Long-time WWE Lawyer Jerry McDevitt has denied involvement in negotiating hush-money payments which were allegedly made to former WWE employees.
In June it emerged that WWE’s Board of Directors were investigating Vince McMahon over claims that he paid $3 million in hush-money to an employee with whom be had an affair.
It has since been reported that McMahon paid out a total of more than $12 million to multiple women across a 16-year period.
On July 25th WWE announced that they would be reissuing financial statements for 2019, 2020, and 2021, as well as Q1 of 2022 upon discovery of $14.6 million made by Vince McMahon which should have been declared as business expenses.
The company have since unearthed a further $5 million in payments, taking the total to $19.6 million.
In the initial reports of the investigation in June, the Wall Street Journal claimed that they had seen anonymous emails that had been sent to WWE’s Board of Directors. In one of these emails, a reference was seemingly made to WWE lawyer Jerry McDevitt. It is quoted as saying “My friend was so scared so she quit after Vince McMahon and lawyer Jerry paid her millions of dollars to shut up.”
Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer has now noted that McDevitt denies these accusations, branding them “categorically false.”
“Jerry McDevitt said that reports that he was involved in the dealings with the woman in the original Wall Street Journal story on Vince McMahon are categorically false. He said that he has never spoken with or dealt with the woman in question in any way. The first Wall Street Journal story said that the investigation into Vince McMahon started in March after the Board of Directors received a message from somebody who was friends with the woman and the story claimed that she negotiated a settlement with McDevitt.”
Jerry McDevitt’s relationship with Vince McMahon and WWE extends back to the 1980’s. His friendship with McMahon was cemented during the steroid trial in 1994 when McDevitt worked on behalf of the then-WWE Chairman.