-By Warner Todd Huston
After Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was fired over a long list of sexual harassment charges, a former Fox News guest and bomb throwing blogger has cast her own veiled accusation of sexual harassment at yet another powerhouse Fox News host. Late last week blogger Debie Schlussel insisted that Sean Hannity invited her to his hotel room and then black balled her from the network when she refused. But only days later, Schlussel was found walking back the accusation.
Speaking to Oklahoma-based radio host Pat Campbell on Friday, Schlussel claimed that in the early 2000’s Hannity invited her to his hotel room after the two met at a book signing event in Detroit. She said she turned the invitation down, but after the rebuff, Hannity retaliated against her by black balling her from his show. She also insisted that soon after Fox News more or less stopped inviting her on as a guest commentator hinting that Hannity had forced the network to dump her as a guest.
Schlussel went on to claim that sexual harassment is “all over the place” at Fox.
“This kind of stuff is all over the place at Fox News and anything that has to do with Sean Hannity,” she said.
The accusations were shocking coming on the heels of the many sexual harassment charges and the eventual cancelation of Bill O’Reilly’s highly popular “O’Reilly Factor” show. But only a few days later, Schlussel was heard walking back her sexual harassment accusation against Hannity and claiming she wasn’t really accusing him of any such violation.
On Monday, Schlussel told LawNewz.com that she was not alleging sexual harassment.
“I would never accuse him of that. Sexual harassment has a special meaning under the law, and I would never accuse him of that,” she said.
“He tried to get me to go back to the hotel after the show after he and his executive producer Bill Shine treated me horribly,” Schlussel continued.
“I never thought I was sexually harassed by Sean Hannity, I thought he was weird and creepy not someone I liked,” Schlussel concluded.
Schlussel also admitted that she had appeared on Sean’s show after the alleged incident but that shortly after that Fox News stopped inviting her on as a guest, the clear implication being that Hannity had her banned from the network.
Hannity released a statement denying the accusations and excoriating Schlussel for “slander” and calling her a “serial harasser.”
LET ME BE CLEAR THE COMMENTS ABOUT ME ON A RADIO SHOW THIS WEEK By this individual ARE 100% false and a complete fabrication.
This individual is a serial harasser who has been lying about me for well over a decade. The individual has a history of making provably false statements against me in an effort to slander, smear and besmirch my reputation.
The individual has not just slandered me over the years but many people who this individual disagrees with.
This individual desperately seeks attention by any means necessary, including making unfounded personal attacks and using indefensible and outrageous political rhetoric.
My patience with this individual is over. I have retained a team of some of the finest and toughest lawyers in the country who are now in the process of laying out the legal course of action we will be taking against this individual.
In this fiercely divided & vindictive political climate, I will no longer allow slander and lies about me to go unchallenged, as I see a coordinated effort afoot to now silence those with conservative views. I will fight every single lie about me by all legal means available to me as an American.
Schlussel, who wrote a handful of op-eds for Breitbart.com back in 2009, told LawNews.com that Hannity’s statement was “defamatory,” and that what said about him is true. “Everything I said was true, and truth is an absolute bar to defamation. He, on the other hand, has a murky record on truth,” she told the website.
The latest attack on Hannity is far from the first time Schlussel has focused on the highly rated Fox News host.
Schlussel spent a lot of time back in 2010 alleging that Hannity had engaged in financial improprieties with the veteran charity Freedom Alliance in connection with the many “Freedom Concerts” the two sponsored.
The blogger alleged that Hannity had bled away much of the money taken in at the concerts for his own expensive hotel and travel expenses. Schlussel even claimed Hannity demanded and received a Gulfstream jet paid for by the charity to transport him to and from the events.
At the time, Freedom Alliance Chief Thomas P. Kilgannon released a long reply to Schlussel’s charges denying them in no uncertain terms.
“This week, false and malicious allegations about Freedom Alliance were posted on the Internet,” Kilgannon wrote in March of 2010, “and we want to address them with you. We don’t know the motivation for these vicious smears, but we will not allow them to go unanswered.”
Kilgannon went on to inform investors and supporters that Freedom Alliance’s efforts “not only meets but exceeds standards of program efficiency set by most charity evaluators” and went on to refute Schlussel’s accusations point by point.
As to Sean, Kilgannon insisted, “The blog posting accuses our friend Sean Hannity of personally benefiting from Freedom Alliance. This is FALSE. Freedom Alliance has never provided planes, hotels, cars, limos, or anything else to Sean. Sean gets nothing from Freedom Alliance except our gratitude for his personal generosity and for all he has done to help the troops and our organization.”
Schlussel’s Freedom Alliance accusations are not the only attacks she has hurled against Hannity.
The Michigan-based blogger has attacked Hannity on a personal level many other times in a long list of tweets. Among her many anti-Hannity tweets, Schlussel recently called him a “harasser.”
https://twitter.com/DebbieSchlussel/status/855464884523413504
Schlussel also used the death of Fox News commentator Alan Colmes as a means to attack Hannity.
https://twitter.com/DebbieSchlussel/status/834798143921324037
The blogger even made the strange accusation that Hannity once “got mad” at her when she changed her hair color.
https://twitter.com/DebbieSchlussel/status/855464413855395840
Along with these tweets — and much more — Schlussel’s obsession with Hannity resulted in the posting of a list of lengthy blog entries attacking the Fox host on a dizzying number of fronts.
For his part, Hannity has more often ignored Schlussel’s attacks.
Ultimately, Schlussel’s intimation that Hannity may have attempted to sexually harass her is not a charge echoed by others. Unlike TV figures such as Bill O’Reilly or NBC “Late Night” host David Letterman, Schlussel’s has been the only such accusation lodged against Sean Hannity.
Finally, since last Friday’s accusation, Sean Hannity said he is looking into filing a lawsuit against Schlussel for her comments, The Hill newspaper reported.
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–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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