De Niro employees say former assistant overused company card for groceries, transport

MANHATTAN (CN) — Employees at Robert De Niro’s company Canal Productions testified Wednesday that his former assistant Graham Chase Robinson inappropriately used company money to purchase Uber rides, groceries and flowers.

De Niro’s lead accountant, head attorney and other assistants all appeared in Manhattan federal court in front of U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman, a Donald Trump appointee, claiming Robinson overused expense reimbursements.

The four-year legal battle between Canal Productions and Robinson involves two lawsuits. Canal Productions first sued Robinson in 2019, claiming embezzlement. Two months later, Robinson sued De Niro for harassment and gender discrimination.

As De Niro’s lead assistant, Robinson was responsible for scheduling his public appearances and assisting with his personal needs, including taking him to the hospital when he fell down the stairs and picking out his Christmas gifts.

Before suing De Niro, most known for his roles in “Taxi Driver” and “The Godfather,” Robinson resigned from her job at Canal in 2019 after 11 years.

In the months after her resignation, tensions began to escalate. According to Tom Harvey, De Niro’s lead attorney, the actor had refused to sign a recommendation for Robinson because he learned she had stolen $125,000 worth of frequent flyer miles.

Between January and March 2019, Robinson transferred about five million frequent flyer miles to her personal account without permission or being personal authorized, according to Canal’s lawsuit from 2019. The company also says Robinson improperly expensed groceries, Uber rides and meals using Canal’s American Express card.

Harvey said he led Canal’s investigation into Robinson’s expenses — particularly into how she used her company card.

Andrew Macurdy, Robinson’s lawyer, pushed back on Harvey’s findings, saying he must have assumed she made the charges because he was not personally there every time she used the card.

“I was there to look at the charges and know that she did it," Harvey shouted in court. “For three years.”

Sabrina Weeks-Brittan, currently a manager at Canal, began as an executive assistant at Canal Productions in 2019. Both Robinson and De Niro supervised her in that role.

After Robinson resigned, Weeks-Brittan said, she and another assistant, Gillian Spears, were tasked with looking at Robinson’s card charges from 2017 to 2019.

Weeks-Brittan and Spears then highlighted the charges made by Robinson before giving the annotated document to Harvey and Michael Tasch, De Niro’s lead accountant.

The document, shown in court, claims Robinson spent about $37,000 on Uber, taxi and other car-service purchases.

Wednesday’s testimony hardly touched on Robinson’s harassment claims. In the months leading up to Robinson’s resignation, tensions had also begun to rise between her and Tiffany Chen, De Niro’s girlfriend.

Robinson was assigned to oversee some of the preparations for a five-bedroom Manhattan townhouse that De Niro bought in 2018 so he could move there with Chen.

In late March 2019, though, Chen began to develop skin rashes from what she suspected to be mold in the townhouse.

Before the mold was officially found, Harvey said Robinson didn’t believe that there was mold and felt she was being held responsible for fixing the mold problem.

After Chen e-mailed Robinson about the mold issue, she forwarded the message to Harvey, saying: “This is targeted at me.”

According to Harvey, that was around when issues between Robinson and Chen began.

Chen “certainly did not like the way Robinson was performing her work,” Harvey said. Chen is expected to testify in court on Thursday.

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