Katie Couric’s memoir “Going There” won’t be released until late October, but that hasn’t stopped tidbits from leaking. According to theDaily Mail, Couric sent Lauer a heartfelt text message amid the news of his sexual misconduct scandal, which she reproduces in the book. “I am crushed. I love you and care about you deeply. I am here. Please let me know if you want to talk. There will be better days ahead,” she wrote to the now-disgraced newsman. Lauer responded with the kissing face emoji.
Couric wrote that although she had read about the “awful things” he had done, she still worried that he was “sleepless, haggard, depressed, maybe worse.” She argued that it would have been “heartless to abandon him, someone who’d been by my side, literally, for so many years.” Couric admitted in the book that although she had “heard the whispers” about her former co-host, she eventually reconciled the fact that Lauer was an “excellent professional partner, a good friend, and a predator.”
In perhaps the most salacious excerpt reported in the Daily Mail, Couric revealed that Lauer was at one point having an affair with a young production assistant with the same last name as her, and accidently sent her a raunchy email. Couric found it “gross” that Lauer was “taking advantage” of a young colleague, but ultimately kept it to herself. “The general rule at that time was: it’s none of your business,” she wrote.