It’s about Tom … and Michael Cohen? Carole Radziwill made a bombshell revelation about how Bethenny Frankel obtained a photo of Luann de Lesseps’ ex-fiancé Tom D’Agostino cheating on her at The Regency in New York City.
“We were all suspicious. … At the time, I was like, ‘There’s just no way Bethenny happened to have a friend — she doesn’t have a lot of friends — and one just happened to be at The Regency, like, on a random Tuesday night and Tom would walk in with an ex-girlfriend and kiss at the bar,’” Radziwill began on Heather McDonald’s “Juicy Scoop” podcast on Thursday, August 10. “It just seems so implausible and unbelievable. But it’s, like, a story line. And there’s a photo.”
Radziwill claimed that Frankel told her that de Lesseps and D’Agostino’s engagement was “fake,” but she couldn’t share why until the cast’s trip to Miami. As viewers of season 8 of The Real Housewives of New York City will recall (or never forget), Frankel dramatically showed the cast — and then de Lesseps — the photo of D’Agostino after chugging Skinnygirl from the bottle.
“A friend of hers knew the girl and was told that they still kind of see each other and hook up and on and on and on,” Radziwill claimed of D’Agostino and his ex. “So she said, ‘Next time that, you know, that it’s gonna happen, let me know.’ So she was told that Tom was gonna be there on that Tuesday night at 10 o’clock with the ex-girlfriend and they were gonna [do] whatever. … I could never figure out the piece of, like, who took the photo.”
Radziwill revealed that six to eight months ago, she was having dinner with a friend in the movie business who invited Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, to join them.
“He’s like, ‘I know you.’ and I’m like, ‘You don’t know me.’ He goes, ‘I know you. I met you 10 years ago with Aviva Drescher. … I know all those effing Housewives.’ … He gets Harry Dubin on the phone,” Radziwill recalled. “We started talking and he talked about Bethenny, Luann, Sonja [Morgan]. He knew all of them — Dorinda [Medley]. … Then we started talking about Tom or the wedding. And he’s like, ‘Oh, please. … Of course I know Tom, who do you think took the picture?’ And I was like, ‘Wait, what do you say?’ And he goes, ‘Who do you think took the picture [at] The Regency?’ Michael Cohen!”
Radziwill went on to explain that Frankel’s then-partner Dennis Shields (who died in 2018) was friends with Cohen.
“He said, ‘I took the picture.’ … [He said] Tom eventually knew that Michael Cohen had taken the photo that ended up being forwarded to Bethenny and ended up being on the show,” Radziwill said, noting that she wants to add “allegedly” to the story. “This is what he was telling me. … I thought, actually, production had set something up, but in a million years, I would not have thought that Michael Cohen was gonna sit down at dinner and, like, tell this whole story about how he took the picture.”
Over the years, Frankel has denied that production gave her the photo of D’Agostino at The Regency — and denied that she “set up” de Lesseps’ then-beau.
“How could I set up a photo? Am I in a movie I’m casting? Like, ‘Hey, Tom D’Agostino, I’d like to cast you in the role as cheater at the Regency Hotel?’” she said on her “Just B” podcast in 2021. “So in this case, I’m a casting director that called Tom D’Agostino — who I don’t f–king know — to say, ‘Listen, I know it sounds weird, I just want you to be in a bar and make out with somebody, because I have a photographer who’s going to be standing by to take a picture. Then I’m going to give it to everyone on the show.’”
After confronting D’Agostino via text message, de Lesseps opted to forgive him and they wed on New Year’s Eve 2016. Their marriage was over seven months later, but the story line about D’Agostino (clearly) lives on.
