Bill Shine, President Donald Trump’s likely new Deputy Chief of Staff, was involved in the use of the private detectives to intimidate and track reporters critical of Fox News,
Vanity Fair reports.
According to press reports, Shine, the former right hand man to Fox News chief Roger Ailes, will soon be named by the president to oversee White House messaging and communication matters.
With the new federal position, Shine, who briefly ascended to the network’s presidency after Ailes was fired for misconduct, may find himself again at the center of controversy.
“This guy is up to eyeballs in shit,” a Republican source close to the White House told Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman. “Shine comes to the job with significant baggage.”
As Ailes’ chief lieutenant Shine was aware of “Ailes’s use of private investigators to harass and intimidate journalists,” Vanity Fair reported.
Sherman notes that Shine was fired from Fox last year “in part because of his role enabling sexual harassment.”
Shine has claimed he had no knowledge of Ailes misconduct.
But several legal claims made against Shine and Fox, as well as other sources, indicate he played a key role.
“Shine was named in at least three lawsuits against the network alleging that he helped facilitate—and, in some cases, actively covered up—a climate of workplace sexual harassment,” the Daily Beast reported this week.
Another former Fox host, Andrea Tantaros, also sued the network and alleged that Shine led the network’s efforts to monitor her private “phone and email communications” in an effort to “intimidate, terrorize, and crush her through an endless stream of lewd, offensive, and career-damaging social media posts, blog entries and commentary.”
Tantaros provided email evidence that indicated Shine coordinated with an outside social media firm to orchestrate “sock puppets” to attack her and other critics of the network. Sock puppets are social media accounts created with fake aliases used to sway public opinion. If Tantaros’ allegations are true, such activities are a criminal violation.
“By far the most controversial part of Trump’s decision to hire Shine is Shine played a central role in facilitating Ailes’s sexual and psychologically abusive relationship with former Fox executive Laurie Luhn,” Vanity Fair reported.
Luhn claims she was videotaped in sex acts by Ailes and that he “coerced her into performing sex acts on him.”
Luhn claimed the relationship led to a “mental breakdown.” At the time, she said Fox executives had her sequestered for almost six weeks at New York’s Warwick Hotel in what she described as being in a “state of delirium,” New York magazine reported.
She alleged that her contacts with third parties were monitored and outside email communication, including with her family, first had to be reviewed by Shine.
After the episode, Shine sought for Luhn to use a San Antonio-based psychiatrist he personally had obtained.
“He did say that they had somebody for Laurie to go see,” Luhn’s father recalled to New York magazine.
Shine admitted to the magazine that he obtained the psychiatrist.
“Under that psychiatrist’s treatment, Laurie was hospitalized and medicated. At one point, she tried to kill herself by swallowing a bottle of lorazepam, an anti-anxiety medication,” the magazine said.
Eventually, Luhn recovered and took legal action against Fox.
In 2011, the network settled with her over her allegations about Ailes and Shine for $3.15 million.
Her settlement agreement took the unusual step of precluding her “from speaking to government authorities like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the FBI,” New York magazine reported.
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