Will Roger Ailes be indicted?

Financial blogger Barry Ritholtz, citing an anonymous source, is reporting a big scoop: Fox News chief "Roger Ailes will be indicted — probably this week, maybe even Monday." The charge? Urging then-News Corp. employee Judith Regan to lie to federal prosecutors about her affair with former New York Police Chief Bernard Kerik, to protect ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a friend of Ailes. The New York Times, which first reported those allegations, but not the pending indictment, says that Regan taped her incriminating conversation with Ailes. Is the Fox News executive going down?

Things don't look good for Ailes: The most damning thing for Ailes is the "very weak" defense of him from Fox News' parent company, says Henry Blodget at Business Insider. They don't even deny that Ailes urged Regan to lie, a potentially serious crime. And if there is in fact a tape of him, it's no wonder News Corp. is "keeping its options open." All that matters now is "what is on the tape and what federal investigators think of what is on the tape."

"News Corp's Weak statement on Roger Ailes"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Indicting Ailes is just a fantasy: I get why there's "lots of buzz" about this story, says Jack "MacRanger" Moss at Macsmind. But its not even a particularly difficult rumor to shoot down."You need a Grand Jury to indict." And as far as anyone knows, "no such Grand Jury has convened."

"No Virginia, Roger Ailes will NOT be indicted"

By Fox's standards, Ailes is guilty: Fox News made its name sermonizing that Bill Clinton's lies about his affair were "a high crime deserving impeachment — or worse," says David Corn in Politics Daily. Well, "this tape is Ailes' blue dress." It's clear that "crime or not, Ailes did wrong," and even if prosecutors aren't on the case, "any other media empire" would consider "such hypocrisy and fierce political favoritism" a fireable offense.

"Roger Ailes' sex-and-lies tale: There is something different about Fox"