The statement from Gretchen Carlson, Julie Roginsky and Diana Falzone slammed Hannity for abusing his power to try to convince O’Reilly to return to the network, despite many women being bound by NDAs and no-rehire provisions. “It is ironic that a man accused of sexual harassment over the course of many years by many different women is being courted to return to Fox News by its most prominent on-air personality, while his many victims and other survivors of sexual harassment at the same network continue to be bound by onerous confidentiality provisions that prevent them from disclosing what those harassers said or did to them,” the statement read. “It is also ironic that many women are bound by no-rehire provisions, which prevent them from getting their jobs back, even as Mr. Hannity is all but begging his network to rehire an accused sexual predator.”
Carlson and Roginsky both settled sexual harassment lawsuits against former Fox CEO Roger Ailes in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Falzone settled her lawsuit against the network for gender discrimination in 2018.
The women called on Fox to release O’Reilly’s accusers from their NDAs so they could openly dispute Hannity incurring legal repercussions. “We call—again—for Fox News to release all women from non-disclosure agreements, so that the public can have a much clearer understanding of why Mr. Hannity’s words are so egregious in this respect,” the statement concluded.
On The Sean Hannity Show Tuesday evening, Hannity and O’Reilly discussed the criticism they’ve received as conservative pundits. “We can identify because we’ve been attacked for more than 20 years. Each of us has,” O’Reilly said. Hannity then told O’Reilly he should return to Fox “so that you can take the number one slot.” O’Reilly remarked that he did not wish to return, because “There is a price to pay for being a traditional conservative American in this country.” Neither made any reference to the five settlements O’Reilly paid out in response to sexual harassment allegations during his time at the network.
This is not the first time Hannity has asked O’Reilly to return from the network since his ouster in 2017. In July, Hannity made a similar overture to O’Reilly. On The Ingraham Angle, he told host Laura Ingraham that he’d asked their former colleague to return. “Why don’t you come back to cable? I’ll let you be number one again, because then I’ll take a lot less crap,” he said.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
