NBC News' Matt Lauer was terminated Wednesday morning over unspecified "inappropriate sexual" workplace behaviors, the details of which were later released as part of a two-month investigation by Variety involving dozens of interviews with current and former staff. The allegations include Lauer gifting a colleague a sex toy and "an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her," quizzing female producers about who they'd slept with, and dropping his pants in front of an employee and then getting angry when she refused his advances.
Lauer "couldn't sleep around town with celebrities or on the road with random people, because he's Matt Lauer and he's married," one producer said, noting that the host also had many consensual relationships with coworkers. "So he'd have to do it within his stable, where he exerted power, and he knew people wouldn't ever complain."
A co-host of Today, Lauer was reportedly paid a $25 million annual salary by NBC. His office at 30 Rockefeller Center "was in a secluded space, and he had a button under his desk that allowed him to lock his door from the inside without getting up," Variety adds.
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The specific incident behind Lauer's termination reportedly stemmed from a complaint by an employee about "inappropriate sexual conduct from Lauer that started on a trip at the Sochi Olympics in 2014 and continued for several months." Read the full investigation here.
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