firing

A former female staffer who worked for Beast Industries, the media venture behind the popular YouTube channel MrBeast, is suing the company, alleging she was sexually harassed and fired shortly after she returned from maternity leave.

The employee, Lorrayne Mavromatis, a Brazilian-born social media professional, alleges in a lawsuit she was subjected to sexual harassment by the company’s management and demoted after she complained about her treatment. She said she was urged to join a conference call while in labor and expected to work during her maternity leave in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, according to the federal complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

“This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it. There is extensive evidence — including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony — that unequivocally refutes her claims. We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us,” Gaude Paez, a Beast Industries spokesperson, said in a statement.

Jimmy Donaldson, 27, began MrBeast as a teen gaming channel that soon exploded into a media company worth an estimated $5 billion, with 500 employees and 450 million subscribers who watch its games, stunts and giveaways.

Mavromatis, who was hired in 2022 as its head of Instagram, described a pervasive climate of discrimination and harassment, according to the lawsuit.

In her complaint, she alleges the company’s former CEO James Warren made her meet him at his home for one-on-one meetings while he commented on her looks and dismissed her complaints about a male client’s unwanted advances, telling her “she should be honored that the client was hitting on her.”

When Mavromatis asked Warren why MrBeast, Donaldson, would not work with her, she was told that “she is a beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy,” and, “Let’s just say that when you’re around and he goes to the restroom, he’s not actually using the restroom.”

Paez refuted the claim.

“That’s ridiculous. This is an allegation fabricated for the sole purpose of sparking headlines,” Paez said.

Mavromatis said she endured a slate of other indignities such as being told by Donaldson that she “would only participate in her video shoot if she brought him a beer.”

“In this male-centric workplace, Plaintiff, one of the few women in a high-level role, was excluded from otherwise all-male meetings, demeaned in front of colleagues, harassed, and suffered from males be given preferential treatment in employment decisions,” states the complaint.

When Mavromatis raised a question during a staff meeting with her team, she said a male colleague told her to “shut up” or “stop talking.”

At MrBeast headquarters in Greenville, N.C., she said male executives mocked female contestants participating in BeastGames, “who complained they did not have access to feminine hygiene products and clean underwear while participating in the show.”

In November 2023, Mavromatis formally complained about “the sexually inappropriate encounters and harassment, and demeaning and hostile work environment she and other female employees had been living and experiencing working at MrBeast,” to the company’s then head of human resources, Sue Parisher, who is also Donaldson’s mother, according to the suit.

In her complaint, Mavromatis said Beast Industries did not have a method or process for employees to report such issues either anonymously or to a third party, rather employees were expected to follow the company’s handbook, “How to Succeed In MrBeast Production.”

In it, employees were instructed that, “It’s okay for the boys to be childish,” “if talent wants to draw a dick on the white board in the video or do something stupid, let them” and “No does not mean no,” according to the complaint.

Mavromatis alleges that she was demoted and then fired.

Paez said that Mavromatis’s role was eliminated as part of a reorganization of an underperforming group within Beast Industries and that she was made aware of this.

Magistrate hands the opposition figure five-year term, that his lawyers say will be appealed.

South African opposition politician Julius Malema has been sentenced to prison time for firing a rifle in ⁠the air at a party rally.

Malema, the leader of the far-left opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), was handed a five-year sentence on Thursday by Magistrate Twanet Olivier.

Malema, who is one of South Africa’s most prominent politicians, was convicted last year of charges, including unlawful possession of a ⁠firearm and discharging a weapon in a public place over the 2018 incident at a stadium in the Eastern Cape province.

The 45-year-old leader of the fourth-biggest party in parliament had pleaded not guilty, arguing the gun was a toy.

“It wasn’t … an impulsive act,” the magistrate said. “It was the event of the evening.”

Malema’s defence said the shots were only intended to be celebratory.

His lawyers applied for leave to appeal the magistrate’s decision within ⁠minutes of it being ⁠read out in a court in KuGompo City, formerly East London, on Thursday.

Outside the court, hundreds of Malema’s red-clad EFF supporters gathered for the sentencing in the politically charged case.

The EFF – a small but vocal party – says the case is an attempt to silence its outspoken leader, who is known for fiery speeches.

Party supporters have threatened protests should their leader be jailed.

The magistrate stressed it “is not a political party who has been convicted here … it is a person, an individual.”

The maximum time was a 15-year prison sentence. If confirmed after all appeals, the five-year sentence would bar Malema from serving as a lawmaker.

That would be a major setback to the EFF, which has strong support among young South Africans frustrated by the racial inequality that has persisted since the end of white minority rule in 1994.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has privately discussed the possibility of firing Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and replacing her with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, three people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Thursday.

In those conversations, Trump has discussed his ongoing frustration with Bondi over her handing of the Jeffrey Epstein files and hurdles the Justice Department has encountered in investigations into Trump’s perceived enemies, the people said. The Republican president has mentioned other candidates but has raised Zeldin’s name as recently as this week, the people said.

