Leslie Moonves, the CBS Corporation’s former CEO, resigned in 2018 amid allegations of sexual harassment… and he saw his scandals continue from there.
Since 2017, Moonves has faced allegations of colluding with Los Angeles officials to obtain information from a confidential document: a police report filed by a survivor of sexual assault.
As part of a settlement with the city, Moonves agreed to pay a fine of $11,250… but the city just rejected his proposed settlement Wednesday.
Staffers at the L.A. Ethics Commission negotiated the proposed settlement with Moonves, but according to the L.A. Times, the city still needed approval from the unpaid panel overseeing the commission.
All four volunteers on the panel rejected the proposal for an $11,250 fine. They wanted a harsher penalty for Moonves.
Ethics Commission President Jeffrey Daar cited the “extremely egregious nature of the allegations” when pushing for a more punitive settlement.
Reportedly, Moonves had already sent a cashier’s check, to be returned after the panel’s vote.
Moonves stands accused of three city-level violations, and his representatives have remained silent on the Ethics Commission’s decision to toss the proposal. “He violated City law by aiding and abetting the disclosure and misuse of confidential information,” a proposed settlement said, according to Deadline.
However, Moonves acknowledged tapping Capt. Cory Palka of the Los Angeles Police Department in 2017 to get details of the police report, according to documents released Friday.
Palka retired in 2021 after 35 years in local police. He had previously provided private security for Moonves between 2008 and 2014 at the Grammy Awards on CBS.
According to the documents, Moonves tapped Palka to obtain an unredacted copy of the police report, complete with the accuser’s phone number and home address.
In 2017, Palka notified CBS about the ethics complaint against Moonves, and according to the documents, Moonves met him at a restaurant to discuss how to quash it.
L.A. County prosecutors declined to charge Moonves with sexual assault in 2018, citing the statute of limitations on the 30-year-old incidents. Moonves denied the allegations of sex crimes.
Now, despite the CBS executive’s attempt to quash the ethics complaint, city officials are finally closing in.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.