Rupert Murdoch takes another swipe at Wolff

What appears to be a vendetta against his (semi-authorised) biographer Michael Wolff by the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch continues with a story in the Murdoch-owned New York Post claiming that the Vanity Fair writer callously ejected his frail 85-year-old mother-in-law from her one-bedroom apartment.

Earlier this week the newspaper ran a story about Wolff, who is married, allegedly having an affair with a 28-year-old journalist called Victoria Floethe. As reported here, this was followed the next day by a cartoon of the 55-year-old Vanity Fair writer in bed with a young women with the caption: “Oh Mr Wolff, you’re books are so moral and ethical. I hope your wife appreciates them.”

Now the Post has reported that Wolff’s mother-in-law, Edith Anthoine, is taking a $2.5m legal action against the “bald, trout-lipped Vanity Fair writer” over "pressuring" tactics to evict her from her New York apartment.

In the suit, issued in the Manhattan Supreme Court, Anthoine alleges that Wolff and his wife Alison asked her in 1994 to give them her rent-stabilised four-bedroom apartment at Lexington Avenue and 77th Street so they could buy it at a good price and have more room for their three children. In exchange, the suit claims, they agreed to buy a nearby one-bedroom apartment for her to live in until her death.

However, Anthoine says that the Wolffs ordered her out of the one-bedroom flat in 2007 so they could "sell the unit for their own profit". She also alleges that, last year, they stopped paying her maintenance fees - part of the original deal - because of "cash flow" problems.

A source close to Wolff said the family considers Anthoine a "batty... difficult old lady" who'd be better off in an old-age home. However, the Post quotes a family member as saying: "It's really, really creepy . . . This guy Wolff epitomises everything that is simply wrong about this generation of spoiled-brat, entitlement children."

It’s a newsworthy enough story, but many believe that Murdoch is egging on his NYP journalists to heap humiliation on Wolff. It is known that he was upset by some elements of Wolff’s recent book, The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch, one of which was the revelation that the 77-year-old tycoon tints his hair. ·