It has been more than two years since the Washington Post dropped the #MeToo bomb on CBS/PBS anchor Charlie Rose. Since then, the story about Rose has only gotten worse. The Washington Post published a follow up in 2018 involving 27 accusers. The day after that story appeared, three women filed a lawsuit against Rose. He tried to get the lawsuit dismissed but yesterday Fox News reported Rose filed new documents in response to the lawsuit in which he admits to flirting with co-workers:

“Did you ever flirt with Gayle King?” the plaintiffs’ counsel Kenneth Goldberg asked.

“Yes,” Rose answered.

“Did you flirt with Norah O’Donnell?” Goldberg followed.

“Yes,” the disgraced anchor confirmed.

Rose confirmed that his nickname around the office at CBS News was “Charlie f—‘n Rose” and that Gayle King and probably Norah O’Donnell both used it to refer to him. NBC News reports today that Rose also admitted to having multiple relationships with women who worked for him over the years, though he wasn’t specific:

Rose admitted in the deposition, filed in the Supreme Court of the state of New York in Manhattan as part of the suit brought against him by the three former CBS News employees, that he has had romantic relationships with women he worked with over the span of his 45-year career, and told lawyers that he now realizes why they those relationships were “inappropriate.”

“I’m saying inappropriate because the fact that I had relationships with people in the workplace over those 45 years and you know, we have now come to understand and appreciate and had by then that romantic relationships or intimacies were not appropriate in the workplace,” he said, adding, “you know, because there was power and balance,” according to the deposition. Rose declined to go into detail about the specifics of those relationships, including names.

I highlighted one section of the quote above. It is an accurate quote from the court document (page 83), however I wonder if this was transcribed inaccurately. It should probably read “there was power imbalance.”

Rose claimed that he routinely kissed women he knew on the cheek when greeting them. Asked if he also greeted men this way, he replied “I’m sure there are.” But he wasn’t able to name any men he’d kissed.

The deposition makes for interesting reading. His attorney objects on nearly every page to questions being asked and frequently tells him not to answer. At several points the attorneys themselves are arguing strenuously over what should and should not be considered a fair question. The attorney representing the women suing Rose promises to ask the judge to compel him to answer at a later date. It’s not clear how many more months this court battle will drag on but Rose is clearly fighting the claims of inappropriate behavior and resisting attempts to pin him down about his behavior toward specific women.

This report is from last September: