Janel Grant made a rare public appearance on Thursday, February 19, 2026, at a Capitol news briefing in Hartford, Connecticut, hosted by the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence. The event addressed the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in workplace misconduct cases and their impact on survivors. Grant spoke about the NDA at the center of her lawsuit against WWE and Vince McMahon, as well as the fallout from the June 2022 Wall Street Journal article that publicly named her in a report detailing allegations against McMahon.
“On June 15th of 2022, my life was rewritten into someone else’s storyline. And I was globally outed in the Wall Street Journal. That is the life-wrecking and the mental health impact of this particular NDA,” Grant said in her speech.
Grant said the situation took a severe toll on her mental health, including thoughts of self-harm. She noted that the support of organizations like the Alliance kept her going when she felt like the “loneliest person on planet Earth.” Grant further spoke about how NDAs can prevent survivors from speaking up and protect dangerous patterns within a workplace.
“Workplace safety depends on transparency because when employees cannot speak, patterns can’t be seen. When patterns can’t be seen, they can’t be stopped. When they can’t be stopped, harm spreads. When an NDA is used to conceal dangerous behavior, it simply relocates the harm to the next employee, the next office, the next victim,” she added.
Grant revealed that after the initial report, WWE requested she make a joint statement describing the relationship as consensual. She declined, but a company spokesperson later described it as consensual in a subsequent article. She also discussed being granted whistleblower status by the SEC in March 2023, just days before Vince McMahon and Ari Emanuel announced the deal between Endeavor and WWE.
“In March of 2023, I got two things from the SEC. I got a subpoena, and I got whistleblower status. A couple days after that, Vince McMahon and Ari Emanuel suddenly appeared on CNBC to announce a deal of Endeavor and WWE, so color me the most surprised person on planet Earth,” Grant noted.
Grant also mentioned that a WWE storyline on Raw had mirrored her situation for months, though she did not specify the angle. Near the end of her speech, she sent a direct message to the TKO board, urging them to have conversations regarding the origin of the company.
“To the board of TKO, if you didn’t know this part of your origin story, now you know. I hope you will have conversations with us. I will hope you have conversations amongst yourselves, and I hope that you don’t rely on old instincts with new insight. All of you have some say in how my life turns out from here, including how quickly I may be able to move on and find help and healing,” Grant stated.
The civil lawsuit, which alleges sexual assault and trafficking by McMahon, is currently set for an arbitration hearing in June 2026. This follows the dismissal of John Laurinaitis from the suit in May 2025 after he reached a confidential settlement and agreed to provide evidence against McMahon and WWE. McMahon resigned from TKO in early 2024 following the initial filing of the allegations.
