The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s baby mama, and his wife, had more competition according to a lawsuit filed against him.
Tamara Holder, a Fox News contributor, is accused of having an affair with Jesse Jackson, Sr. in a lawsuit that alleges the illegal use of a gay Jackson employee to facilitate the relationship.
The accuser, Tommy R. Bennett, was Jackson’s personal travel assistant and ran the legal clinic at Jackson’s organization, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He says he was eventually fired for protesting his treatment by Jackson and other PUSH employees and is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
Holder has not responded to repeated requests for comment from Accuracy in Media, but Jackson’s press representative, Lauren Love, says the allegations are false and will be proven so.
Bennett attorney Thomas V. Leverso says that Jackson and PUSH have been stonewalling a legal response for many months but that investigations and the case are moving forward. Leverso tells Accuracy in Media that witnesses have come forward to verify the allegations against Jackson.
Ms. Holder, an attorney who specializes in pardons, operates a web site called — not making this up — The Holder Position.
Another Holder website says that, in addition to being “a legal and political contributor for Fox News Channel,” she “previously wrote for The Huffington Post and now writes for The Daily Caller.” The latter identifies her as “one of the nation’s rising attorneys and legal analytical stars.”
On one occasion, “Mr. Bennett was instructed by Rev. Jackson to escort Ms. Holder to Rev. Jackson’s hotel room at the Hilton at Chicago O’Hare airport,” the suit says.
The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, says Bennett was director of the clinic but that when he objected to Holder taking a majority of the cases and charging too much to poor clients, he was replaced. He says Jackson then gave control of the clinic to Holder.
Bennett’s lawsuit is one of several pending against Jackson. It includes an explosive allegation: That it has been widely known that Holder and Jackson were having an affair, and that Jackson’s family was made aware of it — by a letter from yet another of Jackson’s mistresses. And even that is not quite the end of the allegations Jackson faces:
In addition to the alleged relationship with Holder, Jackson is accused of demanding sexual favors from Bennett, such as being told to apply a cream on Jackson’s inner thigh to treat a rash. Bennett says he refused, Jackson became angry, and called Bennett a “little mother——.”
The Tatler strives to be a family-friendly website. The fact that reporting allegations against Rev. Jackson draw us close an R or NC-17 rating says quite a bit.
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