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‘Dangerous Megalomaniac’: Seagram’s Heiress Sentenced to 81

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Months in NXIVM Sex Cult Case
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Pilar Melendez
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Updated Sep. 30, 2020 7:41PM ET

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Published Sep. 30, 2020 4:14PM ET

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Brendan McDermid/Reuters

For years, Seagram’s liquor empire heiress Clare Bronfman dedicated her time—and millions—to
NXIVM as its operations director and one of its largest donors, going to extreme lengths to protect
Reporting bravely from our brave new world. Support our fearless
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But on Wednesday, the 41-year-old was sentenced to 81 months in prison for her role in the
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purported cult that branded women and manipulated them into master-slave relationships.

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“I’m immensely grateful and privilegedClick
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people all over
then the world
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they know my goodness,” Bronfman said just before she was sentenced for conspiracy to conceal
and harbor illegal aliens for financial gain, and fraudulent use of identification.
NO THANKS ALLOW “It doesn’t mean I
haven’t made mistakes, I have made mistakes.”

Prosecutors had asked the judge to give her a 60-month sentence, arguing she had shown continued
loyalty to NXIVM’s founder Keith Raniere and made “obsessive” attempts to investigate and
intimidate possible critics of NXIVM.

NXIVM Head’s Jailhouse Call: Show Judge ‘He’s Being Watched’

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Pilar Melendez

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis believed she deserved even more than that. He gave her nearly
seven years in prison, a $500,000 fine, and $96,605 restitution to be paid to one of the victims.

“Ms. Bronfman’s crimes were not committed in a vacuum,” Garaufis said. “They were committed in
connection with her role in NXVIM and her close relationship with Raniere, and I believe that it
would be inappropriate for me to consider them divorced from that context.”
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Bronfman, wearing a dark face mask with a flower pattern, appeared shocked by the sentence. She
was taken into custody and will be housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where
Raniere is being held.

“I am shocked, relieved, and surprised—this is a meaningful win for those of us who were directly
victimized by Clare Bronfman,” Ivy Nevares, a former long-time NXIVM member, told The Daily
Beast. “None of us were expecting the Court to surpass the prosecution’s recommendation... At long
last, justice is being served.”

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Before the sentencing, nearly a dozen former members gave victim statements in court, detailing
how Bronfman enabled Raniere and a purported self-help group that ruined their lives.

Barbara Bouchey, a former high-ranking member who left in 2009, said Bronfman threatened her
with legal action, and she feared that “Clare’s stalking of me is not over,” according to the Times
Union. Toni Natalie, Raniere’s ex-girlfriend, told the judge that Bronfman “was a pivotal part in
trying to destroy my life.”

Another former member, Susan Dones, said, “In my opinion you’re a predator. You should feel
shame, self loathing... I pray that you will take the claws of Keith Raniere out of you, and you will
learn who Clare Bronfman really is.”

In a stunning move, Kristin Keeffe, who has a 13-year-old son with Raniere and worked for
Bronfman in NXIVM’s legal department for a decade, said she saw Bronfman “mentally descend
over several years into a dangerous megalomaniac.”
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Keeffe, who left the group in 2014, said Bronfman helped Raniere dodge child support payments,
and reduced her salary and billed her rent for a NXIVM townhouse after Keeffe protested a legal
attack on Bouchey.

“She was trying to psychologically break me,” Keeffe said, noting that she struggled on a $13,000
annual salary while Bronfman “rode a $1 million horse, bought a 6,500 square foot mansion and
flew in her $11 million private jet.”

Giuliana Bruno @GiulianaBrunoTV · Sep 30, 2020

#ClareBronfman’s sentencing proceeding is on break until
1:45. Victim impact statements just wrapped up. All echoed
that their involvement in NXIVM, funded by Bronfman,
ruined their lives, and that Bronfman was a Raniere enabler.
@WTEN #NXIVM

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Giuliana Bruno
@GiulianaBrunoTV

Here’s some recap of what I heard during victim

impact statements. Apologies for the wind and
somewhat scattered info. You can expect a full,
comprehensive report tonight on @WTEN
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5:22 PM · Sep 30, 2020

77 59 people are Tweeting about this

Nevares also said in a statement that the 41-year-old “never earned the power she was given—not by
title, skill, or performance. And in return, she used her power to abuse others, especially those of us
in Raniere’s ‘inner circle.’”

