Auerbach admits leaking ‘Thai masseuse’ texts to journo
Former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach has admitted he was responsible for leaking text messages about misuse of a Seven Network credit card to pay for Thai masseuses.
Former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach, whose last-minute evidence disrupted Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial, has admitted he was responsible for leaking text messages about misuse of a Seven Network credit card to pay for Thai masseuses.
The startling admission is contained in court documents filed by Auerbach after Seven launched legal action against him for breaching confidentiality and non-disclosure terms in the settlement it reached with him when he left the network.
Seven had alleged Auerbach leaked damaging text messages to news.com.au journalist Samantha Maiden and used a company credit card to pay for sexual services for himself and Mr Lehrmann while trying to woo the former Liberal staffer into a tell-all interview.
But in its defence, and in a counterclaim, Seven alleged it was Auerbach himself who leaked the story and “cast into the public domain the fact that he had used the Network Seven credit card to pay for the use of sexual services for himself and Mr Lehrmann”.
Seven claimed Auerbach had “come to hate” Steve Jackson, a more senior Spotlight producer, and began “backgrounding” journalists against him. As part of this process, Seven alleges, Auerbach provided SMS messages between himself and Jackson to Maiden.
The messages related to the reversal of $2940 in credit card charges incurred for sexual services performed by two masseuses for Auerbach and Mr Lehrmann.
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Jackson, who was tasked with removing the transaction from the card in line with the Network’s expenses policies.
On Friday, Auerbach’s lawyers filed a defence to Seven’s cross claim acknowledging that he had, “on an off-record basis, in a conversation with Maiden … communicated the content of some text messages passing between himself and Steve Jackson … relating to the reversal of credit card charges”.
Auerbach claimed he leaked the messages because he believed Jackson had tipped off Maiden about the credit card misuse.
Jackson categorically denies leaking or backgrounding any journalist about Auerbach or the Spotlight program.
Auerbach says he also told Maiden that he had not been directed by Seven to repay the money from the credit card transaction.
In its recently filed defence, the network rejects Auerbach’s claims that the network never insisted the money be repaid in line with its expenses policy and that he was never counselled or warned.
Seven says McWilliam’s comments to Maiden “had no tendency to disparage Auerbach or lower his reputation”.
The network noted a press conference Auerbach held in March last year where it says he “made it plain to the assembled press corps that he had in fact used a Network Seven credit card to pay for the provision of sexual services by two Thai masseuses for himself and Mr Lehrmann”. Seven noted some media described Auerbach’s behaviour at the press conference as “bizarre”.
In his March claim, Auerbach alleged Seven had made statements to the ABC’s Media Watch program that were “disparaging of Auerbach or likely to injure his reputation”, including that there had been “a personal misuse of the card, immediately admitted to and paid for personally”.
Seven, in its defence, noted Media Watch had catalogued a number of incidents from Auerbach’s past, including that “four years previously Auerbach had appeared in photographs in a “steamy clinch” with (a woman The Australian has chosen not to name for her privacy) in circumstances where he was chasing her for a story and a sit-down interview”.
In the circumstances, the statement provided to the program by Seven “had no meaningful impact on the reputation of Auerbach and could not have caused any vilification or ‘tide of hatred and negativity’,” the network said in its defence.
Seven also noted Auerbach gave evidence in Mr Lehrmann’s defamation case against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson, in the course of which he agreed he had circulated photographs of a woman with her breasts exposed to journalists without her consent. Federal Court judge Michael Lee reopened the case in April last year to hear Auerbach’s claim that the network covered the costs of Mr Lehrmann’s prostitutes and illicit drugs - strongly denied by the Network - as well as a round of golf and a $361 Tomahawk steak.
Seven quoted from Justice Lee’s finding that Auerbach was “a man so resentful towards his former colleagues that he had engaged in the wanton and vaguely disturbing destruction of their property” and gave evidence that “was unbelievable on its face”.
In response to Auerbach’s claim of defamation, Seven raised a number of particulars of contextual truth, including that Auerbach had circulated photos of a partly naked woman without her consent in a bid to damage the reputation of a former colleague who had also been present.
“The act of Auerbach in circulating the photographs was disgraceful,” Seven said in its defence.
Seven then quoted the woman as saying: “That (one) man has chosen to use these pictures to smear another man – with total disregard to my privacy, consent or feeling, further emphasises the point that I’ve previously made of how men in all spheres of life … appear to treat women as disposable objects.”
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