“They protected the s— out of Matt Lauer.â€
The single accusation that ended Matt Lauer’s career when he was fired Tuesday night was not the only accusation made to NBC News executives, VARIETY reports. “For Lauer, work and sex were intertwined,” the entertainment news site says in an exclusive report. It says the report is the product of a two-month investigation which included “dozens of interviews with current and former staffers” at NBC.
“As the co-host of NBC’s ‘Today,’ Matt Lauer once gave a colleague a sex toy as a present. It included an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her, which left her mortified,” the VARIETY report states.
“On another day, he summoned a different female employee to his office, and then dropped his pants, showing her his penis. After the employee declined to do anything, visibly shaken, he reprimanded her for not engaging in a sexual act.”
He would sometimes quiz female producers about who they’d slept with, offering to trade names. And he loved to engage in a crass quiz game with men and women in the office: “fuck, marry or kill,†in which he would identify the female co-hosts that he’d most like to sleep with.
VARIETY claims three women “identified themselves as victims of sexual harassment by Lauer, and their stories have been corroborated by friends or colleagues that they told at the time. They have asked for now to remain unnamed, fearing professional repercussions.”
The article quotes an unnamed producer who says Lauer engaged in extramarital affairs with co-workers, which created obvious problems.
“There were a lot of consensual relationships, but that’s still a problem because of the power he held,†says a former producer who knew first-hand of these encounters. “He couldn’t sleep around town with celebrities or on the road with random people, because he’s Matt Lauer and he’s married. So he’d have to do it within his stable, where he exerted power, and he knew people wouldn’t ever complain.â€
VARIETY also claims Lauer’s “office was in a secluded space, and he had a button under his desk that allowed him to lock his door from the inside without getting up. This afforded him the assurance of privacy. It allowed him to welcome female employees and initiate inappropriate contact while knowing nobody could walk in on him, according to two women who were sexually harassed by Lauer.”
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