Bill O’Reilly’s Last-Ditch Effort to Save Fox News Job Exposed in Emails (Report)

Former Fox News host’s lawyers argued emails expose left-wing conspiracy, Politico reports

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Part of the conversation that was happening inside Bill O’Reilly‘s camp hours before the Fox News host was ousted have reportedly been revealed in emails obtained by Politico.

And they show his lawyers were ready to pull the trigger on a left-wing conspiracy theory.

In the April 18 email, O’Reilly and his team weighed whether or not to send information to the network’s parent company about a liberal campaign to organize an advertiser boycott of “The O’Reilly Factor.”

“If we show to Fox tomorrow, word will get out and the Thursday call may be cancelled,” O’Reilly wrote in the email, which his lawyers said was “accidentally” forwarded to Politico. “So no formal sending to Rupert [Mudoch] until after the call.”

He continued, “You all should know that I will not put up with much more from FNC.”

According to Politico, O’Reilly and his legal team were discussing another email from Mary Pat Bonner, whom they describe as “a Democratic fundraiser and ally of the liberal watchdog group Media Matters,” which had led the advertiser boycott against O’Reilly.

Glenn Beck tweeted out a screenshot of an email from Bonner on Wednesday, which appears to be the one referenced by O’Reilly and lawyers:

“So, Bill O’Reilly’s last ditch effort to save his job was to run to Glenn Beck, dust off the old chalkboard and conjure a conspiracy? Nothing nefarious here,” Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said in statement to TheWrap Thursday night. “Media Matters’ efforts were very public. We’re a nonprofit and the call was to ask our supporters to help make sure we could dig in on this for the long haul. But O’Reilly got fired beforehand. At least this explains why Glenn Beck launched a short-lived counter boycott yesterday morning against the companies that dropped O’Reilly.”

The content’s of O’Reilly’s message line up with a statement issued by the host’s lawyers earlier this week. O’Reilly’s representatives called the boycott a “smear campaign … orchestrated by far-left organizations bent on destroying O’Reilly for political and financial reasons.”

Fox News announced the departure of the “O’Reilly Factor” host on Wednesday morning, following a bombshell New York Times report on April 1 that O’Reilly and Fox News made payouts totaling about $13 million to five women to settle claims of sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior. Additional female accusers have stepped forward in the weeks since the Times story.

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