A sexual assault lawsuit has been filed against Fox News and a former top producer for Tucker Carlson’s show named Justin Wells.
The lawsuit was filed in New York State by Andrew Delancy, who claimed that Wells “grabbed his genitals” and “violently forced his tongue into [his] mouth.”
It all happened around the year 2008, long before Wells became the top producer of Tucker’s show.
Here’s more from MSN:
A former Fox News employee has sued the network and a top producer for former prime-time star Tucker Carlson, alleging that the senior staffer sexually assaulted and harassed him after promising to help advance his career.
In the lawsuit filed in New York State Court, Andrew Delancey claims that Justin Wells repeatedly grabbed his genitals at Wells’s apartment shortly after Delancey was hired in 2008, and that superiors dissuaded him from filing complaints.
A brief version of the suit — claiming assault and battery on the part of Wells, and negligence and sexual harassment on the part of Fox — was originally filed late last month, just ahead of a deadline for claims under the New York Adult Survivors Act, which temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for civil complaints from sexual assault victims. The full complaint was filed Monday.
“Wells utilized his status at Fox to prey on Mr. Delancey,” the complaint reads.
Wells, who was working for a show hosted by Greta Van Susteren at the time, later became the senior executive producer for Carlson’s show and was fired alongside him in April. Wells now works as a top producer on a video series Carlson now presents on the social media network X.
Neither Wells nor a spokesperson for Fox News responded to requests for comment.
Below are the gross details of the gay sexual assault:
The complaint alleges that Wells first contacted Delancey in 2007 through a Facebook group for Fox employees when Delancey was still working for a local Fox station in Florida, writing in the message that Delancey had “caught [his] eye” and encouraging him to take a job at the company’s New York City operations. Delancey eventually took a job at Fox News Edge, a Fox division that deals with local affiliates.
Delancey alleges that Wells lavished an unusual amount of attention on him after he arrived, giving him personally monogrammed pencils and notebooks with Fox branding and promising to help him “learn the ropes” at the cable-news giant. When Delancey complained that he couldn’t afford to live in New York on an entry-level salary, he claims that Wells helped him secure an interview at another network.
Less than a month after Delancey started at Fox, Wells invited him to meet other Fox colleagues at a gay bar, according to the lawsuit. Wells allegedly insisted that the pair first drink at Wells’s apartment, where Delancey claims Wells “easily overpowered” him, forcing him onto his bed and grabbing his genitals and causing what Delancey describes as “severe pain,” even as Delancey yelled out “no.”
“Out of nowhere, Wells aggressively pushed Mr. Delancey onto his bed where he violently forced his tongue into Mr. Delancey’s mouth,” the complaint states.
Delancey convinced Wells that they needed to go meet their co-workers, according to the lawsuit, but Wells again allegedly groped him in a stairwell against his consent.
Later, Delancey claims that Wells turned on him. The interview Wells helped set up for Delancey at another company never resulted in a job, and according to Delancey’s claim, Wells “menacingly” told him that he “wasn’t thinking straight.”
Delancey’s lawsuit also alleges that Fox deprived the staffer of a way to complain, claiming that his supervisor there made him swear not to complain about anything he experienced at Fox to human resources.
Delancey first went public with many of his details about the assault in a 2017 Facebook post, according to the lawsuit, although he didn’t name Wells. Delancey alleges that Wells saw the Facebook post and messaged him to ask who had committed the assault, with what Delancey speculates was “a guilty conscience.”
“Mr. Delancey will no longer be intimidated by Mr. Wells or Fox,” Delancey’s lawyer, Alfredo J. Pelicci, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Our firm is committed to holding Justin Wells and Fox accountable for their unlawful and abhorrent actions.”
Fox has filed a motion to move the case to federal court, noting that Delancey no longer lives in New York.
If Wells did this then he needs to be held accountable for it. And Tucker seriously needs to rethink his current arrangement with Wells.