The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has tapped an outside law firm to investigate accusations of sexual misconduct against Husam (Sam) Asi, a longtime member and Golden Globes voter.
Three women came forward in an investigation by TheWrap to accuse the Palestinian journalist of abusing their trust by turning professional situations into sexualized encounters, including a former assistant who said that Asi showed her pornography at work and kissed her on the lips without her consent.
A spokesperson for the HFPA — which has been under fire for much of the last year amid accusations of corruption, racism and self-dealing that prompted NBC to back out of televising the Globes last month — said that the organization sent the information provided by TheWrap to an outside law firm for review, citing the group’s “intolerance for any type of discrimination or harassment.”
“The HFPA takes any and all allegations very seriously and does not condone any type of inappropriate misconduct or behavior,” the spokesperson said. “If it is found that a member has violated the Code of Conduct, disciplinary action will be taken, including suspension and/or expulsion from the organization. Upon receiving this information, we immediately sent the complaints to the outside law firm for review and investigation. The HFPA strongly encourages anyone with any complaint against any member to do the same.”
Asi, an HFPA member since 2010 who was responsible for running the HFPA website as recently as last year, on Tuesday responded to detailed accounts of the accusations: “We deny all these baseless accusations, and we have ample evidence to prove them false.” He did not provide any evidence ahead of publication to counter the women’s claims.
In interviews with TheWrap, three women went on record to detail accusations against Asi.
• Tianyue Li, who worked as an unpaid assistant for Asi for six months in 2017, said that Asi played Chinese pornography in front of her while she was working at his apartment (“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” she recalled telling him) and once kissed her on the lips without her consent. “I was in my own space, and he just leaned (in)… and then he kissed me,” she said. “I said, ‘No, I don’t want to do that,’ and I pushed him.” (Asi declined to comment in detail, though an individual close to Asi denied that the journalist had ever shown her pornography or kissed her.)
• Wenting “Ting Ting” Xu, a former HFPA member from China who resigned from the group in protest in 2021 over the lack of reforms, said she was mortified after she got into the organization in 2016 — after trying and failing to do so in 2014 — and found that Asi shared with her a rumor that she had performed oral sex on him to gain admission. “Sam one day came up to me and said, ‘When you wanted to apply the first time, I was your sponsor, and members laughed at me and joked that you must’ve given me a blow job in order for me to sponsor you,’” she recalled. “Only people like Sam would even say that.” (The individual close to Asi countered that Xu was aware of the rumor in 2014 and had laughed it off.)
• Former Russian journalist Hanna Greentree told TheWrap Asi gave her the impression he would only sponsor her to become a member of the HFPA if she had sex with him. Greentree, a native of Ukraine who wrote celebrity interviews for outlets like Marie Claire and Hello! under the name Anna Pavlova, said Asi invited her to his apartment in 2016 to discuss sponsoring her application and she immediately felt uncomfortable. Greentree said Asi did not openly proposition her, but the nature of the conversation — talking about girlfriends and dating rather than the HFPA — convinced her that he was angling for a relationship as a quid pro quo before he would agree to back her membership application. “It was such a strange conversation,” she told TheWrap. Ultimately, Asi did not agree to sponsor her. (Asi did not comment in more detail on this accusation.)
Under the HFPA’s revised code of conduct, complaints are investigated by the global ethics company Convercent, which can make recommendations about possible disciplinary action, including expulsion.
Read the full account of he women’s accusations here.
For the record: A previous version of this story had incorrect dates for when Ting Ting Xu applied for HFPA membership.
