Court Documents Reveal New Allegations of Sexual Assault and Harassment Against Former Fox News Host Ed Henry

A new court filing by former Fox News associate producer Jennifer Eckhart contains never-before-reported allegations of sexual assault and harassment at the cable network.

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.

The document as filed in the court records has redactions in multiple places, but key details of these allegations still remain public.

Fox News has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and argued in pleadings that Eckhart “did not tell anyone about her sexual encounters with Henry” and “did not raise any complaints about sexual harassment or retaliation until after her termination from” the network. Eckhart herself said that she did not tell anyone at Fox about her encounters until after she was fired by the network in 2020.

In a new statement in response to the latest brief, Fox said: “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.”

Willemin argues in the filing against Fox’s denial of responsibility by seeking to establish that the network “knew” Henry posed a “significant risk” due to his past behavior and “failed to investigate” past allegations against Henry in 2017, making Fox News a “safe haven for men who engage in sexual harassment and assault.”

This past behavior includes a May 2016 “affair” Henry had with a Las Vegas stripper, the memo states, that led to Fox News suspending Henry (with pay) and ordering him to seek sex addiction treatment.

Henry’s problems were not limited to “a single consensual affair,” Willemin writes, but rather a pattern of “workplace sexual misconduct,” including using a Fox News-issued device to engage in “a ‘sexting incident’ that the ‘DC Bureau helped Ed cover up,’ before Fox News learned about Mr. Henry’s affair with a stripper,” and engaging in an inappropriate “sexual relationship” with another colleague:

As described in further detail below, none of these allegations were ever meaningfully investigated. As it turned out, Mr. Henry was sleeping with [redacted]. This sexual relationship, which involved a similar and severe imbalance of power, began in November 2016, after Mr. Henry returned from suspension, and pre-dating the February 2017 rape involving Ms. Eckhart. [Redacted] has described Mr. Henry as a “predator,” who used the “power imbalance” to get her to engage in a relationship – including coercing her to engage in sex acts in Mr. Henry’s office – that was “predatory,” “emotionally abusive” and “not as ‘consensual’ as [she] thought.” Also, prior to the 2017 rape involving Ms. Eckhart, Mr. Henry sent a picture of his penis to a 22-year-old [redacted]. The photograph was totally unsolicited and [redacted] was shocked and upset at having received it. [Redacted] believes that she told colleagues at Fox News about this unwelcomed sexual harassment in 2016.

In sum, it was well-known at Fox News that Mr. Henry posed a serious risk to his female colleagues. In 2016, Fox Business anchor Liz Claman told Ms. Eckart that “everyone at Fox News knows that Ed Henry is a sex addict. That’s no secret.” [Redacted] reported that when Mr. Henry came back from suspension in 2016 “people across DC & NY [ ] reached out to [her] expressing their discomfort and disdain” that Mr. Henry was back. [Redacted] also stated that Mr. Henry had not changed after graduating from “sex addict’s camp” and warned that he would use his position of power to prey on women. Fox News [redacted] who worked with Mr. Henry in the DC Bureau, said that her and others openly discussed Mr. Henry’s inappropriate behavior towards women at the network, as well as a sexual relationship he was having with [redacted]. Mr. Henry’s predilection and reputation for sexual harassment was so widely known amongst the industry such that after this case was filed one of his prior targets tweeted: “No chance @foxnews didn’t know about Ed Henry. He was a menace to many of us on the comms side when he was @cnn and everyone talked about it. Literally so so so gross.” (Citations omitted.)

Eckhart’s attorney dismisses Fox’s claims that Henry was sent to a sex addiction rehab program because of “a single consensual extramarital affair with a non-employee” as “totally preposterous,” and argues that it was because the network “knew that he posed a risk to his female colleagues, staff and subordinates.”

“And despite knowing this,” Willemin wrote, “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.”

Specifically, the memo describes Eckhart’s accusation that Henry raped her in February 2017, in which Henry allegedly “forcefully raped her” after having “forced himself upon” her, “ripped” off her clothes, handcuffed her, took photos of her without her consent, hit and slapped her, whipped her with his belt. Eckhart’s attorney argues that Henry was able to get Eckhart alone and rape her, even after other alleged sexual assaults Henry committed against her, because she was “even more fearful” of him after Fox News brought him back after his suspension.

Willemin also states that another Fox News staffer claimed she was sexually assaulted by Henry after he returned from suspension around 2017. The staffer, whose name was redacted, detailed the alleged assault in sworn testimony as part of Eckhart’s case.

“Fox News’ treatment of Mr. Henry following his return to the network only served to embolden him, as he escalated his abusive treatment of women by not only raping Ms. Eckhart, but also sexually assaulting another Fox News colleague,” writes Willemin.

The memo details a page and a half of other allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment gathered from sworn deposition testimony — mostly with the relevant names redacted — including multiple men who are described as still remaining employed by Fox News. A sampling of these allegations from the testimony, as described in the memo:

[Redacted] was twice accused of sexual harassment at Fox News, including asking interns and production assistants for sexual favors and leering at female subordinates’ breasts. [Redacted] remained employed, and during this litigation, a former female colleague submitted a declaration that she was raped by [redacted] in his Fox News office. [Redacted] remains employed at Fox News to this day despite being on notice of this allegation and sworn declaration.

[Redacted] has been the subject of approximately five complaints of discrimination, retaliation and/or hostile work environment. He was never disciplined and remains employed by Fox News.

Fox News personality [redacted] sexually harassed his colleague, [redacted]. Even though Mr. Lord testified that [redacted] sent Ms. [redacted] inappropriate sexual texts, he had no recollection whether [redacted] (who plays a very prominent on-air role at Fox News to this day) was disciplined at all. (Citations omitted.)

Currently, Henry is employed at Newsmax. When he was hired, it sparked internal outrage due to the sexual assault claims against him, according to Newsmax staffers. Prior to his Newsmax employment, Henry was a host at Real America’s Voice.

During his tenure at RAV, the scandal-plagued Henry was accused of sending lewd, sexually graphic texts and memes and making inappropriate comments to a female subordinate at the right-leaning news organization, as Mediaite reported in July.

Eckhart, since leaving Fox News, hosts the podcast Reinvented with Jen Eckhart.

Eckhart’s lawyer told Mediaite in a written statement, “As made clear in today’s filings, there is no merit to Fox News’ or Ed Henry’s desperate attempts to extricate themselves from this case. We firmly believe that Fox News and Mr. Henry are going to be held accountable by a jury or Ms. Eckhart’s peers, and we are very much looking forward to pushing this case to trial.”

“Despite the millions of dollars spent by a publicly traded company to attempt to discredit me, and the indisputable facts I have brought forth, this litigation process is now one step closer to trial,” Eckhart said in a statement provided to Mediaite. “What is laid out in our filing is, unfortunately, reflective of many corporate cultures in the U.S. — this is a turning point putting said standards on notice. My heart goes out to every other woman that has suffered at the hands of Ed Henry as we have learned in the discovery process of this case that I am not the only survivor and Fox News employee he has groomed and sexually assaulted. I eagerly await my day in court to cast even more light on the immorality of the culture the network continues to promote, and the countless other survivors that have suffered at the hands of pure evil.”

Mediaite reached out to legal counsel for Ed Henry, but did not receive a reply.

Read the redacted Memorandum of Law below:

Memorandum of Law filed by … by sarahrumpf

Disclosure: Diana Falzone was an on-camera reporter for Fox News from 2012 to 2018. In May 2017, she filed a gender discrimination and disability lawsuit against the network and settled, and left the company in March 2018.