Lawyer: ‘Bullying’ allegations inquiry was ‘whitewash’
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. » Hours after a new Miss America was crowned, the Miss America Organization released a report Monday denying the outgoing one had been bullied by pageant leaders including chairwoman Gretchen Carlson.
The lawyer for former Miss America Cara Mund called the report, commissioned by the Miss America Organization, “dishonest” and “a complete whitewash.”
Mund was not interviewed for the report. She had offered to meet with an investigator working on the report after the next Miss America was crowned Sunday, but pageant officials insisted
it had to happen before then.
The report was intended to put an end to a turbulent year in which the former leaders of the Miss America Organization were forced from office by a misogynistic email scandal, new female leaders took over and dropped the swimsuit competition, state pageant officials revolted against the new leadership, and Mund herself took the extraordinary step of saying Carlson
and CEO Regina Hopper bullied her.
Roger Haber, Mund’s attorney, rejected the report.
“This document is not only dishonest, but a complete whitewash,” he said. “It contains a series of unsupported conclusions, without any factual basis. It was what we expected when the MAO decided to proceed without speaking with Miss America 2018 Cara Mund who raised the allegations.”