After the years-long sexual trafficking and assault case was dismissed, ex-WWE chairman Vince McMahon's accuser, Janel Grant, feels sorry for him.
Speaking to Post Wrestling, Grant was asked how she feels about McMahon now that their case is closed. She feels “forgiveness” and “empathy” for him.
“Forgiveness,” she answered. “I don’t know how else to describe it, other than there’s something that does not take up space in my brain. I feel even empathy, because in a weird way, and this is extreme polar opposites, the thing that might… the series of events that caused The Journal story to happen—whatever it was—it equally impacted him… There are so many people involved in [the] decision-making that I can’t sit still and process.”
When the initial story about Grant's lawsuit against McMahon broke, she was worried about him. Her first instinct was to ask about him.
The scandal first broke in January 2024. Grant alleged that McMahon and John Laurinaitis sexually assaulted and trafficked her. It would be several years before the case saw a resolution.
In June 2026, Grant and McMahon agreed to take the sex trafficking lawsuit into private arbitration. Grant's lawsuit would then be voluntarily dismissed, pending a judge's approval, in July 2026.
McMahon retired from WWE in July 2026 after revelations of hush-money agreements arose. However, he returned in January 2023 as the company's executive chairman.
He helped oversee the WWE-UFC merger that created TKO Group Holdings. McMahon would briefly serve as TKO's executive chairman.
However, Grant's lawsuit would force him to resign again in January 2024. He resigned and has not returned to WWE since then. Paul “Triple H” Levesque, his son-in-law, has remained WWE's chief content officer since September 2022, after McMahon's initial retirement.
McMahon was pivotal in making WWE the biggest professional wrestling promotion. He took over WWE (then-WWF) from his father, Vincent J. McMahon, in 1982.