Notorious anti-Trump actor Robert De Niro has been slapped with a lawsuit in federal court by a former employee accusing him of “gratuitous unwanted physical contact” and making “sexually charged comments.”
“The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, escalates a legal battle between De Niro and the former employee, Graham Chase Robinson,” reports NBC News. “De Niro’s company, Canal Productions, filed a lawsuit against Robinson in August, accusing her of ‘breaching her fiduciary duties,’ including running up expenses on a company card, and binge-watching shows on Netflix during work hours.”
“In his original filing on Aug. 17 in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the actor sought $6 million from Robinson for allegedly charging hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal expenses on a company card, transferring millions of company frequent flyer miles to her own account, and ‘binge-watching astounding hours of TV shows on Netflix’ including 55 episodes of ‘Friends’ during a four-day period in January, among other allegations in the suit seen by NBC News,” the report continued.
In Robinson’s suit, she claims that De Niro essentially tried to sabotage her with false claims about her workplace conduct in order to prevent her from bringing a discrimination suit against the company. After resigning from her position, she claims that he “retaliated and struck first” by concocting “false allegations designed to inhibit [her] from pursuing her claims, destroy her reputation, and obliterate her job prospects.”
“Robert De Niro is someone who has clung to old mores,” says the complaint. “He does not accept the idea that men should treat women as equals. He does not care that gender discrimination in the workplace violates the law. Ms. Robinson is a casualty of this attitude.”
Robinson claims De Niro engaged in numerous forms of sexual and professional improprieties while under his employment, which included asking her to scratch his back, button his shirts, wash his bedsheets, and vacuum his apartment. On top of that, Robinson claims that De Niro would often verbally abuse her while intoxicated, demeaning her with words like “bitch,” “brat,” or similarly “vulgar, inappropriate and gendered comments.” She also alleges that he specifically violated the Equal Pay Act by underpaying her wage based solely on her gender, allegedly implying once “that a male breadwinner deserved more pay.”
Once, De Niro allegedly left Robinson a voicemail message calling her a “spoiled brat” while threatening to fire her.
“How dare you [expletive] disrespect me,” he allegedly said. “You’re [expletive] history.”
“He would joke with Ms. Robinson about his Viagra prescription,” the complaint continues. “De Niro smirked to Ms. Robinson about his young paramour, who was around Ms. Robinson’s age. De Niro directed Ms. Robinson to imagine him on the toilet. He told Ms. Robinson that doing manual labor would ‘make a man out of you.’ De Niro suggested that Ms. Robinson could get pregnant using sperm from her (married) male co-worker.”
Robert De Niro has denied all the claims made against him, calling them “beyond absurd.”
“The allegations made by Graham Chase Robinson against Robert De Niro are beyond absurd,” said De Niro’s attorney, Tom Harvey.