“He couldn’t sleep around town with celebrities or on the road with random people … so he’d have to do it within his stable, where he exerted power, and he knew people wouldn’t ever complain,” a former NBC producer says of Matt Lauer.
Caveat: These are still allegations and Matt Lauer has not yet responded.
Matt Lauer is said to have once given a colleague a sex toy as a present while co-host of NBC’s Today show. It included an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her, which left her mortified.
At another time, he summoned a different female employee to his office, and then dropped his pants, showing her his penis. After the employee declined the opportunity, a shocked Lauer reprimanded her for not engaging in a sexual act.
Sometimes, he is said to have quizzed female producers about who they’d slept with, offering to trade names. One disgusting game involving men and women in the office was called “fuck, marry or kill.” In this game, he identified the female co-hosts that he’d most like to sleep with.
These accusations are the result of a two-month investigation by Variety who conducted dozens of interviews with staffers – current and former. Three anonymous women described sexual assaults and had people they told at the time confirm with Variety.
This conduct was going on at least since 2014.
Several female employees told Variety they had complained to management about the $25 million a year NBC star without results. This flies in the face of NBC’s statement today claiming that they only received one complaint in 20 years.
Lauer’s show was rated Number One and that could be why they didn’t notice the complaints.
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The allegations were so severe and there is such a spotlight on the issue that NBC was forced to act.
Despite being married – for how much longer we don’t know – Lauer was said to be fixated on women, especially their bodies and looks, according to more than 10 accounts from current and former employees. He was known for making lewd comments verbally or over text messages. He once said made a suggestive reference to a colleague’s performance in bed and compared it to how she was able to complete her job, according to witnesses to the exchange.
“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.
His pattern was to lure and seduce young employees much as Weinstein did.
According to producers, Lauer — who had considerable editorial clout over which stories would ultimately air on “Today”— would frequently dismiss stories about cheating husbands.
Lauer had a button by his desk that he could press to give him privacy for his sexual indiscretions without interference. One producer said he couldn’t pick up women while out in the field, so the women at work became his targets.
Lauer’s perv booker was fired earlier this month for gross behavior and that put a light on Lauer’s misbehavior.
In September, hypocrite Lauer asked Fox News star anchor Bill O’Reilly if he’d ever sent lewd text messages to colleagues. “Think about those … women and what they did,” Lauer said. “They came forward and filed complaints against the biggest star they at the network they worked at. Think about how intimidating that must have been. Doesn’t that tell you how strongly they felt about you?”
Listen:
Matt Lauer to Bill O’Reilly on his sexual harassment allegations: “Think about how intimidating that must have been” for women to come forward against the “biggest star at the network they worked at.” pic.twitter.com/pT2vN7RlK3
— Stef W. Kight (@StefWKight) November 29, 2017
Yashar Ali, a NY Mag and HuffPo reporter, wrote on Twitter that women were terrified of Lauer and are still afraid to come forward.
Ali alleges, “some top executives at NBC were aware of these stories.
“I, and other reporters, have been aware of several women who have come forward privately in the past few months,” Yashar tweeted. “Even before Weinstein. They weren’t willing to go public though…they were terrified of Matt. Matt Lauer put the fear of God into these women. He had relationships with reporters outside NBC that he cultivated just for this purpose. They knew that.”
“Lauer is among the worst I’ve heard about,” Ali continued. “Not in terms of the kind of misconduct but the way in which he manipulated these women into silence. It’s evil, frightening stuff.”
He put the fear of God in them.
Katie Couric, a former co-host with Lauer, is out defending him but listen to what she said in 2012.
After publication, TMZ posted another creepy video with Lauer telling his female co=host to “keep bending over like that”. He also liked her sweater.
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