A report published by the media website PUCK on Monday suggested Ari Emanuel, the CEO of Endeavor and World Wrestling Entertainment parent company TKO, may have used legal connections to help Vince McMahon when he was investigated by the Department of Justice.
Eriq Gardner, in an article about the WWE shareholder lawsuit, wrote that Emanuel attempted to “reassure” McMahon in a voice memo to the former WWE owner in September 2022.
Among the most striking artifacts: a September 2022 voice memo in which Ari tried to reassure McMahon by saying he’d spoken with his apparently well-connected lawyer at Latham & Watkins.
“Just F.Y.I., everyone at the D.O.J. is former Latham lawyers,” said Ari, adding that an S.E.C. civil inquiry into the hush-money payments was a separate matter, but manageable.
“Yes, we can indemnify you and we will,” Ari allegedly said. (At a December deposition, Ari said he couldn’t recall making the offer.)
McMahon initially stepped down as WWE Chairman in June 2022 after the company began an investigation into allegations he had sexually assaulted and trafficked former employee Janel Grant, then retired the following month. According to a 2024 article by the Wall Street Journal, a federal criminal investigation into McMahon based on allegations of sexual assault and sex trafficking began the same year.
McMahon remained WWE’s largest stockholder after his resignation and engineered his return as executive chairman in January 2023. He later guided WWE in a sale to Endeavor that closed in September 2023, forming TKO Group Holdings.
McMahon resigned again in January 2024 after a civil complaint was filed by Janel Grant in federal court against McMahon, WWE and former WWE executive John Laurinaitis. Laurinaitis was later dropped from the suit after agreeing to help Grant’s case.
In February 2025, an attorney for McMahon said the federal criminal investigation ended without charges being filed.
McMahon and WWE are defendants in a shareholder lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery, scheduled for June 8.
An arbitration hearing in Grant’s federal civil case against McMahon and WWE is scheduled for June 10.