Ailes Hires Lawyer Behind Gawker Lawsuit, Threatens To Sue NY Mag

Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive officer of Fox News, speaks during the Summer Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., Monday, July 24, 2006. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive officer of Fox News, speaks during the Summer Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., Monday, July 24, 2006. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
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Ousted Fox News chairman Roger Ailes has hired the lawyer behind an expanding constellation of lawsuits brought against major media outlets in order to pursue a possible lawsuit against New York magazine and its reporter Gabriel Sherman.

The Financial Times first reported Monday that Charles J. Harder sent an email to the magazine requesting that all documents related to Ailes be preserved for a possible defamation suit. Sherman spearheaded reporting on the spate of sexual harassment allegations that led to Ailes’ resignation from Fox News, and has chronicled Ailes’ reign at the right-wing media empire for years as a writer for New York.

Though Sherman did not issue a public comment on the legal threat, his magazine told the New York Times that his work “is and has been carefully reported.”

Harder’s name has cropped up in a number of defamation suits and warnings against publications in the past year. The Hollywood attorney represented Hulk Hogan, the former pro wrestler whose given name is Terry Bollea, in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit that resulted in the bankruptcy of Gawker Media. Before the site’s flagship publication was forced to fold, Harder sent Gawker lawyers a letter threatening legal action for a story that alleged that Donald Trump’s hair might actually be a “$60,000 weave” made by a secretive hair treatment clinic.

Billionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel revealed that he had bankrolled Hogan’s lawsuit in a targeted effort to take down Gawker. It was unclear if Thiel had any involvement in the threat related to Trump’s hair.

Thiel endorsed the real estate mogul and served as a pledged delegate for California on his behalf at the Republican National Convention.

Harder, the lawyer Thiel retained in the Hogan suit, is also representing Melania Trump in a $150 million lawsuit filed against The Daily Mail last week for what she said was a false story about her working as an “escort” in the 1990s. At least nine other outlets, including The Week(UK), Politico, Inquisitr, Tarpley, Before It’s News, Liberal America, LawNewz, Winning Democrats and Bipartisan Report, were put on notice by Harder’s team of lawyers for picking up or referencing the Daily Mail’s report.

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