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Attorneys for Vince McMahon respond to Janel Grant’s motion to strike his earlier statement

Aaron Rift

It was reported by The Wall Street Journal in January of 2024 that Janel Grant, a former WWE employee, filed a lawsuit against WWE, Vince McMahon, and John Laurinaitis in a Connecticut federal court. McMahon was accused of sex trafficking in the complaint.

On May 13th, McMahon’s attorneys filed a new memorandum opposing Grant’s motion to strike his earlier statement. According to McMahon’s side, his earlier statement provide “relevant context to the Motion to Compel Arbitration” and Grant’s motion to strike is “meritless and the height of hypocrisy.”

Here is an excerpt from the filing…

Plaintiff chose to violate the Parties’ explicit agreement to “preserve the confidential and private nature” of any dispute that may arise by commencing this lawsuit. Ignoring her obligations to keep the nature of their relationship or the dispute private, the Complaint unnecessarily includes private sexual text messages from Defendant without including any of Plaintiff’s responses to those texts—responses which are equally and often more aggressive and provocative than Defendant’s communications and show not only that the relationship was consensual, but also that in many instances the Plaintiff was the initiator. Indeed, while Defendant no longer is in possession of the text messages between the Parties as he deleted them when he broke off the relationship, the discovery in this case will show that Plaintiff sent him sexually explicit images of herself and texted him to say, among other things:

o That she was in love with him and he was the love of her life;
o That he was her best friend;
o That she wanted to have sex with him and providing graphic detail;
o That she fantasized about being held down, enjoyed being in pain, and wanted rough sex;
o That she wanted Defendant to watch her have sex with other people and know about her sex with others;
o That she wanted Defendant to give her thousands of dollars for clothes, plastic surgery, and other gifts;
o That she wanted to have a future with Defendant even after signing the Agreement; and
o That she wanted Defendant to keep living in the same building, so she could continue to see him, even after signing the Agreement.

Plaintiff sent messages like this to Defendant through the entire duration of their relationship — including through the time they signed the Agreement in January 2022. Plaintiff presumably still has all of these text messages but she did not include them in her publicly filed Complaint because she wanted to paint a distorted, false picture. It is indeed astonishing that after filing her highly salacious Complaint which omitted the truth about her own conduct, Plaintiff now takes issue with purported “mudslinging” and “vicious falsehoods attacking [one’s] moral character” in Defendant’s Motion to Compel Arbitration. (Dkt. Nos. 31 at 1; 31-1 at 3, 4.) Plaintiff cannot have it both ways, and her Motion should be denied for these reasons and those set forth herein.