Over the weekend, The New York Times published a piece saying that Bill O’Reilly had paid $32 million in a sexual harassment settlement with a Fox News legal analyst just before Fox News renewed his contract, indicating that the network was well aware of the many sexual harassment complaints that had been made against him and was choosing to ignore them. Then, just as he’s been doing all year, O’Reilly claimed that this was all some twisted conspiracy and that nobody had ever filed sexual harassment complaints against him. Today, though, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has called bullshit on that for one simple reason: She had filed an harassment complaint against O’Reilly.
According to Deadline, Kelly dedicated a chunk of her Today hour on NBC talking about the allegations against O’Reilly, explaining that she emailed Fox News presidents Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy last November about O’Reilly. She says she told them that O’Reilly’s “attitude of shaming women into shutting the hell up about harassment” was part of how Fox News had gotten into the “decade-long Ailes mess to begin with,” and Shine apparently responded by saying he’d “deal with O’Reilly.” That evening, Kelly says O’Reilly was back on the air, criticizing the people who went public with allegations against Ailes “rather than going to human resources or leaving the company.”
Kelly actually touched on all of this earlier this year, explaining that part of the reason she left Fox News was because of the way the organization responded to her concerns about O’Reilly.