According to The New York Times’s Emily Steel (a coauthor of many of the paper’s earlier O’Reilly investigations), newly released settlement agreements between O’Reilly and ex-producer Andrea Mackris and Rebecca Gomez Diamond, a former Fox Business Network host, reveal the women “were required to turn over all evidence [of sexual harassment], including audio recordings and diaries, to Mr. O’Reilly. In addition, Ms. Mackris was required to disclaim the materials ‘as counterfeit and forgeries’ if they ever became public.” Or as that’s known in plain English, to flat-out lie.
The agreements, including a $3.25 million settlement with Diamond, also confirm the previously reported detail that O’Reilly tapped private investigators to dig up dirt on Mackris (presumably to be used against her) and that, as part of the settlement, the investigators agreed to destroy that information. Shockingly, the new documents also show that a Mackris attorney switched sides in the middle of the legal battle in order to work for O’Reilly—widely considered to be a conflict of interest in the legal community, given the intimate knowledge the attorneys had on the accusers.