Former Fox News guest-booking chief and event planner Laurie Luhn—who left the right-leaning cable channel in 2010 and signed a reported $3.15-million settlement agreement to keep quiet about her decades of sexual and psychological abuse by the late Roger Ailes—says the outlet’s high-powered law firm, Jones Day, is trying to intimidate her.
Several prominent attorneys contacted by The Daily Beast agreed that Jones Day was possibly engaging in “bullying,” or “improper” and potentially “unethical” conduct when it sent a male process server to Luhn’s Los Angeles home on the night of Tuesday, Jan. 26.
It was the day after Luhn, 60, was deposed in former Fox Nation anchor Britt McHenry’s sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against the network and McHenry’s former co-host and alleged harasser George Murdoch, aka former pro wrestler Tyrus. The process server—who rang her buzzer but didn’t identify himself, a still-rattled Luhn told The Daily Beast—delivered court documents that the law firm had already emailed to her lawyer, conservative activist Larry Klayman.
The emotionally fragile Luhn—suffering from a stress-induced body rash and chest pains, she said—testified in a three-hour deposition about her 14-year ordeal at Fox News, including her four suicide attempts and how Ailes lieutenants Bill Shine and Suzanne Scott allegedly enabled and covered up his misconduct. Both Shine and Scott have denied complicity in, or knowledge of, Ailes’ misconduct.
“In my deposition, I spoke about horrific encounters with both Roger and his inner circle that has resulted in unimaginable pain that I suffer from every single day,” Luhn said in an email this week, “and they are still terrorizing me and attacking me. Coming to my house last Tuesday in the darkness of night? Beyond outrageous, but consistent with the Roger Ailes Playbook. I suffer from ONGOING trauma, and physical pain…not PTSD.”
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Describing her sworn testimony, Luhn added: “One of the mantras Roger would use while he was sexually abusing me, was to have me repeat whatever words he said—WITHOUT HESITATION—‘Laurie—you love getting gang raped—don’t you?’ He said it to me for so many years. I was expected to give all of my answers in the affirmative. He wanted my voice on tape saying horrendous things. He always called the photographs and videos: ‘his insurance policy that YOU—Laurie will stay loyal to me.’ He repeatedly told me that he was my only friend. He told me that I had NO friends. He told me to ‘TRUST ONLY ROGER.’…
“Roger endangered my life. Post 9-11, I was expected to meet him at a hotel in Times Square, where he was waiting with a woman—and he told me to put on a [lesbian] show,” Luhn continued. “I had to get up from my desk at Fox News in the middle of my booking work and be seen meeting him. I still cannot believe what he put me through. The abuse escalated after the 9-11 attacks. It is still so difficult to grasp—since he was such a huge paranoid about the terrorists—always saying they were targeting him.
“The terrifying obsession with ME that this man had—that he brazenly forced and shoved me onto another woman in a hotel room –while he filmed videos still takes my breath away. It happened on at least 5 occasions. ZERO regard for me or the emotional toll it was taking on me and the hit my reputation had taken. I have tried to forget. I get sick thinking about it.”
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