Trump slams ABC after leak shows studio tried to bury Epstein victim's interview: 'We no longer have freedom of the press'
President Donald Trump’s troubled relationship with the mainstream media is quite well known. The Republican has always had a tussle with a number of big media outlets and his administration has even decided to cancel the subscription of a number of broadsheets. Trump believes they are always treating him unfairly and often calls them “fake."
On November 10, the president renewed his fight against the media, although in another way. He claimed that the First Amendment right of freedom of the press did not exist anymore after a CBS News employee was fired on charges of leaking a hot mic video of an ABC News reporter.
In the video that was captured in August, ABC News anchor Amy Robach said on the hot mic that ABC, owned by Disney, killed her three-year-old interview with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an accuser of the now-deceased Jeffrey Epstein.
Ashley Bianco, accused of being the former ABC staff member to leak the hot-mic footage, was sacked from her current post at the CBS on November 7, only days after she joined.
Robach said the ABC authorities didn't allow her story to be aired because the British royal family threatened to sue the network and it was feared Prince William and Kate Middleton would not give any interviews to ABC again. "I've had the story for three years. I've had this interview with Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air", she was heard saying on the video.
Trump was quick to take a plunge. In a tweet posted on Sunday, the president slammed ABC calling it “as bad as the rest of them."
“ABC is as bad as the rest of them. Journalistic standards are nonexistent today. The press is so dishonest that we no longer have Freedom of the Press!” he said.
Besides making the remark, Trump also reposted a Fox News video where its anchor Jesse Watters reported on fresh revelations of the video on Epstein that was first shared by Project Veritas. Watters also lashed out at ABC on Twitter for reporting against Supreme Court judge Brett Kavanaugh after he was accused by women of decades-old sexual misconduct but not doing the same with the Epstein accuser.
“Watters World is calling for an independent investigation into ABC News”, the Fox anchor said in the video that Trump reposted to his Twitter account. “The media wants to protect the Trump whistleblower but tries to fire the Epstein whistleblower... The media has gone completely bad”, he said.
Bianco, who spoke with Megyn Kelly in an interview that got released on November 8, said she was innocent. The 25-year-old, who was sacked after the CBS was informed by ABC that she “leaked” the footage, was in tears while telling Kelly that she had only saved the clip when she watched Robach ranting about ABC killing her story from the desk.
Bianco also said that she was told Robach knew she was on a hot mic and it was being broadcast to all the network affiliates. She said she clipped the video in the network’s system and marked the footage to watch at some other time, admitting that she did it for office gossip only.
'Somebody present in network leaked it'
Bianco also said she never touched the video later and warned ABC that somebody else, well present inside the network, leaked it.
“'It wasn't me. 'I'm not the whistleblower. I'm sorry to ABC but, the leaker is still inside. I never did any of that. I may have accessed it. But I never leaked it, I never showed it to anyone, I didn't talk about the situation outside the company”, Bianco told Kelly.
She also acknowledged that she was devastated and humiliated by her firing after joining only four days ago. She said she wanted her career back.