The stringent settlement agreements Bill O'Reilly reached with two of his accusers were made public for the first time Wednesday, revealing new details of how the former Fox News star silenced repeated claims of sexual harassment.
The deals with former producer Andrea Mackris and former Fox Business host Rebecca Gomez Diamond were effectively unsealed by a federal judge in Manhattan as part of a pending defamation lawsuit against O'Reilly.
A copy of the 2011 Diamond deal revealed O'Reilly paid her $3.25 million, an amount not previously disclosed.
In both deals, O'Reilly demanded the women turn over all recordings in their possession, despite public denials any such evidence ever existed.
According to his 2004 pact with Mackris, O'Reilly not only forced Mackris to hand over all copies of "audiotapes, videotapes and digital recordings" and claim "no wrongdoing whatsoever" occurred _ he also made her promise she'd lie and "disclaim" the recordings as "counterfeit or forgeries" if any ever became public.
Though no recordings were confirmed in 2004, the Mackris lawsuit filed shortly before the settlement included lengthy passages of graphic language O'Reilly allegedly used in conversations with his subordinate.
The quotes detailed O'Reilly's alleged desire to use a loofah sponge on Mackris in a shower and included enough words like "uh" and "um" to suggest they were part of a transcript.
As part of the now-public 2004 deal, O'Reilly also forced Mackris to waive any claim of a conflict of interest related to O'Reilly's retention of her lawyer Benedict Morelli "to provide legal advice regarding sexual harassment matters."
In court filings in the defamation case Wednesday, Mackris' new lawyers called O'Reilly's hiring of Morelli "profoundly unethical." They said it left Mackris "virtually without counsel" as she negotiated her deal and separation from Fox.
Morelli did not respond to messages left with his law firm.
The Mackris agreement also confirmed investigator Bo Dietl had been hired to dig up information on Mackris. Under the settlement agreement, the parties agreed Dietl would permanently destroy his files.
Sources previously told the Daily News that O'Reilly paid Mackris as much as $10 million for her silence.
The New York Times reported last year that the amount was around $9 million.
Altogether, The Times has reported six publicly known settlements involving O'Reilly that total close to $45 million.
Five of those were for sexual harassment while one was for verbal abuse, the newspaper said.
Mackris, Diamond and third plaintiff Rachel Witlieb Bernstein filed their defamation suit in December, saying O'Reilly and Fox News tried to brand them as opportunists seeking a payday as his career imploded last year.
"As we have stated previously, the only reason Bill O'Reilly settled any cases was to protect his children," O'Reilly's lawyer Fredric S. Newman said in a statement Wednesday.
"The settlement agreements were fully negotiated by these plaintiffs who were ably advised by experienced counsel. Confidentiality and arbitration were two critical terms for which Mr. O'Reilly bargained in good faith," the lawyer said.
"For the past 14 years, Mr. O'Reilly has always respected the agreed confidentiality of the settlement agreements, but now that the provision has been breached, Mr. O'Reilly will be taking all appropriate legal action to enforce the agreements," Newman said.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts is overseeing the defamation case and allowed the confidential deals to become public when she signed a Tuesday order that said "O'Reilly has failed to present compelling countervailing factors that could overcome the presumption of public access to the agreements in question."
Batts said the "possibility of future adverse impact" on O'Reilly's career or "celebrity status" was not enough to "overcome the presumption of access to judicial documents."
O'Reilly and Fox are trying to force the pending lawsuit into arbitration.
"For the better part of a year, Bill O'Reilly railed against these women, repeatedly insisting that they were conducting a 'politically and financially motivated' 'smear' campaign against him, while in truth, he insisted in settlement agreements that any evidence against him be destroyed," the women's lawyer Neil Mullin said in a statement Wednesday.
"O'Reilly repeatedly spoke publicly about 'shocking evidence' and 'proof' he had that our clients are liars _ and Fox News Chairman Rupert Murdoch called their claims 'nonsense' _ all the while knowing that they had forced the plaintiffs to turn over or destroy video and audiotape evidence of his harassment," their other lawyer Nancy Erika Smith said.
Beyond the defamation case involving Mackris, former Fox News Chanel anchor Laurie Dhue filed her own defamation lawsuit against O'Reilly in late March with largely similar claims.
