Former WWE employee Janel Grant, who in a lawsuit has accused ex-leader Vince McMahon of sexual battery and trafficking during her time with the pro wrestling promotion from 2019 to 2022, has filed a new 40-page affidavit detailing more of her allegations.
In the document filed in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut, Grant outlined: alleged emotional, physical and sexual abuse by McMahon and former head of talent relations John Laurinaitis; her interactions with Brock Lesnar; and new allegations that current WWE president Nick Khan offered to help her get a different job outside the company with his connections in the industry.
McMahon has repeatedly denied the allegations since Grant initially filed a federal lawsuit against him and Laurinaitis in 2024. (Laurinaitis was removed after agreeing to cooperate with the investigation.)
“I felt used, leveraged, humiliated, shamed, dehumanized, intimidated, and exploited for the business and the sexual gratification of these men,” she said in the affidavit.
Grant was hired to work in WWE’s legal department in 2019, and said her encounters with McMahon — who lived in the same condominium complex — became sexual relatively quickly. By 2020, she said she felt trapped in her relationship due to the COVID-19 pandemic relegating her and McMahon to work from home in the same building.
“Vince had unlimited access to me to act on his sexual impulses on any day, at any time. I could not escape from him at work or home,” she said.
Grant alleged she was forced into multiple threesomes with McMahon, his “friend” and on another occasion with Laurinaitis.
Grant also offered more details on her interactions with Lesnar, the WWE superstar who she previously alleged as someone McMahon would traffic to. Although the two never met in person, Grant alleged in the new filing that she was contacted by Lesnar in 2021, that he went by “Polish Joe” and that he asked for nude photos and sought to have her travel to meet him.
“I now understood that I would not only be expected to perform sexually for Brock, but I would also be expected to travel to other states to do so,” she said.
Per the new filing, Grant’s exit from WWE began in January 2022, when McMahon believed an anonymous source may have intimate details of their relationship and that if leaked, they would severely damage his career. Grant alleged that Khan sought to reroute her to another employer by using his industry contacts in order to remove her as a legal liability to the company. However, Grant said she was hesitant to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and the two sides were allegedly at an impasse.
McMahon stepped down as WWE’s CEO later in 2022.
Grant alleged her eventual departure led to significant stress on her life and that she considered suicide.
“I felt I was trapped in a system of exploitation, where anyone could weaponize information about me and blackmail me,” she said. “I became suicidal and considered jumping to my death to avoid the hell my life was about to become.”
