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When Fox News star Megyn Kelly told lawyers that Roger Ailes had made unwanted sexual advances toward her a decade ago, it sealed Ailes’s fate. Ailes, who was already under investigation after former Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson sued him for sexual harassment, stepped down as CEO of Fox News shortly after Kelly came forward.
Now RadarOnline claims to have obtained a copy of Kelly’s new memoir, Settle For More, which contains a last-minute addition: details about Ailes’s alleged advances, which were apparently physical as well as verbal.
According to RadarOnline, Kelly wrote that Ailes “began pushing the limits” with “a kind of cat-and-mouse game,” veering between inappropriate sexual comments and actual professional advice. The description of Kelly’s account continues:
He offered to advance her career “in exchange for sexual favors,” she writes, and even though she says she rejected “every single one,” she claims he tried “physical advances.”
But in January 2006, she claims, he “crossed a new line — trying to grab me repeatedly and kiss me on the lips.” When she shoved him away, she alleges, “he asked me an ominous question: ‘When is your contract up?’ And then, for the third time, he tried to kiss me.”
The harassment ended after six months, possibly because she reported him to a supervisor, Kelly writes. But when Carlson and the other women began to come forward this year, Kelly said she decided the time had come to speak up.
“Crossing him was a major risk,” she writes in the book, “but what if — God forbid — he was still doing it to someone?”
Ailes’s attorney released a statement denying the allegations, CNN’s Dylan Byers reports. The statement also points out that Kelly has said favorable things about Ailes in public before.
#Break: Roger Ailes lawyer responds to Megyn Kelly accusations in her new book >> pic.twitter.com/yJOeevTThq
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) November 3, 2016
It’s worth noting here that there are many reasons a victim might say nice things to someone who attacked her, and that bringing up those comments tells us nothing meaningful about whether an alleged attack happened or not.
