A former Fox News executive filed a lawsuit saying the company made him a scapegoat to mitigate bad publicity about sexual misconduct.

Francisco Cortes, VP of Fox News Latino, was accused of sexual assault by a Fox News contributor. Tamara Holder alleged Cortes tried to get her to perform oral sex on him. Later, Fox reportedly settled with Holder for $2.5 million and participated in a joint statement where Holder said she reported a sexual assault, the network investigated and took action. According to Cortes' lawsuit, that statement breached his confidentiality agreement with Fox which also prevented him from defending himself.

The complaint says, "Mr. Cortes has served as a useful and relatively inexpensive 'Patsy' for Fox to help it demonstrate that it has aggressively handled sexual harassment complaints." Fox calls the lawsuit, "frivolous and without merit".

Cortes maintains he never sexually assaulted Holder. He had been with Fox for 17 years.

h/t New York Times