Former Fox News host Ed Henry, who was fired in 2020 over a sexual misconduct allegation, filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against the right-wing news network and chief executive Suzanne Scott. (CNN Business)
Henry claims that Scott “publicly smeared” him “and ultimately defamed him as a sex criminal” through the process in which he was terminated, quoting another Fox executive as saying that Scott was looking for a job elsewhere in the Murdoch empire. Scott ultimately signed a multiyear contract with Fox earlier this year. (THR / THR, Esq.)
It also alleges that Scott was part of a cover-up of other cases of sexual misconduct in Rupert Murdoch’s companies, and that Henry was fired “in order to divert attention from Ms. Scott’s long history of covering up actual misconduct.” (Deadline)
Fox News fired Henry in July last year after investigating a complaint made by a former employee of the network. Less than a month after Henry’s firing, Jennifer Eckhart, a former associate producer at the Fox Business Network, sued Henry, claiming that the former anchor had raped her in 2017 at a New York hotel and had sexually assaulted her in a separate incident two years earlier. (WSJ)