Irwin Reiter

Irwin Reiter was The Weinstein Company’s longtime accounting and financial-reporting executive and a source whose inside knowledge helped Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey document Harvey Weinstein’s conduct and the company’s failed attempts to address it. His role was not that of an all-knowing whistleblower: he disclosed information cautiously, in fragments, while risking his job. The memo he preserved and eventually enabled Kantor to copy made the consequences of those fragments tangible.

Identity and Position

Reiter served as executive vice president for accounting and financial reporting at The Weinstein Company. Colleagues described him as the company’s institutional memory: he had kept the brothers’ books since 1989. He was also regarded as a loyalist, gruff, and not an obvious critic of Harvey Weinstein’s treatment of women. That reputation made an executive’s report that Reiter hated Weinstein striking enough to prompt Kantor to contact him.

Reiter’s long tenure gave him access to the company’s history, but it did not make him free to speak. He understood that his employment was at risk, and his eventual disclosures came in fits and starts rather than as a single, orderly account. His position inside the company was both the source of his knowledge and a constraint on how he could share it.

Becoming a Source

When Kantor first called, Reiter said he did not want to speak. Before ending the call, however, he gave her a private email address, opening a narrow channel for further contact. Kantor and Twohey worked together on the correspondence, with Twohey reading Reiter’s replies and advising Kantor on her responses. Reiter then arranged a late meeting at the bar behind Little Park in Tribeca, close to Weinstein’s company offices. He set the terms: he would ask the questions, could leave after five minutes, and would pay.

At their first meeting, Reiter was guarded. He used initials when referring to young women who had worked at the company, declined to provide more than he was ready to share, and said his concern was stopping Weinstein’s treatment of young female employees. Over the next two weeks, he met Kantor every few nights, usually at the same bar. He repeatedly said each meeting would be the last. His account moved between episodes, sometimes omitted names, and included material that the reporters could not immediately verify. He did not claim to understand everything that had happened.

Kantor and Twohey treated his disclosures as leads to test, not as a finished story. Between meetings they sought records, contacted the women he had mentioned, and spoke with former employees. They were trying to establish what Weinstein had done and what evidence supported each account. Reiter was especially important because he opened a view into company events during 2014 and 2015, when concerns about Weinstein had become increasingly visible among senior employees.

The 2015 Internal Effort

Reiter’s role extended beyond speaking to reporters. On July 1, 2015, he and two other executives met board member Lance Maerov for breakfast at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. They outlined complaints of verbal abuse made against Weinstein. Reiter also slipped Maerov several pages from the memo concerning Emily Nestor. The executives were taking a risk by showing the material, and they did not want Maerov to leave with it. He read the pages at the table, seeing evidence of the kind of conduct he suspected.

The disclosure did not produce an effective restraint. Weinstein refused to let Maerov inspect his personnel file, while David Boies offered to review it and report potential legal problems to the board. Maerov distrusted the arrangement, but the company’s subsequent response centered on limiting liability. Weinstein’s new contract imposed escalating financial penalties if the company had to pay settlements connected to his misconduct, beginning at $250,000 and rising to $1 million, and allowed for termination. The company also adopted a code of conduct. These provisions did not amount to a guarantee that women would be protected from harassment; Maerov’s stated concern was the company’s exposure.

Reiter and Bob Weinstein had also considered ways to separate Harvey Weinstein from the company. Bob ultimately lost his nerve, and the contract negotiations ended with Harvey Weinstein securing his position for years. Reiter continued to work at the company, but his account of the outcome was not one of confidence in the safeguards. He had helped bring information to a board member, yet the effort did not prevent Weinstein from signing the new agreement in October 2015.

The O’Connor Memo and the Investigation

By September 2017, Reiter was again giving Kantor information from inside the company. After employees discussed a Times investigation into questionable amfAR transactions, he told her that the staff were watching someone hold Weinstein to account. The reporters, meanwhile, needed documentation about the company that could be published without identifying their source. Reiter told Kantor about a memo by Lauren O’Connor, a respected junior executive who, he said, had left because of Weinstein’s treatment of women.

Kantor showed Reiter a brief, anonymous account from an actress describing a hotel meeting with Weinstein and an attempt to use career assistance to pressure her into sex. Reiter, who knew much about the company but little about such encounters with actresses, appeared shocked. Kantor explained that the reporters had heard similar accounts from other women. The juxtaposition connected what Reiter had seen inside the company with a pattern of allegations extending beyond its employees.

Reiter had kept a copy of O’Connor’s memo after seeing it earlier. In 2017, he brought Kantor close to the document while taking a deliberate trip away from the table, enabling her to copy it. The memo did not simply vanish when O’Connor left the company: Reiter had retained it, and other colleagues had also seen it. Its survival gave the investigation documentary evidence of concerns raised within the company, rather than leaving the account dependent on Reiter’s recollection alone.

Change and Narrative Significance

Reiter’s actions developed from guarded contact into consequential assistance, but the evidence does not depict him as having unlimited power or certainty. He was a long-serving insider who had remained at the company, worried about his employment, and disclosed information selectively. He could help Maerov see the Nestor memo and preserve O’Connor’s document, yet he could not make the board’s response protective or prevent Weinstein’s contract renewal.

That tension defines Reiter’s significance in the investigation. His disclosures helped the reporters connect individual accounts to company knowledge and internal decision-making; the memo he saved supplied a document that could corroborate what employees had tried to raise. At the same time, his experience showed the limits of information held inside an organization where warnings could reach decision-makers without changing the outcome. The investigation’s picture of institutional failure emerged partly through Reiter’s divided position: close enough to see and preserve evidence, but not powerful enough to make it stop.