Emily Smith

Emily Smith

Celebrity News
exclusive

Matt Lauer’s lawyers trying to get him $30M payout after firing

Lawyers for Matt Lauer are working on landing the shamed anchor a $30 million golden sexual parachute following his NBC firing.

Sources close to the disgraced newsman say his team is working on a plan to get him paid through the remainder of his $20 million-a-year contract — which still has a year-and-a-half to run.

Matt Lauer (right) and Eddie Burke Jr.MATT AGUDO/INSTARimages.com

A source close to Lauer’s team said, “They are currently looking at his contract and determining whether the claims against him, which clearly would affect any moral clause in his contract and his ensuing termination, would cut off his contractual rights to be paid through to the end of his contract.”

NBC in 2016 had renegotiated a new deal with Lauer valued at $20 million a year that would have kept him on the air through the end of 2018.

But moral clauses are often included in TV contracts and specify that talent can be fired without pay if they bring the company into any disrepute.

Another TV insider said, “There is no way Matt is getting paid. There has been an irrevocable breach of Matt’s contract, there is a moral clause that says if he brings the company into disrepute — which he clearly has — NBC can terminate his employment immediately without pay and they do not have to pay out his contract.”

A rep for Lauer didn’t comment, and his personal attorney William Zabel didn’t return calls.

Meanwhile, the grim-faced anchor was seen for the first time since his sexual misconduct scandal broke leaving his $33 million Hamptons estate Thursday to meet famed East End real estate and criminal lawyer Eddie Burke Jr., to whom he handed an envelope.

Burke had previously defended basketball star Jason Kidd when he was charged with drunk driving shortly after the then-Brooklyn Nets coach was hit with a misdemeanor drunken driving charge after a 2012 crash.

Burke didn’t return calls and NBC News reps declined to comment.