Don Lemon sends legal letter to Megyn Kelly
The letter accused Kelly of allowing listeners to be fed a “lopsided and inaccurate” story about what occurred between Hice and Lemon.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct a prior version that incorrectly stated that Ms. Polisi filed a legal complaint against Ms. Kelly.
Megyn Kelly has been put on legal notice by Don Lemon after the conservative talk show host invited Dustin Hice, a man who made sexual harassment accusations against Lemon, onto her SiriusXM radio show.
“You permitted Mr. Hice’s statements to go unchallenged during your broadcast, clearly out of a vendetta you have against Mr. Lemon,” read a letter from Lemon’s attorney, Caroline J. Polisi, obtained by Radar Online.
The letter also accused Kelly of allowing listeners to be fed a “lopsided and inaccurate” story about what occurred between Hice and Lemon.
Hice accused the CNN host of sexually assaulting him in Sag Harbor during the summer of 2018. Hice filed a lawsuit a year later and said that he has suffered “feelings of shame, humiliation, anxiety, anger, and guilt.”
The incident occurred before Lemon announced his engagement to his partner, Tim Malone.
According to the letter, Hice falsely stated that he was offered $500K to settle the battery lawsuit. Lemon’s lawyer said that they offered a “nuisance” amount of $8K and Hice “demanded” $1.5 million in exchange for not going public with the claim.
Lemon’s lawyer also accused Hice of bribing a witness and distorting what happened.
“Mr. Lemon has presented evidence of Mr. Hice offering to bribe a witness and that he intentionally destroyed and withheld material evidence that both is directly relevant to his purported claims and that severely undermines his credibility,” she wrote in the letter.
In the letter, the attorney asked Kelly to correct her “reckless” reporting and public statements. “I hope you will correct your reckless reporting today, and the prior public statements you have made about this case — statements that demonstrated a reckless disregard for the truth and absolutely no effort on your part to try to ascertain the facts.”
CNN, the network with which Lemon has had a longstanding relationship, stood by the host and implied that Hice has contempt for CNN and has said as much on his now-deleted social media platforms.
“This claim follows his unsuccessful threats and demands for an exorbitant amount of money from Don Lemon. Don categorically denies these claims and this matter does not merit any further comment at this time,” read a statement from CNN at the time of the initial letter.
The former Fox News host has not yet publicly responded to the letter from Lemon’s attorney.
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