Megyn Kelly nabbed an exclusive interview with former ABC News employee Ashley Bianco, the journalist who had access to a tape released earlier this week of Amy Robach venting on a hot mic that the network killed her reporting on convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Bianco, who was an associate producer at “Good Morning America” before leaving for “CBS This Morning” last month, admitted that she made a clip of the Robach moment after seeing it at her desk while still at ABC. The producer said she saved the clip she made in the ABC News system ― something that producers do all the time ― but insisted that she did not leak it to anyone.
“I did it just for office gossip,” said Bianco, who said the intention wasn’t to embarrass Robach or ABC News.
The producer was subsequently fired four days after starting at CBS after ABC discovered she was responsible for making the clip.
“I didn’t touch it after that,” said Bianco, who added that she “wasn’t even given the professional courtesy to know what I had been accused of” when she was fired after ABC News determined she was the person who had access to the Robach footage. It’s currently unknown who actually leaked the footage.
CBS did not respond to a request for comment from HuffPost.
The search for who had access to the tape began after right-wing group Project Veritas shared the footage of the “20/20” host divulging to unseen individuals off-camera that she’d interviewed Virginia Giuffre, née Roberts, a woman who claims to have been one of the billionaire’s sex-trafficking victims. ABC News claims that the piece never aired because the reporting did not meet its standards.
Within the last 24 hours, Bianco has deleted both her Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. She also expressed to Kelly that she’s fearful of ever getting hired elsewhere.
“It wasn’t me. I’m not the whistleblower. The leaker’s still inside,” said Bianco, through tears, who added that many people inside ABC News saw the footage internally.
In the footage, Robach talks about how her 2015 interview with Giuffre “had everything” and yet was pushed aside.
“We would not put it on the air. First of all, I was told, ‘Who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story,’” she says. “Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways. We were so afraid we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will that we, that also quashed the story.”
Robach also mentions celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz as both he and Prince Andrew have been accused of being part of Epstein’s sex-trafficking schemes. Dershowitz has adamantly denied the allegations.