Golden Globes Voter Sam Asi Expelled From HFPA Following TheWrap Investigation Into Sexual Misconduct

thewrap.com:

reporting in which three women accused him of sexual misconduct, including kissing an assistant without consent.The HFPA informed TheWrap of Asi’s expulsion in a letter Tuesday.“Pursuant to the HFPA’s Reporting and Grievance Policy for Members, as approved by the members July 6, 2021, I write to inform you, as a reporting party, that at the Board’s August 22, 2022 meeting, at which a quorum was present, a majority of the present, non-recused Board members voted to expel Dr.

Asi from the HFPA’s membership, effective August 27, 2022,” the letter reads.Asi, a Palestinian journalist for the BBC Arabic service was accused by three women, including a former assistant who said he once kissed her on the lips without her consent.

All three spoke on the record about their experiences with a man they say abused their trust by turning professional situations into sexualized encounters that ultimately drove one of the women to leave entertainment journalism altogether.Asi and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment sent Tuesday.Asi was responsible for running the HFPA website as recently as last year.

When the accusations arose in February, he said: “We deny all these baseless accusations, and we have ample evidence to prove them false,” and called the women’s stories “defamatory attacks” as a pretense for sending them cease-and-desist letters.Earlier this summer, TheWrap obtained a letter Asi sent to the full HFPA membership ahead of a hearing, saying “in a vindictively hostile and blatantly biased report against me, the HFPA’s investigators stretched the limits of logic and credibility to absurdity in order to implicate me.” He further claimed that HFPA’s investigators debunked and failed to support evidence from past.