Billionaire Mike Bloomberg once told a female employee to ‘kill it’ after she announced she was pregnant and a former employee claims the businessman spoke ‘crudely’ of women ‘all the time’.
The 78-year-old businessman-turned-politician’s controversial past of offensive and sexist comments towards woman has come under a microscope as he competes for the Democratic presidential candidate nomination.
On April 11, 1995, top salesperson Sekiko Sakai Garrison told Bloomberg she was pregnant and he responded by insinuating she should get an abortion, according to a 1997 lawsuit that has been settled.
‘He responded to her, “Kill it!”‘ the court documents said.
‘Plaintiff asked Bloomberg to repeat himself, and again he said, “Kill it!” and muttered, “Great! Number 16!” suggesting to plaintiff his unhappiness that sixteen women in the Company had maternity-related status. Then he walked away.’
Bloomberg is seen at his company’s television studios in 1994. A resurfaced lawsuit claims that he made cruel remarks to women who worked for him in the 1990s
On another occasion when she expressed she was struggling to find childcare, Bloomberg told her to hire ‘some black’.
‘It’s a f***ing baby! All it does is eat and s**t! It doesn’t know the difference between you and anyone else! All you need is some black who doesn’t have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building,’ Bloomberg said in July 1993.
She responded by crying at her boss’s harsh words, according to the lawsuit, which is the subject of a new report by the Washington Post published Saturday.
Sekiko Sakai Garrison (above) filed the lawsuit in 1998. It was settled out of court
Former Bloomberg employee David Zielenziger corroborated those accusations saying on Bloomberg: ‘He talked kind of crudely about women all of the time.’
He said he heard Bloomberg tell Garrison to ‘kill it’, slamming his comment as ‘outrageous.’
‘I remember she had been telling some of her girlfriends that she was pregnant,’ he recalled to the Post. ‘And Mike came out and I remember he said, “Are you going to kill it?” And that stopped everything. And I couldn’t believe it.’
‘I understood why she took offense,’ he added.
Zielenziger said he never spoke to Garrison about the incident and he was not a party in her lawsuit against the lawsuit against their former boss.
Ken Cooper, a software engineer who now leads Bloomberg’s human resources department, told the Washington Post that he did not hear the comments himself, but Garrison had recounted the kill it comment.
Former Bloomberg employee David Zielenziger (left and right) said on Bloomberg: ‘He talked kind of crudely about women all of the time.’ He said he heard Bloomberg tell Garrison to ‘kill it’, adding he ‘couldn’t believe it’
When Bloomberg heard that Garrison was upset by his comments he called her and left along voicemail saying she misinterpreted his comments.
‘When you have time, give me a buzz or stop by…I don’t understand,’ he said in his voicemail message.
‘I didn’t even know you were pregnant until the other day…(another employee) said you were all upset…whatever you heard wasn’t what I said and whatever I said had nothing to do with pregnancies…I couldn’t be happier you are having a child…I apologize if there was something you heard but I didn’t say it, didn’t mean it, didn’t say it,’ he added.
However, Bloomberg died that ‘black’ comment under oath during the lawsuit. He reached an undisclosed settlement with Garrison.
A spokesperson for Bloomberg’s campaign did not immediately respond to an inquiry from DailyMail.com regarding the alleged ‘some black’ remark.
Bloomberg’s company has been hit with several lawsuits over the years alleging that women were discriminated against in the workplace and accusing the founder himself of creating a culture of sexual harassment and degradation.
Bloomberg pictured speaking during a ‘Mike for Black American Launch Celebration’ at the Buffalo Soldier National Museum in Houston, Texas on February 13, 2020
There have been two reports of alleged sexual assault by Bloomberg executives.
The old lawsuit, and others regarding discrimination complaints at Bloomberg LP, are the subject of fresh scrutiny as Bloomberg’s presidential campaign faces hard questions about the former New York City mayor’s ability to win over black voters.
As mayor, Bloomberg presided over sharp drops in crime that continued from the term of his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, and was a strong advocate of ‘stop-and-frisk’ policies.
Bloomberg credited stop-and-frisk with getting illegal guns off the streets and dramatically reducing shootings, but his critics decry it as a racist policy that targeted black and Hispanic youth.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg tried to tackle race concerns head on by launching a ‘Mike For Black America’ outreach initiative.
Bloomberg rallied black supporters in Texas on Thursday, with his sights set on so-called ‘Super Tuesday’ on March 3, when voters in 16 states and territories will cast their ballots in the Democratic primary.
‘This month, we look back and celebrate black history together, because black history is American history,’ Bloomberg said at the Buffalo Soldiers museum, named after a Civil War regiment of African-American soldiers, where he kicked off his ‘Mike for Black America’ campaign.
On Thursday he again apologized for backing arbitrary ‘stop-and-frisk’ searches by the New York police when he was mayor.
‘I defended it, looking back, for too long, because I didn’t understand then the unintended pain it was causing to young black and brown families and their kids’.
Bloomberg had already apologized over the scandal, but it surfaced again after a recording was spread widely on social media — and retweeted by Trump — in which he said police should be deployed to minority neighborhoods because ‘that’s where all the crime is.’
He received the support Thursday of the influential, black Democratic mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner.
‘It’s important for me to hear the recognition that the policy that was put in place was not the right policy, that it was flawed, that it was insensitive,’ Turner said.