Janel Grant filed an amended complaint late Friday, adding new details to her allegations against Vince McMahon, John Laurinaitis, and WWE. The updated lawsuit, submitted in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, comes just over one year after she initially sued, with the new filing expanding to 101 pages from 67.
Grant, a former WWE employee, continues to allege that McMahon sexually assaulted and trafficked her before she signed a nondisclosure agreement with him in 2022. Laurinaitis participated in the abuse, she says. Grant also asserts that WWE was negligent in allowing McMahon’s alleged misconduct to occur.
McMahon has repeatedly denied any allegations against him related to the case. Laurinaitis has also denied the allegations against him, after initially claiming he was a victim of McMahon as well.
One of the most striking new claims in the amended complaint is Grant’s allegation that McMahon instructed her to create pornographic content for Michael Hayes, a longtime WWE creative executive who remains with the company.
“In or about September 2020,” Grant’s attorneys wrote, “McMahon instructed Ms. Grant to create customized pornographic content for producer Michael Hayes and his crew.”
The complaint includes screenshots of text messages that Grant appears to have sent McMahon. In one, Grant’s body is obscured by text reading: “Dear Vince’s crew, Hope ur enjoying these pics! Xoxo.” Another image, purportedly of Grant, includes text reading: “Hey Michael! Vince’s stories are true. And I love to live up to hype. Xoxo.”
Hayes is not mentioned elsewhere in the lawsuit.
Grant also expands on previous allegations that McMahon shared explicit images of her without her consent. The new filing claims McMahon once video-called Laurinaitis and recorded Grant while she was nude. Laurinaitis, she alleges, then sent sexually explicit videos to McMahon, which he, in turn, shared with Grant.
The lawsuit maintains many of the allegations from the original complaint, including Grant’s claim that McMahon and Laurinaitis sexually assaulted her in Laurinaitis’s office at WWE headquarters despite her repeated pleas for them to stop. The complaint alleges multiple instances of sexual assault by McMahon. Added to Grant’s complaint is the detail that Laurinaitis’s office shared a wall with Paul Levesque’s office. The complaint, as it did originally, alleges that Laurinaitis often called Grant into his office and instructed her to perform oral sex on him.
“Ms. Grant’s amended complaint reveals new details that further demonstrate the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Vince McMahon and John Laurinaitis and pulls back the curtain on the dangerous workplace culture McMahon created at WWE,” Grant’s attorney, Ann Callis, said in a statement. “Ms. Grant looks forward to holding her abusers accountable in a court of law.”
McMahon’s attorney, Jessica Rosenberg, dismissed the amended complaint in a statement to POST Wrestling.
As expected, the proposed amended complaint is nothing more than the latest publicity stunt in an ongoing smear campaign,” Rosenberg said. “It is filled with desperate falsehoods from a team that continues to disregard the law and the truth.
Grant’s lawsuit seeks to establish that McMahon sex trafficked her, asserting that he pressured her to send Laurinaitis explicit images and reminded her to do so repeatedly. The complaint also states that McMahon instructed Grant to “show off” for construction workers, though she says she avoided an in-person encounter due to COVID-19 concerns.
Dr. Carlon Colker, previously referred to in the lawsuit as “Celebrity Doctor,” is now identified by name, along with his clinic, Peak Wellness. Grant alleges that McMahon directed her to undergo treatments at Colker’s clinic, where she was prescribed substances without knowing what they were. She petitioned Colker in Connecticut state court last summer for evidence, including her medical records, and reserves the right to add him and Peak Wellness as defendants.
The amended complaint also names WWE executives who were previously identified under pseudonyms. WWE President Nick Khan and executives Brad Blum and Brian Nurse are now referenced by name, confirming prior reporting. Grant’s attorney previously confirmed, along with the other three anonymized executives, that former WWE Chairwoman Stephanie McMahon is “WWE Corporate Officer No. 3.” However, in the updated complaint, her name has been removed, and references to her public statements in the original filing have been replaced with the pseudonym. None of the four officers are accused of abuse, but Grant claims they enabled McMahon’s misconduct. We contacted Grant’s representatives to ask why Stephanie McMahon’s name was treated differently and will update this report if we learn more.
A newly added paragraph alleges that McMahon “continued to remind Ms. Grant of his control,” and that she “felt watched and intimidated by McMahon and his executive enforcers, even while she was outside of the WWE office.”
Grant calls WWE’s board of directors’ internal investigation into allegations against McMahon a “sham”. She has added to her claims that she was preparing with an attorney to be interviewed by the board’s investigators, but that she was never interviewed. A year ago when Grant’s lawsuit was filed, Jeffrey Speed, who was the WWE board member in charge of the investigation told the New York Times, “I remain confident in our investigation which included outreach to Ms. Grant and engagement with her lawyer.”
