Warren proposes contract to free women from Bloomberg confidentiality agreements

Elizabeth Warren on Thursday urged her fellow Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg to sign a contract the senator wrote herself that would release people who have made allegations of sexist and misogynistic behavior against Bloomberg from nondisclosure agreements.

“I used to teach contract law,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a CNN town hall in Nevada. “And I thought I would make this easy. I wrote up a release and covenant not to sue, and all that Mayor Bloomberg has to do is download it — I’ll text it — sign it, and then the women, or men, will be free to speak and tell their own stories.”

Warren had pressed the former New York City mayor the night before at a Democratic presidential debate to release the women from the nondisclosure agreements. Bloomberg said the parties involved had signed the agreements, “and we’ll live with it.”

“None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told,” Bloomberg said, which was met by groans from the audience in the debate hall.

Onstage at the CNN town hall Thursday night, Warren read from the contract she had written and said, “I think that the mayor should sign this, and that we all have a right to see.”

CNN has reached out to Bloomberg’s campaign for comment.

The billionaire candidate faces claims from the 1990s that prior to a male colleague’s wedding, Bloomberg told a group of female employees to “line up to give him a blow job as a wedding present”; that he would regularly direct comments like “look at that nice piece of ass” at women in the office; and that upon learning that a female employee was expecting a baby, he responded: “Kill it!”

Bloomberg, through his representatives, has denied making the “kill it” comment and other remarks laid out in at least two lawsuits, but has acknowledged that he has made comments that do not align with his values.

At the debate on Wednesday night, Bloomberg brushed off a question about the claims and pointed to his record of hiring and promoting women within his company and at City Hall when he was mayor. He said he has “no tolerance for the kind of behavior that the #MeToo movement has exposed.”