Fox News says Andrea Tantaros’ allegations are a ‘smokescreen’ for a contract breach
Fox News is denying the sexual harassment allegations of former co-host Andrea Tantaros and has asked that her complaints against the network go to arbitration.
In a memorandum filed Monday in New York Supreme Court, Fox News disputes Tantaros’ allegation that she was removed from her on-air role in retaliation for making a sexual harassment complaint against her former boss, Roger Ailes. She also contended in her lawsuit filed last week that other executives covered up for Ailes, describing Fox News as a “sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency, and misogyny.”
Tantaros, a former co-host of the Fox News daytime program “Outnumbered,” has been off the air since April 25. The network has said her removal was due to her not allowing management to vet her book, called “Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable,” before it was published, as required in her contract.
“Tantaros’s allegations about sexual harassment are a smokescreen to obscure her violation of her employment contract,” the court memorandum said.
A representative for Tantaros could not be reached for comment.
In her lawsuit, Tantaros said her tenure at Fox News “devolved into a sexual harassment nightmare” in the summer of 2014, when Ailes allegedly made inappropriate comments to her.
Ailes resigned from Fox News on July 21 after former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit against him, alleging he sexually harassed her and sabotaged her career. The suit led to an internal investigation at the 21st Century Fox unit; it found that other Fox News employees were subjected to similar behavior. Tantaros was not one of them, the memorandum said.
Tantaros asserts in her suit that she was never contacted to be interviewed in the investigation conducted by an outside law firm, Paul Weiss. But the response from Fox News said Paul Weiss attorneys had returned a call from her lawyer, Joseph Kane, about the matter. Kane never called back, the memorandum said.
The memorandum also said Tantaros never mentioned Ailes when she first complained of sexual harassment to Fox News programming chief Suzanne Scott, who is named in her lawsuit, and the company’s human resources department in February.
Ailes has denied all allegations of sexual harassment.
Twitter: @SteveBattaglio
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