Janel Grant claims she was specifically warned not to speak to a senior WWE executive during a key moment inside the company, according to court filings tied to her lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE.
The claim comes from filings describing the time when Grant says she was moved out of WWE’s legal department. According to the document, she was told not to discuss the situation outside a small group of people involved in the plan. One name was singled out — Rich Hering.
Hering worked for WWE as the company’s senior vice president of government relations and risk management, a position tied closely to corporate and legal oversight. What stands out even more is that Hering retired from WWE in October 2023, just months before Vince McMahon was hit with Grant’s lawsuit in January 2024. Grant said the instruction to avoid speaking to him stood out immediately.
“Outside of the group essential to this plan, I was not allowed to discuss it with anyone and ‘especially not Rich [Hering].’”
According to the filing, Grant said she believed that warning wasn’t random. She said it made her think leadership did not want the legal department alerted to what was happening behind the scenes. She explained that speaking to Hering would have meant putting WWE’s legal structure on notice about what she says was taking place.
“I understood ‘especially not Rich’ to mean that Vince and WWE leadership anticipated I would confide in Rich and, if I did, I would be putting the legal department on notice of Vince’s sexual conduct, the group of executives who were making decisions based on that conduct, and its direct impact on the legal department.”
This lawsuit keeps peeling back new details, and moments like this are putting even more focus on who inside WWE knew what — and when. With more filings expected, the timeline around these decisions could become even clearer as the case moves forward.
Do you think being told not to speak to a senior risk management executive raises red flags, and how important is transparency when situations like this unfold inside major companies? Leave your thoughts and feedback below.