Cosby lawyers strong-armed tabloid into dropping story about rape claims
A damning 2005 article about two of his accusers was scrapped for a softer interview with the comedian after his lawyers threatened to sue the publication
Lawyers acting for Bill Cosby cajoled the tabloid magazine the National Enquirer into ditching a groundbreaking investigation it had conducted into his alleged sexual misconduct and replacing it with a celebrity interview in which the comic dismissed the claims as money-motivated "misinterpretations", the Guardian has learned.
The National Enquirer's investigation was carried out in 2005, just weeks after it first emerged that Cosby had been accused of drugging and molesting a female friend, Andrea Constand. The tabloid magazine dispatched its senior reporter Robin Mizrahi to look into the story.
Mizrahi made contact with a second woman, Beth Ferrier, who alleged that she too had been drugged and sexually molested by the entertainer. The Enquirer brought Ferrier to Los Angeles from her home in Denver, where she was then working as a model, and Mizrahi interviewed her and arranged for her to undergo a lie detector test.
"She passed the polygraph test with flying colors," Mizrahi told the Guardian. "She had a very, very detailed description of what allegedly happened which I still remember because it was so haunting. She said Cosby had stood over her and then she fell asleep because there was something in her coffee."