Vince McMahon’s legal team issued a filing in response to Janel Grant’s lawsuit accusing McMahon of sex trafficking and other abuses during the course of his relationship with Grant, a former WWE employee.
From McMahon’s filing:
In fact, because the Parties wished to “preserve the confidential and private nature” of any disputes under the Agreement, they specifically provided in the Agreement that disputes would be resolved through arbitration. Plaintiff was represented by a lawyer who negotiated the Agreement for her before she executed it.
When Defendant learned that Plaintiff, despite her promises, had violated the Agreement by wrongfully disclosing both the existence of the Agreement and their relationship, he exercised his contractual right to withhold payment otherwise owed under the Agreement.
McMahon alleges that Grant broke their NDA, presumably during media coverage of and investigations into his 2022 hush money scandal. That led to his withholding payments to Grant she was to receive in exchange for signing the agreement and upholding its terms. Her suit accuses WWE of leaking her name and claims she was never contacted when the Board of Directors was looking into McMahon’s financial dealings. It seeks to have the NDA voided as a result of his stopping payment.
McMahon previously denied all the allegations in Grant’s suit against him, John Laurinaitis & WWE, and the memo generally and aggressively continues that denial:
For the avoidance of doubt, however, Defendant vehemently and categorically denies all allegations of wrongdoing in the Complaint, including Plaintiff’s outrageous claims that Defendant coerced Plaintiff into unwanted sexual acts, sexually assaulted and/or battered her, trafficked her, and defecated on her. Those are false statements intended for publicity.
When the Complaint’s allegations are adjudicated in the proper forum (arbitration), witnesses are called to testify under oath, and all communications between the Parties (including those authored by Plaintiff which she intentionally did not share in her Complaint) are produced, the allegations and claims will be disproven and Plaintiff will be exposed for the liar she is.
Contrary to Plaintiff’s false allegations, Plaintiff and Defendant (collectively, the “Parties”) engaged in a consensual relationship during which Defendant never coerced Plaintiff into doing anything and never mistreated her in any way.
In fact, in a love letter Plaintiff wrote to Defendant shortly before the Parties ended their relationship, Plaintiff described Defendant as “[m]y best friend, my love and my everything,” praising him for being the “wonderful, tender, vulnerable, heart-on-your-sleeve soul you really are.”
It is incredulous that Plaintiff, a then 42-year-old woman who claims on her resume to have a law degree from Pace University, would have written these words to Defendant months after all the events in the Complaint of alleged abuse, coercion, and “sex-trafficking” took place.
Grant’s suit argued that she was especially vulnerable when McMahon initiated a relationship with her, particularly due to her having been grieving the loss of her parents at the time and on the verge of financial collapse as a result of caring for them prior to their deaths. Several points in the McMahon memo aim to refute those claims:
Those statements are complete falsehoods. Based on a foreclosure action against Plaintiff and her parents, Plaintiff’s father passed away on April 18, 2017-two years before Plaintiff met Defendant - and his marital status was recorded as “widowed” confirming Plaintiff’s mother had passed earlier.
In McMahon’s accounting of it, he and Grant were involved in an open relationship. In particular, he says she was living with a man she was engaged to marry:
It is nonsensical that the disturbing alleged acts in the Complaint including violence, coerced sex, and forcing Plaintiff to be defecated on were taking place before Plaintiff returned to her lawyer fiancé four floors below without incident. Defendant was never contacted by Goncalves (who was on the Board of the luxury building), anyone at the building, the police, any friends of Plaintiff, or any lawyer or advocate for Plaintiff at any time about the fictitious, extensive, years-long abusive behavior alleged in the Complaint.
Grant’s lawyer, Ann Callis, issued a response to Post Wrestling about McMahon’s filing. Callis directly addresses the claims regarding her client’s parents and the “fiancé” Grant was living with when she met McMahon:
Vince McMahon has never known a storyline that he doesn’t twist to fit his own shameful narrative. Her father was in in-home hospice during his final days where Janel continued to care for him around the clock. Prior to his death, she had been caring for her blind, wheelchair-bound mother. Using the grief of someone who lost both of her parents is an all new level of disgusting.
#wwe #vincemcmahon #janelgrant