Sex trafficking, securities fraud, an NDA in furtherance of a crime — and the WWE founder married to Trump's Education Secretary asking a federal judge to enforce it.

Vince McMahon — WWE's billionaire founder, husband of Trump's Education Secretary, subject of a federal grand jury investigation widely reported to involve sex trafficking, and a recent SEC enforcement target — is asking a federal judge to send Janel Grant's sex-trafficking lawsuit out of open court and into private arbitration. On April 1, 2026, Grant's lawyers filed a 48-page memorandum opposing McMahon and WWE's renewed motion to compel arbitration in Grant v. World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., No. 3:24-cv-00090-SFR (D. Conn.). The next day, they renewed Grant's motion for discovery into how the NDA at the center of the fight was actually formed.

Three years of abuse, then a hush NDA.

Grant alleges McMahon — who lived in a duplex in her apartment building — recruited her in 2019 with promises of employment, then over three years subjected her to physical and sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sex trafficking inside WWE headquarters. The amended complaint pleads claims under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the Speak Out Act, and Connecticut tort law.

In January 2022, the amended complaint says, McMahon told Grant his wife Linda had learned about the relationship and was threatening divorce, and pressured Grant to sign an NDA. McMahon's pitch, per Grant: sign the NDA, Linda doesn't leave, the condo stays, the public stays out of it. (Everyone wins except Grant.)

Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, and a criminal NDA.

The NDA Vince now wants a federal court to enforce was, on Grant's account, drafted to keep his estranged wife Linda from divorcing him. Linda McMahon now runs the U.S. Department of Education.

Linda isn't the first Trump cabinet pick whose family life has trailed sex-scandal coverage into office. She is, however, the first whose husband is now asking a federal judge to enforce a contract that two federal authorities have separately tied to crime.

McMahon's move: send the case to secret arbitration under the same NDA.

McMahon and WWE moved to compel arbitration under the NDA. If they win, Grant's claims leave open court for a private arbitrator under a clause requiring "absolute confidentiality." The public stops hearing about it.

Grant: this NDA is part of a federal crime, not a release of one.

Grant's opposition memorandum (ECF No. 138) argues the NDA — and its arbitration clause — are unenforceable as a matter of law:

• The NDA was drafted in furtherance of federal securities crimes. The SEC's January 10, 2025 cease-and-desist order found McMahon signed two settlement agreements — including this NDA — and hid them from WWE's board, accountants, and auditor. That bypassed WWE's internal accounting controls and produced material misstatements in WWE's 2018 and 2021 financials. Defrauded investors, in plain English. McMahon paid WWE $1.3 million in victim restitution. The Second Circuit, in In re: Grand Jury Subpoenas Dated September 13 (2025), separately found that communications between McMahon and his then-WWE outside counsel about this same NDA fall under the crime-fraud exception — meaning a federal court found probable cause those communications were made in furtherance of crime.
• The arbitration clause is independently void under the federal Speak Out Act and the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act — two laws passed after #MeToo specifically to stop employer NDAs and forced-arbitration clauses from burying claims like Grant's.
• Grant lacked capacity to consent. The brief and her accompanying expert declaration argue she signed under McMahon's coercive control — sleep-deprived, suicidal, and only briefly represented by counsel whose advice McMahon worked to undermine.

The companion motion (ECF No. 140) asks for limited discovery into how the NDA got drafted. Grant's point: defendants have already produced the same materials, and given sworn testimony, to the SEC, the grand jury, and the plaintiff-shareholders in the Delaware merger litigation. They just don't want to give it to her.

The motions to compel arbitration are still pending.