‘Survivor’ Hatch behind bars for TV interviews

The lawyer for “Survivor” winner Richard Hatch said he was taken to jail because he granted two TV interviews without getting the required permission from the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Hatch had been serving the remainder of his prison term for tax evasion on home confinement at his sister’s home in Rhode Island. He granted three television interviews on Tuesday — to TODAY’s Matt Lauer, NBC affiliate WJAR-TV and the NBC-owned “Access Hollywood.”

The Bureau of Prisons said permission is needed for each media outlet that gets an interview with any prisoner serving a home confinement term.

Hatch’s lawyer, Cynthia Ribas, said Wednesday afternoon that the bureau told her it only gave permission for the interview with TODAY. She says she thought the permission extended to all NBC properties.

On Wednesday morning, Ribas and Hatch’s sister appeared on TODAY and said they were mystified about why Hatch had been arrested and taken back to jail just a few hours after his Tuesday interview with Lauer.

Hatch’s sister, Kristin Hatch — speaking from her home in Newport, R.I., where Hatch has been living under house arrest — told Lauer that a sheriff’s deputy and another official arrived at her house within hours of the TODAY interview airing to take Hatch into custody.

Kristin Hatch said that her brother told the deputy, “Do what you need to do, just tell me why.”

“I heard him tell Rich that he [Hatch] did an interview, and that’s why he was going back to prison,” Kristin Hatch told Lauer.

‘Tense phone call’
During nearly four years in prison for tax evasion, Hatch had been denied permission to give interviews. Hatch told Lauer that his TODAY interview, along with two other interviews he did, were approved by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). TODAY producers confirmed that Lauer’s interview was approved.

Hatch also called a local radio station twice on Tuesday to respond to comments that were made about him on the air. That station did not have formal approval to interview Hatch because Hatch called in on his own.

Lauer had interviewed Hatch on Monday for the TODAY segment that ran Tuesday morning. While Hatch was preparing for the interview, Kristin Hatch said she got what she characterized as a “tense phone call” from a local sheriff’s deputy. The deputy demanded to speak to Hatch immediately. When his sister said that he was in the shower, “he was adamant that I hand Rich the phone in the shower, which I did,” she told Lauer.

After getting out of the shower, Hatch spoke with Ribas. “Cynthia got on the phone with the BOP and assured us everything was fine,” Kristin Hatch said.

“The interview, as you know, we got all of the clearances from the people at BOP,” Ribas added during the TODAY interview on Wednesday morning.

(source)