WWE president Nick Khan and COO Brad Blum have been named Corporate Officers No. 1 and No. 2 in a sex-trafficking complaint filed in January in federal court in Connecticut against the corporation, former chair Vince McMahon, and former talent-relations executive John Laurinaitis.
The suit claims that Khan and Blum, whose names have not previously been reported, were key players in a scheme in which the plaintiff, a woman named Janel Grant, was hired “in a completely undefined role, except for the understanding that she remain a sexual slave to be used and trafficked by McMahon within the WWE.” Unlike McMahon and Laurinaitis, the two are not personally accused of sexual misbehavior or violence. Instead, the suit contends that they and others facilitated and
Khan, a dealmaker and former CAA executive who rose to prominence in sports media by negotiating billion-dollar deals for clients such as the SEC and WWE before becoming president of the latter in 2020, is now in charge of the sprawling empire that McMahon built over his lifetime. He reports to TKO president Mark Shapiro and, ultimately, to famed Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel, who took over as chairman of WWE’s parent company, TKO, when McMahon resigned in January following the suit’s filing.
Front Office Sports independently identified Khan and Blum, as well as the two other anonymous corporate officers named in the suit, by cross-referencing the suit’s details with publicly available records such as online résumés and corporate filings, as well as information provided by sources familiar with WWE. (Corporate Officer No. 1 is stated in the action, for example, to have kept a fourth-floor office at the company’s former headquarters, which a former employee verified was Khan’s.) FOS then questioned Grant’s lawyer, Ann Callis, if the reporting was correct.
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