Fox News recently decided to end Bill O’Reilly’s era, and claims still continue to mount against Roger Ailes. Now, an accusation has arrived for another network host, Sean Hannity. A former Fox News guest, Debbie Schlussel, claims that Hannity repeatedly invited her to his hotel after a Detroit book signing. She says that after she refused to do so, Hannity never asked her to be on his show again. Schlussel also claims that she was “banned from Fox News” following the incident.
FYI: This story has turned into a tangled web with some dubious twists and apparent backtracking by Schlussel, but let’s dig into this mess.
Schlussel, an attorney and conservative pundit, made her accusations during a radio interview with Pat Campbell (of KFAQ in Tulsa, Oklahoma) on Friday. She claims that Hannity invited her to a signing (sometime in the early 2000s — her date isn’t definite). She says the encounter was “awkward” because he insisted that she stand with him while he met fans before initially inviting her to his hotel. After she said no, Schlussel said that Hannity made a “weird” remark about wanting to “double-team” another guest, and he allegedly asked her again to come to his hotel:
“And then after that, I wasn’t booked on a show again. And he called me and yelled at me. It was made clear to me that I didn’t go back to his hotel with him after and I got a very weird feeling about the whole thing, and I kind of knew I wouldn’t be back on his show.”
Hannity has denied Schlussel’s accusations against him in a semi-all-caps statement to the New York Daily News. He also calls her a “serial harasser”:
“LET ME BE CLEAR THE COMMENTS ABOUT ME ON A RADIO SHOW THIS WEEK by this individual ARE 100% false and a complete fabrication. This individual is a serial harasser who has been lying about me for well over a decade. The individual has a history of making provably false statements against me in an effort to slander, smear and besmirch my reputation.”
Hannity also maintains that he will be taking legal actions for what he calls “slander” from Schlussel, who has made accusations against him on previous occasions. Indeed, there’s a history here. A 2010 Gawker report detailed how Schlussel claimed that Hannity plagiarized one of her columns in 2007, and in 2010, she dug into tax returns to expose how he allegedly blew tons of money on luxury items during the course of a charity tour (his “Freedom Concerts”). At the time, the charity’s founder denied that Hannity was enriched in any way by his participation.
Following Schlussel’s newest accusations against Hannity going semi-viral, she spoke with LawNewz and appeared to backtrack on reports that she felt sexually harassed. Instead, Schlussel says that she simply didn’t like his behavior: “I never thought I was sexually harassed by Sean Hannity, I thought he was weird and creepy not someone I liked.”
Sclussel also said that she doesn’t appreciate Hannity calling her a “serial harasser” and is considering countersuing him: “It’s defamatory. Everything I said was true, and truth is an absolute bar to defamation. He on the other hand has a murky record on truth.”
(Via KFAQ, New York Daily News, Gawker & LawNewz)