With his typical vindictiveness, Bill O’Reilly has started attacking one of his many accusers of sexual harassment. Unfortunately for O’Reilly, the evidence is rather flimsy.
Appearing on Today, O’Reilly was questioned by Matt Lauer about his firing from Fox (transcript excerpts via Media Matters, with my emphases):
O’REILLY: There was no reason. They had a contractual clause that they could pay me a certain amount of money and not put me on the air. And they exercised that clause.
LAUER: But why did they exercise that? What was the reason they said they were exercising that?
O’REILLY: There was a sponsor boycott engineered by Media Matters, the radical left group. And the sponsor boycott unsettled some people at Fox News.
During the tense exchange, O’Reilly repeatedly insisted he has done nothing wrong. In a now familiar pattern of behavior, he began attacking at least one of his accusers.
LAUER: Let me put a period on it this way, Bill, by asking you over the last six months since your firing, have you done some soul-searching, have you done some self-reflection, and have you looked at the way you treated women that you think now or think about differently now than you did at the time?
O’REILLY: My conscience is clear. What I have done is organize a legal team to get the truth to the American people. So if you go to Newsmax.com or BillOReilly.com, you will see an article about one of the accusers of me, OK, who was arrested for filing a false police report. You will see that article. And I want people—
LAUER: And that happened—
O’REILLY: I want people to read it and make up their own mind.
LAUER: And that happened back in 2015. And I just want to mention, the two things can be mutually exclusive. She could have filed a false report in—
O’REILLY: But you don’t know, Lauer. You don’t know.
LAUER: And I don’t. But she could have filed a false report in 2015 and still be telling the truth about you.
O’REILLY: Look, anything’s possible, all right, but it goes to credibility, doesn’t it, all right? If you look at it in totality, this was a hit job, a political and financial hit job, engineered by—
LAUER: Is this a vast left-wing conspiracy?
O’REILLY: No vast, and don’t be sarcastic. Don’t be sarcastic.
[…] We’re going to be able to prove what we say. There are more things to come, all right? This was Media Matters, the Bonner Group, Color of Change, organizing sponsor boycotts to bring down Fox News and me.
For the record, NewsHounds did not participate in the boycott effort.
The accuser who was arrested for filing a false police report is Perquita Burgess. She alleged that O’Reilly ogled her and called her “hot chocolate.” She reported his (mis)treatment of her to Fox News but, significantly, did not ask for any money.
LawNewz’ Rachel Stockman investigated the matter and confirmed that “O’Reilly’s team” is behind the story. Stockman also reported:
In 2015, [Burgess] was reportedly arrested after a domestic incident. However, the details of the arrest were so flimsy that The Washington Post apparently refused to go with it after an extensive investigation. Instead, it was published in the conservative publication Newsmax, which claimed “[a] 2015 arrest by Detroit police of a key accuser of Bill O’Reilly for giving a false report of a crime has raised serious doubts as to her credibility.”
As LawNewz legal analyst Ronn Blitzer said, the story doesn’t quite exonerate him. According to a report, Burgess is accused of calling the police on her then-boyfriend claiming that he hit her, and when police arrived, she basically recanted. However, since that time, Burgess’s then-boyfriend said he believed that the allegations were based “on a misunderstanding and were not pursued by the police or prosecutors.” The case was dropped. In fact, Burgess’ attorney Lisa Bloom even provided [a] signed statement from the boyfriend[.]
Meanwhile, what about all the other women?
And check out Bill O’Reilly’s tweet that claims “he’s sorry to have to post” the article attempting to discredit Burgess.
Sorry to have to post this article but it is necessary to expose the evil in play in this country. More to come. https://t.co/okplbsK9iC
— Bill O'Reilly (@billoreilly) September 18, 2017
Watch O’Reilly deny he did anything wrong below, from the September 19, 2017 Today.
It doesn’t matter that the facts show O’Reilly’s behavior was swinish and unacceptable. It doesn’t matter that he cost his employer millions of dollars in legal costs and settlement payments. It doesn’t matter that it was O’Reilly’s own behavior that put him in this position. To O’Reilly, the only thing that matters is that he thinks he was somehow wronged and he’s trying to get revenge.
It’s understandable that O’Reilly feels wronged. He had a cushy gig on Fox News and was setting himself up to be an Elder Statesman of the Right, someone who could opine as a real authority on Current Affairs and be thought of as a true Man of the World by Fox News viewers and Right Wingers everywhere. Instead, he’s been publicly humiliated and reduced to ranting on his website or on Glenn Beck’s increasingly wacky radio show. I’m sure it rankles him to no longer have his bully pulpit to yell at everyone.
It’s interesting that O’Reilly wants to point fingers at David Brock’s group rather than acknowledge his own behavior. The reality is that Fox News would never have fired him if O’Reilly was this innocent paragon of virtue. They fired him because the damage he had caused them was real, and was increasing. They fired him because they knew the facts about his awful behavior and they could no longer bury them. They fired him because in the wake of Roger Ailes’ humiliation, they knew they couldn’t get away with encouraging this behavior any further.
O’Reilly is delusional if he thinks that his downfall occurred because some left wing conspiracy concocted “a political and financial hit job”. His downfall, like Ailes, like Eric Bolling, happened because of his own conduct. If he wants to know who’s responsible for his situation, he should follow the Right Wing’s trademark advice: Look in the Mirror. (Why is it that the Right Wing never wants to take individual responsibility when it’s for something that actually matters? It’s like Mitch McConnell saying he had “no choice” but to destroy the filibuster rule this year. Of course McConnell had a choice – and he made one to ram his gargoyle through. And then he ran and hid from the consequences of his choice.)
I’d recommend that if O’Reilly actually thinks he has a case for wrongful termination, or for slander or libel here, he should stop making childish threats and file his lawsuit. If he really thinks he has a case, then put his money where his mouth is. Until then, this is just more hot air from the blowhard at the end of the bar.