{"id":41686,"date":"2025-11-13T05:12:02","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T10:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/?page_id=41686"},"modified":"2025-11-13T05:15:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T10:15:47","slug":"linda-mcmahon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/linda-mcmahon\/","title":{"rendered":"Linda McMahon"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Secretary of Education,<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

CNN\u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

A recent lawsuit alleges Linda McMahon, who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the Department of Education, knowingly enabled the sexual exploitation of children by a World Wrestling Entertainment\u00a0<\/strong>(WWE) employee as early as the 1980s \u2014 allegations she denies.<\/p>\n\n

McMahon is the former CEO of the WWE, which she co-founded with her husband, Vince. As head of the WWE, Linda McMahon oversaw its transformation from a wrestling entertainment company into a publicly traded media empire. She stepped down in 2009 to run for Senate, but she\u00a0<\/strong>lost in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012.<\/p>\n\n

As McMahon \u2014 who co-chairs Trump\u2019s transition team \u2014 vies to be confirmed as Education secretary, a recent lawsuit raises questions about her care for children\u2019s safety at the WWE.<\/p>\n\n

The suit alleges McMahon, her husband, the WWE and TKO Group Holdings, the league\u2019s parent company, knowingly allowed\u00a0<\/em>employee\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Melvin Phillips Jr. to use his position as ringside announcer to sexually exploit children.<\/p>\n\n

The filing\u00a0<\/strong>alleges Phillips would recruit children to work as \u201cRing Boys,\u201d helping him set up and take down wrestling rings at WWE events. However, the job was a guise for sexually exploiting the children, which Phillips would do even in front of wrestlers and executives in the locker area, the lawsuit alleges. He also would often film his sexual abuse, according to the filing.<\/p>\n\n

The suit was filed in October in Baltimore County, Maryland, on behalf of five John Does, who say they were ages 13 to 15 when Phillips met and recruited them to work as \u201cRing Boys.\u201d Each of them say they suffered mental and emotional abuse as a result of the alleged abuse.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cPhillips lured and manipulated the young boys with promises of meeting famous wrestlers and attending the highly popular wrestling shows, experiences that were otherwise unattainable for these kids,\u201d the lawsuit alleges. \u201c(The McMahons, WWE and TKO Holdings) allowed Phillips and others to engage in, and foster, the WWE\u2019s rampant culture of sexual abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The lawsuit claims that the McMahons were negligent as employers and failed to protect the plaintiffs, who are demanding more than $30,000 in damages.<\/p>\n\n

Phillips worked for the WWE in the 1970s, \u201980s and \u201990s as a \u201cprominent ringside announcer and crew chief.\u201d He died in 2012.<\/p>\n\n

Both Linda and Vince McMahon were aware of Phillips\u2019 abuse, the lawsuit alleges. Vince McMahon admitted that he and Linda were aware as early as the early to mid-1980s that Phillips had a \u201cpeculiar and unnatural interest\u201d in young boys, according to the filing.<\/p>\n\n

Laura Brevetti, an attorney for Linda McMahon, called the allegations false.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThis civil lawsuit based upon thirty-plus year-old allegations is filled with scurrilous lies, exaggerations and misrepresentations regarding Linda McMahon,\u201d Brevetti said. \u201cMs. McMahon will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit and without doubt ultimately succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Brevetti also told CNN that Linda and Vince McMahon \u201care separated\u201d and have been \u201capart for some time.\u201d Jessica Rosenberg, an attorney for Vince McMahon, did not respond to CNN\u2019s request for comment for this story. Rosenberg\u00a0said in a previous statement<\/a>\u00a0that the lawsuit\u2019s allegations are false.<\/p>\n\n

The WWE did not immediately respond to CNN\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n\n

Decades of allegations<\/h2>\n\n

Phillips\u2019 alleged abuse at the WWE was reported by the New York Post as early as 1992.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt was common knowledge in the WWE \u2014 among the ring crew, wrestlers, and executives \u2014 that Phillips surrounded himself with a posse of underaged Ring Boys, including when he traveled across state lines and stayed in hotel rooms with the children,\u201d the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n\n

What do you think?<\/strong>Join 385 others in the comments<\/p>\n\n

View Comments<\/a><\/p>\n\n

The McMahons fired Phillips in 1988 after allegations about him sexually exploiting children continued to surface, according to the lawsuit. They \u201crehired him six weeks later on the condition that he \u2018steer clear from kids,\u2019\u201d but he continued\u00a0<\/strong>sexually exploiting young boys with the McMahons\u2019 knowledge, the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cAfter decades of suffering in silence from their childhood trauma, these survivors come forward now to hold Defendants accountable for their conduct in allowing the systemic and pervasive abuse by Philips,\u201d the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n\n

No one has been criminally charged.<\/p>\n\n

In 2023, the Maryland Child Victims Act, which repeals the statute of limitations in certain\u00a0<\/strong>child sexual abuse civil\u00a0<\/strong>lawsuits, became law. The legislation recognizes that \u201csurvivors of childhood sexual abuse often wait years before disclosing the abuse to others due to the psychological and emotional trauma,\u201d said Greg Gutzler, a partner at DiCello Levitt, which is representing the plaintiffs along with Murphy, Falcon and Murphy.<\/p>\n\n

Linda McMahon worked in Trump\u2019s first Cabinet as the administrator of the Small Business Administration before stepping down in 2019 to chair a pro-Trump super PAC. She is also a co-founder and the board chair of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.<\/p>\n\n

Allegations of sex trafficking and abuse have followed Vince McMahon for some time. In 2023, Vince McMahon paid a multimillion-dollar\u00a0settlement\u00a0<\/a>to a former employee who accused him of rape, and he stepped down this year as executive chairman of TK Holdings following allegations of sexual assault and trafficking. He has denied the allegations.<\/p>\n\n

Most recently, Vince McMahon is a subject in a federal criminal investigation and a separate lawsuit in federal court in Connecticut. That lawsuit was put on hold this summer until early December. A criminal investigation around McMahon also exists in New York, though it doesn\u2019t carry legal risk for Linda McMahon, who left the WWE over a decade ago, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation.<\/p>\n\n

A spokesperson for the US Attorney\u2019s Office in the Southern District of New York declined to comment. A lawyer for Vince McMahon declined to comment on the criminal probe.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Secretary of Education, CNN\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 A recent lawsuit alleges Linda McMahon, who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the Department of Education, knowingly enabled the sexual exploitation of children by a World Wrestling Entertainment\u00a0(WWE) employee as early as the 1980s \u2014 allegations she denies. McMahon is the former CEO of the WWE, which she co-founded with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-41686","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41686"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41693,"href":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41686\/revisions\/41693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/herrickhomepage.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}