Representatives for a woman who has accused former WWE CEO Vince McMahon of sexual assault and trafficking said her civil case will proceed after the Justice Department let its stay on her lawsuit expire.
Janel Grant, who worked at WWE from 2019 to 2022, first filed her lawsuit in January, accusing McMahon of making her employment contingent on engaging in a sexual relationship with him and being sexually available to others within WWE. WWE and former WWE executive John Laurinaitis are named as defendants in the suit as well. All defendants in Grant’s lawsuit have denied all wrongdoing.
On May 30, she agreed to stay her case for six months at the request of the Department of Justice, which had begun its own federal investigation into her allegations against McMahon. A judge approved the stay in June, and on Wednesday, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York informed Grant that they let the stay expire.
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Grant declined comment through her representatives because of the nature of her active litigation. A spokesperson for Grant said that her civil litigation will now move forward.
“We are pleased that prosecutors for the Southern District of New York have concluded that they can continue their criminal investigation while we bring forward new evidence in our civil case about the sexual exploitation carried out by Janel Grant’s abusers,” Ann Callis, Grant’s attorney, said in a statement. “For the last six months, Ms. Grant has patiently waited to hold Vince McMahon, John Laurinaitis, and WWE accountable for the sex trafficking and abuse she endured at the company on a near daily basis. Her wait is over, and we now look forward to sharing Ms. Grant’s story.”
“Ms. Grant’s representative’s self-serving statement is, as usual, factually incorrect and intellectually dishonest,” Jessica Rosenberg, McMahon’s attorney said in a statement to The 19th on Friday. She did not respond to questions about what was incorrect.
Attorneys for Laurinaitis and representatives for WWE did not respond to requests for comment.
According to Grant’s lawsuit, she first met McMahon in March 2019, as she was struggling financially and looking for a job after serving as a full-time caretaker for her parents for several years. For several months, McMahon promised her a job, she said in the suit, often greeting her in his underwear, touching her and asking for hugs — all while asking Grant to keep their “closeness” a secret. Ultimately, Grant says in the suit, McMahon offered her a job at WWE in exchange for a physical relationship, and she started working for the company on June 17, 2019.
Grant said in her filing that her employment at WWE was predicated on her having a relationship with McMahon and that he shared explicit photos and videos of her — including to one performer WWE was trying to sign to a new contract. In her suit, she also alleges that she was forced to engage in sex acts not only with McMahon, but with other WWE executives and wrestlers. Grant maintains that McMahon would routinely remind her of his vast financial and legal resources and threaten her with consequences if she disclosed the situation.
McMahon has maintained that the relationship was consensual.
Grant’s suit said that in January 2022, McMahon told her that his wife, Linda McMahon, had discovered their relationship and that “to avoid divorce, negative publicity, and other repercussions,” her employment with WWE would be ending — but that he needed Grant to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA). In exchange, according to Grant’s suit, he promised her $3 million in payments. She signed the NDA but, her suit says, she was paid only $1 million.
Linda McMahon is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Education; she served as his transition co-chair and led the Small Business Administration in his first term. An attorney for Linda McMahon told The Washington Post in late November that the couple are now separated.
Both McMahons and the WWE are named as defendants in a now-paused lawsuit by former WWE “ring boys” who allege they were sexually abused, some as minors, while working for the company. The McMahons and the WWE have denied all wrongdoing in this case as well. Linda McMahon was president and then CEO of the WWE from 1980 through 2009, when she left the organization to unsuccessfully run for Senate in Connecticut.
In June 2022, Vince McMahon stepped down as CEO and chairman of WWE but continued to oversee content development. He announced his retirement from the organization in July 2022 but returned as executive chairman in January 2023. He went on to become the executive chairman of TKO Group Holdings (TKO) following a merger between WWE and Zuffa, the owner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). He resigned in January 2024 after the allegations were brought against him by Grant.
Through statements issued via Rosenberg, McMahon has claimed that Grant’s allegations — including that of sex trafficking — are “false, defamatory and entirely without merit.”
With the stay now lifted, Grant may now move ahead in her lawsuit against McMahon. Experts say that one of the accusations, that of trafficking, remains widely misunderstood.
Brigitte Carr, the director of the Human Trafficking Law Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School, told The 19th that Grant’s case underscores many of the commonly held misperceptions that exist about what trafficking is and can look like. “In the U.S., we talk about trafficking like it’s a unicorn — we make it foreign, exotic, unique and extremely rare. And so we train people to think it would be like seeing a unicorn if you come across it. And the reality is that it is just another form of abuse and abuse is everywhere in our society.”
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Carr said trafficking involves two people, one of whom has power over the other, in a commercial setting. It happens when the person with power exploits the other one by taking advantage of a vulnerability. Often, this takes the form of what is known as a “compelled service,” in which a victim is forced to be in service to someone else, “whether that’s picking crops or performing sex acts.”
Carr has not met with Grant and does not represent her but is familiar with the details of her lawsuit. She said the biggest myth about trafficking is that it is rare. It is not uncommon to see a powerful employer offer a vulnerable person a job — especially one they may not necessarily be qualified for — and make their continued pay and employment contingent on sexual acts, Carr said. It is a dynamic that separates sex trafficking from other forms of sexual abuse, where financial or commercial elements are not at play.
“Every sex trafficking case involves sexual abuse,” Carr said, “But the commercial element is so important to acknowledge because traffickers are not only doing the exploitative harm to the individual, but they are often financially benefitting — either from making pure profit or from not having to pay for those acts that they are obtaining in another way.”
The current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, announced November 26 that he would be resigning effective this Friday. Trump has nominated Jay Clayton — who served as the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during the first Trump administration — for the role. Deputy U.S. Attorney Edward Kim is the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
