We all knew this was coming but now it's official.
Fox News host Megyn Kelly writes in her new book that former network chief Roger Ailes began sexually harassing her in 2005 and even tried to kiss her. But that may not even be the most galling part.
According to Kelly, Ailes tried to get her to defend him against other women he harassed but she says there was "no way" she was going to "lie to protect him."
Kelly claims in the book that he started to harass her, too, in the summer of 2005, a few months after she was hired as a legal correspondent in Fox’s Washington bureau.
She writes that she was informed by her managing editor that she’d “captured the attention of Mr. Ailes” and she was summoned to the first of a series of meetings in his Manhattan office.
“Roger began pushing the limits,” she alleges. “There was a pattern to his behavior. I would be called into Roger’s office, he would shut the door, and over the next hour or two, he would engage in a kind of cat-and-mouse game with me — veering between obviously inappropriate sexually charged comments (e.g. about the ‘very sexy bras’ I must have and how he’d like to see me in them) and legitimate professional advice.”
Kelly also wrote that Ailes offered to advance her career if she had sex with him and also vaguely threatened her when she refused by asking when her contract is up for renewal.
Kelly's description of her encounters with Ailes fits the descriptions provided by his other victims who says they were called into his office for private meetings where he made lewd comments and even asked them to twirl for him.
Kelly "capturing the attention" of Ailes and then being summoned to his office also fits a pattern established by other women who say Ailes used the network's recruitment apparatus to funnel young women into his office. One on Ailes's victims also claimed that Ailes told her she would have to sleep with other executives if he told her to.
The more we learn about the operation, the more it appears that Ailes used Fox like a sex trafficking ring.
Ailes and GOP nominee Donald Trump don't appear to be speaking to each other anymore, but Ailes served as a top adviser to Trump for most of the past several months.