On Monday, Justin Wells, a former Fox News producer who ran Tucker Carlson’s primetime show and currently works with him on his new social media ventures, is being accused of sexual assault stemming from an incident that allegedly took place in 2008.
Andrew Delancey, a former Fox News staffer as well, is suing the network and Wells – claiming assault and battery on the part of Wells and negligence and sexual harassment on the part of Fox News.
Delancey’s lawsuit was filed in a New York State Court before the expiration of the New York Adult Survivors Act.
In the suit, uncovered by The Washington Post, Delancey claims that Wells repeatedly accosted him in his apartment, where they first met to have drinks before heading out to meet fellow Fox News colleagues at a gay bar.
While at the apartment, Delancey claims he was “easily overpowered” by Wells, who forced him onto his bed, grabbing his genitals despite Delancey’s verbal objection. “Out of nowhere, Wells aggressively pushed Mr. Delancey onto his bed where he violently forced his tongue into Mr. Delancey’s mouth,” the complaint states.
According to the lawsuit, Delancey managed to convince Wells that they needed to meet their co-workers at the bar and that Wells again allegedly groped him in a stairwell against his consent.
Before the alleged incident, Delancey initially made contact with Wells via a Facebook group for Fox employees in 2007. At that time, Delancey was working for a local Fox station in Florida, with Wells encouraging him to take a job with Fox News in New York.
The suit continues to say that when Delancey landed in New York working for Fox News Edge, Wells allegedly lavished an unusual amount of attention on him after he arrived, giving him personally monogrammed pencils and notebooks with Fox branding and promising to help him “learn the ropes” at the cable news giant.
When Delancey complained that he couldn’t afford to live in New York on an entry-level salary, he claims that Wells helped him secure an interview at another network.
After the alleged sexual assault incident, Delancey says that Wells started to give him the cold shoulder and that the interview with another company that Wells had set up did not result in a job offer.
Delancey also alleges that Fox News did not provide a way for him to complain and that his supervisor at that time made him swear not to complain about anything he experienced at Fox to human resources.
Wells, for his part through his attorney Harmeet Dhillion, said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast that he “denies the allegations unequivocally and will contest them vigorously.”
Meanwhile, Fox News has not provided a statement to media outlets regarding this latest lawsuit, but Carlson is defending Wells, telling Mediaite that “if you believe you’ve been the victim of a sex crime, you have a moral obligation to alert police, so it doesn’t happen to someone else. If a man waits 15 years to cash in with a civil suit, no one should take him seriously. I certainly don’t.”