More than a year after Fox News fired him over complaints about “willful sexual misconduct in the workplace,” Ed Henry has quietly returned to right-wing media, landing at a fringe outlet with ties to Steve Bannon.
Real America’s Voice is a fledgling internet and satellite TV network starring mostly obscure MAGA hangers-on, with the exception of former Donald Trump confidants like Steve Bannon, whose daily War Room podcast airs on the channel, and the ex-president’s Ukraine conspiracy architect John Solomon, who partnered with RAV to produce “news” content for the network.
And in recent weeks, the little-watched channel has added Henry, a former rising star anchor at Fox News, to its roster as a correspondent and “political insider” pundit. His re-surfacing went mostly unnoticed until he played a role in RAV’s live election coverage on Tuesday.
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“Seeing the man, @edhenry back on air has made my night,” one apparent fan tweeted that evening. “Welcome back, Mr. Henry! Your public has missed you.”
Aside from broadly contributing to Real America’s Voice programming, the former Fox anchor also has his own online show titled Uncut Politics. Premiering last week with an interview of Mark Meadows, RAV hyped the show on social media by giving potential viewers a promo code to win a free copy of the former Trump chief of staff’s new book.
“It is unfathomable that Real America’s Voice has decided to give Mr. Henry, an alleged sexual harasser and abuser, this new platform,” read a statement to The Daily Beast from Wigdor LLP, the high-powered law firm representing Jennifer Eckhart, the former Fox News producer whose allegations led to Henry’s firing last year. “This recent hiring decision is yet another example of why so many survivors of abuse are afraid to come forward while their perpetrators are often rewarded in the workplace.”
The statement continued: “[Real America’s Voice] is the same company that actually declined to hire Ms. Eckhart after she bravely stood up and filed her sexual assault and rape lawsuit against Mr. Henry.”
Real America’s Voice and Henry’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
Up until his unceremonious firing in June 2020, Henry was one of Fox’s “hard news” reporters and had quickly risen up the ranks. After serving as the network’s chief national correspondent for several years, the award-winning White House reporter and former Fox & Friends Weekend host was rewarded with a plum co-anchor gig on weekday afternoons in late 2019.
But just months later, Henry found himself out of a job. After briefly suspending him over claims of sexual misconduct in the workplace, Fox News announced on July 1 that the America’s Newsroom host was immediately terminated following an investigation into the allegations. Henry subsequently lost his book deal with Murdoch-owned publisher HarperCollins. (The anchor was previously benched by Fox in 2016 after tabloids reported on his extramarital affair.)
Weeks later, Henry was hit with a lawsuit from Eckhart, a former Fox News reporter and associate producer who alleged he raped her and “performed sadistic acts on her without her consent that left her injured, bruised and battered with bloody wrists.” The suit also claimed that Henry, who is married, “groomed, psychologically manipulated and coerced” her into a sexual relationship in which he referred to her as his “sex slave.”
Eckhart’s lawsuit further alleged that Fox News willfully downplayed allegations against Henry, claiming executives were aware of years-old complaints against the star anchor but continued to promote him anyway. “There were not sexual harassment claims against Ed Henry at FOX News prior to Jennifer Eckhart’s claim on June 25, 2020,” a Fox spokesperson responded at the time. (The complaint also included former recurring Fox guest Cathy Areu accusing Henry and several other Fox News stars of sexually harassing her. A judge tossed Areu’s claims in September. Eckhart’s litigation against Fox News and Henry, however, continues to this day.)
Months after Eckhart’s lawsuit was filed, Henry was accused of pushing “revenge porn” in an attempt to dismiss her complaint—a move victims’ rights advocates described as a blatant attempt to “slut-shame” his accuser. “[I]t is obvious that Defendant Henry chose to publicly file such personal and intimate images of Eckhart to humiliate and retaliate against her for her decision to speak out against his sexual abuse,” Eckhart’s attorney Michael J. Willemin wrote to the judge overseeing the case, referring to Henry including 15 salacious and explicit photos in an October 2020 court filing.
Henry would be nearly radio silent between that October motion and this past summer, when he filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its CEO Suzanne Scott. In that suit, he accused Fox of painting him as a “sex criminal” in an effort to protect the network executive’s own reputation.
At the time, a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement that Henry’s lawsuit was “a desperate attempt for relevance and redemption.” The spokesperson also touted the “many cultural changes,” such as “executing a zero-tolerance policy regarding workplace misconduct,” that Scott had instituted during her tenure.