The people were not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.

No decision has been announced, and Trump has been known to change his mind on personnel decisions.

“Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” Trump said in a statement produced by the White House.

Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York, has been publicly and privately praised by Trump, who at an event in February described him as “our secret weapon.”

Bondi, a former state attorney general in Florida and a Trump loyalist who was part of his legal team during his first impeachment case, has been in her position for more than a year. She came into office pledging that she would not play politics with the Justice Department, but she quickly started investigations of Trump foes, sparking an outcry that the law enforcement agency was being wielded as a tool of revenge to advance the president’s political and personal agenda.

She has also endured months of scrutiny over the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files that made her the target of angry conservatives even with her close relationship with Trump.

Under Bondi’s leadership, the department opened investigations into a string of Trump foes, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan.

The high-profile prosecutions of Comey and James were quickly thrown out by a judge who ruled that the prosecutor who brought the cases was illegally appointed. Other politically charged investigations have either been rejected by grand juries or failed to result in criminal charges.

Richer, Tucker, Balsamo and Price write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Three fired FBI agents sued on Tuesday to try to get their jobs back, saying in a class-action lawsuit that they were illegally punished for their participation in an investigation into President Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The federal lawsuit adds to the mounting list of court challenges to a personnel purge by FBI Director Kash Patel that over the last year has resulted in the ousters of dozens of agents, either because of their involvement in investigations related to Trump or because they were perceived as insufficiently loyal to the Republican president’s agenda.

The lawsuit in federal court in Washington was technically filed on behalf of just three agents but may have much broader implications given that its request for class-action status could open the door for agents fired since the start of the Trump administration to get their jobs back.

The three agents — Michelle Ball, Jamie Garman and Blaire Toleman — were fired last October and November in what they say was a “retribution campaign” targeting them for their work on the investigation into Trump. The agents had between eight and 14 years of “exemplary and unblemished” service in the FBI and expected to spend the remainder of their careers at the bureau but were abruptly fired without cause and without being given a chance to respond, the lawsuit says.

“Serving the American people as FBI agents was the highest honor of our lives,” they said in a statement. “We took an oath to uphold the Constitution, followed the facts wherever they led and never compromised our integrity. Our removal from federal service — without due process and based on a false perception of political bias — is a profound injustice that raises serious concerns about political interference in federal law enforcement.”

Trump’s indictment

The investigation the agents worked on culminated in a 2023 indictment from special counsel Jack Smith that accused Trump of illegally scheming to undo the results of the presidential election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Smith ultimately abandoned that case, along with a separate one accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., after Trump won back the White House in 2024, citing Justice Department legal opinions that prohibit the federal indictments of sitting presidents.

The lawsuit notes that the firings followed the release by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of documents about the election investigation — known as Arctic Frost — that he said had come from within the FBI. Those records included files showing that Smith’s team had subpoenaed several days of phone records of some Republican lawmakers, an investigative step that angered Trump allies inside Congress.

The complaint names as defendants Patel and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, accusing them of having orchestrated the firings despite being “personally embroiled” either as witnesses or attorneys in some of the legal troubles Trump has faced.

Patel, for instance, was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and had his phone records subpoenaed, while Bondi was part of the legal team that represented Trump at his first impeachment trial, which resulted in his acquittal.

“And now, by virtue of presidential appointment to the pinnacle of federal law enforcement, Defendants are abusing their positions to claim victories that eluded them on the merits,” the lawsuit states.

Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Patel and Bondi have said the fired agents and prosecutors who worked on Smith’s team were responsible for weaponizing federal law enforcement, a claim that was also asserted in their termination letters but that the plaintiffs call defamatory and baseless.

Fired agents call for ‘fundamental constitutional protections’

Dan Eisenberg, a lawyer for the agents, said in a statement that his clients were fired without any investigation, notice of charges or chance to be heard.

“This lawsuit seeks to reaffirm fundamental constitutional protections for FBI employees, ensuring they can perform their duties without fear or favor. We all benefit when law enforcement officers’ only loyalty is to facts and the truth,” said Eisenberg, who is with the firm of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel.

The lawsuit asks for the agents to be reinstated to their positions and for a court declaration affirming that their rights had been violated. It also seeks to represent a class of at least 50 agents who have been terminated since Jan. 20, 2025, or will be. Those agents also stand to recover their jobs in the event the case is successful and the requested class-action status is granted.

Others have been fired too

Other fired employees who have sued include agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in 2020; an agent trainee who displayed an LGBTQ+ flag at his workspace; and a group of senior officials, including the former acting director of the FBI, who were terminated last summer.

The firings have continued, with Patel last month pushing out a group of agents in the Washington field office who had been involved in investigating Trump’s hoarding of classified documents. Trump has insisted he was entitled to keep the documents when he left the White House and has claimed without evidence that he had declassified them.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.