Reeling from allegations of sexual harassment and assault against its co-founder Harvey Weinstein, the Weinstein Company announced Monday that it will receive an immediate lifeline from Colony Capital, the private investment firm founded by Tom Barrack, a longtime friend of Donald Trump. “We will help return the company to its rightful iconic position in the independent film and television industry,” Barrack said in a statement announcing the preliminary deal. Colony is also in talks to buy either some or all of T.W.C., including its movie and television rights, putting an end to the Weinstein Company’s decade-long run as Hollywood’s top independent film group.
Barrack’s involvement with Weinstein is notable, given how much political capital Republicans have sought to extract from the scandal over the last week. White House aides and Trump allies have gleefully alighted upon the fact that Weinstein was a major Democratic donor, and slammed Hillary Clinton for not repudiating him sooner. Barrack, after all, is hardly a bit player in Trumpworld: the billionaire real-estate developer spoke at the Republican National Convention last summer on Trump’s behalf, served on Trump’s inaugural committee, and was a top Trump fund-raiser during the 2016 election. Though the two have had their disagreements—Barrack has criticized some of Trump’s proposals, including the border wall with Mexico, and recently said he was “shocked” and “stunned” by some of Trump’s rhetoric—Barrack remains one of the president’s closest confidants. Last week, my colleague Gabe Sherman reported that Barrack has even been floated as a replacement for White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
The Colony deal comes less than two weeks after The New York Times and The New Yorker published reports detailing allegations of harassment and assault by Weinstein spanning decades. Weinstein has since been fired, leaving his 42 percent stake, and the company’s future, in doubt.
For most investors, the stain of scandal would have made Weinstein too risky a bet. “No respectable business or talent would touch him,” Larry Harder, a corporate buyout specialist, told The Wall Street Journal. “The only alternative is to find somebody to come in, take out Harvey’s position, so they can say look, we’re wiping the slate clean.” But Barrack, who likely got a steep discount on T.W.C., has made money off of Weinstein’s properties before. In 2010, he helped create a joint venture to buy Miramax, the Weinstein brothers’ first production company, from Disney for $663 million. It was acquired by a Qatari media group, almost six years later, for as much as $1 billion.
