Megyn Kelly may have played a key role in Fox News’ internal investigation of sexual harassment allegations against her former boss Roger Ailes. But the news host remained publicly silent, even after a lawsuit filed by her colleague Gretchen Carlson led to Ailes’ resignation in July.
It appears that Kelly, host of “The Kelly File,” may have been holding off sharing her version of the story for her forthcoming book, “Settle for More,” due out Nov. 15. In it, she offers up some explosive details, according to tidbits that have been released by RadarOnline.com.
She claims that the portly Fox News founder and media powerhouse began to harass her in the summer of 2005, a few months after she was hired as a legal correspondent in Fox’s Washington bureau.
Her managing editor told her she had captured Ailes’ attention, and he summoned her to the first of a series of meetings in his Manhattan office.
“Roger began pushing the limits,” Kelly alleges. “There was a pattern to his behavior. I would be called into Roger’s office, he would shut the door, and over the next hour or two, he would engage in a kind of cat-and-mouse game with me — veering between obviously inappropriate sexually charged comments (e.g. about the ‘very sexy bras’ I must have and how he’d like to see me in them) and legitimate professional advice.”
Kelly says she rejected every advance. Ailes “crossed a new line” in 2006, when he allegedly grabbed her and tried to kiss her on the lips.
“He asked me an ominous question, ‘When is your contract up?’ And then, for the third time, he tried to kiss me.”
The harassment stopped shortly after Kelly reported him to a supervisor. But she decided to disclose her experiences to investigators looking into allegations by Carlson and other female Fox News employees. Andrea Tantaros also filed a lawsuit, alleging network executives helped enable Ailes’ worst behavior.
“Fox News masquerades as a defender of traditional family values, but behind the scenes, it operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency, and misogyny,” Tantaros said in her lawsuit.
Like Carlson, Kelly feared there would be professional fall-out from speaking up against Ailes. “Crossing him was a major risk,” she writes in the book, according to Radar. “But what if—God forbid—he was still doing it to someone?”
A representative for Ailes, contacted by RadarOnline, said that he denies Kelly’s “allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct of any kind.” The representative pointed to a 2015 video in which Kelly praised Ailes, describing him as being “nothing but good to me.”
Kelly is currently in negotiations over whether to stay at Fox News. The network has reportedly offered her a compensation package worth over $20 million a year to stay, Vanity Fair reported. Fox News CEO Rupert Murdoch has said he hoped they would come to an agreement “very soon.”
