Andrea Tantaros is the latest Fox News female employee to publicly accuse ousted chairman and CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, telling New York through her lawyer that she "made multiple harassment and hostile-workplace complaints" against Ailes, starting in April 2015, and that her complaints were why she was demoted from The Five to the midday show Outnumbered in February 2015, then benched this spring. In late 2014 and early 2015, Tantaros claims, Ailes told her in his private office that she must "really look good in a bikini" and unsuccessfully solicited an embrace. Tantaros has not been on the air at Fox News since April 25, and her lawyer, Judd Burstein, tells New York, "I believe it's retaliatory."
Tantaros is still being paid, though a "source close to the situation" tells Business Insider that she is likely to be fired soon. Fox News says Tantaros was pulled from the air for violating company policy, claiming she did not submit her latest book for approval by the network, as stipulated in her contract. Two sources familiar with the Tantaros legal dispute tell BuzzFeed the situation was more complicated, and that Fox News had investigated more than a dozen people while looking into her reports of abuse and harassment from at least five Fox News employees, none of whom was Ailes. Burstein, Tantaros' lawyer, says there was no such investigation and that BuzzFeed was being fed selectively misleading information.
Meanwhile, Vanity Fair's Sarah Ellison says that 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, has begun settlement talks with Gretchen Carlson, the former anchor whose sexual harassment allegations against Ailes started the investigation that forced his departure. The settlement is "expected to reach eight figures," sources say, because of "the existence of audio tapes recorded by multiple women in conversation with Ailes." If the settlement is reached out of court, the alleged tapes will stay out of the public record. But "if they litigate the case, all the tapes will become public, directly and through others," a source tells Ellison. "Then you will have a parade of women come in. Nobody wants that." Ailes, through his lawyer, denies all the harassment allegations.
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