President-elect Trump’s pick for Education secretary, Linda McMahon, is at a center of the lawsuit regarding child sexual abuse while she was in charge of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).
The lawsuit, which was filed last month, accuses McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, of knowing about a ringside announcer who allegedly abused young boys for years but doing nothing about it.
The plaintiffs, who were not named, said announcer Mel Phillips, who died in 2012, sexually assaulted them when they were “ring boys” back in the 1980s. Ring boys were young boys who ran errands and helped set up venues for fights.
McMahon, who led Trump’s transition team and has been nominated by the president-elect to lead the Education Department, is accused of failing to act after learning about the sexual abuse.
“Thanks to the bravery of our clients, we finally have a chance to hold accountable those who allowed and enabled the open, rampant sexual abuse of these young boys,” Greg Gutzler, a partner at DiCello Levitt, who is leading the litigation, said in a statement. “That so many were aware of the sexual abuse of the Ring Boys and did nothing to prevent or stop it is simply unconscionable.”
McMahon has denied the allegations and says she plans to fight against the suit.
“This civil lawsuit based upon 30-plus-year-old allegations is filled with scurrilous lies, exaggerations and misrepresentations regarding Linda McMahon,” attorney Laura Brevetti told CNN.
The lawsuit says Vince McMahon commented on the announcer’s “unnatural and peculiar interest” in young boys and fired Phillips. He was rehired weeks later and allegedly told to stay away from the ring boys, but he did not — and the McMahons knew that, the suit says.
Conservatives have voiced skepticism over the timing of the legal action.
“I have not reviewed it in depth at this point, but the first thing that comes to my mind is just more lawfare, right? I mean, this was a suit that goes back to events that occurred in the 1980s and it was filed in October of 2024, a few weeks before she was presumed to, if [Trump] won, take some position. So, I just kind of have a blanket suspicion and skepticism of it without having gone into the details of it myself, so it’s not of [special] concern to me,” Max Eden, a research fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, previously told The Hill.
Along with the October lawsuit, Vince McMahon resigned from TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of WWE, earlier this year after a lawsuit accused of him of sexual misconduct with four women and paying them off. McMahon has denied the allegations, which are the subject of a Netflix documentary series, “Mr. McMahon.”