REPORT: Investigative probe reveals Les Miles offered secret settlement to LSU student

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Former LSU head football coach Les Miles reached a settlement with a former student who accused him of harassment almost a decade ago, according to a report from The Advocate newspaper.

The newspaper reports the settlement has surfaced due to Husch Blackwell, a third-party law firm, investigating the university’s handling of Title IX violations following last year’s USA Today report claiming the university mishandled sexual misconduct allegations for years.

Sources told The Advocate a former LSU Athletic Department intern accused Miles of “hitting on her.”

“As part of the Husch Blackwell review and our internal investigations, we have heard about a settlement but LSU is not a party to it and we have not seen it,” Jim Sabourin, LSU’s vice president of strategic communications, told the newspaper Wednesday, Feb. 24.

When contacted by the newspaper Wednesday, Miles denied making advances toward a student intern. However, he did not directly answer the newspaper’s questions regarding the settlement.

Peter Ginsberg, Miles’ attorney, told the newspaper Wednesday that a description of his client’s settlement with the student was “discernibly incomplete and inaccurate, and its publication would recklessly cast Mr. Miles in a false light.”

The newspaper reports Ginsberg did not immediately respond to questions about whether or not he was denying the existence of the settlement itself.

The Advocate also reports Miles has intervened in a Baton Rouge district court case in an effort to prevent LSU from releasing Husch Blackwell’s investigation into him.

Miles was fired as the head coach of the LSU football team in 2016. He became the head football coach at Kansas University in 2019. The Kansas Jayhawks have gone 3-18 in Miles’ first two seasons. He is currently in the third year of his five-year contract, the newspaper reports.