Bronfman was one of five women charged alongside Raniere in 2018, including alleged NXIVM co-
founder Nancy Salzman and her daughter Lauren, a top lieutenant; Smallville actress and alleged
second-in-command Allison Mack; and the group’s bookkeeper, Kathy Russell. While all five
pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, Salzman was the only one to testify against Raniere.
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Bronfman is the first of NXIVM’s innerfirst!
circle to be sentenced in Brooklyn federal court, and her
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sentence marks another step in the unraveling of thethen confirm
once for
ultra-secretive “self-help” organization
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founded by Raniere in Albany, New York, over two decades ago.
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Raniere, 60, was convicted last June of seven offenses including sex trafficking for founding a
criminal enterprise that allowed him to have sex with underage girls, force women he impregnated
to have abortions, and command his “slaves” to illegally monitor his enemies. He is facing a life
sentence.

NXIVM began in 1998 and amassed an estimated 17,000 members, luring them in with $5,000
workshops that promised the skills to promote a path to “greater self-fulfillment.” Prosecutors,
however, say it was an illegal pyramid scheme, sucking in recruits who were made to recruit others.
It relied heavily on Bronfman’s unlimited bank account, too.

To prove her loyalty to NXIVM, Bronfman allegedly helped Raniere steal email passwords from
“perceived enemies,” laundered money to help a non-citizen enter the U.S. in the name of the
program’s success, and paid off debts Raniere had racked up on a dead girlfriend’s credit card.

“Bronfman spent millions of dollars of her inherited fortune on Raniere’s endeavors. She pursued
Raniere’s accusers and critics by dispatching powerful teams of lawyers, private investigators, and
public relations firms to attempt to discredit them and dredge up information that could be used to
undermine their claims,” a prosecutors’ memo to Garaufis said earlier this month, claiming that
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even now “Bronfman continues to support Raniere.”

How NXIVM’s Sex-Cult Sorority Started as an Anti-Trump Group

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The memo detailed how Bronfman provided millions to NXIVM and Raniere’s various investment
interests, including giving him $67 million because he “wished to invest in the commodities
market… with no expectation that he would ever be in a position to pay her back (he didn’t).”

Investigators began to look into the organization in 2017 after former members came forward
stating they were lured into a master-slave program named DOS under the guise of it being a secret
women’s empowerment group. In reality, they claimed, the women were forced to have sex with
Raniere, blindly obey their “masters,” and brand themselves with his initials near their crotch with a
cautery pen—without anesthesia. Allegations of the sinister sorority, which allegedly began in 2015,
were also exposed in a bombshell NewGet
Yorkour exclusive
Times and breaking news
report.
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In addition to sending former membersClick "Allow" then
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letters forspeaking out about NXIVM, the
to stop
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heiress hired a psychologist, private investigators, and a public relation firm to “rehabilitate the
public image of DOS,” but made no attempt to contact
NOany of the women
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their abuse, the sentencing memo said.

“The only reason for Bronfman and Raniere to send these letters to sex trafficking victims was to
attempt to threaten and intimidate them, efforts which succeeded,” the memo states.

In her own sentencing memo filed last month, Bronfman claimed that she didn’t know the
disturbing details relating to DOS until after Raniere’s arrest in 2018 and his subsequent trial in
which women detailed the manipulation and fear they endured at the hands of Bronfman.

In another letter to the court, she stressed that she “never meant to hurt anyone, however I have and
for this I am deeply sorry.” But despite her remorse, Bronfman said she wouldn’t disavow Raniere
because “NXIVM and Keith greatly changed my life for the better.”

FBI assistant director-in-charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a statement after Wednesday’s
sentencing that Bronfman will “now have more than six years behind bars to contemplate that
sentiment, and decide once and for all if it’s as easy to accept as she once believed it to be.”
Duncan Levin, one of Bronfman’s lawyers, told The Daily Beast that they plan to appeal the
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sentence. “We respect the Court’s decision but disagree that her conduct merited this sentence,” he
said.

On Tuesday, Bronfman’s legal team also revealed in a letter to Garaufis that the Seagram’s heiress
has a “possibly serious liver ailment,” thus putting her at “heightened health risk” amid the
coronavirus pandemic.

