As a leading Republican Party propagandist, Bill O’Reilly often holds himself up as an arbiter of “family values.” In 2004, of course, O’Reilly and his employer settled a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a former Fox employee for an undisclosed sum. Now Gawker is reporting that O’Reilly is involved in what ultimately may become a much bigger scandal:

Last summer, Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly came to believe that his wife was romantically involved with another man. Not just any man, but a police detective in the Long Island community they call home. So O’Reilly did what any concerned husband would do: He pulled strings to get the police department’s internal affairs unit to investigate one of their own for messing with the wrong man’s lady.

We reported in June that Bill O’Reilly and his wife of 15 years Maureen McPhilmy O’Reilly seem to be on the outs. Last summer she purchased a separate home under her own name, and transferred her voter registration to the new address, while O’Reilly kept his registration current at their old address. As per usual, Fox News did not comment on the situation at the time. Since then we’ve learned what happened, and it’s like Bridges of Madison County meets Copland. When confronted with a potentially disloyal spouse, O’Reilly reacted by—not unlike his boss Roger Ailes—treating his local police department like a private security force and trying to damage one cop’s career for the sin of crossing Bill O’Reilly.

Adweek reports that Fox has fired back at Gawker with a Nixonian non-denial denial, which is perfect since Fox President Roger Ailes worked in the Nixon White House political shop:

“Gawker has been lying about Fox News for several years,” a Fox spokesperson told Adweek when reached for comment about the story. “We are not going to dignify this with any further comment.”

Despite that un-denial, longtime “Bill-O” tormenter Keith Olbermann gave the scandal his coveted “Worst Person in the World” slot on his show last night, pointing out that Lawrence Mulvey, the former police commissioner who allegedly launched the investigation into Mrs. O’Reilly’s purported affair, inadvertently confirmed that, at the very least, some sort of investigation had taken place:

Mulvey retired as commissioner in April. When we called him for comment, he seemed to be aware of the case. “I don’t know if the investigation is ongoing or concluded,” he said, “so I wouldn’t comment…”

Jeff Bercovici at Forbes wonders if O’Reilly’s scandal could drag Fox News into the Murdoch family’s U.K. hacking scandal:

At any other time, that would amount to precisely nothing given the knee-jerk tendency within Fox News, and parent News Corp. in general, always to defend its own against outside critics, right or wrong. But it’s exactly News Corp.’s culture that’s at issue in the Justice Department’s open-ended probe of the company. To build a case that News Corp. constitutes a corrupt organization under anti-racketeering statutes, prosecutors have to show that there exists a pattern of wrongdoing sanctioned at the highest levels of the company.

I’ve said I consider it unlikely that such a pattern can be established. But the charges against O’Reilly make it that much less unlikely. As Gawker notes, his boss, Fox News chief Roger Ailes, has a habit of using local cops as though they’re his personal employees. Ailes has also been accused of instructing an employee, Judith Regan, to lie to federal investigators who were vetting former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik for the job of running the Homeland Security Department. He’s even been accused, by a former employee, of operating a “brain room” that had the capability to access outside phone records, although that claim has never been substantiated.

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