REPORT: AILES ASKED PUBLISHER TO LIE

Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes asked then-HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan to lie to federal investigators who were vetting Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner for the job of secretary of Homeland Security in 2004, according to court documents disclosed today (Thursday) by the New York Times. Regan, who was fired by parent News Corp in 2006, had claimed in an earlier wrongful termination lawsuit that a News Corp executive had asked her to lie to the investigators about her affair with Kerik, but she did not mention the executive’s name. But, according to the Times, she had taped her telephone conversation with Ailes, something that might have prompted News Corp to settle her lawsuit for $10.75 million in 2007. Word of the existence of the tape recording, the Times said, comes in a lawsuit filed by Regan’s former lawyers who have accused her of firing them on the eve of the settlement so that she would not have to pay them a 25-percent contingency fee.