Mike Bloomberg Has Been Accused of Having a ‘Woman Problem’—Here’s What That Means

Going into the Democratic debate in Nevada ahead of the state’s caucus last week, it looked like it could be Mike Bloomberg’s night. The former mayor of New York City and billionaire businessman had gone from rumored candidate to serious contender in a matter of weeks, thanks in no small part to the almost half a billion dollars he spent of his own personal fortune on the race. Bloomberg—who hadn’t appeared in a single debate until then—started to look as though he had a real shot at the nomination.

But within the event’s first 20 minutes, an alternative future took shape—one in which the 78-year-old might exit the stage, undergo a legal name change, and hire a number of armed guards to keep him safe from Senator Elizabeth Warren. Warren opened the debate with these words:

“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians,’” she said. “And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump; I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”

If Bloomberg imagined that moment would be the first and last he would spend looking like an unwitting participant in the ice-bucket challenge, he was to be disappointed. Like a frat made up of Little League dads and WWE women, the Democratic candidates onstage seemed to land a series of blows on Bloomberg just to pass the time. Their attacks focused on his administration’s policy of stop-and-frisk, which disproportionately targeted black and Latino New Yorkers, his failure to release his full financial records, his damning comments on the 2008 financial crisis, and the accusation that his massive spending on campaign ads, rather than policy or charisma, purchased his appearance onstage. (Bloomberg defended stop-and-frisk as recently as 2015, specifically championing the fact that the policy resulted in the arrests of children in minority neighborhoods.) But the deepest slashes came when Bloomberg was confronted about accusations over his and his business’s treatment of women.

Though Bloomberg’s main function throughout the debate was to serve as a business-casual piñata, things became somehow worse for him about an hour into the night, when NBC News’s Hallie Jackson asked him about the sexual harassment and gender discrimination allegations leveled against him by former employees. “I have no tolerance for the kind of behavior the Me Too movement has exposed,” Bloomberg said, pointing out that 70% of the workers his foundation employees are women and that his deputy mayor was a woman.

“I hope you heard his defense: ‘I’ve been nice to some women,’” Warren said, asking Bloomberg point-blank how many of his former female employees had settled sexual harassment and gender discrimination lawsuits with him, leaving them bound by nondisclosure agreements that prevent them from speaking out now. Bloomberg refused to give a number, saying, “None of them accuse me of anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told.” (Bloomberg himself has not been accused of sexual assault, but two of the suits are from women who alleged that they were sexually assaulted by other employees while they worked at Bloomberg LP, and that their cases were mishandled.)

What followed had the combined television appeal of a Bachelor proposal and a high-speed car chase. Warren, acting as a cross between an elite trial lawyer and a trained assassin, cross-examined Bloomberg on his refusal to release untold numbers of women from the muzzle of nondisclosure agreements, which Bloomberg faintly insisted the women “wanted.” (As former vice president Biden pointed out—that’s not what a nondisclosure agreement is.)

On February 21, after further public pressure from Warren, Bloomberg announced in a statement that his company will agree to release from nondisclosure agreements three women who had accused him of sexually inappropriate comments. He also announced that under his leadership, the company will no longer seek confidentiality agreements for sexual harassment or misconduct issues. “I want my company to be a model for women seeking opportunity and support in their careers,” Bloomberg said, according to the statement.

As Warren points out, we don’t know how many times Mike Bloomberg has been accused of harassment. Business Insider notes that “nearly 40 employment lawsuits from 65 plaintiffs have been lodged against Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg personally in state and federal courts since 1996, the majority of which deal with discrimination over gender, race, and disability status, as well as pregnancy discrimination and wage theft.” We know that hundreds of women—and some men—have reported in depositions that Bloomberg created a sexually hostile work environment at his company that targeted female employees. And though his spokespeople have pushed the narrative that these accusations are ancient history, Business Insider notes that eight of the lawsuits date to the years since the former mayor returned to his job as president and CEO of the company in 2014.

We know that after one of his employees sued, alleging she was raped by a coworker on a business trip, Bloomberg said during a deposition, according to the Village Voice, that he wouldn’t believe that the rape occurred unless he heard it from “an unimpeachable third-party witness.” We know that Bloomberg cast doubt on the sexual harassment allegations against Charlie Rose, and said that the issues of the #MeToo movement should be left to the court system. We know that at a party in 2013, when a journalist tried to talk to Bloomberg about gun-violence prevention, the former mayor pointed at a woman standing nearby in a gown and said, “Look at the ass on her.” (Bloomberg denies that he said this.)

The decades and decades of claims about Bloomberg’s treatment of women are a grab bag of sorts: on-the-record sexist comments next to allegations of shocking verbal harassment next to court cases over the way his company handled rape accusations of its employees. The allegations against Bloomberg concerning sexual and gender discrimination have something in common with the allegations of sexual harassment and sexual violence against Donald Trump—there are so many that it’s difficult to keep track of all of them.

Let’s give it a try.

The booklet

In 1990, Elisabeth DeMarse, the chief marketing officer at Bloomberg’s company, celebrated his birthday by gifting him a booklet of quotes allegedly said by their boss, entitled “The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg.” She added an editor’s note that read, “Yes, these are all actual quotes. No, nothing has been embellished or exaggerated.” The aphorisms included the following:

“What do I want? I want an exclusive, 10-year contract, an automatic extension, and I want you to pay me. And I want a blow job from [name redacted]. Have you seen [name redacted] lately? Not bad for fifty.”

