After lashing Michael Bloomberg over his employee NDAs in the Democratic debate Wednesday night, Elizabeth Warren has followed up with her own simple solution.
The Massachusetts senator decided to make it easy for Bloomberg to release several women from non-disclosure agreements they have with the billionaire businessman: She drew up a handy contract herself.
“I used to teach contract law,” Warren told a roomful of voters at a CNN town hall in Nevada Thursday night, holding a copy of the contract. “And I thought I would make this easy. I wrote up a release and covenant not to sue, and all that Mayor Bloomberg has to do is download it – I’ll text it – sign it, and then the women, or men, will be free to speak and tell their own stories.”
At least 17 cases of sexual harassment opened against Bloomberg LP over the past 30 years, including three specifically naming Mike Bloomberg, according to ABC News. Among those accusations, Bloomberg allegedly told a group of women to line up and give an engaged co-worker a blowjob as a wedding present, regularly called his female colleagues a “nice piece of ass” and once told an employee to kill her baby shortly after she announced her pregnancy.
The candidate tried his best to defend the NDAs during Wednesday’s debate, saying that the agreements were signed consensually, but the attempts fell flat. The former New York mayor stumbled when Warren pressed him to release the women in question from the agreements so they would be free to share their side of what happened.
“None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told,” Bloomberg said, to a chorus of jeers from the audience.
Bloomberg has become a target for the other seven remaining candidates in the race. On Wednesday, his first time on the debate stage after his millions in ads got him to the qualifying threshold, he was battered for his past positions and remarks, including defending stop and frisk policing, misogyny, his old ties to the Republican Party, and using his wealth to surge in the primary.
Cover: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a Democratic presidential primary debate Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020, in Las Vegas, hosted by NBC News and MSNBC. (AP Photo/John Locher)
