This Jan. 30, 2017 photo shows Fox News Channel chief news anchor Shepard Smith on The Fox News Deck before his “Shepard Smith Reporting” program, in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Up front, let me say I’m just presenting this in the spirit of the #OldRules, which said that it isn’t the strength of the evidence but the seriousness of the allegation that creates the demand for an investigation, and the #NewRules, which say that you gotta believe everyone who makes an allegation of sexual assault because people just don’t lie about that.

BigLeaguePolitics is running an audio tape of a guy who says he was sexually assaulted by FoxNews anchor Shepard Smith. BigLeaguePolitics, if you’ll recall, was the site that broke the news of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s blackface picture in his medical school yearbook. For a day or so, no one would touch the story because the site was unknown. My feeling is that, based on that episode, the site has earned some respect.

This is the story:

John Doe #1 says he met up with Smith at the now defunct Nation bar in Manhattan, a spot Smith used to frequent to play Golden Tee and hang out when he was not on the Fox airwaves. “I wake up, and Shepard is on top of me, like, in a towel or a bathrobe. And he’s got his tongue down my throat and his hands all over me. Completely uninvited. I mean, I gave him no signal. There was nothing,” John Doe #1 says in the interview — excerpts of which are presented in audio form above. Latest: The Smithsonian Won’t Accept Trump’s Portrait. Here’s Why. “I had also volunteered to sleep in the spare, so it wasn’t — I never invited myself to his bedroom,” John Doe #1 said. “I pushed him off. I was like, ‘Dude what are you doing?’ And he’s like, ‘what you don’t like it?’ There was like this, kind of like No!, and he kept going, he kept pushing. Like, pushing his hands on all these spots,” John Doe #1 said. “He was just on top of me,” John Doe #1 said, calling the experience “definitely shocking.” John Doe #1 noted that “he finally stopped, but it took a lot of — it wasn’t just an immediate no, and then everything was like, so sorry.” John Doe #1 said that Shep Smith lunged at him “three or four more times” after the initial attack. John Doe #1 noted another moment in the kitchen, while John Doe #1 was getting ready to leave, when Smith grabbed him and put his tongue down his throat after the initial incident.

Is this true? I have no way of knowing. It is hard to see BigLeaguePolitics having an interest in running their rep into the ground but one is hesitant to get too far out over your skis on it because the guy making the accusation may or may not be on the level. Regardless, a lot of investigations have been launched over a lot less. The test will be what does Fox do with this as it seems that Smith is slated to become the new face of a center-left FoxNews. Will they investigate it? Or will they sandbag it?

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