When NBC abruptly reneged on their $69 million, three-year contract with Megyn Kelly after an insensitive but obviously unintentional gaffe about blackface, some — myself included — hypothesized that the overhyped incident was simply a convenient excuse for something else. Nearly a year later, Ronan Farrow’s explosive reporting on the lengths NBC went to shut down his investigation into Harvey Weinstein grants further credence to an unpalatable, sexist, and abhorrent rationale for Kelly’s firing: NBC wanted to silence Kelly’s coverage of their former anchor, Matt Lauer.

In the weeks before the blackface nothingburger, Kelly spent ample amounts of time on her talk show reporting on the numerous sexual assault and harassment allegations plaguing Lauer. Unlike many of her fellow daytime hosts, Kelly had covered the #MeToo beat in scrupulous and, at times, necessarily unsavory detail: conducting explosive interviews with multiple Weinstein victims, and when the Lauer story broke and his termination from NBC came shortly thereafter, Kelly covered it with the same righteous indignation.