An article in The New York Times yesterday suggests that Fox News’ Dianne Brandi, executive vice president for business and legal affairs almost certainly had to know about the $3.15 million in hush money to Laurie Luhn, who accused Fox chief Roger Ailes of sexual assault. While I was looking through some old posts on NewsHounds, I found a suggestion that Brandi was involved in a smear campaign against Rupert Murdoch’s then-wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch.
As you probably recall, New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman dropped a bombshell late last month when he reported the story of Luhn, who alleged that she was, essentially, Ailes’ sex slave for 20+ years and was paid $3.15 million as a settlement. Despite the salacious details, I noted that the more important revelations were the implications that certain high-level Fox employees had aided and abetted the wrongdoing. One of those employees was Bill Shine, who has just been promoted to, essentially, replace Ailes. The other was Brandi.
A New York Times article by James B. Stewart yesterday was more incriminating:
Given the size of Ms. Luhn’s settlement — $3.15 million, according to New York magazine — Fox News must have believed that the claim had some merit. […]
At Fox News, Dianne Brandi, executive vice president for business and legal affairs, handled Ms. Luhn’s claim. She presumably conducted an investigation, if only to assess the merits of Mr. Luhn’s claim. Fox News’s parent company has said no one there knew about the Luhn payment until recently, and a Fox News spokeswoman said previously that Mr. Ailes alone directed the settlement negotiations and agreed to the terms.
Ms. Brandi would appear to have plenty to answer for. Not only should Mr. Ailes have had no involvement in disposing of the matter given that he was the subject of the claim, but ethical standards suggest that she should have told higher ranking executives and perhaps even Rupert Murdoch, who was 21st Century Fox’s chief executive at the time, or members of the company’s board.
The New York State Rules of Professional Conduct require internal lawyers who know of behavior “substantially likely” to injure the corporation to take all steps “reasonably necessary” to protect the company, which may include notifying the company’s board.
That’s pretty damning, eh? But while I was writing an unrelated post about private investigator Bo Dietl’s departure from Fox, in the wake of revelations he was involved in a “Black Room” operation that used corporate funds to run smear campaigns against Roger Ailes’ enemies, I found a suggestion that Brandi was involved in that, too.
In 2014, I wrote about Dietl’s role in a smear campaign against Wendi Deng Murdoch. My post was based on a Gawker article by John Cook. In it, Cook explained how he had stumbled on Dietl’s involvement and then investigated further. These two paragraphs jumped out at me then and even more now (with my emphases):
In the course of our conversation, the investigator took back his initial claim of non-involvement. Dietl confirmed that he had, indeed, been hired to spread dirt on Deng. He wouldn’t say who it was, but he did say who it wasn’t.
“It was not Roger Ailes who hired me to look into Wendi and Rupert,” he told me. He also told me that he had been in touch with Fox News’ vice president for legal affairs, Diane Brandi.
Like The Times said, Brandi has plenty to answer for. The question is whether someone at 21st Century Fox will start asking.
Photo of Fox News Headquarters by By Jim.henderson (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons