Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have dropped a criminal probe that focused on whether former World Wrestling Entertainment boss Vince McMahon tried to cover up multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, his lawyer told The Post.
The revelation comes as appeals judges on Friday revealed that a grand jury had considered whether the 78-year-old billionaire broke the law by hiding allegations of sexual misconduct from two former two female employees, whom he ended up paying $10.5 million to keep quiet.
The ruling from a three-judge panel does not name McMahon but refers to “the subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation concerning whether, as CEO, he engaged in a criminal scheme to circumvent the company’s internal accounting controls and mislead company auditors in order to conceal multiple allegations of sexual misconduct raised against him by two former company employees.”
Sources familiar with the matter confirmed to The Post that McMahon is the former CEO referenced in the ruling.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision suggests that the case is still active. But McMahon’s lawyer Robert W. Allen, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor, stressed Tuesday that the prosecutors have ended the probe without asking the grand jury to bring an indictment against him.
“This is simply the result of an appeal of a procedural matter that was argued five months ago,” Allen told The Post. “We have been in consistent communication with the government since that time and understand, with no ambiguity, that the investigation has definitively concluded and will not result in charges.”
Prosecutors’ apparent decision to abandon the case comes despite federal judge Valerie Caproni ruling in June 2024 that the government had “established probable cause to believe” that McMahon and one of his former lawyers broke the law.
There’s evidence that they “circumvented [the Company’s] internal controls and created false books and records,” “concealed the Victims’ claims and settlement agreements from [the Company],” and “made false and misleading statements to the Company’s auditors,” Caproni’s ruling said.
Both Caproni and the appeals panel — Judges Gerard Lynch, Beth Robinson and Sarah Merriam — ruled in favor of prosecutors on an evidence issue, writing that McMahon’s conversations with his attorneys were not subject to attorney-client privilege.
The appeals court has seen files showing that McMahon’s ex-lawyer “specifically instructed” him to talk about the payoffs “via text instead of email for the express purpose of avoiding the Company gaining knowledge of it,” Friday’s ruling reads.
Those facts and others provide “a sufficient basis for a prudent person to believe that the settlement negotiations and resulting attorney-client communications were structured and intended to conceal the resulting agreements from the Company,” Judge Lynch wrote on behalf of the panel.
But prosecutors decided to drop the case at some point between Sept. 18 and Jan. 10, when the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the waning days of the Biden administration, announced that it had reached a settlement with McMahon to resolve the cover-up claims, a source familiar with the matter said.
When the SEC deal was announced, McMahon released a statement implying that he would not face criminal charges — and dismissing the seriousness of the probe.
“In the end, there was never anything more to this than minor accounting errors with regard to some personal payments that I made several years ago while I was CEO of WWE,” McMahon said in the statement. “I’m thrilled that I can now put all this behind me.”
The Wall Street Journal first broke the news in February 2024 that federal prosecutors were eyeing McMahon and had interviewed more than one of his accusers. The newspaper reported that the feds were looking into allegations of “sexual assault” and “sex trafficking.”
But Friday’s ruling, which does not mention sex trafficking, indicates that the probe focused instead on whether McMahon broke the law by covering up the allegations.
Several details in the decision match up exactly with public information about McMahon and the company he led for decades.
For example, the ruling references $10.5 million paid out by a “former Chief Executive Officer of a publicly traded company” to two women who accused him of sexual misconduct. That’s the exact amount McMahon paid the two women, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The ruling also mentions that the CEO’s company announced on July 25, 2022 plans to revise its “financial statements” for 2019, 2020, and parts of 2021 and 2022 to account for $14.6 million in total “settlement payments” made by the CEO.
WWE announced in a regulatory filing that day that it was taking those exact steps.
A spokesman for the SDNY declined to comment.
If the criminal probe has in fact ended without an indictment, it will mark the second time that McMahon emerged from a federal law enforcement probe without being convicted of crimes.
McMahon, a longtime Trump supporter, went on trial in 1994 in Brooklyn federal court on charges of conspiracy to distribute anabolic steroids to his wrestlers. But a jury ended up acquitting him after an 18-day trial that featured testimony from wrestling superstar Hulk Hogan.
McMahon’s wife, Linda McMahon, faces a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday as Department of Education secretary nominee.
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