Fox News’ Special Report has devoted only about five minutes of airtime to stories about alleged influence peddling by President Donald Trump’s family members in the 13 months since its anchor, Bret Baier, told an interviewer that the press “100%” had an obligation to report such stories with the same vigor with which they had pursued Republican allegations about the business interests of former President Joe Biden's son Hunter.
When Politico’s Dasha Burns asked Baier last year about reports on the international business dealings of Trump’s eldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, the Fox chief political anchor laid down a marker that covering such stories was vital.
“If you're going to play it one way, you've got to play it another way, and you’ve got to cover all of those things,” he explained during the interview, which was published on May 9, 2025. Baier cited what he termed “real questions” about the “access” of the Trump sons and that of President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.
Such coverage is more than warranted — Trump and his family members oversee a sprawling business empire that has grown dramatically since he launched his reelection campaign. It includes immense holdings in cryptocurrency and international real estate deals through business entities now controlled by Eric and Don Jr. Kushner and the president’s sons also hold an array of consulting and venture capital positions that have the aroma of influence peddling. These businesses benefit from Trump’s presidency — some even receiving direct federal contracts — while posing conflicts with U.S. policy.
But Baier was not living up to the standard he set. While Special Report had routinely covered Hunter Biden stories, its handling of the Trump family’s myriad financial conflicts over the first 81 episodes of the second Trump term (the period prior to his May 2025 Politico interview) consisted of only a single underwhelming segment about its cryptocurrency holdings, as Media Matters noted at the time.
And now, after Baier’s program has spent another 13 months all but ignoring the damning reporting from other outlets about these shady business dealings, we can say conclusively that he has not followed through on his promise to “cover all of those things.”
Here’s what little Special Report has said about the many Trump family business dealings
- The five-minute sum of Special Report’s coverage of the conflicts of interest created by the Trump family’s business dealings in the 13 months since Baier’s remarks came over just four editions of the program that aired in November and early December of last year.In late October, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange Binance, expunging Zhao’s 2023 conviction on charges related to Binance’s facilitation of money laundering for criminals and terrorists. The pardon — which set the stage for Binance’s return to the U.S. — came after Binance took steps following the 2024 election to bolster World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s then-newly formed crypto company. On November 4, 2025, Fox White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich addressed the pardon and briefly referenced “scrutiny over Binance's role in the Trump sons’ crypto venture.”Three nights later, Baier aired an exclusive interview with Zhao, roughly 2 minutes of which revolved around the Trump family’s business interests. The anchor repeatedly asked Zhao whether he had any business ties to the president’s sons and if those connections led to his pardon, only for Zhao to flatly deny any such relationship.
Special Report also briefly mentioned Zhao receiving a Trump pardon after Binance boosted the Trump family’s investment earlier in the November 7, 2025, program, and again on its December 5, 2025, edition.
The only other reference to the Trump family’s business dealings that we found on Special Report since last May came on November 19, 2025. Discussing a bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress, correspondent Rich Edson reported: “Some members want to extend stock trade prohibitions to those in the judiciary and executive branches as Trump family business interests have drawn more attention. The president says he has nothing to do with his family business.”
And that’s it for Special Report’s treatment of alleged Trump family self-dealing, corruption, and conflicts of interest from May 9, 2025, through June 2, 2026. Special Report’s treatment of the World Liberty Financial story notably failed to address a key aspect uncovered by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in February: Emirati Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is literally known as the “spy sheikh,” secretly paid $500 million for a major stake in the Trump family company just four days before Trump’s inauguration, and subsequently received approval from the Trump administration for “access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips” that the previous administration had blocked due to “fears that the sensitive technology could be diverted to China.”
“You’d have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power, foreign entanglements, and corruption alleged in the report to get near what Trump has raked in just from the UAE,” National Review writer and Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy noted in a column on that story. And then there are the myriad stories that Baier completely ignored during that period, a sampling of which are included below:
- The Wall Street Journal reported in October that “BlinkRx, an online prescription drug delivery company that this year installed Trump Jr. as a board member,” was set to host an event featuring the president’s son, “the country’s top drugmakers,” and “senior Trump administration officials that regulate the pharmaceutical industry” which would “ conclude with a dinner at the Executive Branch, the exclusive new club founded by Trump Jr. and his close friends.”
