Fox P.I. Bo Dietl Admits Fox Paid Him To Discredit Gretchen Carlson And Others

Former Fox News contributor Bo Dietl has admitted that he was paid to discredit former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson and other women who alleged sexual harassment by former CEO Roger Ailes and/or at Fox News. Dietl has been hoping to run for mayor of New York City. UPDATED

New York’s Daily News reports that the federal investigation into Fox News has honed in on Dietl:

The former private investigator admitted Thursday to the Wall Street Journal that he was hired by Fox News to investigate several women who made sexual harassment allegations against the company and its former chairman Roger Ailes.

[…]

Dietl, a onetime Fox News contributor, previously denied the charges.

“In big letters: never ever did Roger Ailes hire me to do any investigation of any journalist,” Dietl said at the time.

But you have to wonder whether Dietl was cleverly parsing his words there. In 2014, Dietl admitted to Gawker that he had been hired to smear Rupert Murdoch’s allegedly unfaithful then-wife Wendi Deng:

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.

Similarly, in the April 21, 2017 video below, CNN caught Dietl boasting, in 2004, about discrediting Bill O’Reilly accuser Andrea Mackris:

DIETL: Now what we’re going to do as investigators, now, is take her credibility and show the court, if it ever goes there, her credibility falling apart.

In the same CNN report, we saw Mackris saying about Fox, “They are threatening me, they are trying to intimidate me, yes I’m rattled.”

So if it wasn't Ailes who hired Dietl to "investigate," who did?

(Bo Dietl image via screen grab)

UPDATE: (5/7/17) It looks like Dietl was paid by Fox's law firm.

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Showing 7 reactions

commented 2017-05-08 00:09:54 -0400 · Flag

PS If anyone is able to help us move to a new site, I’m all ears.

commented 2017-05-08 00:09:24 -0400 · Flag

Hmm, John, you’re the second person who has said he had trouble logging in. I didn’t know what what to make of it when the first person contacted me because I told him (correctly, at the time) that nobody else had had trouble.

Sometimes, I have to log in a few times before it takes.

commented 2017-05-07 19:45:44 -0400 · Flag

Did I just say ‘wariants’?? (Slaps self rather too hard).

commented 2017-05-07 19:44:14 -0400 · Flag

That’s fine, Ellen. A couple of weeks ago, the system rejected all the possible wariants of my password, so I had to re-register. My comments are still being recorded, so it’s no big deal :)

commented 2017-05-07 00:32:18 -0400 · Flag

I do not know why it changed. Did you change some setting in your account? I looked around in your account and did not see anything that looked like I could change it.

Sometimes our host changes things…

commented 2017-05-06 23:26:51 -0400 · Flag

P.S. Ellen – why have I been demoted to the ranks of the black-type name brigade? Something I said?

commented 2017-05-06 23:24:54 -0400 · Flag

This guy is like Fox News* in a bottle. He recently made a very convincing lowlife murderer/extortionist in ‘Vinyl’ (recommended) – I think the director just said “Be yourself, Bo. Act naturally.”

*Actually, as we all know, anything but