Jury selection in his trial begins Monday and is expected to last one day. Last July, Batali, his business partner, and their New York City restaurant company agreed to pay $600,000 to resolve a four-year investigation by the New York attorney general’s office into allegations that Batali, restaurant managers, and other workers sexually harassed employees. After four women accused him of inappropriate touching in 2017, Batali stepped down from day-to-day operations at his restaurant empire and left the since-discontinued ABC cooking show “The Chew.” But the ponytail- and orange Croc-wearing personality’s high-flying career crumbled amid sexual misconduct allegations in recent years. Batali is accused of forcibly kissing and groping a woman after taking a selfie with her.īatali faces a maximum sentence of 2.5 years in the Suffolk County House of Correction.īatali’s lawyer has said the charge is “without merit.”īatali was once a Food Network fixture on shows like “Molto Mario” and “Iron Chef. The celebrity chef is accused of indecent assault and battery connected to a 2017 incident at a Boston restaurant. Jury selection gets underway Monday in the trial of Mario Batali on a sexual misconduct charge.
