Media mogul and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday said his company has agreed to release three woman from nondisclosure agreements they had signed related to “comments” they said he made as founder and chairman of Bloomberg Media.
The move comes two days after Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on him to release women from NDAs during a heated moment at the ninth Democratic presidential debate. Thursday, during a town hall on CNN, she announced she’d even drafted a contract for him to do that.
“Bloomberg LP has identified 3 NDAs signed over the past 30+ years with women to address complaints about comments they said I had made,” the Bloomberg tweeted. “If any of them want to be released from their NDAs, they should contact the company and they’ll be given a release.”
In a longer statement on his website, the billionaire wrote, “I’ve done a lot of reflecting on this issue over the past few days and I’ve decided that for as long as I’m running the company, we won’t offer confidentiality agreements to resolve claims of sexual harassment or misconduct going forward.”
Warren took the billionaire mogul to task on the issue during Wednesday’s debate, the first in which he had appeared since his late entry into the presidential race. “He has gotten some number of women — dozens, who knows? — to sign nondisclosure agreements, both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace,” the Massachusetts senator said. “So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those nondisclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story?”
Warren’s question was met with rowdy cheers from the in-house audience at the Paris Las Vegas Theater. Once the crowd died down, Bloomberg was able to respond, “None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told.”
Bloomberg’s answer was met with gasps and groans from the audience.
His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether there were more NDAs identified that had to do with issues other than “comments” the women involved said he had made.