Former Fox News CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes was furious that the public believed women accusing him of sexual harassment over him, according to a new report.
Ailes voiced frustration over the sexual harassment allegations that prompted his resignation from Fox News in a recent interview, the New York Daily News reported.
“Why would anyone take the word of these women over mine?” Ailes said. “Why would you take what they say as truth when I am right here telling you none of it is true?”
{mosads}“You know what they’ve got? Nothing. It’s their word against mine. You know the reason why these cases go nowhere? It’s their word against mine.”
Ailes said that cases he had settled with accusers were not “an admission of guilt” as he had “done nothing wrong.”
The New York Daily News reporter agreed to keep his recent conversation with Ailes off the record unless Ailes died.
Ailes died early Thursday at age 77, following complications from a fall at his home in Florida on May 10.
“I am profoundly sad and heartbroken to report that my husband, Roger Ailes, passed away this morning,” Ailes’s widow, Elizabeth Ailes, said in a statement. “Roger was a loving husband to me, to his son Zachary, and a loyal friend to many.
“He was also a patriot, profoundly grateful to live in a country that gave him so much opportunity to work hard, to rise – and to give back.”
Ailes resigned as the head of Fox in July 2016 amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment, leaving the network he founded and then led for 20 years. Fox News is reportedly under federal investigation for how it handled sexual harassment settlements during Ailes’s tenure.