Letterman's Blackmailer Out of Jail -- Will He Win an Emmy Now?
He may have a tough time landing a new job -- we'll assume future employment at CBS is a long shot -- but Robert "Joe" Halderman, the former '48 Hours' CBS producer who tried to blackmail David Letterman, has been freed from the hoosegow.Halderman, 52, had been sentenced to serve six months at Rikers Island jail in New York after admitting to trying to soak 'The Late Show' host for $2 million to keep Letterman's affairs with his staffers a secret. But after serving four months, Halderman was given time off for good behavior and released on Thursday, and will now begin completing 1,000 hours of community service.
And try to get a new job, obviously.
"He survived this, and he's glad to be getting off the island," his attorney, Gerald Shargel, told the Associated Press, while also confirming that Halderman is embarking on a job search.
A plus on his resume: Halderman, along with several co-producers, is a nominee for the Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story in a News Magazine award at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards ceremony in New York on Sept. 27. The nomination is for a 2009 '48 Hours Mystery' feature called 'American Girl, Italian Nightmare,' about the Amanda Knox case.
But a potential employment roadblock, of course, is the blackmail rap (officially, his conviction was for attempted grand larceny), in which Halderman was privy to information about Letterman's sexual habits with his 'Late Show' staffers, and used the scoop to try to get money from the talk show host. Halderman, whose ex-girlfriend, Letterman assistant Stephanie Birkitt, was one of the staffers Letterman had an affair with, found out about Letterman's history with his female staffers by reading the diary of his ex.
The fallout of the case resulted in a public scandal in which Letterman admitted, on air, last October, that he'd been involved with some of his employees. He later apologized, also on air, to wife (and mother of his son Harry) Regina and his 'Late Show' staffers for the affairs, and said during an April 2010 appearance on 'Live! With Regis and Kelly' that the whole saga had left him "scared ... depressed and sad."
"And you kind of got to let that knock you down and knock you down, and then pretty soon you've got to start knocking it down. And then, when that happens, you start looking at the pieces left of your life."
In addition to his jail stint and community service, which he will reportedly fulfill by providing job training to people who were homeless and convicts about to be released from jail, Halderman, who's already won several Emmys throughout his three-decade news career, will also be on probation for five years.

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