Cosby to AP Reporter: "If You Want to Be Serious," Delete Rape Question
On November 6, the Associated Press interviewed Bill Cosby and his wife Camille about an art exhibit in D.C. When the reporter asked Cosby about the multiple rape accusations against him (brought up onstage by comedian Hannibal Buress), Cosby issued a "no comment" and tried to bully the reporter into "scuttling" the footage.
The AP chose to release the video now in the wake of the news that Cosby's career is crumbling. The way Cosby acts towards the reporter in the video gives you some idea why his lawyers think they can bully reporters into suppressing Janice Dickinson's claim that Cosby raped her.
When the AP reporter asks about the accusations and comedian Hannibal Burress's recent comments about them, Cosby responds: "No, no, we don't answer that." The reporter pushes him, and he says, "There is no comment about that and I'll tell you why. I think you were told, I don't want to compromise your integrity, but I don't talk about it."
After the interview wraps up, Cosby brings up the issue again: "Now can I get something from you, that none of that will be shown?" The reporter says he'll check with his boss, but notes, "you didn't say anything." Cosby responds:
I know I didn't say anything, but I'm asking your integrity that since I didn't want to say anything, but I did answer you in terms of I didn't want to say anything, what value would it have? I would appreciate it if it was scuttled. I think if you want to consider yourself to be serious, that it will not appear anywhere.
It's not clear why the AP originally left this footage out of the interview.
This isn't the only damning Cosby recording released today. Radar Online released a snippet from a 2005 interview with the National Enquirer where Cosby reportedly explains why he doesn't want rape accusations in the press. (This was around the time attorney Tamara Green accused him of sexual assault). In Radar's recording, Cosby tells the Enquirer's Barry Levine:
Nobody ever wishes for a situation [like this]. Nobody ever really wishes for that. Who really wants to put his or her family in a position of information coming out publicly that will cause great emotional stress, challenge? The choices that the family, friends have made in looking at him or her as a good person, a wonderful person, a person to be trusted?
Cosby also says that media reports about him obtaining lawyers in the midst of the scandal are "unfair."