Megyn Kelly Admits She Has ‘No Reportable Evidence’ But Still Accuses Don Lemon and His Attorney of Lying About Why Case Settled

It’s not often you see a media figure quadruple down on an allegation they admit they can’t back up with any evidence, but it’s 2022 and here we are.

Earlier this month, Mediaite reported how Megyn Kelly was “doubling down” on baselessly accusing CNN’s Don Lemon of secretly paying off accuser Dustin Hice to drop  his lawsuit against the CNN host, ignoring significant, fundamental weaknesses in Hice’s case. Kelly responded to that article by tweeting that she was in fact “tripling down” on her allegations, and declaring anyone who disagreed with her would “look stupid for swallowing this BS story so dutifully.”

Tripling down!
Trust me: you are going to look stupid for swallowing this BS story so dutifully. https://t.co/xOVXAH9lVF

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) May 3, 2022

On Tuesday, Kelly posted a clip from the latest episode of her podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, on YouTube, in which she dove into a now quadruple-downed accusation, despite admitting she had “no reportable evidence” to support her claims. There are metaphorical truckloads of information omitted from Kelly’s nearly 8-minute monologue directly contradicting and undermining her claim that the only reason Hice would have agreed to drop the suit was if he were paid off.

For a full breakdown of Hice’s lawsuit, Mediaite did a deep dive analysis in March, with this reporter reading hundreds of pages of court documents and deposition transcripts, but here are some key elements relevant to Kelly’s comments on her podcast.

Hice’s complaint claimed that on June 15, 2018, he was working for the summer as a bartender in the Hamptons and his boss, George Gounelas, decided to close up early. The two men, along with bar patron Isabel Peters, went to another local bar where they saw Lemon.

The complaint alleged that the CNN host “put his hand down the front of his own shorts, and vigorously rubbed his genitalia, removed his hand and shoved his index and middle fingers into Plaintiff’s moustache under Plaintiff’s nose.” Hice claimed that he was “shocked and humiliated” and “emotionally devastated” by the alleged assault, “lived in fear” of running into Lemon again, found it difficult to continue working in the Hamptons, and was emotionally traumatized, including experiencing suicidal ideations.

Hice’s case completely collapsed after Lemon’s attorney, Caroline Polisi, began taking depositions, interviewing Hice’s witnesses under oath.

The two key witnesses Hice’s complaint claimed would back up his story instead contradicted him, with Gounelas recanting his prior testimony and Peters completely denying she had seen what Hice claimed happened. Hice got caught making misrepresentations to the court, attempting to conceal and destroy evidence, along with other misdeeds (including trespassing on Lemon’s property after the alleged bar incident to take photographs “holding a lemon in front of his own genital area”).

Polisi filed a motion for sanctions against Hice on Oct. 1, 2021, citing how he had “selectively destroyed countless text messages, social media posts and messages, and incriminating photographs, believing that this evidence would be damaging to him in the litigation.”

The judge agreed and ruled that “Hice’s conduct, when taken in total, depicts an attempt to deceive this Court by attacking the integrity of the litigation process, and must be treated accordingly.” The judge not only ordered Hice to pay Lemon $77,119.33 in attorney’s fees and costs but also ruled that an adverse inference instruction would be given to the jury.

If this case had proceeded to trial in June as scheduled, Hice would have had zero witnesses besides himself to support his claims.

His attorney had removed both Gounelas and Peters from the plaintiff’s witness list after they contradicted Hice’s story in their sworn deposition testimony. Polisi had then added their names to the defense’s witness list. A jury would have been instructed regarding Hice’s destruction of evidence in bad faith, to interpret that in Lemon’s favor against Hice. Lemon would also have been able to present testimony from Gounelas and Peters that Hice was not traumatized or suffering emotional distress — not to mention incriminating text messages and photos like the ones embedded above. There were also a series of messages from Hice to Gounelas that Polisi argued showed Hice attempting to offer his boss money in exchange for testimony supporting his story.

