Westporter Martha Stewart says she sometimes has a bad temper. But in an ABC News interview airing Friday she insists she is innocent and should not be lumped with corporate fraud cases like Enron and WorldCom.
“What I did was not against the rules,” Stewart told ABC’s Barbara Walters in a “20/20” interview, excerpts of which were released by the network today.
Martha Stewart chats with Barbara Walters. ABCNews.com photo
Asked whether she ever thought she would be considered a corporate criminal, mentioned in the same breath as Enron and WorldCom, Stewart said: “Absolutely not, and I certainly don’t belong in that category.”
Stewart goes on trial Jan. 12 on charges she obstructed justice and lied to investigators about her sale of ImClone Systems stock on Dec. 27, 2001.
In the interview, Stewart said she “sometimes, but not always” has a bad temper and can occasionally be insensitive and driven. But she said she does not know why some of the public does not like her.
“Those traits and that behavior, if it were applied to a man, would be admirable. Applied to a woman, you know, she’s a ‘beetch,”’ Stewart said, according to the ABC transcript.
“The people you think hate me don’t know me,” she tells Walters, “I don’t know why people don’t like me. I’m not perfect.
“The perception that I am perfect I think got kind of mixed up with the idea that what we’re trying to teach is the best possible standard out there. So, if we’re going to make a cake, Barbara, my cake can’t be a flop. People won’t watch my show if I make a flop. I’m not a comedy show. I’m a how-to show.”
The excerpts were released as Manhattan federal prosecutors filed court papers urging the judge overseeing the case to preserve all five counts in the criminal indictment of Stewart returned in June.
Stewart had asked U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum to dismiss an obstruction-of-justice charge and a securities fraud charge that accused Stewart of deceiving her shareholders when she spoke about the investigation last year.
The prosecutors said Stewart’s motion to dismiss the securities fraud count was “frivolous,” was without legal precedent and “flies in the face of common sense.”
