Husam was expelled from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association “Sam” Asi, a Golden Globes voter and member since 2010, following an inquiry in response to ’s investigative reporting in which three women accused him of sexual misconduct, including kissing an assistant without consent.
The HFPA informed Wrap editor Sharon Waxman of Asi’s expulsion in a letter Tuesday, as she had lodged a complaint about an anti-Semitic tweet against her by Asi that followed the investigative article.
“Pursuant to the HFPA’s Reporting and Grievance Policy for Members, as approved by the members July 6, 2021, I write to inform you, as a reporting party, that at the Board’s August 22, 2022 meeting, at which a quorum was present, a majority of the present, non-recused Board members voted to expel Dr. Asi from the HFPA’s membership, effective August 27, 2022,”It reads:
Three women accused Asi, a Palestinian journalist working for the BBC Arabic Service, of having kissed her without her consent. The three women spoke openly about their relationship with Asi, a man who they claim abused their trust by making professional situations sexualized. This eventually led one of them to quit entertainment journalism.
Asi and his attorney didn’t respond to Tuesday’s requests for comment.
Wenting “Ting Ting”Xu and Tianyue, the two accusers, claimed they were not contacted by HFPA, but were grateful to have been expelled.
“We had a lot of naysayers along the way,”Xu expressed her gratitude for the investigation and for her two peers’ willingness to come forward. “People who know us at other outlets rejected this story. I’m grateful you dug into the story and listened to what we had to say.”
She continued: “Without Tian and Anna (Greentree) I wouldn’t have come to tell my story either. The more voices we hear, the more brave other women will be to tell their stories. That is how we go forward as a community, we can’t go back anymore.”
“I didn’t think it would make a splash. We are nobody,” said Li, who was Asi’s former assistant. “I didn’t think this thing would have a conclusion.”
Asi was the one responsible for managing the website of HFPA as recently as last. He said that he was innocent of the charges in February. “We deny all these baseless accusations, and we have ample evidence to prove them false,” and called the women’s stories “defamatory attacks”To make them stop and desist from receiving letters.
Earlier this summer, Asi received a letter from the full HFPA membership informing them that a hearing was imminent. “in a vindictively hostile and blatantly biased report against me, the HFPA’s investigators stretched the limits of logic and credibility to absurdity in order to implicate me.”
He further claimed that HFPA’s investigators debunked and failed to support evidence from past misconduct accusations. Instead, he claims the board changed its mind and expanded the investigation, to include antisemitism accusations, including a “misinterpretation”One of his Arabic articles, and tweets he made about Wrap editor-in chief Waxman.
In ’s story from February, Li, a former assistant of Asi’s, claimed that Asi played pornography in front of her and kissed her without her consent. Xu, a member of the HFPA, resigned in protest last year and claimed that Asi had repeated a rumor she had done oral sex with him to gain admission.
Hanna Greentree, a former journalist from Ukraine, told Asi that he only sponsored her to join the HFPA if she sex with him. Greentree, a Ukrainian native who was working as a journalist in L.A., under the name Anna Pavlova in 2016, said Asi invited him to his apartment to discuss sponsoring her application. He made her feel uncomfortable and focused the conversation on dating and girlfriends.
Brian Welk contributed this report.