms when he ran beauty pageants.

            Adding a few allegations related specifically to Jeffrey Epstein would be dumping a teacup of water into the ocean and thinking that’ll make all the difference.

            I mean, even if he loses he’ll still have the support of – what’s the minimum you’d predict? 38% of American voters?

            I think it’s fine to condemn those voters whether their preferred candidate wins or not.Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

            This strikes me as a reason to condemn Trump voters if they vote him back in despite the news coming out.

            If my choice is between a 50T tax increase (and/or a ton of other equally destructive policies) or holding my nose then that’s an easy choice.

            But the Epstein story also strikes me as being big enough that I changed “when” to “if” in the above sentence.

            Your above link is to Epstein shutting down a story about him in 2003. I checked to see what powerful people he was connected to in 2002-2003 and the name which stands out is Bill Clinton.Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

              Would it be fair to characterize your comment as saying that you are willing to accept racism and injustice for millions of people, just to avoid paying higher taxes?Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Would it be fair to characterize your comment as saying that you are willing to accept racism and injustice for millions of people, just to avoid paying higher taxes?

                50 Trillion in new taxes subjects the bulk of the people in the US to a level of “injustice” that we need to look to other countries’ experience to comprehend. These policies take us into wreck the economy territory.

                A dirty old man walking through the wrong changing room is a problem. Large numbers of people not being able to feed their children is another. They’re not even slightly comparable in terms of the amount of “evil” being inflicted. Real life is a series of trade offs. Looking at the Dem candidate through rose colored glasses and seeing no flaws to match against the other guy’s flaws doesn’t lead to a good evaluation of which is worse.

                I’m all in favor of evaluating what is going to happens to millions, or better yet, hundreds of millions of people. However at that level of review, Trump’s sex history rounds to nothing. It’s not a factor. Similarly Bill Clinton potentially being a rapist also rounds to zero at that level of evaluation, although it does showcase that the Dems don’t consider this to be a disqualifying issue for members of their own team.Report

        • Dark Matter in reply to dragonfrog says:

          4) People who think, perhaps correctly, that the other side is worse.
          5) People who think, perhaps correctly, that this issue is less important than others.Report

  4. George Turner says:

    A commenter at Intapundit said:

    Sounds like she should lawyer up. She appears to have a case of tortuous interference against ABC. Under New York law, a tort action for interference with a contractual relationship must be based upon five essential elements:

    A valid contractual agreement between parties must be established
    The defendant must be shown to have had knowledge of the contractual agreement
    The alleged interference must have caused a breach of the contract
    The interference must be both intentional and improper
    The plaintiff must establish that it suffered damages as a result of the alleged contractual interference

    Any lawyers want to weigh in?Report

  5. Jaybird says:

    Someone on the twitters pointed out this juicy excerpt to me:

    Eventually, the women agreed to go on the record, Ward said, and when Epstein was told about their accounts he went “berserk”. Epstein had already threatened to get a witch doctor to put a curse on Ward’s unborn children – she was pregnant with twins at the time – and now he campaigned to stop Vanity Fair publishing the allegations, even turning up unannounced at the office of the then editor, Graydon Carter.

    Report