CBS employee fired for allegedly leaking Robach hot mic clip denies she leaked the tape

Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly interviewed Ashley Bianco, who was fired by CBS earlier this week for reportedly leaking a hot mic clip of ABC host Amy Robach.

In the hot mic clip, Robach claims that she had a story about Jeffrey Epstein three years ago, but that the network quashed it. 

“I’ve had the story for three years,” Robach says in the clip.

“I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air.”

The video was posted online by conservative group Project Veritas.

When asked by Kelly if she had ever leaked the video to anyone, Bianco replied “no, never.”

Bianco, who worked as a producer for ABC, told Kelly that in August, she saw Robach’s comments in real time. She questioned her manager about the comments, but her manager told her that Amy knew that she was on a hot mic.  

Bianco decided to make a clip of the moment, something that she told Kelly that they did “all the time,” but didn’t inform her manager that she had done so.

“I did it just for office gossip,” Bianco said, when Kelly asked why she saved the clip.  

But, after she clipped the video, Bianco says that she never had anything else to do with the situation. Her decision to leave ABC, Bianco continued, was not related in any way to the video clip, but because CBS had offered her “a good contract.” 

According to Bianco, she had only been at CBS for four days when she was abruptly fired.

“I wasn’t even given the professional courtesy to defend myself,” Bianco said in the interview. “I didn’t know what I had been accused of. It was humiliating.”

Additionally, multiple times during the interview, Bianco said that she had never heard of Project Veritas or its founder James O’Keefe before this week. 

O’Keefe has come out and said that Bianco did not leak the video and the person who did is still employed at ABC.

Kelly, a former attorney-turned-journalist, has slowly been reentering the public eye in recent weeks.

Last month, Kelly appeared on Tucker Carlson’s prime-time program on Fox News to slam NBC News for its handling of allegations against longtime host Matt Lauer while calling for an outside investigation of what happened internally.

On Thursday, Journalist Yashar Ali reported that ABC News executives believe they know who accessed the Robach video and were aware that the former employee had moved on to CBS. He noted that it was unclear whether the employee was responsible for leaking the video.

“Two sources familiar with the matter tell me that CBS News has fired the staffer in question,” Ali tweeted with an accompanying story. “This comes after ABC informed CBS that they had determined who accessed the footage of Amy Robach expressing her frustrations about the Epstein story.”

Epstein was found dead in his New York jail cell in August while awaiting trial. A New York medical examiner declared his death a suicide.

ABC News in a statement attributed to a spokesman said it had continued to work on the story.

“At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we have never stopped investigating the story. Ever since, we’ve had a team on this investigation and substantial resources dedicated to it,” the spokesman said in a statement released Tuesday. “That work has led to a two-hour documentary and 6-part podcast that will air in the new year.”  

Joe Concha contributed