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The Art of Selecting the Perfect Bourbon Barrel

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Published Sep. 10, 2020 5:24PM ET

Since people first started making bourbon, arguably the easiest part of the whole production process
has been selecting the type of barrel used for aging the whiskey.

As decreed by the United States Congress in 1954, bourbon must be aged in a new, charred
American oak container. Most distillers opt for the standard 53-gallon American white oak barrel,
add their spirit to it and, after a few years, bottle the whiskey.

However, as Jefferson’s Bourbon founder Trey Zoeller discovered not long after launching the brand
with his father in 1997, sticking only to this traditional aging method doesn’t allow for much
innovation or excitement. His hope was to make whiskey that truly pushed the conventional
boundaries of bourbon.

Around the time Zoeller began developing his globetrotting lead innovation bourbon Jefferson’s
Ocean, he also became increasingly interested in how he could finish his whiskey in other types of
barrels. This led him to visit the Independent Stave Company (ISC) in Lebanon, Missouri.
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“I saw what they had learned over the last 100 years of being in business and the technologies that
they were incorporating,” remembers Zoeller. He was particularly interested in the possibility of
going beyond the standard options for charring the inside of a bourbon barrel. After the experience,
“I thought, ‘Why are we so rudimentary in bourbon that we’re only using four levels of char?’”

That visit, and the many more to come, set Zoeller on a path to understanding how the type of wood
and the different kinds of barrel treatments, from toasting and charring to texturizing, could be used
to alter the flavor of bourbon. One of his favorite successes from these experiments was the
Jefferson’s Reserve Twin Oak, a 10-year-old bourbon finished in barrels he developed alongside ISC
coopers.

“These barrels, I extra seasoned outside in the cooperage yard for about 18 months, then we grooved
them out so the inside of it looks like a ridged potato chip,” says Zoeller. “That gives you twice as
much surface area to touch the liquid. We put a flash char on it to kind of open it up. Then we
toasted at a certain time and temperature, which brings out mocha flavors.”

Following a visit to a winery in Missouri, the whiskey maker decided to push this idea even further.
He wondered how the different wood treatments used by wineries would affect the bourbon. So he
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“I always say I’d never want to develop a product out of the boardroom,” says Zoeller. “I’ve been
lucky enough to collaborate with a lot of people.”

When it comes to finishing his whiskies in used barrels, rather than using the relatively common
sherry or Port casks, he’s found success collaborating with winemakers and distillers who make
products he enjoys drinking.

“It’s flavors that I want to put together, that I like, that I think would come together—not what’s
available or what’s been done traditionally,” says Zoeller. “I’m tasting what’s in there beforehand
and then going to the wineries or to the distilleries and speaking to them and telling them, ‘Hey, I’d
love to work together on this with you, would you all like to partner with us?’”

To that end, Zoeller has partnered with a handful of wineries working with big, bold Cabernets to
showcase how their unique flavors can influence bourbon. That includes Napa Valley winery
Pritchard Hill, as well as French wineries Château Pichon Baron and Château Suduiraut.

“Even though it’s the same Cabernet grape, the earthiness that comes out of those Bordeaux Cabs
versus the Napa Cabs is tremendously different,” he says. “We’re picking in this case wines that have
very distinct flavors that come through in the bourbon.”
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He’s also collaborated with Malcolm Gosling, Jr. of Gosling’s Rum to create Jefferson’s Reserve Old
Rum Cask Finish—but the process of discovering that partnership’s potential was a bit more
unusual. One evening, while having a glass of rum with Gosling, he had an idea.

“I’m a bourbon guy and after one rum drink it’s too much,” says Zoeller. “So I poured a glass half full
of his Family Reserve Old Rum and half of Jefferson Reserve and together I thought the flavors were
out of this world. So, I ended up finishing some bourbon in those old rum casks, and I thought that’s
absolutely delicious.”

Of course, not all of his barrel experiments turn out so well. Though Zoeller loves spicy foods, an
experiment finishing bourbon in a used hot sauce barrel didn’t work out. “It would have blown your
head off because the seeds were stuck in the staves.”

But Zoeller says that’s the fun—you never know exactly what combination of factors is going to
produce the next exceptional bourbon or how long it will take to get there.

“It’s an evolution,” says Zoeller. “The exciting part of maturation for me is you don’t know exactly
what it’s going to taste like. Some of the experiments that you don’t think are going to be the winners
come out as the shining stars.” Get our exclusive and breaking news
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