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Fox News’ Lou Dobbs Helped Dox A Woman For Accusing Donald Trump Of Sexual Assault

By Darien Cavanaugh
Published on: 15:25 PST, Oct 16, 2016

On Thursday morning, Fox Business anchor Lou Dobbs retweeted a tweet from a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, The Washington Post reports. The original tweet contained a screen grab with the personal phone number and home address of Jessica Leads. It also linked to an article on the conservative news site 100 Percent Fed Up that accused Leads of working for the Clinton Foundation.

Leads had come forward with allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump the day before. The article on 100 Percent Fed Up was an effort to discredit Leads by suggesting she made up the story to undermine Trump’s campaign because she is on the Clinton payroll.

Jessica Leads’ supposed ties to the Clinton Foundation have since been debunked by Business Insider and others.

It wasn’t that difficult a task. The phone number listed for Leads that supposedly matched one listed for the Clinton Foundation in a batch of WikiLeaks docs that was recently released didn’t actually match. It was just from the same New York area code and had a few other matching numbers.

Dobbs later apologized for the retweet via a subsequent tweet that read “My Retweet, My Mistake, My Apology to Jessica Leeds,” according to the Post. That tweet appears to have since been removed. His retweet linking to Leads personal information, however, remains viewable but “unavailable” and has already between retweeted over 1,300 times and liked over 1,600 times.

Leads’ personal information is not visible in the viewable version of Dobbs’ retweet.

The original tweet appears to have come from Twitter user and avid Trump supporter @MichaelDelauzon. That tweet has since been removed as well, though there is no indication who removed it.

Leads, now 74, told The New York Times Trump groped her without permission in a first-class cabin of a flight to New York more than 30 years ago when Leads was traveling on business for the paper company she worked for at the time.

“He was like an octopus,” Leads told the Times. “His hands were everywhere.”

She said she moved to the back of the plane to get away from him. In case there was any doubt as to how Leads felt about the encounter, she clarified her perspective, saying “It was an assault.”

The accusations were made after Leads watched the second presidential debate between Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton last Sunday.

Leads watched the debates from her Manhattan apartment, according to the Times. While discussing recently released video in which he can be heard bragging about and encouraging the sexual assault of women, Trump was asked whether he had ever actually engaged in sexual contact with a woman without consent.

He emphatically replied, “No, I have not.”

His response sent a jolt of anger through Jessica Leads.

“I wanted to punch the screen,” she told the Times.

A second woman, Rachel Crooks, accused Trump of intentionally kissing her on the mouth without permission in the Times article.

Doxing is a form of online activism or revenge that exposes private or personal information about an individual. It can often lead to harassment and threats.

It is possible that Lou Dobbs did not intend to help dox Jessica Leads. The image containing her contact information was small and easy to overlook if you weren’t paying attention. Dobbs may have simply been focused on the linked article attempting to discredit Leads.

It, too, contained screen grabs of her phone number and address, but, as of this post, some digits of the phone number and parts of the address were blurred out.

At this time, there are no reports of Jessica Leads being harassed due to her contact information being shared.

[Featured Image by Gage Skidmore | Flickr | Cropped and Resized | CC BY-SA 2.0]

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