The day after the phone call with Weinstein, the journalists received a letter from one of his attorneys threatening them with a lawsuit if they published their findings and requesting two weeks to prepare a refutation. Weinstein’s team implied that he was the true victim and that the paper was abusing the public’s trust. The newspaper’s legal counsel drafted a response denying that the journalists were committing defamation and demanding that Weinstein’s team preserve all evidence related to the investigations, essentially one-upping their attempt to force the Times to back down.

Kantor continued to press Gwyneth Paltrow to go on record for the forthcoming article while Weinstein and his team, including the lawyer Lisa Bloom, arrived at the newspaper’s offices threatening to publicly smear his victims. The Weinstein team also began speaking to other media outlets to preemptively deny the charges. As the Times employees continued work on the article, Laura Madden contacted Kantor and agreed to go on the record—a major boon for the investigation. Weinstein’s team simultaneously began asking questions about whether the paper was going to quote Paltrow, signaling that he had something more to fear about the actor coming forward.