Rose McGowan: Lisa Bloom should be 'disbarred' for helping Harvey Weinstein discredit her

Rose McGowan, one of fallen movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's most vociferous accusers, has turned her firepower on women's rights attorney Lisa Bloom, calling for her to be disbarred for offering to help Weinstein discredit his accusers, as detailed in a new book.

In response, Bloom is apologizing again for her Weinstein work and thanking reporters for "forcing me to confront the colossal mistake" she made.

"While painful, I learn so much more from my mistakes than my successes," she tweeted. 

The book is "She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement," by Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, the New York Times reporters who helped unravel Weinstein's powerful Hollywood career.

The book, which is about how the reporters assembled their Weinstein exposé, includes a number of new revelations, including a copy of a memo written by Bloom to Weinstein offering help in attacking his accusers, such as actresses Ashley Judd and McGowan, as unreliable and mentally unstable.

Bloom, who has made a career of representing women who have accused powerful men of sexual misconduct, wrote to Weinstein in December 2016, explaining that she was "equipped to help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them."

She wrote that they "start out as impressive, bold women, but the more one presses for evidence, the weaknesses and lies are revealed." Bloom's clients have included women who have accused Bill Cosby, former Fox News star Bill O'Reilly and Donald Trump.

At the moment, Bloom also is representing three women who are accusers of Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire financier and convicted sex offender who committed suicide in federal custody while awaiting trial on new sex-crime charges.   

It's not news that Bloom briefly worked as a lawyer for Weinstein; she apologized for that in October 2017 after blockbuster stories about Weinstein's alleged sexual misconduct were published in The New York Times and The New Yorker.

She told the Associated Press at the time that she agreed to work with Weinstein because "I've often wished I could get in on the other side and knock the guy around a little and tell him to knock it off. ... Remarkably, I now have the opportunity to do that." 

But the memo from nearly a year before those stories were published reveals more details about what she said she could do for Weinstein, including planting articles portraying McGowan and other accusers as "unglued."

McGowan, who has long been furious with Bloom about this, was not pleased about the new revelations in the book. 

"The evil that was perpetrated on me and others was mind bending and illegal. Lisa Bloom should be disbarred," she declared in a tweet Monday.

McGowan has attacked Bloom before, on her Facebook page. On Sunday, she urged her followers to read an article in The Times about the book.  

"If you’ve read about me coming ‘unglued’ in the past two years, read the attached article," she posted. "You’ll understand what was done to me and how systematic it was. They’ve called me mentally unbalanced, a whore, an attention seeker, a TERF. All bought and paid for by a rapist and his evil minions. Read this article before you pass judgement. All I have done is for the greater good of the world." 

Once Twohey and Kantor began promoting the book on TV on Sunday, Bloom tweeted a fuller apology and thanked the reporters, including Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker.

"While painful, I learn so much more from my mistakes than my successes. To those who missed my 2017 apology, and especially to the women: I am sorry. Here are the changes I've made to ensure that I will not make that mistake again," the tweet read.

She said she judged people "not by their one worst mistake but by their lifetime of work."

Since October 2017, more than 85 women have accused Weinstein, 67, of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to rape. He has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.

Among the other revelations in "She Said:" 

Weinstein's brother and partner, Bob Weinstein, wrote him a letter two years before the stories were published pleading with Harvey to get help for his behavior with women.

Rowena Chiu, a former Weinstein employee in London, revealed her name for the first time. She says Weinstein tried to rape her in a hotel room in Venice, Italy, in 1998, when they were working there together. She later agreed to a settlement and signed an agreement not to talk about her allegations. 

One of Weinstein's accountants, Irwin Reiter, who worked for Weinstein for 30 years, ended up as the "Deep Throat" of the reporters' Weinstein investigation.

Weinstein is scheduled to go on trial in January in New York on five sex crime charges, including rape, involving two women and dating from 2013 and 2006. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.