Fox News has suspended Eric Bolling after claims the popular host sent lewd photos to at least three female coworkers — two at Fox Business and one at Fox News.
“Eric Bolling has been suspended pending the results of an investigation, which is currently underway,” a Fox News spokeswoman told Philly.com Saturday afternoon. The investigation is being conducted by the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, retained by parent company 21st Century Fox to investigate claims of sexual harassment at the network.
According to the HuffPost, which spoke to 14 sources in and out of the two networks, Bolling sent the unsolicited graphic messages several years ago, which included an image of a man’s genitalia. All three women, whose identities were not revealed, say they recognized his number from previous interactions. Four additional people confirmed to the Huffington Post they had seen the photo.
Hours after Fox News announced it was suspending Bolling, Caroline Heldman, a politics professor at Occidental College and frequent guest on the network from 2008 to 2011, claimed the Fox News host made an unspecified number of unsolicited sexual advances to her.
“[Bolling] said he wanted to fly me out to New York for in-studio hits and to have ‘fun.’ He asked me to have meals with him on several occasions, but I found excuses not to go,” Heldman wrote in a lengthy Facebook post. “Once, he took me up to his office in New York, showed me his baseball jerseys, and in the brief time I was there, let me know that his office was his favorite place to have sex.”
“My only surprise is that it took this long for people to come forward about Bolling’s behavior, which has been wildly inappropriate for years,” Heldman continued.
Bolling is a rising star at Fox News. After a career as a commodities trader, he became a commentator at CNBC. He joined Fox Business Network in 2007 and eventually became part of the late afternoon roundtable show “The Five” on Fox News Channel.
After O’Reilly’s departure, “The Five” moved to prime time, but Bolling stayed in the late afternoon slot to head up a new program “Fox News Specialists.”
Rotating hosts will fill in for Bolling on “Fox News Specialists” during the suspension. Bolling also won’t appear on his weekend financial show “Cashin’ In.”
Bolling’s attorney firmly denied the allegations in his exclusive statement to Breitbart News and called the Huffington Post story “not true.”
“The story is based on anonymous sources and not true,” Bolling’s attorney Michael Bowe told Breitbart News exclusively on Friday night. “No such unsolicited communications occurred.”
Bowe is Bolling’s counsel and is an attorney with Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP law firm in New York City.
Bowe previously told Huffington Post, before this more firm denial to Breitbart News: “Mr. Bolling recalls no such inappropriate communications, does not believe he sent any such communications, and will vigorously pursue his legal remedies for any false and defamatory accusations that are made.”
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