UPDATED at 11:12 a.m. PT: Barry Asen, the outside counsel for Ailes, issued the following statement to TheWrap: “It has become obvious that Ms. Carlson and her lawyer are desperately attempting to litigate this in the press because they have no legal case to argue. The latest allegations, all 30 to 50 years old, are false.”
PREVIOUSLY:
Roger Ailes is facing new allegations from six women who have said the Fox News chairman and CEO sexually harassed them over multiple decades, pre-dating his time as the head of the network.
After former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson sued Ailes for sexual harassment during her time at the network, the six additional women reached out to New York Magazine to describe their own alleged encounters with the executive.
Kellie Boyle, a former Republican National Committee field adviser, said that Ailes propositioned her in 1989 during their first meeting in New York. Boyle said that when she and Ailes were alone together in a car, he told her, “‘You know if you want to play with the big boys, you have to lay with the big boys.’”
Boyle went on to say that when she asked Ailes if she would be expected to do similar things with other men in the media, he replied, “‘Well you might have to give a blow — every once in a while.’”
Marsha Callahan, a former model, said that Ailes interviewed her in the late 1960s when he was producing “The Mike Douglas Show.” She alleged that Ailes informed her she would have to sleep with him and “a few of [his] select friends” in order to get the job. When she refused, he said, “‘Oh, pretty girls like you are a dime a dozen.’”
The four other women spoke on the condition of anonymity and told very similar stories. Three of those women were also models who said Ailes tried to engage in sexual activities with them during interviews in his office. The fourth said she was interviewing for a communications job with Ailes when he told her in so many words that she would have to sleep with him to get the job.
The author of the piece, Gabriel Sherman, previously published an unauthorized biography of Ailes entitled, ” The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News – and Divided a Country.”
Carlson’s suit, filed on Wednesday in Bergen County, New Jersey, said she refused Ailes’ sexual advances, and “as a direct and proximate result” her relationship with Fox News was severed in June.
The court filing states Ailes told Carlson on Sept. 16 of last year, “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better.”