Ex-Fox host Tantaros accuses network of hacking, online harassment

Former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros claims she was a victim of hacking and a campaign of online harassment by her former network in a Monday lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court.

Tantaros is seeking unspecified damages from the company, former chairman and CEO Roger Ailes and other executives.

“As demonstrated below with accompanying exhibits, the Defendants in this case subjected Ms. Tantaros to illegal electronic surveillance and computer hacking, and used that information (including, on information and belief, privileged attorney-client communications) to intimidate, terrorize, and crush her career through an endless stream of lewd, offensive, and career-damaging social media posts, blog entries and commentary and high-profile ‘fake’ media sites which Fox News (or its social influence contractors) owned or controlled,” reads one part of the lawsuit. 

{mosads}Fox News’s outside counsel, Dechert LLP, issued a statement in response to Tantaros’s Monday lawsuit.

“Fox News and its executives flatly deny that they conducted any electronic surveillance of Ms. Tantaros,” reads the statement. 

“They have no knowledge of the anonymous or pseudonymous tweets described in her complaint.

“This lawsuit is a flimsy pretext to keep Ms. Tantaros and her sexual harassment claims in the public eye after the State Supreme Court directed her to bring them in arbitration.”

Ailes’s attorney, Susan Estrich, said the case has no merit.

Tantaros claimed in a sexual harassment lawsuit last year that Fox operated like a “sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult.” 

Her lawsuit followed similar allegations made against Ailes filed by former host Gretchen Carlson. 

Following an internal investigation by the law firm Paul, Weiss, Ailes was forced out of the network in July 2016. 

The 76-year-old reportedly received an exit package worth more than $40 million.

Carlson settled her lawsuit for $20 million. 

Tantaros’s sexual harassment claim was sent to private arbitration due to a clause in her contract. 

Bill O’Reilly, 67, had hosted the top-rated cable news show for the past 15 years before parting ways with the network last week, in the wake of sexual harassment charges that led 90 advertisers to leave his program.

He will reportedly receive $25 million in severance, although that has not been confirmed.