| | | Kimberly Guilfoyle - what a skank!
........ Fox News forced her out in July, 2018—several years before her contract’s expiration date. At the time, she was a co-host of the political chat show “The Five.” Media reports suggested that she had been accused of workplace impropriety, including displaying lewd pictures of male genitalia to colleagues, but few additional details of misbehavior emerged. Guilfoyle publicly denied any wrongdoing, and last year a lawyer representing her told The New Yorker that “any suggestion” she had “engaged in misconduct at Fox is patently false.” But, as I reported at the time, shortly after Guilfoyle left her job, Fox secretly paid an undisclosed sum to the assistant, who no longer works at the company. Recently, two well-informed sources told me that Fox, in order to avoid going to trial, had agreed to pay the woman upward of four million dollars.
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The woman was hired in 2015, just out of college, to work as an assistant for Guilfoyle and another former Fox host, Eric Bolling. According to a dozen well-informed sources familiar with her complaints, the assistant alleged that Guilfoyle, her direct supervisor, subjected her frequently to degrading, abusive, and sexually inappropriate behavior; among other things, she said that she was frequently required to work at Guilfoyle’s New York apartment while the Fox host displayed herself naked, and was shown photographs of the genitalia of men with whom Guilfoyle had had sexual relations. The draft complaint also alleged that Guilfoyle spoke incessantly and luridly about her sex life, and on one occasion demanded a massage of her bare thighs; other times, she said, Guilfoyle told her to submit to a Fox employee’s demands for sexual favors, encouraged her to sleep with wealthy and powerful men, asked her to critique her naked body, demanded that she share a room with her on business trips, required her to sleep over at her apartment, and exposed herself to her, making her feel deeply uncomfortable.
As serious as the draft complaint’s sexual-harassment allegations were, equally disturbing was what the assistant described as a coverup attempt by Guilfoyle, whose conduct was about to come under investigation by a team of outside lawyers. In July, 2016, the network had hired the New York-based law firm Paul, Weiss to investigate sexual misconduct at the company, which, under the leadership of Roger Ailes, had a long history of flagrant harassment and gender discrimination. According to those familiar with the assistant’s draft complaint, during a phone call on August 6, 2017, she alleged that Guilfoyle tried to buy her silence, offering to arrange a payment to her if she agreed to lie to the Paul, Weiss lawyers about her experiences. The alleged offering of hush money brings to mind Trump’s payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, in order to cover up his sexual impropriety.
By 2017, the Paul, Weiss lawyers had begun investigating accusations of workplace sexual misconduct involving Eric Bolling, with whom Guilfoyle shared the assistant. Guilfoyle and Bolling were close, and it was all but inevitable that if the assistant accused Bolling of sexual harassment—as in fact she did—Guilfoyle’s conduct would come under scrutiny next. (Bolling, whose employment Fox ended in September, 2017, declined to comment; he has denied any wrongdoing, and is now a host at Sinclair Broadcast Group.) According to the assistant, as the investigation into Bolling gained momentum, Guilfoyle told her that she needed to know what the assistant would say if she were asked about sexual harassment, and warned her that she could cause great damage if she said the wrong thing. Guilfoyle, she said, told her that, in exchange for demonstrating what Guilfoyle called loyalty, she would work out a payment to take care of her—possibly, she said, with funds from Bolling. The assistant alleged that Guilfoyle mentioned sums as large as a million dollars, and also other inducements, including a private-plane ride to Rome, a percentage of Guilfoyle’s future speaking fees, and an on-air reporting opportunity. People close to Guilfoyle called the assistant’s allegation untrue, and said they were shocked that she would fabricate such a false claim. But a well-informed source independently confirmed to me that Guilfoyle had discussed the topic of raising hush money.
When the assistant declined the offer of money, Guilfoyle warned—in a manner that the assistant regarded as threatening—that, if she spoke candidly to the lawyers, some aspects of the assistant’s private life that Guilfoyle knew about might be exposed. In fact, as I reported on this story, associates of Guilfoyle’s contacted me, offering personal details about the assistant, evidently in hopes of damaging her credibility and leading me not to publish this report.
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According to the former assistant’s account, she declined what she regarded as Guilfoyle’s attempts to buy her off, and refused to conceal evidence or lie. Instead, she told the legal team at Paul, Weiss that both Guilfoyle and Bolling had sexually harassed her. Multiple people in whom the assistant confided at the time say she expressed concern that Guilfoyle might retaliate against her; Guilfoyle had boasted of her high-level connections inside Fox’s legal office, and of her ability to ruin enemies’ reputations. The assistant’s concerns had mounted to the point that she sought legal help. Meanwhile, her allegations sparked months of investigation into Guilfoyle’s behavior by Fox’s human-resources department, and eventually resulted in Guilfoyle’s negotiated departure from the company.
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The New Yorker, however, was able to independently confirm several of the assistant’s accusations. The allegation that she was required to work at Guilfoyle’s apartment while Guilfoyle was barely clothed or naked was substantiated by several of the assistant’s confidants, including an eyewitness, who recalls being surprised by the sight. “It was provocative in a way that made you want to get away from this person,” the eyewitness told me.
One current and one former Fox employee confirmed the assistant’s allegation that Guilfoyle had often shared lewd images, noting that she had shown photographs of male genitalia to them, too—some of romantic partners, others of fans. Another former employee described Guilfoyle showing pornographic videos in the office. Guilfoyle’s graphic sexual talk so upset hair-and-makeup artists at Fox that they lodged an internal complaint, triggering an investigation by the company.
A former Fox colleague who had been friendly with Guilfoyle said, “It was worse than gross—it put other women at Fox in such a terrible position.” She explained that, as someone at a junior level, she felt afraid to criticize Guilfoyle, who was a powerful star with high-ranking friends at the network. At the same time, the former colleague didn’t want to be complicit in behavior that she regarded as crude, unprofessional, and legally troubling. “It created an environment that was detrimental to young women,” the former colleague said.
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Guilfoyle reportedly led a public-relations campaign, coördinated with Ailes, in which she implied to women at Fox that their careers would suffer if they didn’t back him. According to a complaint filed by the former Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky, with whom the network settled yet another sexual-harassment claim against Ailes, Guilfoyle “sought to recruit Fox News employees and contributors to retaliate against Carlson by publicly disparaging her.” This “retaliatory onslaught,” Roginsky’s complaint said, was characterized as “supporting ‘Team Roger.’ ”
According to Brian Stelter’s “ Hoax,” Guilfoyle told female colleagues that they had better support Ailes, warning, “I’m taking notes.” Stelter suggests that Guilfoyle was motivated by the belief that Ailes, who seemed all-powerful, would reward her by making her the host of her own show. One of the former Fox colleagues who spoke with me said that Guilfoyle tried to intimidate other women at the network: “It was ‘Pick your team now—and if you don’t back Roger you will be out of here fast. There will be retribution.’ ”
Once Ailes was gone, Guilfoyle’s position at Fox grew less secure. Even her allies agree that Ailes’s public disgrace left her in a bad spot. But Guilfoyle’s defenders claim that she left the network entirely of her own volition. At the time, a widely circulated story line suggested that she had left the network in order to avoid conflicts of interest posed by her deepening romance with Donald Trump, Jr. In fact, soon after Guilfoyle left Fox, in July, 2018, she joined Trump’s reëlection campaign, as vice-chair of America First Action, a pro-Trump super pac.
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newyorker.com |
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