2 Women Who Settled With O’Reilly Over Sexual Harassment Sue for Defamation<br />The women are Andrea Mackris, a former producer on Mr. O’Reilly’s show on Fox News who sued him for sexual harassment in 2004,<br />and Rebecca Gomez Diamond, a former host on Fox Business Network who reached a settlement with Mr. O’Reilly in 2011 after coming forward with sexual harassment allegations against him.<br />“In fact,” states the lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, “he mistreated both Ms. Mackris<br />and Ms. Diamond and he is well aware of the irrefutable evidence of his harassment, abuse and mistreatment which caused him to settle their legal claims.”<br />“They are tired of being smeared with lies by a bully who thinks<br />that his victims are afraid to answer to them,” Nancy Erika Smith, a lawyer for the women, said in a statement.<br />Two women who reached sexual harassment settlements with Bill O’Reilly joined a defamation lawsuit against Mr. O’Reilly and Fox News on Wednesday, asserting<br />that statements that he and the network made depicted them as liars, political operatives and extortionists.<br />They joined a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, a former Fox News employee who reached a settlement with Fox News<br />and Mr. O’Reilly in July 2002 after she repeatedly complained about his behavior to the network’s human resources department and other executives.<br />Since the public exposure of those agreements and the allegations against him, Mr. O’Reilly has said<br />that the claims that led to his ouster from Fox News in April have no merit, that he “never mistreated anyone,” that he was the victim of a “political and financial hit job,” that his fame had made him a target and that he “put to rest any controversies to spare” his children.