On Bloomberg, referring to the Bloomberg Terminal, the company’s computer business software: “[Computers] will do everything, including give you a blow job. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.”

“If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s.”

“The royal family—what a bunch of misfits—a gay, an architect, that horsey-faced lesbian, and a kid who gave up Koo Stark for some fat broad.”

"A good salesperson asks for the order. It’s like the guy who goes into a bar, and walks up to every gorgeous girl there, and says ‘Do you want to fuck?’ He gets turned down a lot—but he gets fucked a lot too!”

“You know why computers will never take the place of people? Because a computer would say that the sex of the person giving you a blow job doesn’t matter.”

Bloomberg has not commented on the booklet, though a spokesperson for the candidate told the Washington Post, “Mike simply did not say the things somebody wrote in this gag gift.” He added, “Mike openly admits his words have not always aligned with his values and the way he has led his life and some of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong.”

DeMarse has also not commented on the booklet—she has signed a nondisclosure agreement.

“Kill it.”

Sekiko Sakai Garrison, a Bloomberg employee from 1989 until her firing in 1995, who led the sales of Bloomberg Terminals, sued Bloomberg and his company after being fired, according to documents published by the Washington Post. She claimed in her lawsuit that male Bloomberg employees, from the CEO on down, “engaged in a pattern and practice of sexual harassment, sexual degradation of women, and discrimination,” that she and other saleswomen were encouraged by Bloomberg and other male employees to wear “sexually provocative” clothing, and that she endured personal comments about her Japanese nationality.

According to the suit, when Garrison told Bloomberg of her pregnancy in 1995, Bloomberg told her to “kill it!” and that he repeated the comment when she asked him to, sure she had misheard it. Another former Bloomberg staffer, David Zielenziger, told the Washington Post that he heard Bloomberg say, “Are you going to kill it?” to Garrison, in response to her pregnancy. “He talked kind of crudely about women all the time,” Zielenziger said. Another Bloomberg employee confirmed to the paper that Garrison reported the interaction to him at the time, though he didn’t overhear it personally.

In the lawsuit, Garrison claimed that she had heard Bloomberg make a series of similarly inappropriate statements:

To a female employee after a disappointing business meeting:
“If [the clients] told you to lay down and strip naked so they could fuck you, would you do that too?”

To a group of female employees after a male employee announced his engagement:
“All of you girls line up to give him a blow job as a wedding present.”

To Garrison, when she wasn’t included in a photo opportunity:
“Why didn’t they ask you to be in the picture? I guess they saw your face.”

To a female employee struggling to secure child care:
“It’s a fucking baby! All you need is some black who doesn't even have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building.”

Bloomberg denied the allegations and said that he was cleared by a polygraph test, but he did not release the test. Bloomberg and Garrison reached a settlement. She has signed a nondisclosure agreement.

“I’d like to do that piece of meat.”

Mary Ann Olszewski sued Bloomberg LP in 1996, according to documents published by Business Insider. She claimed in the suit that “Bloomberg, through its male managers and employees from chief executive officer Michael Bloomberg on down, engaged in a pattern and practice of sexual harassment and sexual degradation of women.” In the suit she alleges that she heard Bloomberg make comments including “I’d like to do that piece of meat,” and that Bloomberg repeatedly tried to look up her skirt. Olszewski’s suit also seems to corroborate Garrison’s allegation, when it cites Bloomberg saying, “Kill it,” to Garrison when he learned of her pregnancy. But the most significant subject of the suit is her claim that she was raped by another Bloomberg employee during a trip she made on behalf of the company. (Garrison’s suit also alleges that Olszewski was sexually harassed and raped.)

According to the Olszewski’s suit, she reported the rape and asked to be reassigned but was fired shortly after. In a deposition excerpted in the Village Voice, Bloomberg cast doubt on Olszewski’s story, saying, “My personal belief is that we have an allegation without proof.” He said that “satisfactory proof” that Olszewski's allegation was “genuine” would be “an unimpeachable third-party witness.” When pressed to explain how there could possibly be such a witness, he said, “There are times when three people are together.”

According to the Village Voice, the case was dismissed after Olszewski’s attorney missed a filing deadline.

“Drugged and raped”

Margaret Doe is the pseudonym of a woman who sued Bloomberg and Bloomberg LP in 2016, according to documents published by Business Insider. According to the suit, she was “drugged and raped” and “tormented” by another Bloomberg employee. Doe sued Bloomberg as well as the company, which, according to the complaint, had a rampant “drug culture,” and she further accused Bloomberg of encouraging “sexist and sexually charged behavior.” Bloomberg, Bloomberg LP, and the employee have all denied Doe’s allegations, and a judge removed Bloomberg himself from the suit.

Michael Bloomberg—a New Yorker, a billionaire, a businessman—has billed himself in election materials as a Good Guy version of Trump. He even spent campaign ads skewering Trump for calling Hillary Clinton “such a nasty woman.” Maybe soon Trump will run ads featuring Bloomberg’s on-the-record comments on a random woman’s ass.

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.

Originally Appeared on Glamour