Former prosecutor Linda Fairstein is experiencing karma having a bad week.
Since the release of Netflix’s haunting masterpiece When They See Us, the world has been provided with explicit details of the abhorrent lengths that Fairstein went to to ruin the lives of five innocent black and brown teenagers.
As a result, social media has been engulfed with outrage as the hashtag #cancellindafairstein has become ground zero for users to voice their disgust at the cruelty of her actions. Additionally, a petition surfaced calling for her book publisher to drop her and for retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Nobles to remove her best-selling novels from their shelves and online stores. Raymond Santana—who was eventually exonerated despite her best efforts to bury him alive—co-signed the boycott, telling TMZ, “Even if it’s 30 years later, she has to pay for her crime.”
Since then, Fairstein has been forced to resign from Vassar College’s board of trustees after Vassar students collected over 13,000 signatures in two days calling for her removal, as well as step down from Safe Horizon, a nonprofit organization that provides assistance to victims of domestic abuse.
While everyone and their momma has something to say about her nefarious ass, like any good coward, the 72-year-old vanished into thin air—erasing her social media accounts and presumably hiding behind the millions of dollars she made on the backs of innocent black and brown children.
Until now.
Now considered one of the most vile human beings in the history of Western Civilization, Fairstein shared her thoughts on When They See Us with the Daily Beast, dismissing it as “a basket of lies”—which requires an incredible degree of unmitigated gall considering filmmaker Ava Duvernay recently revealed that Fairstein attempted to negotiate her involvement—including script approval—in the miniseries. Fairstein maintains those negotiations never happened.
Here’s another juicy tidbit from the Daily Beast’s interview:
The series dramatizes Fairstein—who is played by real-life college-admissions cheating-scandal felon Felicity Huffman—as the prime mover behind the police investigation and persecution of the five teens.
Fairstein said that presents “a totally and completely untrue picture of events and my participation,” including “putting words in my mouth that I never said in Oliver Stone fashion”—such as ordering the cops to conduct an indiscriminate sweep of Harlem for “black males” and “thugs.” She said DuVernay erred in showing her dismissing DNA evidence that exonerated the five, and placing her at times, dates, and locations where she had never appeared.
Fairstein also maintains that in what she feels is essentially a four-hour smear campaign, the series portrays a “fundamental misrepresentation” of how the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office interacts with police investigators.
“[Ava DuVernay]’s behind it,” Fairstein said. “Her lies are behind it all.”
The irony of a woman who coerced five innocent children to confess to a crime they never committed openly questioning the character of any other living soul isn’t lost on me, but it’s safe to say that karma needs to hurry the hell up already. Just don’t expect Penguin Random House, Simon & Shuster or Dutton to have a hand in her inevitable downfall.
“My publisher is fantastic,” she said.