Longtime CNBC director Dan Switzen stands accused of placing a hidden camera in a bathroom as an alleged means to spy on his teenage au pair.
Switzen is now the tenth NBC staffer accused of some form of sexual misconduct.
The Daily News reports that the 44-year-old Switzen was arrested in mid-November after a friend of his live-in nanny, who is just 18 years old, discovered a bathroom camera allegedly concealed in a Kleenex box.
Showing an impressive presence of mind, the teens went straight to the police, who secured a search warrant and found “incriminating images” on the camera’s memory card. Switzen, a 16-year CNBC veteran, was then arrested and charged with unlawful surveillance, which is a felony.
The complaint reads, “He intentionally installed a video recording device in a tissue box located in his family’s bathroom to surreptitiously view a person dressing or undressing … at a place and time when (the victim) had a reasonable expectation of privacy without (her) knowledge or consent.”
Released without bail, Switzen is not commenting on his arrest, nor is CNBC.
Switzen’s attorney told the Daily News that “He’s a very decent family man. I don’t want to litigate these allegations in the press. We will defend him accordingly.”
Along with Chris Matthews, Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, Mike Tirico, Larry Gaetano, Harold Ford Jr., Matt Zimmerman, Alec Baldwin, and David Corn, you can add Switzen to NBC’s ongoing existential crisis.
Moreover, in order to shield powerful Democrats and their own colleagues, three of NBC’s highest-profile feminist staffers — Andrea Mitchell, Mika Brzezinski, and Kasie Hunt — have downplayed or dismissed or shamed a number of alleged victims.
Despite what is quite obviously an institutional crisis involving a climate of abuse and enabling, NBC still refuses to go the Fox News route and hire an outside firm to investigate what can only be described as a misogynist environment that has time and again failed in every possible arena, including that of common decency.
Incredibly, NBC News is still investigating itself, and this is, in large part, due to its allies in the rest of the elite media — CNN, Politico, The Washington Post, etc., who are protecting NBC in the form of a cover-up — not of the individual stories, which are dutifully reported on, but of a disturbing pattern.
NBC’s systemic and institutionalized culture of excusing, looking the other way, and even making light of alleged behavior that can only be described as predatory and appalling cannot be fixed by those who helped create that culture.
But when you are a member of the elite media and the anti-Trump resistance, right and wrong hold no meaning.
As of now, nearly 50 members of the elite media have been fired, suspended, or accused of some form of sexual misconduct.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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