Former Fox News panelist Scottie Nell Hughes lectured women about avoiding sexual assault and sex discrimination in the workplace a year after host Charles Payne allegedly raped her, new bombshell court papers claim.
Legal documents obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com show the 37-year-old conservative commentator ‘excoriated a gender discrimination plaintiff’ on air and chastised women for having affairs in the workplace.
Hughes and Payne, who are both married, admitted to having an affair, however, Hughes accused the Making Money presenter of pressuring her to carry on with their two-year illicit relationship by threatening to cancel her gig on Fox.
Last September Hughes sued the host and network for gender-motivated violence, gender discrimination, retaliation, and defamation after claiming Payne, 57, pressured his way into her hotel room and forced himself on her in 2013.
Now Payne and Fox are demanding the lawsuit be tossed out.
Fox News Network and Fox Business host Charles Payne slammed former panelist Scottie Nell Hughes as an ‘unlikely champion for victims of sexual harassment and assaults’ after she claimed her raped her in a hotel room in 2013
In the motion to dismiss the complaint, Payne and Fox have slammed Hughes as ‘an unlikely champion for victims of sexual harassment and assaults,’ and argued that she did not report any misconduct until four years after the alleged rape.
‘Sitting in a television studio alongside Defendant Charles Payne—the man she accuses of raping her and coercing her into a two-year sexual relationship—she excoriated a gender discrimination plaintiff for purportedly succumbing to pressure to engage in a workplace affair,’ court documents read.
Hughes blasted Silicon Valley investment partner Ellen Pao during a 2015 on-air panel discussion on Pao’s sexual discrimination suit against a capital firm.
Pao was also having an affair with a colleague before she was fired.
Hughes went on the air to say: ‘So, if she’s having the affair with him, of course they’re going to talk about sex; of course they might talk about pornography; of course they might go other places. She was having the affair. You make your bed, you have to lie on it, and it’s not a $60 million bed.
She added: ‘If she really has these great qualifications and felt so pressured to have an affair and go to that extent: go get another job; there’s other opportunities.
In her 2014 book, Roar: The New Conservative Woman Speaks Out, Hughes also admitted she was attracted to ‘men who hold power’ and said men are ‘pretty easy to persuade if you’re wickedly smart and not afraid to actually be a woman.’
She also claimed she was raised to ‘avoid situations’ that could lead to sexual assault and explained how women could avoid ‘nonconsensual sexual relations’ a year after she says she was raped in her hotel room.
‘In light of her allegations in this case, it is also remarkable that in that same book, she thanked Payne for his “kindness” as one of her many “mentors” in the “broadcast business,’ the lawsuit read.
Hughes was having an affair with Payne while she was appearing as a panelist on his Fox show Making Money
In 2015, Hughes slammed Silicon Valley investment partner Ellen Pao after she claimed she was sexually discriminated against at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins – two years after Hughes says she was raped by Payne
Hughes, who was a supporter of the Trump campaign, also railed against the women who accused the then-candidate of sexual assault after publication of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, court papers state.
Payne and Fox have also argued that the panelist has no basis in claiming discrimination or retaliation under federal, state, or city law because she was not a Fox employee.
Hughes served as a panelist and commentator on several Fox News and Fox Business shows from March 2013 to March 2016 but was never paid by the network, according to the suit.
She began her affair with Payne during her first year on the show and claimed the two had sex in her New York City hotel room in July 2013 without her consent.
Hughes blasted Silicon Valley investment partner Ellen Pao (pictured) during a 2015 on-air panel discussion on Pao’s sexual discrimination suit against a capital firm
Payne admitted to the affair last summer, but he referred to the claims of harassment as ‘an ugly lie I vehemently deny to my core,’ on Twitter.
He was suspended and reinstated after ‘evidence showed that he and Hughes had a consensual affair.’
The two continued their sexual relationship for about two years, until at least June 2015.
But Hughes then claimed that after she ended the affair she stopped appearing on Payne’s Making Money. She also alleged her appearances on Fox ‘dramatically decreased,’ after Payne’s wife demanded that Fox prevent her from doing any future appearances.
Hughes left the network in 2016 and went on to land a role on CNN but her contract was not renewed the following year.
In her complaint, she alleged that she had been ‘blacklisted’ after she ended her relationship with Payne and that she ‘submitted to his sexual advances in order to ‘continue to appear on Fox programs, and potentially receive a contributor contract.’
The network argued that Payne was not in a position to offer her a job, according to court documents.
Hughes, who was married (pictured right with her husband) when she had a sexual relationship with Payne, railed against the women who accused the then-candidate Trump of sexual assault after publication of the infamous Access Hollywood tape
Payne, who is also married, admitted to having an affair, but ‘vehemently denied’ the sexual assault allegations
Fox also argued that her complaint does not allege that any Fox executive then had reason to believe that her affair with Payne ‘purportedly had been coerced – a conclusion wholly at odds with [her] emails to Payne.’
Two months after Payne allegedly raped her, Hughes graphically described apparently consensual sex with Payne in an email sent to him. They were initially leaked to the National Enquirer and then obtained by the Huffington Post, the filing says.
‘Do you know what I keep dreaming about.. You and I in the pool… My legs wrapped around your waste [sic] and you have me pressed up against the wall of the pool,’ she wrote.
Hughes also accused Payne of defamation after the National Enquirer published a story headlined ‘Fox Rocked by Another Sex Scandal,’ reporting that a ‘married male anchor has confessed to cheating with a married colleague.’
The paper did not use Hughes’s name or photo and only referred to her as a ‘former CNN and Fox News contributor.’
The suit argued that ‘[n]o reader could infer that the article was referring to [Hughes] because she never contracted to be a Fox contributor.’