The complaint expands on a previously described incident in which McMahon allegedly pressured Grant to have a sexual encounter in his office at WWE headquarters. Grant says she suffered a panic attack at the suggestion and pleaded with McMahon to take her home. According to the lawsuit, McMahon insisted they have sex either in his office or in his parked car. She alleges that she ultimately agreed to go inside the building, where the encounter took place.
In the days that followed, Grant says McMahon left her a voicemail calling it “the greatest thing that probably ever happened in this building.” According to screenshots included in the lawsuit, he later texted her: “I can hardly think about anything except yesterday,” along with photos of his office.
The amended complaint also explicitly identifies Brock Lesnar as the previously anonymized “WWE Superstar.” Grant claims that McMahon attempted to arrange a sexual encounter between her and Lesnar as part of Lesnar’s contract negotiations. She alleges that the encounter did not take place due to weather-related travel issues and Covid-19 concerns.
According to the complaint, McMahon texted Grant: “U have to take a flight to Greenville South Carolina this Monday. Even if it’s just to C Brock.”
Rich Hering, a longtime WWE employee who received the company’s Warrior Award in 2021, is also identified in the complaint as the previously referred to as “WWE Employee No. 1.” Hering, who retired in recent years, is not accused of abuse but is characterized as a feared veteran employee at WWE and very loyal to the company.
Grant’s attorneys argue that McMahon’s actions amounted to trafficking, alleging that he “forced her to exchange sex for commercial value and employment” and that “these acts would grow more extreme and outrageous over time.”
In another new claim, Grant alleges that McMahon viewed nude photos of Grant while being filmed for the Netflix documentary that was later released last year under the title, “Mr. McMahon”. The updated complaint shows a still from the documentary of McMahon in a conference room, compared to screenshots of Grant’s text message interactions with McMahon in which he sent her a photo of what appears to be the same conference room.
The complaint includes what Grant says is a text message from McMahon in which he tells her: “Unfortunately, you appear to have my company over a barrel.”
Grant and McMahon signed a nondisclosure agreement in January 2022, which coincided with her departure from WWE and included a $3 million payout from McMahon. Grant alleges that the attorney who represented her in the NDA negotiations was recommended by Colker and that McMahon was “ultimately paying” for the attorney’s services.
In January 2022, McMahon and Grant signed an NDA that coincided with her departure from the company. Under the NDA, McMahon agreed to pay her $3 million. Grant says the attorney she retained—recommended to her by Colker—was uneasy about the speed of the negotiations, which took just eight days. She also claims McMahon ultimately paid for her legal representation.
As an important meeting with WWE’s board approached, McMahon pressed Grant to sign the NDA, she says, because he needed to be able to tell the board there was no pending litigation—something he could not truthfully do if the deal wasn’t completed. The complaint now includes a purported transcript of a voicemail McMahon left for Grant.
“Ummm so [Jerry] McDevitt is in charge of the fuckin’ audit of the books kind of like thing,” McMahon is quoted as saying in a January 27, 2022, voice memo. “He’s got to tell the audit committee there’s no lawsuits, there’s no pending this, there’s no that—kind of like thing—and he won’t do and can’t do it legally unless I get this thing signed. So we need to work on this really fuckin’ fast otherwise I’m double fucked.”
According to Grant, Jerry McDevitt, a close legal adviser to McMahon for decades, was aware of the NDA discussions as part of his representation. The lawsuit claims McMahon feared that without the NDA in place, McDevitt could not tell the board there was no pending litigation, raising the risk that board members would discover McMahon’s relationship with Grant—jeopardizing both his marriage and his standing in the company.
A key legal question now is whether the case will remain in public court or be moved to private arbitration. The NDA includes a clause requiring disputes to be settled through arbitration, but such clauses can be ruled unenforceable if a party is found to have agreed under duress, fraud, or other extraordinary circumstances.
Grant argues she was under duress, controlled by McMahon, and desperate to escape her alleged abuser. Her attorneys have also pointed to WWE’s public filings, which, after the broader scandal over McMahon’s secret No agreements surfaced, stated that the company had no prior knowledge of the NDA with Grant. McMahon signed the NDA on behalf of both himself and WWE, where he was CEO and chairman at the time. That assertion, Grant argues, raises questions about whether WWE can enforce the arbitration clause given its claims of ignorance.
Grant’s account also includes an alleged final sexual assault after the NDA was signed on January 28, 2022. In what she describes as their last in-person meeting, she says McMahon forced her to perform oral sex.
Judge Sarah F. Russell will rule on whether to allow Grant’s amended complaint, which is only proposed at this stage, to formally become a part of the case. After that is decided, the defendants are expected to resubmit their motions to transfer the case to arbitration, which will likely be the next major decision.
