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The Donald can rest easy. He’s not the only victim of Robert De Niro’s F-bomb-laced threats and tirades.
A former employee’s $12-million lawsuit, filed today in Manhattan Superior Court, alleges that the raging Raging Bull star subjected her to verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse that paint him as an intolerant bully and dirty old man.
Whatever the truth of Graham Chase Robinson’s claims, she doesn’t sound like much of a bargain either. In August, De Niro sued her for $3 million, alleging she embezzled money from his Canal Productions company, stole frequent flier miles, and spent her days as a vice president binge-watching programs on Netflix.
But the takeaway as the 76-year-old actor goes is this: Yet another #MeToo claim might deep-six the career of yet another left-wing, Hollywood big mouth.
The Lawsuit
Noting that Robinson started her career as De Niro’s executive assistance in 2008 at 25 years old, her 19-page lawsuit claims that he is “someone who has clung to old mores. He does not accept the idea that men should treat women as equals. He does not care that gender discrimination in the workplace violates the law. Ms. Robinson is a casualty of this attitude.”
De Niro, the lawsuit alleges, “subjected Ms. Robinson to gratuitous unwanted physical contact” and made “sexually-charged comments to her. He was verbally abusive. He treated Ms. Robinson as his ‘office wife,’ assigned her stereotypically female duties like housework, and insisted that she be available to him around the clock. He underpaid her because she was not a male breadwinner and denied her overtime pay even though she worked punishingly long hours.”
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That verbal abuse included calling her a “b***h” and a “brat,” the lawsuit alleges, and De Niro called his business partner a c*** in a conversation with Robinson. He called his assistants “the girls,” and “unleashed tirades against Ms. Robinson — often while he was intoxicated — in which he denigrated, berated, bullied, and hurled expletives at her.”
If true, the man who famously played mobster Jimmy “The Gent” Burke is in trouble:
De Niro made vulgar, inappropriate, and gendered comments to Ms. Robinson. He would joke with Ms. Robinson about his Viagra prescription. De Niro smirked to Ms. Robinson about his young paramour, who was around Ms. Robinson’s age. De Niro directed Ms. Robinson to imagine him on the toilet. He told Ms. Robinson that doing manual labor would “make a man out of you.” De Niro suggested that Ms. Robinson could get pregnant using sperm from her (married) male co-worker….
He urinated during telephone calls with her and met with her wearing only his pajamas or a bathrobe. In addition, De Niro directed Ms. Robinson to come to his bedroom to wake him up and directed her to meet alone with him in empty apartments and hotel suites.
As for the “office-wife” duties, De Niro expected Robinson to “scratch his back, button his shirts, fix his collars, tie his ties, and prod him awake when he was in bed” and perform other “job duties that were not commensurate with her title” but instead “stereotypically female.”
De Niro, the lawsuit alleges, “directed Ms. Robinson to put away his boxers, hang up his clothes, wash his sheets, vacuum his apartment, set his table, mend his clothing, and select gifts for his children.”
He also “stood idly by while his friend slapped Ms. Robinson on her buttocks.”
Aside from being overworked and underpaid, the lawsuit alleges, she was subjected to scatalolgical rants and abuse. “Once when she did not pick up his phone call, De Niro left Ms. Robinson a voicemail filled with expletives in which he called her a “spoiled brat,” said “how dare you f***ing disrespect me,” and threatened her, saying “you’re f***ing history.”
In April, 2019, Robinson quit and told De Niro she would sue.
And so the Vito Corleone actor, ignoring the character’s advice that “revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold,” sued first and “ensured that the suit would be widely publicized,” Robinson alleges.
His lawsuit’s “clickbait” accusations portray Robinson as a “loafer, a thief, and a miscreant. Now, when her name is Googled, these allegations pop up on the screen. The results have been devastating to Ms. Robinson. Her reputation and her career have been destroyed.”
De Niro’s Lawsuit
Thus is yet another prominent leftist, if the charges are true, revealed for what he really is.
But that doesn’t mean Robinson left her job with clean hands.
De Niro accused Robinson of staging a major theft and embezzlement operation that included stealing three million frequent flier miles worth $125,000 and tens of thousands of dollars worth of personal items.
The Netflix binge included 30 episodes of two programs over four workdays, and 55 episodes of Friends over three workdays.
Photo: AP Images