On Wednesday, Janel Grant publicly addressed for the first time the anonymous emails that led to WWE’s 2022 Board of Directors’ investigation into Vince McMahon’s conduct.
In an Instagram post, Grant denied any role in sending the emails and denied certain assertions about her that the emails made. The emails have been included in exhibits that are a part of the WWE merger lawsuit, which was settled in principle recently.
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The three anonymous emails were sent to various WWE board members on March 30, April 11, and April 14, 2022. They described alleged sexual misconduct by McMahon and former WWE executive John Laurinaitis.
The first email makes statements about the anonymous sender’s connection to Grant, alluding to living “homeless” and “on percs,” the latter an apparent reference to the prescription pain medication Percocet. The anonymous emailer says, with Grant, they got “cleaned up together.” Grant denies those claims, saying she never lived on the street, nor had an addiction to Percocet.
“There is no person who knew me in life pre-dating 2019 who could write this,” Grant wrote in a note posted to Instagram on Wednesday.
“Reading these for the first time took a sledgehammer to my mental health,” Grant wrote. “I feel like a Taylor Swift lyric and wonder if someone caged me just to call me crazy.”
The exact email address the messages were sent from is redacted in the court exhibits, but the emails appear to have been sent from a ProtonMail user with the handle “drosen77”. The person represents themselves as a friend of Grant.
In the months after the emails were sent, the Wall Street Journal broke the story in June 2022 that WWE’s board was investigating alleged misconduct and a related $3 million nondisclosure agreement McMahon made with an employee who we now know to be Grant. The Journal referenced portions of the anonymous emails. Subsequent reporting by the Journal that year uncovered three additional NDAs and millions more in payments that should have been recorded in WWE’s financial reporting filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The emails are partly redacted, including apparent uses of Grant’s name, although she has been public with her allegations. Identifying information of NDA counterparties was broadly protected in the merger case. The identities of other women who agreed to settlements with McMahon are not known to the public.
The first email was sent on March 30, 2022, at 8:46 am, just days before that year’s WrestleMania events. The message used the subject line, “vince mcmahon chief chairman behavior”. Containing many spelling and grammar errors, the first email reads:
To Whom it May Concern,
My friend worked at WWE. She is [REDACTED] and we live homeless for a while on percs etc. Etc. We went to get cleaned up together and she met chief chairman Vince McMahon not too long after that. Vince McMahon gave her a job and paid her one hundred thousand dollars every year until he started fucking her then he paid her two hundred thousand dollar a year he is 80 years old and took my friends soul just because he could. Vince McMahon gave her like a toy his friend John who works at WWE to John is 70 and her boss to. My friend was so scared so she quit after Vince McMahon and lawyer Jerry paid her millions of dollars to shut up I am going to the media as well I don’t want anything from from I just want the world to know the truth about this pervert.
The reference to “lawyer Jerry” apparently refers to longtime WWE attorney Jerry McDevitt. The next email makes it more apparent that the “John” referred to is talent relations executive John Laurinaitis. However, Laurinaitis was 59 years old at the time, not 70. McMahon’s is also off but closer. He was 76 at the time, and is referred to as being age 80.
Grant wrote on Instagram, responding to the first email: “What never happened: No living on the street. No addictions to ‘percs.’ No rehab.”
Her post continues: “The spin: A friend? I see a trick to steer public perception. Homeless? I shared my background at work. Rehab? I shared my experience with grief counseling at work. Addiction? I shared that quitting nicotine lozenges wasn’t fun at work.”
The second of the three emails was sent twelve days later, on April 11, 2022, at 11:08 pm.
The board of directors for major company like wwe does not care that the old founder and his old sidekick johnny Laronitis took advantage of a [REDACTED] who only worked hard? She would be angry that I wrote this but I want no money. I am sending this out to your stock holders tomorrow and to all lawyers my friend worked with. The lawyers knows of the settlements investigate and you will see WWE paid for her silence. [REDCATED] is her name. Very good lady. Treated like an animal by Vince Mcmahon and Johnny Loronitis.
The last of the three messages was sent three days later and seems to refer to interactions the emailer was purportedly having with media outlet Deadspin. Deadspin isn’t known to have broken information about this story at the time. It’s unknown if the emailer actually contacted the outlet.