Even if a jury could somehow have been convinced to believe Hice’s story, which seems highly doubtful, Hice had already been ordered to pay Lemon over $77,000 in sanctions, more than an average bartender could have expected to make over a summer, even in the poshest Hamptons establishment. Without any verifiable evidence of Hice suffering actual emotional trauma or financial harm, how could a jury plausibly find that he had suffered any damages worth more than the sanctions he already owed?

A jury won’t have to waste their time, because Hice dropped the case earlier this month, issuing a statement: “After a lot of inner reflection and a deep dive into my memory, I have come to realize that my recollection of the events that occurred on the night in question when I first met CNN anchor Don Lemon were not what I thought they were when I filed this lawsuit.”

In Tuesday’s podcast episode, Kelly told her audience that she wanted to provide an “update” on the “sexual assault case against CNN’s Don Lemon,” saying that Hice had “walked away from his lawsuit” several months after he had appeared on her show and “described the alleged incident as follows.”

Kelly then played a clip of Hice on a November episode of her podcast where he made his allegations, including mentioning “I look at my boss” (at roughly the 1:11 mark) right before he claims Lemon assaulted him, implying that Gounelas was there to directly witness the incident. She then read Hice’s statement about dropping the suit.

“It reads like a hostage statement,” Kelly said with a chuckle (1:55). “Now, I have no reportable evidence for this, but I do have ten years of legal practice under my belt, plus nearly 20 as a legal analyst. And I can tell you that no plaintiff issues a statement like that, walking away from a case against a public figure unless they’ve been paid to do so.”

Kelly may have “ten years of legal practice” under her belt, but she launched this monologue with a major error; this was not a “sexual assault” case. The complaint made claims of assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

The bigger problem, of course, is that Kelly neglects to mention that plenty of plaintiffs do, in fact, walk away from lawsuits without getting paid when their case has fallen apart, as described in detail above.

Kelly focused her ire on Polisi, quoting the attorney’s public statement and a quote she gave to Mediaite that “not a single penny was paid by Don Lemon or any of his representatives to Mr. Hice or anyone having anything to do with Mr. Hice.”

“Well, I don’t believe her,” Kelly said emphatically (2:32). “I believe a check was cut to Dustin Hice, and that it was cut by a representative of Don Lemon’s, and that Ms. Polisi is misleading.”

“What does she mean, by the way, by Lemon’s representatives?” Kelly pondered out loud. “Right? How about Lemon’s insurance company, Ms. Polisi? Did they cut a check? Because that’s typically how this would go.”

Polisi “told the media that she sent me a letter” after Hice was on the show last November, Kelly continued, slamming it as a “typical bully tactic by a lawyer toward the press.”

“But the thing was, it wasn’t true,” Kelly said. “It was a lie. She never sent me a letter or any other correspondence.”

Mediaite obtained a copy of the Nov. 8, 2021 letter that Kelly referenced, and linked it in an article earlier this month. The letter, as indicated on its header, was sent via e-mail, and Mediaite confirmed that the letter was sent by this method, addressed to Kelly and one of her podcast staffers.

Perhaps Kelly really did not get the emailed letter — it could have been caught in a spam filter or her staffers declined to make her aware of it — but once it was publicly posted she was on notice. In the letter, Polisi requests Kelly issue a correction that the case was not a sexual assault as she had said (an error Kelly made again in Tuesday’s episode), and points out that Hice “has no eyewitnesses to the conduct he falsely alleges Mr. Lemon of having engaged in.”

The reality is that Kelly was informed of the glaring flaws in Hice’s case months ago. Besides Polisi’s November letter, there were the records in the court file themselves (online and accessible to the public throughout the case), plus multiple articles here at Mediaite and other sites directly citing court records and other information highly unfavorable to Hice. Kelly’s own producer emailed Mediaite back in March in response to this reporter’s article and indicated that he had read it in its entirety.

