Former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin has revealed that she believes she was drugged and potentially sexually assaulted by an older man in 2001. The 46-year-old made the disclosure on Substack on Sunday, recounting an incident that occurred when she was 21, years before joining the network.
Baldwin's Account
In a post accompanying a 2018 monologue she shared on Instagram, Baldwin wrote: 'I was afraid. Afraid to make it personal. Afraid to break the rules of Journalism.' The monologue originally aired after psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about her allegation that then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teen.
During that segment, Baldwin told her audience: 'We all have our stories. The spiked drink. Waking up on the cold tiles of a hotel bathroom floor. The uncertainty. The shame. The thought, I somehow brought this on myself.'
On Sunday, she wrote: 'When I delivered the final section of that monologue... you can see it in my eyes and hear it in my voice. But there was one pronoun I intentionally left out: I.'
The Alleged Incident
Baldwin described a spring break trip to Los Angeles with a friend when she was a 21-year-old college student. She recalled: 'I was 21. Alone at a very adult bar in Beverly Hills. And then I remember two much older men appearing beside me. Offering me a drink. And the rest comes only in flashes: A black SUV. Chateau Marmont. Waking up half-dressed on cold bathroom tile. Flashes of memory. And a deep, different kind of grogginess the next day that I did not understand.'
She said she did a 'frantic check of my body' and felt 'relief' after 'believing penetration hadn't happened,' but added, 'At least that was the story I told myself.' Baldwin noted that her own 'shame' led her to rule out the possibility of rape.
Motivation for Sharing
'I am sharing this story not for sympathy. Not for drama or clicks. And not because my story is the story here,' Baldwin wrote. 'I am sharing it because... it matters... and maybe somewhere... there is a woman reading this right now and wondering about her own experience: Wait, was that assault? Did something happen to me too? Have I also been minimizing my own experience for years?'
CNN Firing and Aftermath
Baldwin was fired from CNN in 2021 after more than a decade as an anchor. She previously accused the network of 'muzzling' her and firing her without cause. In a 2024 op-ed for Vanity Fair, she wrote that she 'couldn't tell the whole truth' about her signoff from CNN Newsroom on April 16, 2021, which was initially presented as her own decision.
She claimed she was sidelined and later cut by then-CEO Jeff Zucker after a contentious relationship with an unnamed executive producer. 'Jeff [Zucker] wanted me out. No explanation. Just out,' she wrote. 'And the worst part? I had to lie to my team, my friends and family, and my viewers.'
Days after announcing her departure, Baldwin told the 'On the Issues With Michele Goodwin' podcast that CNN had become male-dominated during her tenure. 'I got told no a lot,' she said. Last year, she gave a TedX talk titled 'Getting Fired from my Dream Job Taught Me Truth' and told Oprah Winfrey in October that her firing came as 'an unraveling, but in a good way.'
Kavanaugh Context
Kavanaugh 'unequivocally and categorically' denied Ford's allegations and was confirmed to the Supreme Court in October 2018.