Deadspin is surprised that board of directors has not checked vince mcmahon s phone which will show all of his hurtful pictures back and forth to [REDACTED] these include pictures of his privates to a 25 year old employee and them in sex together and with Johnny in sex acts with her. Gross old men abusing a 25 year old.
Grant was 41 years old at the time, rather than 25, as the email states.
“I’m pretty sick over whether this is implying a revenge porn situation and whether it extends to Deadspin,” Grant wrote on her post on Wednesday. “I’m sick over whether this is implying I was being filmed and didn’t know it. I’m sick over whatever it is that I don’t know.”
Grant is the plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit in federal court in Connecticut that alleges she was sex trafficked and sexually abused by McMahon; allegations he denies.
In a second post, published on the same day, Grant shares excerpts of transcripts of depositions with WWE President Nick Khan and former executive Frank Riddick, testimony they provided as part of the merger case.
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Khan testified about the internal reaction when the emails were received. Khan was an executive as well as a member of the company’s board of directors at the time.
“[T]he reaction to this one [the first email, received on March 30, 2022] — there’s a lot of passionate wrestling fans out there — and we get e-mails that are, you know, sort of a little erratic all the time, sometimes threatening to — you know, myself or colleagues,” Khan said in his deposition last December, the transcript of which is a publicly filed exhibit in the merger case.
Possibly related to that notion, WWE is occasionally named as a defendant in lawsuits that are written by the plaintiffs themselves, who appear to make incomprehensible or erratic claims.
“Upon reading the first e-mail, it felt to me like it was more like that,” Khan testified. “I didn’t — it didn’t register to be real in my mind.”
A plaintiff’s attorney took note that the first email refers to Grant’s salary and questioned Khan about that, asking him if he signed off on a promotion that took her salary from $100,000 to $200,000 — a detail the first email mentions.
“I signed off on her promotion,” Khan stated. “I don’t recall the exact numbers.”
The deposition transcripts redact apparent uses of Grant’s name and certain other portions of the testimony.
“When you read the first e-mail, did you understand or believe it was a reference to [REDACTED]?” the attorney asked Khan.
Khan responded: “I didn’t know who it was referring to. And part of it is my understanding is [REDACTED] is not a [REDACTED]. So no, I don’t recall thinking this is [REDACTED].”
Khan then responded to a question about his memory of what transpired between the first email on March 30 and the second one on April 11.
“It felt to me that the — the board members who received it, interpreted it similar to how I interpreted it. I don’t recall anything happening after the first email.”
Khan testified, however, that the second email felt much more real.
“I think because it listed her name and I knew who she was. I know who she is,” Khan said. “It made it not seem like a fanatic wrestling fan.”
“I remember it became a serious matter after receiving the second e-mail,” Khan stated in his testimony.
“Once we determined that [REDCATED] I asked Frank Riddick [WWE Chief Financial Officer at the time] to check if any payments had been made by WWE to [REDACTED] other than, you know, normal payroll,” Khan said. He testified he also checked with Riddick about whether WWE’s human resources department had ever received a complaint made by the person whose name is redacted but is apparently Grant.
After the third email made graphic references to sexual acts involving McMahon and Laurinaitis, Khan stated the response was:
“Full investigation launched by the independent board members, and the matter was as serious as I had seen any matter being taken.”
Khan’s further testimony on this subject is more difficult to follow as redactions in the transcript become more frequent.
Riddick testified that he was among the addressees of the anonymous emails. In his deposition conducted last October, Riddick said he doesn’t know how the anonymous sender knew his correct email address.
Through questioning from the merger lawsuit plaintiffs’ attorney, Riddick said the board, in their investigation, tried to determine who sent the emails, but he didn’t know whether they made any determination about who sent them.
Riddick said his initial reaction to the first email was that it was an attempt to extort money from the company. But after the second email, sent on April 11, Riddick said, “Because of the — as the information got more specific, I think we — I realized and I think — you know, I won’t speak for others but I realized that this — this was not a scam, that this was real.”
Riddick said he contacted WWE’s general counsel, who, at the time of the first email, on March 30, 2022, may have been Samira Shah.
WWE issued a press release on April 7, 2022, announcing that Elisabeth Collins had been named the new general counsel and that Shah was leaving the company.
Grant’s post frames the timing of the turnover of WWE’s general counsel position as conspicuous, and shows a screenshot of an article from Law.com that alludes to Shah’s exit from the company under “murky circumstances.”
