The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Report: O’Reilly settled 6th claim for $32 million
Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly secretly settled a sexual harassment allegation with a network contributor for $32 million — the largest, by far, of six such agreements that eventually toppled the outspoken commentator, according to a new report.
The New York Times said Bill O’Reilly agreed to the settlement in January with Lis Wiehl, a longtime legal analyst at Fox who had worked with O’Reilly and had once offered him legal advice.
Despite knowledge of a settlement with Wiehl, Fox renewed its contract with O’Reilly in February, paying him $25 million per year over four years, the paper said.
In a brief interview on Saturday following publication of the Times story, O’Reilly declined to discuss details of the settlement with Wiehl, citing a confidentiality agreement. But he said he agreed to settle “to protect my children from the horror” of continuing adverse publicity had Wiehl’s allegations been litigated in court.
“That’s it,” he said. “I knew if I took this to court there would be three years of unrelenting headlines. That’s why I did it.”
Wiehl alleged O’Reilly had repeatedly harassed her, had engaged in “a nonconsensual sexual relationship” with her, and had sent gay pornography and other sexually explicit material to her, the paper said.
O’Reilly spokesman Mark Fabiani released an affidavit on Saturday in which Wiehl acknowledged O’Reilly forwarded her emails sent to him, apparently while seeking legal advice from her about what to do about them.
“Additionally, over the years while I was acting as Bill O’Reilly’s counsel, he forwarded to me certain explicit emails that were sent to him, and any advice sought or rendered is attorney-client privileged, confidential and private,” she said in the affidavit, dated Jan. 17. “I have no claims against Bill O’Reilly concerning any of those emails or any of the allegations in the draft complaint.”
Wiehl said in the affidavit, “We have since resolved all of our issues” and she would “no longer make the allegations” contained in a draft complaint against O’Reilly she had drawn up months before.
Fabiani confirmed Wiehl signed the affidavit after reaching a monetary settlement with O’Reilly. He declined to comment on the size of the settlement paid to Wiehl, saying O’Reilly and Wiehl were bound by a confidentiality agreement.
In a statement, Fabiani said the affidavit repudiates “all allegations” against O’Reilly. “The Times ignored that evidence, sworn under oath, and chose to rely on unsubstantiated allegations, anonymous sources and incomplete leaked or stolen documents,” he wrote.
Fabiani said 21st Century Fox had paid out “close to $100 million” to “dozens of women” who had alleged harassment by other men at the network. Fox re-signed O’Reilly earlier this year, he wrote, “after the company had analyzed and considered all the allegations against him.”
Times editor Dean Baquet, responding to Fabiani on Saturday, disputed his characterization of the paper’s reporting. “Mr. Fabiani, as often, addresses everything but what the story actually says,” Baquet said. “This article like the others is accurate and deeply reported and we welcome any challenge to the facts.”
O’Reilly was fired in April by Fox News’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, after the Times revealed he had settled with five former colleagues who had alleged harassment by him over more than a decade. Neither Fox nor 21st Century acknowledged the settlement with Wiehl at the time O’Reilly was fired.
If the Times’ figure is accurate, the latest settlement exceeds all of the previous agreements between O’Reilly and his accusers. The five agreements reportedly amounted to $13 million, and included a 2004 payment by O’Reilly to a former Fox producer named Andrea Mackris for $9 million.