‘It’s Guilty Until Proven Innocent’: Portnoy Blasts ‘Woke Cancel Culture,’ Denies Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, ripped allegations he choked and filmed women without consent during sex.

Portnoy appeared on Fox News Monday night for an interview with host Tucker Carlson. The sports media mogul slammed Business Insider over a report the outlet published last week detailing several accusations of sexual misconduct against Portnoy.

“They won’t even discuss it. They print and run. They print and run. It’s disgusting and it’s character assassination,” Portnoy said. “My lawyers have said just let it go, it’ll go away. I’m not going to let it go because this is, this behavior, I’ve never been attacked like this. I’ve been attacked for two decades, but never escalated to this length and, frankly, it’s scary. I didn’t know that you could do this.”

Reminder I will go on any show that invites me on. I want to scream from the rooftops about what is happening here. This shouldn’t be political. Everybody should be outraged pic.twitter.com/MbGIk0SZGA

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) November 9, 2021

Business Insider published a report last week detailing two women’s accusations that Portnoy choked and hurt them during a consensual hook-up. Portnoy, who claims to have identified the women referenced in the article, pushed back against the allegations in a video posted online on Thursday.

The women making the allegations, both college-aged, did not consent to Business Insider using their real names, claiming to fear retribution from Portnoy. The first allegation, brought by a woman identified as Madison, said that Portnoy flew her to his house for a visit lasting a few days. During her time with the Barstool founder, she said they had sex once and the experience left her feeling like “a human sex doll.”

Texting a friend two days after the episode, she told a friend that Portnoy was rough and compared the feeling of sex that night to rape. She said she screamed in pain for Portnoy to stop, but he did not. She slept on the couch for the rest of her stay, she said.

In a video posted to Twitter on Thursday, Portnoy said that her version of events was “not true.” Portnoy was able to identify the girl because she said she slept on the couch for the rest of her visit. That was one of the few details about her story that Portnoy said was accurate.

“I can say this unequivocally, she came, she flew, we did have pizza, hung out, hooked up. At no point during it, at no point was it not 100% consensual. At no point did she ask me to stop. At no point did either of us think something unseemly happened. There was no weirdness after. It was totally fine, normal interaction. Sexual, 100% consensual,” Portnoy said.

The reason the woman slept on the couch, Portnoy said, was because they were not getting along. He added that he remembered she wanted to continue hooking up, but after having significant disagreements about life, he realized the relationship would not work.

“After we hooked up, we were hanging out more and it just became one of those situations where we disagree basically on everything from, you know, is it raining or sunny out. It was just oil and vinegar. Two people who did not get along, did not see the world the same way, and that is why she slept on the couch,” Portnoy said.

He said the entire situation was a “he said, she said” and that no matter what he claimed, he could never disprove her version of events. He did unequivocally deny her version, however.

The second accusation came from a woman identified as Allison who claimed to have met Portnoy at his house in Nantucket. She messaged him over social media and asked to meet with him, and the two agreed to meet at his house. They hung out by his pool, then had sex.

Allison said the sex was rough, and she said that Portnoy choked and filmed her without permission. She said she left Portnoy’s house and was hospitalized after becoming suicidal several days later. Allison’s mother called the police and asked them to post an officer outside of Portnoy’s house. “Go put somebody outside his door because you’re going to see every day there’s some young girl being dropped off,” Allison’s mother said.

Portnoy expressed condolences for Allison if she was so depressed after hooking up with him that she had to be hospitalized. He again denied the allegations against him, however, and produced messages from the girl who he believed to be the one in the article asking to meet up with him again.

He said he was able to identify Allison because, contrary to what the Business Insider report depicted, Portnoy does not throw parties often or have people over at his house. The list of possibilities of who Allison could be was small. Portnoy showed messages from the woman continuing to talk to him after they hooked up and telling Portnoy that she had bragged about the experience to her friends.

“For eight months, those are the two accusations, sexual in nature, that were dug up against me. The first one, I’ll never be able to prove my side of the story. Ever. It’s a he said, she said. I swear to God on my life I am telling the truth. The second one, at least I have something to back it up. I don’t know what else to do,” Portnoy said, after giving his version of events.

Portnoy went on to say that for months he had been receiving messages from women that he has been associated with telling him of a reporter at Business Insider asking leading questions about Portnoy’s sex life. “This reporter had an agenda from day one,” he said.

“The woke cancel culture wants to cancel me. This is the next escalation,” he said. “I’m scared now. I’m scared because they’re asking for more. It’s like they are asking the internet, ‘tell us bad stories about Dave Portnoy.’ Well, guess what, a lot of f***ing people hate me. I guarantee you this, they’ll never be able to prove anything, nothing, because nothing has ever happened.”

“But I can’t stop a he said, she said so, yeah, it’s f***ing scary and it sucks and it’s sad that that’s the world we live in. This isn’t a court of law until it’s innocent until proven guilty,” he continued. “No charges ever have been filed, probably won’t unless I’m provoking right now, but there’s no way to do it because I’ve never done anything. But with media and Business Insider, which doesn’t give a f*** about destroying lives, or who they’re affecting right now, or their reputation. It’s guilty until proven innocent.”

“It’s actually f***ing scary because people can basically say whatever they want and, like, this is going to be the new narrative, ‘Dave Portnoy is a rapist.’ It is 100% false. There is not an ounce of credibility to it,” Portnoy said.

My Response To The Business Insider Hit Piece That Has Been 8 Months In The Making (Part 1/2) pic.twitter.com/gwrO07uIEE

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) November 4, 2021