Husam “Sam” Asi, a longstanding member the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., is suing the organization over a battery of claims, including sexual harassment, discrimination and breach of contract.
The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, comes three months after the HFPA, the group behind the Golden Globes, put Asi on probation following allegations of sexual misconduct, prompting a third-party investigation into him.
Asi’s suit alleges that the HFPA is “weaponizing false sexual misconduct allegations” in retaliation for “his attempts to hold it accountable.”
He said he was personally and professionally damaged by the HFPA investigation, adding that he was placed on probation with the BBC and his newspaper and lost his source of income.
In February the Wrap reported that three women alleged that Asi — who represents the United Kingdom and the Middle East for the association and is a Palestinian journalist for the BBC Arabic service and a columnist for Pan Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al Arabi — “abused their trust by turning professional situations into sexualized encounters.”
Asi called the misconduct allegations against him baseless. “Of course, I deny them, I deny them all, they are ludicrously absurd,” he told the Times in February.
According to his lawsuit, Asi, a member of the HFPA since 2010, contends that he has “been subjected to and endured a pattern of sexual harassment, hostile behavior, racial epithets and discrimination, and retaliatory conduct,...
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