Former Fox News anchor Andrea Tantaros told Esquire she's suing the cable news channel and former chairman Roger Ailes for $49 million for a pattern of sexual harassment and retaliation.
"Fox News operates as a dictatorship," Tantaros told Esquire. "Ailes couldn't act by himself. He needed lieutenants. He needed a regime. And so they carried out his orders. They covered up his grotesque misdeeds."
Those lieutenants, according to Tantaros: current co-president Bill Shine, head of programming Suzanne Scott, head of media relations Irena Briganti, and Dianne Brandi, general counsel of Fox News.
According to the Esquire article, Tantaros only recently stopped receiving paychecks from Fox.
"I have been bullied and intimidated, but I won't be silent," Tantaros told Esquire. "I want the torture to stop."
In her lawsuit, Tantaros said Fox News was run like the Playboy mansion. Tantaros told Esquire how Fox's wardrobe department held a "trunk show" twice annually to showcase designer dresses for female on-air talent.
"In front of a group of women, you are expected to completely disrobe," Tantaros says. "You have no privacy, and they make comments on, you know, your underwear set."
But it was her repeated encounters with Ailes, charged with sexual overtones, that led Tantaros to complain to Shine and Scott, which subsequently led to a change of shows, time slots, and ultimately fewer appearances altogether, Tantaros told Esquire.
Fox counters that Tantaros's lawsuit is designed to obscure the real issue: that she did not receive the approvals required in her contract for book, "Tied Up in Knots."
Tantaros told Esquire that she met all the requirements of her contract. Further, she said Fox offered her a seven-figure settlement, but that she turned it down because it would have required her to admit that she had violated her contract's book guidelines, she told Esquire.
The $49 million far exceeds the $20 million settlement former anchor Gretchen Carlson received from the network.
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