According to Gawker, the top-rated Fox News host is the prime mover behind a highly irregular police investigation in his Long Island hometown. A detective working for internal affairs was allegedly asked to meet with private investigators who were trying to build a case against another detective, who had become romantically involved with O’Reilly’s wife while the two were separated. This, by the way, is the promised bombshell that prompted Fox News’s bizarre and dishonest reports about how Gawker is “dying.”
To build a case that News Corp. constitutes a corrupt organization under anti-racketeering statutes, prosecutors have to show that there exists a pattern of wrongdoing sanctioned at the highest levels of the company.
I’ve said I consider it unlikely that such a pattern can be established. But the charges against O’Reilly make it that much less unlikely. As Gawker notes, his boss, Fox News chief Roger Ailes, has a habit of using local cops as though they’re his personal employees.
