Ed Henry, a former anchor for Fox News is suing the network and one of its executives for defamation.
Henry was fired from his job as co-presenter of “American Newsroom” in 2020 after his former colleague, Jennifer Eckhart, accused him of raping her in 2017. She also alleged that Henry had sexually harassed two other women. Henry denies all of the allegations.
In a lawsuit filed on June 30, Henry claimed that Fox CEO Suzanne Scott knew that the claims were false, but chose to fire him anyway in order to avoid public controversy. Henry claims that Scott intentionally lied in a company-wide letter she sent out on July 1, 2020. The letter said that Fox had hired an outside law firm to investigate Eckhart’s allegations, and that based on their investigative findings, Henry’s employment was terminated.
Although the statement did not explicitly state that the investigators found evidence of sexual misconduct, Henry said that others could easily make that leap. “When Defendants released the July 1, 2020 Statement about Plaintiff, they knew that it would be interpreted as confirmation of Ms. Eckhart’s false allegations against Mr. Henry, and indeed it was,” reads the complaint.
In his lawsuit, Henry claims that Scott purposefully ignored evidence that would have exonerated him, including his three-year-long relationship with Eckhart, and that Scott’s statements led to a loss of “economic opportunities, scorn, derision, harassment, emotional as well as loss of reputation.”
In a statement to Insider, a Fox spokesperson said that there was a “thorough independent investigation” into Henry’s conduct, and that based on those findings, “we promptly terminated Mr. Henry’s employment for willful sexual misconduct and stand by the decision entirely.”
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