Why Trump nominee Linda McMahon was named in child sexual abuse case in Maryland
Baltimore — When Donald Trump first considered longtime wrestling executive Linda McMahon for a Cabinet role, the team behind the president-elect’s vetting process wrote out a series of questions she might address under a headline titled “political vulnerabilities.”
The document, obtained and published by the news organization Axios in 2019, noted “numerous complaints of sexual abuse” that World Wrestling Entertainment faced during her time at the company.
“Is it possible,” Trump’s team posed, “current or former employees of the WWE could elevate new sexual assault accusations from their tenure at your company if you were to receive a prominent public position?”
McMahon was never asked about the widespread, decades-old allegations during a 2017 confirmation hearing. She went on to lead the Small Business Administration for two years before stepping down to support Trump, both within and outside of his campaigns.
Now, as Trump’s pick to become the next education secretary, McMahon is at the center of a lawsuit filed in Baltimore County with new claims that she and her husband, Vince McMahon, permitted an environment at their company that led to the sexual abuse of boys in Maryland and elsewhere.
“Linda McMahon was in the thick of it, acting as Vince’s wife, confidante, co-leader in running the business, and the leader in trying to conceal the sordid underbelly of WWE’s sexual abuse culture,” lawyers for five unidentified men wrote in a complaint filed in late October.
The suit alleges the McMahons and their company knowingly allowed Melvin Phillips, a ringside announcer, to prey on boys — traveling with them across state lines to wrestling events as they set up the rings for matches and abused them in hotels and dressing rooms.
Allegations about Phillips first became public in the early 1990s, though he was never criminally charged and died in 2012.
The suit was filed in Maryland now because the men came forward, some of the alleged abuse occurred in the state, and the 2023 landmark Child Victims Act eliminated the statute of limitations and allowed previously time-barred claims to be filed in court.
“The Child Victims Act is designed to do exactly this, to give survivors of child sexual abuse an avenue for seeking justice in the courts,” said Robert Jenner, an attorney who represents child sexual abuse victims.
Maryland one of WWE’s ‘key locations’ early in the McMahons’ reign
The law’s constitutionality is pending before the Maryland Supreme Court. Its enactment unleashed numerous lawsuits, with some of the most high-profile coming against the Archdiocese of Washington and the Key School in Annapolis — both of which are at the center of appeals on the law’s legitimacy — and the state Department of Juvenile Services.
Unlike the local institutions and agencies targeted under the law, WWE and its parent company TKO Group Holdings are not based in or near Maryland, and none of the five men who filed the suit are Maryland residents, according to the complaint.
But the complaint details each man’s claims of abuse that occurred as they traveled with Phillips in Maryland, including in and around Baltimore and in Landover. The state was “one of the company’s key locations from the earliest days of the McMahons’ ownership of the WWE,” and “a substantial part of the events giving rise to” the claims happened in Baltimore County, the filing states.
The men are represented by the Baltimore-based personal injury firm Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, but the lead attorney is Greg Gutzler, a partner at the Washington, D.C.-based firm DiCello Levitt.
Gutzler referred to the Child Victims Act in a statement when asked by The Sun for comment about why the firm chose Maryland. He said the law recognized “that survivors of childhood sexual abuse often wait years before disclosing the abuse to others due to the psychological and emotional trauma they have experienced.”
Linda McMahon’s attorney, meanwhile, used the decades lapsed since the alleged abuse occurred to reject the claims.
“This civil lawsuit based upon thirty-plus year-old allegations is filled with scurrilous lies, exaggerations, and misrepresentations regarding Linda McMahon,” lawyer Laura A. Brevetti said in a statement. “The matter at the time was investigated by company attorneys and the FBI, which found no grounds to continue the investigation. Ms. McMahon will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit and without doubt, ultimately succeed.”
McMahon, who also co-chairs Trump’s transition back to the White House, resigned from WWE before running for U.S. Senate in Connecticut in 2010 and again in 2012. She is one of multiple other upcoming nominees facing allegations of sexual misconduct. The others are Pete Hegseth, the Trump pick for Defense secretary, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nominee for Health and Human Services. Former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, of Florida, was picked but then withdrew his name for consideration as attorney general amid an ethics investigation.
Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct and was found liable by a jury last year for sexually assaulting a woman in the 1990s.
How do the claims connect to Maryland?
The 85-page complaint filed in Baltimore County Circuit Court relies heavily on news reports from 1992 through 2020, books, documentaries, court records and pieces of a 1993 FBI file on Philips to allege the McMahons “knew about, tolerated, and at least tacitly (and arguably expressly) approved of a culture of sexual misconduct.”
It alleges they knew about Phillips’ “peculiar and unnatural interest” in boys years before they temporarily fired him in 1988 and then fired him finally in 1992. Linda McMahon “had a direct role in the settlement” of one victim who spoke out publicly at the time, the filing describes while citing both filed and unfiled court records.
The five men who brought the latest lawsuit all met Phillips and were abused by him when they were around 13 to 15 years old, between 1981 and 1984, the complaint states. Phillips would personally drive them from wherever they lived outside of Maryland to Baltimore or Landover, where they would stay in his hotel rooms during WWE events at venues like the since-closed Capital Centre near the current-day Northwest Stadium, where the Washington Commanders play.
Multiple victims described Phillips providing alcohol to them and other boys before and during the sexual abuse. One who described naked “wrestling,” fondling and attempted penetration after a show in Baltimore said the abuse happened seven or eight times over a year to 18-month period, according to the complaint.
The complaint does not specify where exactly in Baltimore or Baltimore County the alleged abuse occurred, and it does not refer to specific WWE events.
While the allegations from the five individuals focus on Phillips, the complaint details accusations against two other WWE executives who are also now deceased. It cites multiple times over many years in which former professional wrestlers said the abuse of the boys was well-known and disregarded by executives.
“Sexual misconduct permeated the organization from the top down and infected the organization to its rotten core,” the complaint reads.
Jenner said an open question in the case is whether the claim that some of the abuse occurred in Maryland means the defendants would be responsible for all of the abuse they suffered, including in other states, or just the acts that occurred in Maryland.
As McMahon prepares for a U.S. Senate confirmation process in early 2025, the case will likely be paused as the state Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality question. The court is expected to rule on the appeals before its term ends next August.
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