Gawker: Bill O'Reilly Tried To Get His Wife's Cop/Paramour Investigated By The Cops
Reported by Ellen - August 30, 2011 -
Here's some sizzling summer scintillation care of Gawker, Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. You may recall that in June we posted about Gawker's investigation into Mrs. Bill O'Reilly's purchase of a house in her own name, suggesting that she and Mr. Bill were separated. Gawker has continued its investigation and is now reporting that not only has the couple indeed separated but that O'Reilly pulled strings to have the Nassau County Police Department investigate the detective thought to be having an affair with the Mrs.
It's a sad, sordid story and I'm sorry for the pain Bill O'Reilly is likely going through. But using the police for your personal purposes? Not exactly looking out for the folks - even if, as Gawker noted, it seems to be a habit of Fox News boss Roger Ailes.
Gawker writes:
Richard Harasym is a 23-year veteran of the Nassau County Police Department who, as of last summer, had been a detective in the elite internal affairs unit for 12 years. His job was to catch crooked cops, root out corruption, and police the police. But at some point during the summer of 2010, his commanding officer, Inspector Neil Delargy, called him into his office with a highly unorthodox assignment: Harasym was to launch an investigation into a fellow officer based not on what he had done, but on who he was dating.Delargy ordered Harasym to meet with two private detectives working on behalf of Bill O'Reilly. They had information about an NCPD officer they believed to be carrying on with O'Reilly's wife. Delargy told Harasym to launch an investigation into the man and to tell him to end the relationship.
...Internal affairs detectives aren't accustomed to running personal errands, and trolling for dirt on their colleagues, at the behest of major donors to department projects. So Harasym, the source says, refused the assignment. Several months later, he was transferred out of internal affairs. It's unclear whether the investigation was assigned to another detective.
Gawker's sources are anonymous. Its main source was described as someone with "a longstanding personal relationship with Harasym, and who heard the account directly from Harasym himself. The source provided contemporaneous e-mail traffic to support his account."
Not surprisingly, Fox News has declined to comment. So have Harasym and his commanding officer. Gawker's FOIA request to the NCPD has been denied but is under appeal.
Interestingly, Fox News launched an attack on Gawker this week just in advance of this report the "fair and balanced" network knew was coming.
