Bill O'Reilly
Bill O'Reilly asked a police department to investigate one of its detective's involvement with his wife, according to a report. REUTERS

A much-hyped Gawker exclusive alleges that popular Fox News host Bill O'Reilly tried to have his wife's police officer boyfriend investigated by his department's internal affairs.

The story alleges that O'Reilly pressured the Nassau County Police Department to investigate the behavior of one of its cops with O'Reilly's wife of 15 years, Maureen McPhilmy O'Reilly.

Gawker in the past has speculated that O'Reilly's marriage was on the rocks, even showing the television host without his wedding ring, but neither has filed for divorce.

The source for the story is a friend of Richard Harasym, a long-time internal affairs police officer for the Nassau County Police Department. The source indicated that NCPD police commissioner Lawrence Mulvey directly ordered the investigation of the officer, possibly because O'Reilly was considering making a major donation to the Nassau County Police Department Foundation.

He told me, 'You'll never guess what happened to me the other day. Do you know Bill O'Reilly? I got called into my boss' office saying they wanted me to meet with these two PI's working for O'Reilly to go over some information because a detective was having an affair with O'Reilly's wife, the source told Gawker.

Harasym was expected to work with two private investigators hired by O'Reilly to dig up dirt on the detective, but also to tell the detective to back off.

Harasym refused to investigate the detective and was subsequently transferred out of internal affairs, though not officially due to the O'Reilly investigation.

When reached by Gawker for the story, former police commissioner Mulvey acknowledged there was an investigation but refused to delve further into the subject. He admitted to personally knowing O'Reilly, but that he had never been contacted by Bill O'Reilly or anyone associated with him and asked to launch an investigation.

Gawker had hyped the story up over the past two weeks and inferred that the exclusive could have impacted Fox News' coverage of the blog. Last week Fox News reported that Gawker had seen its traffic drop 75 percent - - a claim that Gawker and other media entities have pointed out to be patently untrue.

Fox News refused to comment on Gawker's story and Bill O'Reilly hasn't made an announcement or reacted to the exclusive story.

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