After Kimberly Guilfoyle mysteriously left Fox News in the summer of 2018, she found herself vehemently denying news reports that said her departure was due to allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior.
But her former boss, Fox News Chairman Rupert Murdoch, has apparently confirmed that he wanted her gone because of the allegations, which were detailed in a 2020 report in The New Yorker. Murdoch’s concerns about Guifoyle, a former top campaign aide for Trump, were revealed in a trove of texts and emails that were recently leaked in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News.
Murdoch said in an email, sent in the wake of the 2020 election, that he had “insisted” Fox News fire Guilfoyle “for inappropriate behavior.” The 91-year-old executive also ripped into his once-popular Fox News host in other ways, according to the email, which was shared by Semafor media reporter Max Tani.
While Murdoch’s note mistakenly called Guilfoyle “Kimberly Strassel,” an opinion writer for the Wall Street Journal, he clearly was referring to Guilfoyle when he wrote about her association with Newsmax. The rival news network was known for pushing even harder than Fox News to promote debunked conspiracy theories that Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden was due to widespread election fraud.
“Newsmax not good people!” Rupert wrote in the email. “Being advised by Don jr’s girlfriend Kimberley Strassel who I insisted we fire for inappropriate behavior. Not one of our people will join her. Newsmax desperate for money. Scoured the world, so far without luck.”
biggest revelation from the dominion lawsuit may be that rupert murdoch's email tone is less logan roy, more the colleague dropping a link in slack saying "just wanted to flag!" pic.twitter.com/IygOVHRbLg
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) March 8, 2023
It’s clear that Murdoch is talking about Guilfoyle, given his reference to “Don Jr.’s girlfriend” and her being “fired”; Strassel still writes for the Wall Street Journal. Guilfoyle and Donald Trump Jr. have been dating since 2018 and became a popular duo in MAGA circles, campaigning for Trump’s re-election in 2020 and helping him to push his lies that the election was stolen. Both also spoke at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally, which preceded the violent attack at the U.S. Capitol to stop congress from certifying the results of the election.
After her departure from Fox, Guilfoyle became a contributor to Newsmax. Along with One American News Network, Newsmax aggressively pushed false claims of voter fraud. In its lawsuit, Dominion alleges that Fox News hosts and executives harbored doubts about such claims but promoted them anyway because they worried about losing audience to Newsmax or OAN.
The idea that Murdoch wanted Guilfoyle gone adds weight to the New Yorker report, published a month before the 2020 election. The report suggested that Guilfoyle had to leave Fox News, where she had worked since the mid-2000s, because of sexual harassment allegations made by a former assistant. Before the New Yorker report, the popular explanation for Guilfoyle’s departure from Fox was that she wanted to avoid conflicts of interest posed by her new romance with Trump Jr.
Reporter Jane Mayer detailed allegations in a 42-page draft complaint, which said that Guilfoyle showed lewd photos of male genitalia to colleagues, regularly discussed sexual matters at work, urged the assistant “to submit to a Fox employee’s demands for sexual favors,” and exposed herself to the assistant while asking for a critique of her naked body.
The story furthermore described efforts by Guilfoyle to cover up the allegations, citing well-informed sources who said the network paid the former assistant up to $4 million to avoid a trial.
In her response to the New Yorker report, Guilfoyle referred to her time as a prosecutor in San Francisco in the early 2000s, before and during her marriage to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was then mayor of San Francisco.
“In my 30-year career working for the SF District Attorney’s Office, the LA District Attorney’s Office, in media and in politics, I have never engaged in any workplace misconduct of any kind,” she said in a statement.
In a recent interview with CNN’s Axe Files podcast, Newsom opened up for the first time about his political differences with Guilfoyle, his wife from 2001 to 2006. He said she was a “different person” back when they were married and that she ended up becoming a right-wing personality because “she fell prey” to the culture at Fox News after she began working there in 2006.
