Report: Probe of Fox News extends to snooping
By Erik Wemple March 13 at 12:48 PM
As noted in this space last month, a lawyer representing a former Fox News host said in a court proceeding that hed received a subpoena in connection with a federal investigation of the network. That subpoena, said attorney Judd Burstein, was related to the sexual harassment scandal surrounding ousted Fox News chief Roger Ailes (Ailes has denied the sexual harassment claims). Burstein deduced that the authorities were investigating whether Fox News violated securities laws by not reporting settlements to the Securities and Exchange Commission, he said in a hearing at the New York State Supreme Court.
That federal investigation came under the leadership of Preet Bharara, who was fired over the weekend from his post as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a job that involves oversight of Wall Street and the media titans of New York. And according to New York Magazines Gabriel Sherman, the probe is looking at a number of potential crimes, including whether Fox News executives broke laws by allegedly obtaining journalists phone records or committed mail and wire fraud by hiding financial settlements paid to women who accused Roger Ailes of sexual harassment. One possible candidate to replace Bharara, reports the New York Times, is Marc Mukasey, who has represented Ailes himself.
As Sherman pursued a number of stories last year about the Ailes scandal, Mukasey himself supplied a colorful bit of media criticism to the Daily Beast: Gabe Sherman is a virus, and is too small to exist on his own, and has obviously attached himself to the Ailes family to try to suck the life out of them, said Mukasey in comments to the website.
Last year, Burstein told this blog that he expected to sue Fox News on behalf of former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros based upon her right to seek damages as the victim of violations of certain federal criminal laws having nothing to do with sexual harassment, etc. The cloud of secrecy surrounding the 14th floor will be replaced by the sunlight of litigation. That 14th floor was the locus of a so-called black room where Ailess people allegedly carried out PR and surveillance operations against his detractors.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/03/13/report-probe-of-fox-news-extends-to-snooping/?utm_term=.5d0e97fb67d2&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1
mercuryblues
(14,491 posts)this in England, why would anyone think it did not happen here?
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/02/rebekah-brooks-201202
But that smile wasnt on display on July 19 as Brooks told the parliamentary committee investigating the hacking scandal that she had never condoned or sanctioned hacking or even known that it was taking place at the News of the World while she was the editor. She said she had learned about the allegations that Milly Dowlers phone had been hacked only when they were revealed in a story in The Guardian two weeks earlier. At the hearing she appeared exhausted, her trademark hair stringy and disheveled, but she testified calmly and coolly for nearly two hours. She said she had never met or had any dealings with Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator whose files, seized by the police in 2006, would trigger the national scandal with some 11,000 pages of notes and 690 audiotapes, indicating that nearly 6,000 peopleincluding politicians, celebrities, police officers, and crime victimsmay have had their phones hacked by the News of the World.