Report: Lauer Dropped His Pants In Front of Colleague

The downfall of Matt Lauer, a presence in American living rooms for more than 20 years, adds to a head-spinning string of prominent firings over sexual harassment and abuse allegations. NBC News said it had decided to dismiss its star morning anchor after a woman met with network executives on Monday to describe her interactions with him.

“While it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over 20 years he’s been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident,” Andrew Lack, the NBC News chairman, wrote in a memo to staff.

According to The NYTimes, NBC received at least two more complaints Wednesday related to Lauer.

One complaint came from a former employee who said Mr. Lauer had summoned her to his office in 2001, locked the door and sexually assaulted her. She provided her account to The New York Times but declined to let her name be used.

She told The Times that she passed out and had to be taken to a nurse. She said that she felt helpless because she didn’t want to lose her job, and that she didn’t report the encounter at the time because she felt ashamed.

At the time, the woman was in her 40s and Lauer never made another advance at her after the incident, she claimed.

The woman said she didn’t report the incident to network bosses when it happened, believing nothing would be done to the powerful and highly paid Lauer, the Times reported.

But she did tell her then-husband, who is now her ex-husband, and he confirmed her report to the Times.

She also told a friend about five years ago, and the friend also confirmed her story, according to The NYPost.

Page Six reports that Lauer had sent lewd text messages and revealing pictures to women including a young intern. Page Six reports that the reason he was fired so quickly was that the messages, saved by an NBC employee he approached while they were in Sochi for the Olympics, "showed incontrovertible proof of inappropriate sexual behavior on his part."

Hours after the firing, the trade publication Variety posted what it said was a two-month investigation that included dozens of interviews with current and former staffers who asked to remain anonymous.

Among other things, Variety reported allegations that Lauer once gave a colleague a sex toy with an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her; that he exposed himself to another female co-worker; that he would question female producers about their sex lives; and that he would talk about which co-hosts he would like to sleep with.

Journalists at several news outlets had recently conducted interviews with former and current NBC employees about Mr. Lauer’s behavior, alerting the network to potential articles about him. But it was the formal complaint on Monday that prompted NBC to take action, reports The Times.

In an editorial meeting on Wednesday, Lack said that Lauer’s involvement with the woman who made the complaint began while they were in Sochi, Russia, to cover the Winter Olympics in 2014, and that their involvement continued after they returned to New York, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

Other “Today” hosts learned of the 59-year-old Lauer’s termination around 4 a.m. on Wednesday; staff members were told just minutes before the show went on the air at 7 a.m. Savannah Guthrie, Mr. Lauer’s co-anchor, was visibly shaken when she delivered the news to viewers, describing Mr. Lauer as “a dear, dear friend” and adding that she was “heartbroken for the brave colleague who came forward to tell her story.”