Fired producer denies to Megyn Kelly she leaked Amy Robach video: 'I'm not the whistleblower'
Megyn Kelly, former Fox News anchor and NBC host, conducted her first interview in over a year since her namesake talk show was canceled in October 2018. On Friday, Kelly launched her Instagram page and YouTube channel by interviewing Ashley Bianco, a former ABC producer accused of leaking a video of anchor Amy Robach complaining that her network passed on a Jeffrey Epstein story.
"It wasn't me," Bianco told Kelly. "I'm not the whistleblower. I'm sorry to ABC, but the leaker's still inside. I never did any of that. I may have accessed [the video], but I never leaked it. I never showed it to anyone. I didn't talk about the situation outside the company."
In the leaked clip, Robach is caught on a hot mic complaining that three years ago, she had interviewed Virginia Roberts, who had accused the convicted sex offender and accused serial pedophile, of abuse. Robach and ABC both issued statements this week saying the reporting didn't meet the network's standards. In Friday's interview, Bianco denied to Kelly she had anything to do with leaking the video.
"No, never," she replied, but Bianco admitted to making a clip of the moment. "I saved it in the internal system. ... I essentially marked it in the system ... we do it all the time."
Related: Leaked Footage Details Canceled Jeffrey Epstein Story
Bianco claimed Robach, who was off-air but taping promos, knew she was mic'd when venting her frustrations about ABC and Epstein on August 19.
"Everyone in the office was freaked out by what she was saying and everyone was watching it," Bianco explained, saying the purpose of clipping the moment was to "watch it back later. You know, I did it just for office gossip, you know?"
Bianco maintained she had no intention of embarrassing Robach or ABC by making the clip, saying she "loved" her three years at the network.
"I never went back to [the clip]," an emotional Bianco declared, saying she "didn't touch it after that, it stayed in the system." The producer said the first time she heard of Project Veritas, the right-wing activist group that leaked the hot mic moment, was this week.
"I was shocked," Bianco said when she saw the Robach video online, "but didn't think anything of it."
Bianco recently left ABC News for CBS News. After working at CBS for only four days she was fired this week after ABC called her employer.
"I begged, I pleaded, I didn’t know what I had done wrong and I just, you know, I didn’t — I wasn’t even given the professional courtesy to defend myself," Bianco said. "You know, I didn’t even know what I was accused of. It was humiliating, it was devastating."
As for who the leaker could be, Bianco said "everyone" saw Robach's August comments.
"Everyone was talking about it, was running around taking videos of it," she said, but added she regrets clipping the moment.
"Had I known, I would have never clipped it," Bianco said.
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