Her delivery was so jarringly loud that Chuck Ross, a reporter at the conservative Daily Caller, tweeted, “I heard Guilfoyle’s speech and my TV’s not even on.” But Guilfoyle evidently pleased the audience that mattered most: Trump reportedly told her that it was one of the “greatest” speeches he’d ever seen, because it was delivered with “so much energy.”
[...]
Her name has already been floated for a major post after the election: according to a report by Tom LoBianco, in Business Insider, Guilfoyle is under consideration to replace Ronna Romney McDaniel as the chair of the Republican National Committee.
[...]
As Susan Faludi, the feminist author of “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,” points out, “From Amy Coney Barrett to Betsy DeVos to Kimberly Guilfoyle, every woman Trump picks is an emblem of everything women are up against.”
[...]
And this fall Guilfoyle, who is Donald Trump, Jr.,’s girlfriend, has been crisscrossing the country as a Trump surrogate, on what is billed as the “Four More Tour.” At a recent “Women for Trump” rally in Pennsylvania, Guilfoyle claimed that the President was creating “eighteen hundred new female-owned businesses in the United States a day.”
A day? Let's see some documentation.
. That's something.
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. [...] 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.
[...]
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.
[...]
he 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.
[...]
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. [...] 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.
[...]
The New Yorker [...] 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.
[...]
Another former Fox colleague who observed the dynamic between Guilfoyle and the assistant said, “It was an insane, abusive relationship,” adding, “Rather than being a mentor, she was an afflictor.” And yet another close observer who still works at Fox told me that the assistant was “one of the nicest, hard-working people—she was young and full of ambition, but by the time she left she was just broken.”
[...]
The draft complaint, which was never filed in court, is covered by a nondisclosure agreement. The former assistant has not been publicly identified, and, out of respect for the rights of alleged victims of sexual harassment, The New Yorker is honoring her confidentiality. Reached for comment, she said, “I wish you well. But I have nothing to say.”
[...]
Before Guilfoyle became an outspoken defender of Trump, she was an outspoken defender of [disgraced Fox CEO Roger] Ailes. When [[Gretchen] Carlson sued him [for sexual harrassment], Guilfoyle attempted to debunk her credibility. In an interview with Adweek, Guilfoyle claimed that she had spoken with more than thirty women at Fox, and said, “Nobody that I’ve spoken to said that this was their experience.” Two months before Fox settled with Carlson, for twenty million dollars, Guilfoyle gave an interview to Breitbart in which she vouched for Ailes’s “character, integrity, and credibility,” saying, “I’ve known the man very well the last 15 years. He’s someone who I admire greatly.” She called Ailes “a champion of women” who has “always been 100 percent professional.”
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.’ ”
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment