In a post entitled “Let’s get something straight…” Van Susteren writes that “all sort of motives have been assigned to me.”
“I did not defend Roger Ailes nor did I condemn him. I just stated what I knew or did not know. Period,” she says. “As an aside..of course if I had known of any sexual harassment, I would not keep quiet as I would not want other people hurt by my silence. You all know me – I speak up.”
Shortly after Gretchen Carlson filed suit against Ailes, accusing him of a pattern of sexual harassment stretching back years, Van Susteren told People Magazine, that “we have a disgruntled employee, a colleague.”
“I deal with Roger Ailes often. I’ve often been alone with Roger Ailes in his office over the course of 15 years and I
In the intervening weeks, several other women at Fox stepped forward to support and corroborate Carlson. At the same, many others at the network — including Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Harris Faulkner, Martha MacCallum, and Ainsley Earhardt — came out to defend the network’s founder. Ailes was eventually forced out last week.
Van Susteren’s blog post reads in full:
At the outset of the Roger Ailes investigation, right after Gretchen Carlson lawsuit hit the papers, I said:1/ I never heard of the sexual harassment allegations – no one ever came to me and said anything to me about it – not once;2/ I never saw it3/ It never happened to meand4/ I said that Gretchen Carlson was unhappy when she was at Fox News (she told me that a few years back when we both happened to be in London covering the same story but never said it was sexual harassment.)What I said above was true when I said it …and it is true now.In the meantime, all sorts of motives and intentions have been assigned to me.I did not defend Roger Ailes nor did I condemn him. I just stated what I knew or did not know. Period.As an aside..of course if I had known of any
sexual harassment, I would not keep quiet as I would not want other people hurt by my silence. You all know me – I speak up. I do not know if that is what happened but other people at Fox now say they knew about it. I did not.
—
Sam Reisman (@thericeman) is a staff editor at Mediaite.