Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Nov. 17, 2022. . Photo by Jason Koerner/Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh March 21, 2023

A Jewish producer at Fox News filed a lawsuit against the network Monday that claims the network pressured her to provide deceptive testimony in the ongoing legal dispute over its reporting of baseless election fraud allegations. Abby Grossberg, who was recently head of booking for Tucker Carlson’s primetime program, paints a picture in the suit of an office culture rife with sexism and antisemitism.

She details in the suit offensive jokes about Jews made by Alexander McCaskill, the show’s senior producer, in recent months. 

McCaskill displayed “his discriminatory animus” against her last October over Christmas decorations in the booking staff’s area in the office. The loud inflatables distracted her, but when she tried to turn them off, McCaskill called her a “Scrooge” and a “Grinch,” she claims in the suit, which was filed in district court in New York and Delaware. She said he also hung a sign on a Christmas tree that had been placed near her desk that read, “Hannukah Bush.” 

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Grossberg also said McCaskill invaded her privacy when he asked where her tattoos were, and that Andrew Carmichael, an editorial producer, stated he thought it was forbidden for Jews to have tattoos. 

Carlson, Fox News’ most-watched political commentator, is a defendant in the lawsuit. The Anti-Defamation League previously called on advertisers to boycott Tucker Carlson Tonight for promoting the antisemitic “replacement theory” — the conspiracy theory that Jews are orchestrating a replacement of white Americans with nonwhite immigrants.

Last year Carlson released a documentary feature investigating “how one nation stopped George Soros from undermining civilization.” Right-wing pundits and antisemites often paint the Jewish billionaire philanthropist, who has supported many progressive candidates, as a bane to society.

McCaskill also repeated antisemitic tropes against another Jewish employee, according to Grossberg’s suit. She claims he ridiculed Eldad Yaron, an Israeli-born booking producer, in front of other staffers for taking time off to observe both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur “because they fell on back-to-back weeks.”

And Grossberg accuses McCaskill of suggesting, ahead of the Fox News Spotlight Awards, which recognizes employees for outstanding work, that Yaron be nominated for “Inclusion Ambassador of the Year” because he was an “Israeli Jew,” and could use the $10,000 prize to buy the team pizza for a year.

McCaskill also made fun of Yaron for buying lunch at a Jewish bakery known as Breads Bakery, telling staffers that he went “to see his people” at the “Jew bakery,” according to the lawsuit. In December, Yaron brought a babka to the office to share with the staff ahead of New Year’s when McCaskill began to “loudly and obnoxiously” demand that the booking team have “the bread made by the Jews.”

Grossberg claims McCaskill “endorsed others in the office to repeat these offensive remarks.”

A Fox spokesperson said the network “engaged an independent outside counsel to immediately investigate the concerns” raised by Grossberg and concluded that her allegations in connection with the Dominion case are “baseless” and her legal claims “have no merit.”

As for the babka incident, the spokesperson said it “is patently false and never happened.”

Fox forced Grossberg to take administrative leave after she filed the lawsuits.

This post has been updated.

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