Kelly demanded (3:40) that Polisi either “certify under oath” that Lemon’s insurance company didn’t pay off Hice or “produce a declaration from Dustin Hice that no money was paid to him in connection with the settlement of this case.”

This seems to be an opportune time to remind readers of Kelly’s previous comment that she has “no reportable evidence,” and despite her “ten years of legal practice,” she is still demanding Polisi produce some sort of sworn evidence far outside the norms of standard litigation practice to contradict, well, nothing — other than Kelly’s own unfounded speculation.

Kelly continued hypothesizing (3:59). If Hice “really just threw in the towel after two years of publicly lying about Don Lemon, where’s the lawsuit against him? He’s besmirched Don Lemon’s reputation. Why would Lemon let him get away with that? Why wouldn’t he be pursuing a defamation claim right now?”

One reasonable interpretation, based on Lemon’s restraint in not commenting publicly on the case and this reporter’s general impressions from conversations with Polisi, is that Lemon simply wants to put this matter behind him. The more bluntly practical interpretation is that Hice does not seem to have vast personal financial resources and already owes Lemon over $77K in sanctions, so suing Hice would be paying an attorney to pursue a judgment there would be no hope of ever collecting.

Kelly does finally admit (4:18) that Hice’s case was “far from perfect” and that Polisi had done “a good job banging up his witnesses,” which she claimed had been “covered at length on this show.”

She asked (4:56) “what incentive did Dustin Hice have to settle this case on the eve of trial if he was not paid off?” If he really were “lying the whole time,” she continued, “why not roll the dice at trial and see if he can convince a jury?”

Hice “told a compelling story with disturbing detail” and “definitely had a shot at winning this case,” said Kelly, moments later claiming (again, inaccurately) that he “had an eyewitness” to support his claims. “The guy had been through two years of depositions and motion practice and headaches and so on. It would take a check to make one abandon that gamble pretrial, and that’s what likely happened here.”

Again, those witnesses were not just “banged up,” but completely contradicted Hice’s case and were now listed as testifying for the defense. There were no eyewitnesses left to back up Hice’s claims. Kelly never once acknowledged this, nor does she mention the over $77,000 in sanctions ordered against Hice.

Kelly then spun up a rant about how the “media ran cover on this for Lemon,” claiming there had been a “virtual blackout of these allegations” and pointing out how the media had “absolutely killed Brett Kavanaugh” regarding the sexual assault allegations brought up during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

The accusations of media bias are wildly off target here. Mediaite editor-in-chief Aidan McLaughlin reported on Hice’s lawsuit on Aug. 13, 2019, including detailed, graphic quotes from Hice’s accusations against Lemon. Mediaite’s subsequent coverage of the case has repeatedly quoted from the complaint and linked directly to the public court file — highlighting, not hiding, the allegations.

Specifically regarding Kavanaugh, this reporter wrote multiple articles in 2018 defending him or reporting on the conservative pushback on his critics, including several posts at RedState (two of which were quoted by Fox News and The Washington Times) and another article at The Capitolist.

“This is why people hate the press,” said Kelly (7:21), calling the media “agenda driven,” “partisan,” and “leftist.”

Americans were now “waking up and have learned to question the mainstream media” and “their inherent bias,” Kelly concluded. “They’ve learned where to find other, more honest news sources. And we’re delighted to be one of them.”

A “more honest news source” would not quadruple down on promoting baseless conjectures without evidence, would not falsely characterize a case as a “sexual assault” when it was not, and would not omit contradictory facts of which she had been notified months ago. “Media bias” is a convenient trope, but what is more biased than deliberately ignoring evidence that disproves your story?

Mediaite contacted both Kelly and Robert Barnes, Hice’s attorney, but did not receive a reply.

Mediaite contacted Polisi and she laughed and then declined to comment.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.