Ex-Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle was reportedly forced out of the network under a cloud of scandal in 2018, after she faced an internal review about a number of lurid allegations about sexual harassment from her former assistant.

These details are included in a new bombshell story from Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, which offers new reporting on Guilfoyle’s exit from Fox. Mayer also reports that the network secretly paid Guilfoyle’s ex-assistant “upward of four million dollars” to keep the scandal out of the public eye.

Back in 2018, Guilfoyle left the network with several years left on her contract not long after she began dating Donald Trump Jr. She has since become a member of the Trump family’s inner circle and holds a key fundraising role in the Trump 2020 campaign.

At the time of her departure, Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz had vaguely reported on “tensions” between the former The Five co-host and the network: “Behind the scenes, there have been tensions as lawyers on both sides have tried to negotiate the issues surrounding her departure.”

Mayer’s reporting adds more context to how Guilfoyle was pushed out, as well as the highly salacious allegations against the former Fox News star by her young assistant:

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.

After the network turned to the same law firm that investigated the allegations about broader sexual harassment culture under former CEO Roger Ailes, Guilfoyle tried to buy the assistant’s silence, Mayer reports. Bolling, notably, was also pushed out of the network one year before Guilfoyle left, after he was accused of sexual harassment of female co-workers.

Guilfoyle did not sit for an interview with Mayer, but vehemently denied the report. “I have never engaged in any workplace misconduct of any kind,” Guilfoyle said in a statement. “During my career, I have served as a mentor to countless women, with many of whom I remain exceptionally close to this day.”

The Trump campaign declined to comment.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2ER4w2h