The conflict originated previous year when the network claimed Mrs. Tantaros breached her contract by writing and promoting a book without Fox’s approval.
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NY magazine reported that a former booker for the network, Laurie Luhn, alleged that she’d been sexually harassed by Ailes over a period of 20 years.
Tantaros in the lawsuit said that she believed Briganti had set her up with an interview that would make her look bad after she rebuffed Ailes’ advances. When she refused, the suit states, she was moved off the well-rated 5 p.m. show to a lower-rated midday show.
Tantaros also claims that she was also subject to unwanted advances by O’Reilly, one of the network’s most popular primetime hosts. She claims Mr. O’Reilly started to invite her to Long Island last fall, where it would be “very private”.
Brown, who was accused of making sexually inappropriate comments and touching Tantaros’ waist in a lawsuit filed against Fox News on Monday, called the allegations “fabricated”, adding that he would not display such behavior given his own experiences with sexual abuse in a Tuesday tweet.
Brown told POLITICO that the allegations were “completely and totally false”.
The suit does not list O’Reilly or Brown as defendants.
Luhn said before she left Fox News she was kept incommunicado at New York’s Warwick Hotel from friends and family under the watch of Ailes and his deputy, Bill Shine, who screened her emails and communications.
Tantaros also claimed that Ailes was obsessed with the sexuality of the Fox hosts, asking if Greg Gutfeld was gay or if Dana Perino was lesbian before he asked if they were “sleeping together”. “Shine’s inexplicable elevation sends the message that it will be “business as usual” at Fox News when it comes to the treatment of women”.
The Times reports that in April 2015 Tantaros met with Bill Shine, a close aide to Ailes who was then a senior Fox News executive, to discuss the meetings she’d had with Ailes.
Ailes resigned last month when former anchor Gretchen Carlson sued, claiming she was sacked for refusing Ailes’ advances. The document reads in part, “He may have been the primary culprit, but his actions were condoned by his most senior lieutenants, who engaged in a concerted effort to silence Tantaros by threats, humiliation and retaliation”. “I never have touched Andrea Tantaros except to shake her hand and say good morning”, he said. “She said the sole interview arranged by the publicity department during that period was with a writer for a blog controlled by Fox, who asked about her breasts and if she was hard to work with”.
Tantaros served as co-host on the Fox News show the “The Five” beginning in 2011.
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Tantaros’ lawyer Judd Burstein told the New York Times that during arbitration, Fox News offered to pay her a sum “in the seven figures” if she renounced her claims against Ailes and others at the network, including O’Reilly.
