Stephen A. Smith has broken his silence on Shannon Sharpe explosive sexual assault lawsuit.
“We’ve grown close as friends. I certainly root for him. I know he’s been through a lot in life, he’s overcome a lot of things, and when he departed from FOX, I was more than happy to bring him on board here,” Smith said on his podcast, calling the scandal a “sad situation.”
Smith did not seem to agree with Sharpe’s legal team releasing explicit text messages between the Club Shay Shay host and the alleged victim.
“On one hand, going on the offensive to defend himself, I completely understand where Shannon Sharpe is coming from. On the other hand, when his legal team issued out the press release on X yesterday, they mentioned her name and revealed some of those explicit text messages, that was uncomfortable, and I don’t know if that’s a strategy that would work,” Smith continued.
He also spoke on Sharpe, comparing his case to Jay-Z, who was also sued by a client of attorney Tony Buzbee and won.
“In my perfect world, this equates to Jay-Z where the case ultimately dropped, and Shannon is allowed to continue on “First Take” and thrive and shine and have an illustrious career in the podcast stratosphere… In my perfect world, he moves on. And somehow, someway, we find this all to be false,” he continued. “But it doesn’t seem like that’s the way things are about to go down considering who Mr. Buzbee is and how emphatic his client is proclaiming that she is right and she’s telling the truth. I don’t know where this is going to go. I can’t speak to anything else.”