Earlier this year, Vince McMahon returned from his self-imposed retirement and reasserted himself as the majority owner and leader of WWE. He quickly went about taking control of the board of directors before orchestrating a sale of the company to Ari Emanuel, which left him as the Executive Chairman of a new publicly traded company that became official last week, TKO Group Holdings. McMahon’s new role sees him serving under Emanuel in the pecking order but over WWE President Nick Khan and UFC President Dana White.
McMahon’s retirement, of course, came on the heels of a series of disturbing allegations from former female WWE employees. The hush money payments used to silence those women and the circumstances around them, are currently the subject of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. McMahon was recently served a search warrant for his home and was served with a federal grand jury subpoena in July.
The LA Times has released a new, in-depth piece looking at the allegations against McMahon and the potential ramifications because of them. While discussing his decision to initially step down from the board and retire, one source close to the board, but declined to be named, said that McMahon was not going to stand in the way of whatever the company thought the best course of action was. When they requested he step down, he was not happy but went along with the decision.
It was also noted that on a phone call with the board, McMahon adamantly denied the allegations against him and said that any sexual relationships he had were consensual. He also explained that he had entered into settlements with his accusers in order to protect the company from any future litigation.
In regard to the current investigations going on in regard to McMahon’s conduct, the breadth of the scope of the investigation is not known. Attorney Jacob Frenkel, chair of Dickinson Wright’s Government Investigations & Securities Enforcement Practice Group and a former senior counsel in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said the inquiry could be “much broader than the one company and its one majority shareholder.”
“Depending on the potential findings,” Frinkel stated. “McMahon could face criminal and/or civil liabilities that could prevent him from serving as an officer or director of a public company, as well as a clawback of any ‘ill-gotten gains.'”