Federal investigators probing Fox News’s business practices are beginning to turn their attention to mysterious consultants once employed by the network’s former CEO, Roger Ailes, CNN reported Thursday.
Ailes, who was ousted from the network last July amid a deluge of sexual harassment allegations, employed a number of consultants and political operatives — known internally at Fox as “friends of Roger” — for reasons that remain unclear.
In addition, CNN reported that the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation has been expanded to include financial crime experts from the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), whose purview includes mail fraud and wire fraud cases.
{mosads}Both DOJ and USPIS investigators have been interviewing people, including some former Fox News staffers, recently to uncover information about managers and business practices at the network, CNN said.
Investigators began their probe by digging into settlements made to women who alleged sexual harassment by Ailes, and whether the network was duty-bound to inform shareholders about those payments.
They are now asking questions about the overall environment, as well as the “friends of Roger.”
While some of the consultants were booted from the network after Ailes’s resignation, investigators want to know more about these consultants and their roles at the network, according to CNN.
One such consultant, Bert Solivan, directed negative PR campaigns against Ailes’s personal and political adversaries, New York Magazine reported in August. Another consultant received $10,000 a month from the network, according to CNN.
Fox News has faced heightened scrutiny in recent weeks after a New York Times report revealed that the network had paid out about $13 million in settlements to women who alleged that they were sexually harassed by former “The O’Reilly Factor” host Bill O’Reilly, who was let go by the network earlier this month.