- After drone company Unusual Machines put Trump Jr. on an advisory board and gave him “shares worth millions,” the firm announced “at least $15.2 million in military-linked orders, including a direct U.S. Army buy,” Forbes reported in October.
- The Associated Press reported after President Trump launched the war with Iran that military drone company Powerus — which counts Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. as investors — was seeking Pentagon contracts and pitching its interceptors to Gulf countries “while they are under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.”
- Kushner has been moonlighting as a top U.S. negotiator before and during the Iran war — but there are questions about whose interests he is serving since his day job is running the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which “took a $2 billion investment from a Saudi fund led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”
- In April, the robotics company Foundation Future Industries won a $24 million Pentagon contract; Eric Trump is the firm’s “chief strategy adviser.”
- The Trump Organization, which is led by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, has embarked on international real estate deals in the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman in partnership with a developer who has ties to the Saudi government.
- A joint venture between the Trump Organization and a local consortium is building a Trump Tower in Tbilisi, Georgia, “on land currently part-owned by the son of the US-sanctioned leader of the country,” The Guardian reported in May.
- ProPublica reported last week that North Carolina startup Vulcan Elements received a $620 million loan from the Pentagon — at the insistence of the White House — three months after the venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner took a stake in it.
The context of Baier ignoring the Trump family’s corruption
Special Report’s paltry coverage of the Trump family’s business dealings is infinitesimal when compared to the program’s handling of Hunter Biden’s business interests before and during the Biden administration.
When Baier laid down his marker last May, we noted that after the New York Post broke the story regarding former President Joe Biden's son's laptop in October 2020, Special Report covered Hunter Biden's alleged influence peddling in at least 32 segments over 19 days that combined for more than an hour and a half of airtime. Other Media Matters research revealed that Hunter Biden’s name was mentioned on Special Report at least 679 times from January 2023 through April 2024.
Baier’s work reflects the
broader shift at his network, which furiously demagogued the right’s thin claims of Biden corruption but has ignored or excused the allegations surrounding Trump, even as the latter often feature
orders of magnitude more money and much more direct nexuses to the White House.
Indeed, some Fox personalities are even cashing in with the Trumps — star host Laura Ingraham is on a corporate board alongside Trump Jr. for a company whose CEO co-founded the venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, while contributor Brett Velicovich co-founded a drone company that counts the Trump sons as investors.
Baier has reaped substantial benefits from his lackadaisical coverage of what we should probably term the Trump crime family. The president regularly harangues and threatens journalists from more credible news outlets — but the treatment he gives Baier is closer to that reserved for Baier’s propagandistic evening-show hosts.
The Fox anchor has been Trump’s guest on the golf course and received highly sought invitations to White House galas like November’s lavish banquet honoring Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the April state dinner for King Charles III of Britain and his wife Camilla, the queen consort.
Baier has also received a steady stream of interviews with top Trump administration officials, and just last month, he sat down with Trump himself during the president’s state visit to China.
Accompanying the president on that trip was his son Eric Trump (who is married to Baier’s colleague, Fox host and walking media ethics disaster Lara Trump). The New York Times noted that Eric’s presence “could blur the lines between government business and private enterprise” and “evoked parallels to Hunter Biden’s decision to join his father, then Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., on a trip to China in 2013.” But the president’s son tagging along on the China visit went unmentioned during Baier’s interview and ensuing Special Report coverage of the trip.
Methodology
Media Matters searched transcripts in the Nexis database for all original episodes of Special Report with Bret Baier for any of the terms “Don,” “Don Jr.,” “Don Junior,” “Donald Jr.,” “Donald Junior,” “Eric,” “Jared,” “Kushner,” “Ivanka,” “Melania,” “Lara,” “son,” “sons,” or “family” within five words of either of the terms “Trump” or “president” from May 9, 2025, when Special Report host Bret Baier told Politico that the media should “100%” go just as hard after President Donald Trump's sons' business dealings as it had Hunter Biden's, through June 2, 2026.We timed segments, which we defined as instances when any allegations of influence peddling or financial conflicts against any of Trump's family (excluding the president himself) were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of such allegations. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed such allegations with one another.We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned any such corruption allegations without another speaker engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about such allegations scheduled to air later in the broadcast.We rounded all reported times to the nearest minute.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters
