Gawker Killer Now Batting for Melania Trump

Charles Harder does not want to be recorded, one of the very few interview subjects I’ve ever had make that demand. Military officers at Guantánamo Bay were fine with it; the convicted murderer in a New York prison was fine with it; countless politicians and government officials were fine with it. But not this Beverly Hills lawyer to the stars, which means that as we sit down for lunch, I am forced to eat with one hand and scrawl notes with the other. I don’t want to give the idea, however, that Harder was torturing me because he likes to torture journalists, though that accusation has been made. A client list that includes Jude Law and Amber Heard means, to borrow from Falstaff, that discretion is the better part of disclosure.

My notes from that meal are sparse, because in addition to not wanting to be recorded, Harder frequently goes off the record. Having become somewhat famous for defending the obscenely famous, Harder has a deceptively casual manner that disguises a master gardener’s impulse for pruning media curiosity into the kind of flowery coverage that reflects well on his practice and clients. He will not so much as acknowledge that he works for Roger Ailes, the deposed Fox News chairman, though Harder’s name appears on a threatening letter to magazine. Nor will he say how, which alleged, in an article since removed, that the wife of the Republican presidential nominee worked for an escort service in the 1990s. Nor will he talk—on the record or off—about his politics. Or his family. “I have the most boring life in the world,” he says—on the record.