CBS legend spills on 'jaw-dropping' meeting before firing: 'Accuses me of physical abuse'

Scott Pelley, the veteran broadcast journalist who was controversially fired by CBS News last week, revealed new “jaw-dropping” details Sunday about his last meetings before his ousting, one that included, he claimed, false accusations of physical abuse.

CBS Executive Producer Nick Bilton – who was hand-picked by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss and reportedly vetted by David Ellison, a strong ally to President Donald Trump whose company owns CBS – met with Pelley and proceeded to do “something absolutely jaw-dropping,” Pelley told The New York Times in its report Sunday.

“He pulls out his phone and begins reading a statement off his phone in a room full of 50 heartbroken people,” Pelley recalled Bilton doing, explaining the reasoning behind the mass purge of staff for the network’s “60 Minutes” program. “The callousness, the tone deafness of that, you could hear the groan in the room. They put out a big spread of bagels like we were all going to feel better.”

In a follow-up meeting immediately preceding Pelley’s firing, Tom Cibrowski – president and executive editor of CBS News since last year – leveled a shocking allegation against Pelley, who had been with CBS News for nearly four decades.

“Tom accuses me of physically abusing Nick Bilton. This is a lie,” Pelley told the Times. “I didn’t come within 10 feet of Nick Bilton. In my life, I have never put my hands on anyone in anger. And when he was caught in that lie, he said, ‘well, OK, I take that back.’ And I said, ‘great.’”

Pelley continued: “So I’m thinking that the meeting’s going to carry on. We’re going to have a long conversation. Very quickly after the meeting began, Tom Cibrowski said, this conversation is over. I was stunned. I didn’t have a 60-minute stopwatch in that room. I don’t know how long it lasted really, but I think it was about 10 minutes.”

Pelley said that he left the CBS News office out of frustration, and later the same night, he received an email informing him of his termination “for cause.”