Sacha Baron Cohen has a new Showtime series called Who Is America?, where he’s been able to (thanks to facial prosthetics) get people to do or say some pretty incredible things. But one scene in particular, that never aired due to it’s dark and extreme nature, was incredibly concerning:

“…in character as Italian playboy Gio Monaldo, he convinced a concierge to help him find an underaged boy to molest.

‘We wanted to investigate how does someone like Harvey Weinstein gets away with doing what…get away with criminality, essentially. And the network that surrounds him. We decided that Gio would interview a concierge in Las Vegas,’ Baron Cohen describes.”1

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And during that interview, Cohen, dressed as Gio, revealed to the concierge that he had molested an eight-year-old boy. Cohen says of the exchange:

“This guy starts advising Gio how to get rid of this issue. We even at one point talk about murdering the boy, and the concierge is just saying, ‘well, listen, I’m really sorry. In this country, we can’t just drown the boy. This is America we don’t do that.’”2

(The video below is a clip from the new show but does not show the event described above.)

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However, he doesn’t stop there. The concierge then offers to put Cohen’s “Gio” in touch with a lawyer who can help to “silence the boy.”

The last thing Baron Cohen asks for is help securing a date for the night:

“He says, ‘what do you mean, a date?’ I go, you know, like a young man. He says, ‘well, what kind of age?’ I say, lower than Bar Mitzvah but older than eight. And he says, ‘yeah, I can put you in touch with somebody who can get you some boys like that.’”3

The segment bothered Cohen and his production team so much that they turned the footage over to the FBI. However, according to Cohen, the FBI wasn’t interested in pursuing the tip.

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Given that Las Vegas sees millions of visitors each year, many of whom travel from all over the world, and sex is a big part of the industry if you’ve got a concierge at a nice, expensive hotel who knows where to procure young children for sex, it’s not a question whether or not you investigate. I’m shocked and disgusted that the FBI just passed on it.

Should we hear anything else about this story we will update you.

SOURCE:

  1. Newsweek
  2. Newsweek
  3. Newsweek