The unceremonious sacking of Brian Lewis, a veteran right-hand man to Roger Ailes and “one of the most powerful executives at Fox News,” has resulted in an epic amount of carefully placed backbiting from the network already. Lewis, meanwhile, who was fired for alleged “financial irregularities” and “multiple, material and significant breaches of his employment contract,” which anonymous sources have been happy to discuss, stayed quiet until now. In a statement provided to Gawker, Lewis’s lawyer Judd Burstein upped the ante with some vague threats directed at Ailes and “his toadies.”
I have just been retained and am still plotting our course of action. But two things are very clear to me. First, Brian Lewis no longer has any confidentiality obligation to Newscorp or Roger Ailes because of the false and malicious statements made by Fox to date. Second, Roger Ailes and Newscorp have a lot more to fear from Brian Lewis telling the truth about them than Brian Lewis has to fear from Roger Ailes and his toadies telling lies about Brian Lewis.
According to whispers, Ailes had become paranoid, as he’s been known to do, that Lewis was speaking out of turn to New York contributing editor Gabriel Sherman, whose book on Ailes and Fox News is forthcoming. Lewis, though, does not appear to be taking those accusations lightly. Game on, and it might get ugly.
