New Filing In Fox News Ed Henry Rape Lawsuit Reveals More Than Meets The Eye

A recent legal filing from attorneys representing Jennifer Eckhart regarding her former employer, Fox News, and ex-Fox anchor turned Newsmax host Ed Henry shed new light on Fox News’s recent motion for summary judgment filings.

Eckhart has alleged that she was violently raped by Henry and is now suing Fox News over allegations they failed to properly investigate and manage Henry’s behavior despite wide knowledge within the company that Henry had assaulted other Fox employees. Mediaite’s Diana Falzone and Sarah Rumpf reported on Monday:

Eckhart sued Fox News and former host Ed Henry in 2020 over her claim that Henry had violently raped her in 2017. Henry has vehemently denied the accusations. Fox News said they fired Henry directly after learning of Eckhart’s claims. In a previous statement, the network said, “Upon first learning of Jennifer Eckhart’s allegations in 2020, Fox News promptly conducted an investigation by an outside independent law firm, which resulted in senior management and HR terminating Ed Henry within six days.” Eckhart has contested both of their accounts in the past.

On Wednesday, Eckhart’s legal counsel Michael J. Willemin, a partner at Wigdor LLP, filed a 39-page motion that Mediaite has obtained. The legal brief opposing Fox’s motion for summary judgment detailed shocking new claims that Henry also assaulted another Fox News female colleague during his tenure at the network and multiple Fox News staffers alerted company brass to their concerns about him, along with other previously unreported allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment at Fox News by other male employees still employed by the network.

Willemin argued against Fox’s denial of responsibility in managing Henry amid the alleged rumors and claimed Fox News “knew” he posed a “significant risk” due to past behavior and “failed to investigate” allegations going back as far as 2017, insisting that the network was a “haven for men who engage in sexual harassment and assault.” Eckhart is seeking damages as a result.

Fox News did suspend Henry with pay after a consensual affair with a stripper in Las Vegas came to light and ordered him to seek treatment for sexual addiction. Eckhart’s lawyer ridiculed the idea that Henry would be treated for one single affair and noted that “Fox News welcomed him back with open arms, rewarded him by drastically renewing his contract, increasing his pay to per year, promoting him to a highly-coveted anchor role, and continuing to enable and turn a blind eye to his actions, effectively condoning his behavior, as the red flags, complaints and the warning signs piled up.”

Willemin made reference to the network’s “well-documented history and reputation of animus toward women in the workplace” — citing six sexual harassment cases against former on-air talent that were settled.

Fox News claimed in its summary judgment filing, which was made in September, that they handled the news of Henry’s behavior with alacrity and presented a timeline that runs counter to Willemin’s claims of ignoring actions that related explicitly to hers and Henry’s interactions. Further, in a deposition under oath, Eckhart admitted that she did not go to Fox News about any allegations regarding Henry until two weeks after she had been dismissed from the network.

A key issue in this legal proceeding is what the network knew and when. Fox News insists that the evidence — as they present it — clearly shows that they were not aware of any sexual interactions between the two employees. And when they became aware, they acted swiftly — firing Henry six days later.

All parties agreed that there were three sexual encounters between Henry and Eckhart. The last encounter occurred on Feb. 27, and neither Henry nor Eckhart told anyone at the network. Fox did learn of an April 17 consensual affair between Henry and another employee who wanted to alert management about it. Fox News insists that all allegations were investigated, but not substantiated.

The preliminary statement in Fox News’s motion for summary judgment encapsulates the network’s position on the matter:

Eckhart admits that she told no one at FNN about Henry’s alleged misconduct either at the time it was happening or during the entire time she worked at FNN. Rather, Eckhart raised these allegations with FNN for the first time through her lawyers on June 25, 2020—three years after the alleged harassment ended, and two weeks after Eckhart was terminated by FNN for longstanding, unremedied performance failures. Even though Eckhart was no longer employed by FNN, upon hearing of Ms. Eckhart’s allegations, FNN President Jay Wallace and Executive Vice President of Human Resources Kevin Lord suspended Henry that very day, took him off the air, and immediately hired an independent law firm to investigate. Notably, during that investigation Eckhart refused to disclose her communications with Henry—communications that, as FNN learned in discovery, contained numerous sexually provocative messages and intimate photographs that Eckhart sent to Henry and that she conspicuously omitted from her Complaint. FNN’s outside investigator issued findings, and Wallace and Lord fired Henry for his admitted violations of workplace policy six days after FNN first received Eckhart’s complaint. On the same day as Henry’s termination, Wallace and FNN CEO Suzanne Scott informed all employees that FNN had received a complaint of sexual misconduct against Henry, investigated, and fired him—and reminded everyone that FNN prohibits all forms of sexual harassment, misconduct, and discrimination.

The summary judgment filing also lays out what the network deemed to be Eckhart’s “substantial performance deficiencies” as an Associate Producer at Fox Business as a pretext for her review, “performance improvement plan,” and eventual dismissal from the network, all before she made anyone at Fox aware of any interactions with Henry. Willemin counters by arguing, “the record is replete with disputes about whether Ms. Eckhart’s performance was, in fact, poor.”

Fox News terminated Eckhart’s employment on June 12, 2020. On June 25, 2020, two weeks after her termination, her attorney communicated, for the first time, the allegation that Henry had sexually harassed Eckhart. Fox News request for summary judgment claims “Eckhart alleges that Henry’s improper conduct began in or around 2014 and culminated in her alleged rape in February 2017. Nevertheless, during the entire course of her employment at FNN, Eckhart never once complained that she had been sexually harassed by Henry—or raised any concerns about Henry at all—despite having ample opportunity to do so.”

In response to Eckhart’s response to their summary judgment filing, Fox released a statement that reads, “After having missed their deadline for filing, the lawyers for Ms. Eckhart are now desperately trying to salvage their case. As discovery in this matter has confirmed, FOX News was not aware of any relationship between Ms. Eckhart and Mr. Henry or of any allegations of unwelcome sexual activity by Mr. Henry until after she left the company.”

Eckhart and her lawyers are clearly trying to hold Fox News liable for the behavior of its employee at the time — which requires they show that Fox knew about it and ignored it. But her argument, Fox News contends, hits a major roadblock in the form of her own sworn testimony admitting that she never revealed anything to the network about Henry’s alleged harassment until two weeks after her dismissal.

Read the request for summary judgment below:

000368-00-2024-09-23-MEMORANDUM-OF-LAW-in-Support-re-367-MOTION-for-Summary