Fox News reporter Doug McKelway shared a story on Wednesday detailing a personal interaction with Debra Katz that he says occurred in the 1990s.
According to his claim, Katz had him pulled from a story when she realized that he was going to ask substantive questions.
McKelway noted that the lawsuit involved racial discrimination and that he felt it was “weak” like a “shakedown” and had been filed on a Friday in order to push it to a settlement.
My Debra Katz story. In the mid 1990s, I was anchoring for NBC4 in DC. She sent a fax to us alerting us to a racial discrimination suit she was filing against Bank of America. It was late Friday afternoon. I read the suit. It was incredibly weak, smelled of a shakedown attempt..
— Doug McKelway (@dougmckelway) September 27, 2018
Went to her office with camera. Got miked up. I told her it smelled of a shakedown attempt, and I was familiar with the technique of late Friday accusation, too late for deep pocketed organization to respond with its multi-layered PR office in some distant city. The story would..
— Doug McKelway (@dougmckelway) September 27, 2018
Stew over the weekend, prolly result in a settlement, sparing her the hard work of trial preparation. She then …
— Doug McKelway (@dougmckelway) September 27, 2018
McKelway claimed that Katz, upon realizing that he intended to ask challenging questions, quickly removed her own microphone and contacted his news director, who then allegedly pulled him from the story.
Ripped the mike off, called my lefty news director, who then called me, and pulled me off the story. It’s riveted in my memory. Always thought she was sleazy, and I guess my news director was, too.
— Doug McKelway (@dougmckelway) September 27, 2018
Katz, who is currently representing Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford, also has connections to the “resistance” against President Donald Trump and her firm represented more recent Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick in a sexual harassment lawsuit about a decade ago.
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