Names and faces
PBS says more witnesses have detailed sexual misconduct allegations against talk-show host Tavis Smiley, who was suspended in December and later fired. In papers filed in Washington, D.C., Superior Court in response to a breach-of-contract lawsuit by Smiley,
PBS said the witnesses spoke to an independent investigator and corroborated initial accounts that Smiley had established a pattern of sexual relationships with subordinates. The filing from last week also said he subjected subordinates to unwanted sexual advances — including requests for specific sex acts — and made lewd jokes. “Over a dozen individuals reported that they were either subjected to or witnessed unwelcome, inappropriate sexual comments or conduct or otherwise inappropriate behavior by Mr. Smiley or were informed of the misconduct contemporaneously,” the court filing said. Smiley and his representatives stuck by their denials. “More lies, half-truths and smears from PBS from an ‘investigation’ that never should have happened, with a result that was decided well before the inquiry was even begun,” they said Friday in an emailed statement. The network said it also found further evidence that Smiley created an abusive and threatening workplace, often belittling and cursing subordinates. Many of the witnesses were women of color, the documents say, pushing back against comments from Smiley, who is black, that racial bias was involved in his firing.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was “foolish” not to mount a louder and longer defense of her government email troubles in its last weeks, when the FBI had suddenly reopened the issue and Donald Trump was using it to thrash Clinton daily, a top Clinton aide concludes in a new memoir. Clinton herself had a gut feeling that she should be addressing the issue more forcefully in those closing days in 2016, but her campaign staff urged a strategy that would show her tackling policy questions that would matter if she won the White House, campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri wrote. “It was a mistake, although at the time it was hard to accept that telling Hillary to keep bringing up the emails herself could possibly be the right advice,” Palmieri wrote. “But I should have seen that, as unappealing as addressing the issue was, it was what voters needed to hear from Hillary at that moment. She got that.” Palmieri’s memoir, Dear Madam President, is a campaign postmortem wrapped in an open letter to the woman who will one day become what Clinton did not — the country’s first female president. It is also a compendium of advice for working women now and in the future, and at times a diatribe against Trump and the campaign he ran.