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WWE is under new leadership these days as part of TKO, with Vince McMahon in a less prominent day-to-day role. Yet it still might not be able to distance itself from his alleged misdeeds, as a new, highly detailed lawsuit has been filed that accuses McMahon of sex trafficking and names both a longtime former WWE executive and a star who is still currently active as participants.
The Wall Street Journal, which first broke the story in the summer of 2022 about McMahon making payments that ended up totaling nearly $20 million to cover up alleged sexual misconduct against multiple victims, today published an article explaining a new lawsuit (warning: article contains graphic sexual language and details throughout) filed by one of those accusers, a woman named Janel Grant.
According to the lawsuit, Grant claims that McMahon first hired her to WWE’s legal department in 2019, creating a job that was mostly for show but saying it “has to look legit.” She goes on to accuse McMahon of abusing her sexually for years, sharing explicit texts and videos of her with others, and arranging for her to have sex with other men.
One of those men is John Laurinaitis, who is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit and has been included in earlier accusations against McMahon. Another will come as a bigger shock to people who follow WWE: Brock Lesnar, who the Journal’s sources identified as the recipient of McMahon’s request for Grant to “create personalized sexual content for a WWE superstar that he was trying to re-sign.”
As with other alleged McMahon victims, Grant did sign an NDA two years ago to remain silent on her relationship with McMahon in exchange for a $3 million payment. However, her new lawsuit suggests she received only an initial $1 million installment, and thus looks to void the agreement in exchange for additional financial damages.
The WWE’s board of directors began an internal investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and McMahon’s payments to keep them quiet two years ago, which led to his brief retirement that summer. Yet even after additional payments came to light, he was able to successfully engineer a return to power in January 2023, replacing some board members to ensure there was little chance of further complications for him within the company.
WWE has since become part of TKO under the corporate oversight of Endeavor, and McMahon’s influence has in most important ways shrunken to its lowest level in decades. What the new lawsuit suggests, though, is that the full extent of his personal scandal may yet to be revealed, and that legal questions may continue to dog him — and WWE — despite his best efforts to evade them.