David Brock, fearful that damaging information about Media Matters For America would be released, reportedly paid his former domestic partner $850,000 to stay quiet, according to a Fox News report Monday. Brock later characterized the arrangement as “blackmail.”
Brock is the founder of Media Matters, a liberal messaging organization that was the subject of a recent Daily Caller series.
A police report obtained by Fox News shows that Brock contacted the Washington, D.C. Metro Police Department in September 2010 after his longtime domestic partner William Grey allegedly threatened to release “derogatory information about him and his organization to the press and donors that would be embarrassing to him and cause harm to the organization if he did not comply [with Grey’s demands].”
Grey, Brock told the police, was demanding “17 pieces of property he felt belonged to him.” Among those items were $10,200 in Louis Vuitton bags, $5,000 in “exotic decorative antelope horn bar accessories,” and a $5,000 “antique painted bust of [a] Roman soldier.”
Grey reportedly warned Brock to comply with his demands in a 2008 email. “Please finish this today so I don’t have to waste my time emailing anyone — Biden, Coulter, Carlson, Huffington, Drudge, Ingraham,” Grey wrote.
In a 2010 email, Grey threatened to blow the whistle on what he presumably saw as financial issues at Media Matters worthy of the attention of Brock’s “donors and the IRS.”
“This is going to stink for you if you do not resolve this now,” wrote Grey.
Brock claimed in court papers that he paid Grey the $850,000 “under duress,” and that he had to sell a Rehoboth Beach, Del. home worth $1,587,500 to meet Grey’s demands.
The fight reportedly began after Brock ended his relationship with Grey and began dating James Alefantis, a Washington-area restaurateur. The back and forth, complete with competing lawsuits, dragged on for years, with a settlement finally reached in late 2011.