Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly maintained Tuesday that he is innocent of all charges of sexual harassment at his former network, and said his termination was a “political and financial hit job.”
O’Reilly was asked in his first national television interview since he was fired in April whether he stands by his claim that he did nothing wrong.
“I do,” O’Reilly said on NBC’s “Today” show. He also said Fox never talked to him about any sexual harassment claims against him in his more than two decades with the network.
“I can go to sleep at night very well knowing that I never mistreated anyone on my watch in 42 years,” O’Reilly said.
But O’Reilly admitted that the claims against him unsettled the network, and said executives eventually agreed to let him go because of the negative attention it was getting, including the loss of $13 million in advertising profits.
“There were billions of dollars at stake in business deals and they made a business decision that they could prosper without me,” O’Reilly said. “They had a contractual clause that they could pay me a certain amount of money and not put me on the air and they exercised that clause.”
O’Reilly, 68, blamed “radical left groups” like Media Matters for sponsoring a boycott against him and the right-leaning network in hopes of taking down the conservative outlet.
“This was a hit job, a political and financial hit job,” O’Reilly added. “Every allegation in this era is a conviction … there isn’t a smoking gun.”
O’Reilly was fired nine months after former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes was outed after employees brought sexual harassment allegations against him.
O’Reilly also appeared on “Today” to talk up his new book. He and Martin Dugard co-authored England, which was released Tuesday.
On Monday night, Fox News primetime host Sean Hannity spoke with O’Reilly and said he should return to the network.
“I don’t know,” O’Reilly replied. He joked that he was enjoying being “at the beach every day.”
O’Reilly insisted Tuesday the public has not seen the last of him.
“We’re gonna be able to prove what we say,” O’Reilly finished. “There are more things to come. This is Media Matters, the Bonner group. Color of Change, organizing sponsor boycotts, to bring down Fox News and me.”
