ABC News chiefs have discovered a former employee could be behind the leak of the damning footage of Amy Robach slamming the network for shelving her interview with Jeffrey Epstein’s “sex slave” Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Sources told Page Six that a former staffer had access to the footage of Robach as she aired her frustrations over a hot mike. The employee is now believed to be working at CBS. ABC sources confirmed to us they’ve informed counterparts at rival CBS about the staffer “as a courtesy.”
An ABC source told us the network is considering its options — but added that it’s more difficult because the person no longer works there. If they did, the leak would be a “fireable offense.”
Robach was caught on tape in July in ABC’s Times Square studio, where promos are usually shot. She was talking to someone off-camera whom “she would have every reason in the world to trust,” the source said.
The feed, however, is available to ABC News staffers not in the studio. Our source added: “We have good reason to believe this person had access to the footage, but what we don’t know is whether they would have shared it directly with Project Veritas or a couple of others and it made its way to Project Veritas.”
An ABC rep told us: “We take violations of company policy very seriously, and we’re pursuing all avenues to determine the source of the leak.” CBS declined to comment.
In the footage, Robach says that Giuffre, who claims she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew by Epstein, “told me everything.” But ABC “would not put [the interview] on the air.” The network said the report didn’t meet its standards, and on Tuesday a top ABC producer told NPR: “We would never run away from that … We would never kill a story about Prince Andrew. That’s what’s ridiculous on its face. That’s a great story. So if we could do that story, we would have done it!”
Andrew denies Giuffre’s allegations. Writer Yashar Ali first reported that the possible leaker now works at CBS.
For more on the drama at ABC, listen to this episode of the Page Six podcast, “We Hear”: