On Wednesday, former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros filed an affidavit from her therapist recounting their discussions about Roger Ailes’ sexual harassment as far back as 2014. “Over the course of many months (2014-2016), Andrea relayed to me on multiple occasions instances of Mr. Ailes’s demeaning and overtly predatory behavior toward her, as well as the abusive conduct of Fox News’s public-relations department,” Dr. Michele Berdy wrote in her testimony:
“I remember Andrea being shocked and devastated after a meeting with Mr. Shine in which he told her she needed to stop complaining about Mr. Ailes’s sexual advances toward her, and his subsequent retaliation. He then followed this directive by telling her that she must forget about what Mr. Ailes had done to her, instructing her: ‘Don’t fight this’ because Ailes is a ‘very powerful man,’ and that she needed to ‘let this one go.’ Andrea found Shine’s warning ‘not to fight this’ as both very threatening and extremely disturbing.”
In the affidavit, screenshots of which were posted on Twitter by Politico’s Kelsey M. Sutton, Berdy also explains why she felt the need to independently corroborate Tantaros’ story.
“I also want to make clear that Andrea did not reach out to me about her present case against Fox News. After reading about it in the media, and also reading reports that Fox News was denying her claims, I emailed Andrea to tell her that I knew she was telling the truth because she had told me, in a therapeutic setting where she would have had no motive to lie, about the conduct of Mr. Ailes, Mr. Shine, Mr. O’Reilly, Ms. Briganti, and others at the time, or very shortly after, the harassment, retaliation, and perverse hostile and sexualized workplace conditions took place.”
According to Tantaros’ lawyer, the former host of The Five rejected a 7-figure settlement offer from the network in order to continue pursuing her case. “She summarily refused their offer, and believes that any settlement must provide for the cleaning up of Fox News, a task that has regrettably fallen squarely on her shoulders,” attorney Judd Burstein said in a statement.
(Via The Daily Beast & Variety)
