On Wednesday morning, Politico reported that multiple sources confirmed that Roger Ailes—the former Fox News chief forced out due to multiple sexual-harassment allegations—had previously said that he would send goons to savagely assault an adversarial reporter.

When journalist and author Gabriel Sherman was writing his 2014 biography on Ailes, the Fox News chairman reportedly said in private conversation that “I know where he lives, and I’m gonna send people to beat the shit out of him.”

“If it ever came out [what we’ve done against Sherman], multiple people at Fox would go to jail,” Ailes reportedly said.

“It's alarming that anyone would threaten violence against a journalist, even more so given that Ailes claimed to have run a news network employing journalists,” Sherman told The Daily Beast on Wednesday, responding to the Politico story.

Earlier this week, Sherman reported for New York magazine that Ailes had allegedly funneled part of the Fox News budget to hiring operatives and private detectives to help wage covert war against Ailes’s enemies in politics, news media, and elsewhere.

“I was also the target of an operation, a source told me,” Sherman wrote. “One source also said private investigators employed by Fox contributor Bo Dietl were instructed to follow me and my wife.” (Dietl denied this in an interview with The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning.)

—Asawin Suebsaeng