Maria Bartiromo repeatedly used her Fox Business show to peddle an election fraud conspiracy theory that she claimed originated with the wife of a friend of a friend in Texas and that she made no apparent effort to confirm. But when the Texas Department of Public Safety and the local Republican Party investigated her reckless allegation, they discovered that none of it was true.
On Sunday morning, Bartiromo posted an item to X alleging that “a massive line of immigrants” had been obtaining driver’s licenses and registering to vote at three Department of Motor Vehicles offices in Texas:
From a friend ...
Friend of mine’s wife had to take her 16 yr old son to the DMV this week for a new license. Couldn’t get an online appointment(all full) so went in person and had to go to 3 DMV’s to get something done. First DMV was in Weatherford. Had a massive line of immigrants getting licenses and had a tent and table outside the front door of the DMV registering them to vote! Second one was in Fort Worth with same lines and same Dems out front. Third one was in North Fort Worth had no lines but had same voter registration drive.
Bartiromo brought the wildly flimsy allegation to Fox’s airwaves the following day, having apparently done no independent reporting to confirm claims that she said originated with the wife of a friend of her friend.
She brought up the story in at least three segments on the Monday and Tuesday editions of her Fox program — including in interviews with two Republican U.S. senators.
Indeed, the story became even more sinister for the Fox audience, with Bartiromo alleging that the people registering to vote were not just “immigrants,” as stated in her X post, but “illegals.” A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety noted that assuming that nonwhite Texans are undocumented is “kind of racist” and called her story “simply false.”
Bartiromo used Fox show to trumpet thirdhand claim of “illegals” getting registered to vote
Bartiromo first flagged the story during a
Monday morning interview with Sheriff Thad Cleveland of Terrell County, Texas, and Republican strategist Michael Balboni. “I'm serious about this issue of illegals voting, and I want to get your take on this,” Bartiromo told Balboni. “Apparently, the DMV offices right now are packed with illegals right now trying to get driver's licenses, and they're getting Social Security cards, driver's licenses, apparently, in very short order after coming into the country. They want to get them naturalized as soon as possible before the election.”She returned to the subject later in the segment, saying that a “person … spoke to me about this this weekend” detailing how DMV offices had been “jam-packed with illegals” and claiming that “he” had told her there had been a voter registration “tent and a table” in Weatherford, Texas, that had been “an obvious Democrat operation.”Bartiromo further discussed the DMV conspiracy theory during an interview with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). This time, she said the allegation came not from the wife of a friend of a friend, as she originally wrote on X, but from “a friend” who had personally seen the “massive lines of illegals getting licenses” and registering to vote, and texted her directly.“I reported, earlier, and over the weekend, that a friend had sent me a text this weekend telling me that they went to DMV for a new license, and there were lines and lines of illegals all over the DMV office, the Department of Motor Vehicles,” Bartiromo said. “There was one in Weatherford, Texas, massive line of immigrants getting licenses. They had a tent outside and a table to register them to vote. “So, what is going on in terms of illegals voting in this election? And do you think that is the reason that the border has been wide open for three and a half years?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’ve been saying that for about three and a half years,” Johnson replied, quickly pivoting from Bartiromo’s anecdote to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. “I saw no other explanation of why Joe Biden-Kamala Harris would open up the border, presenting a clear and present danger to America, other than to change the electorate to bring in more people — it would be, you know, very beneficial to them from a standpoint of getting elected.”
“Democrats want to make it easy to cheat,” he added. “They want to change the electorate, that is what this has all been about, and it’s destroying this country.”
Bartiromo discussed the story with a second senator on Tuesday.
“I got a tip over the weekend that these DMV offices are jam-packed with illegals and they’re getting them Social Security cards and drivers' licenses,” she told Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS). “Do you have any evidence that illegals are registered to vote?”
Bartiromo’s thirdhand claim was “simply false,” “kind of racist”
Others who saw Bartiromo’s initial X post did what she apparently failed to do and tried to confirm her story.Sgt. William Lockridge, spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety,
told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the account Bartiromo promoted was “simply false” and “kind of racist.”From the Monday report:
Contrary to Bartiromo’s friend’s wife’s account, there is no office for the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles in Weatherford. Folks there get their licenses at a DPS Driver License office.
Still, no such tent and table were set up outside the office last week.
“None of it is true,” Lockridge said, adding that the assumption that non-white Texans lined up to get their driver licenses are immigrants or illegal is “kind of racist.”
“Just because these people aren’t white, that doesn’t mean they’re illegal,” he said.
There was a table set outside the DPS Driver License office in Lake Worth on Friday, Lockridge said, but not at the other two sites mentioned in Bartiromo’s post.
Similarly, Brady Gray, the chairman of the Parker County GOP, said on X that his group had spent “24 hours investigating the claims” Bartiromo made about Weatherford and found them to be “erroneous.” From the post:
1. While we are everyday registering more voters in Parker county, there has been no large submission of registrants consistent with the claim.
2. All voter registration applications in the county are processed by the county EA office (County Voter Registrar) and are uploaded to SOS to verify the applicants eligibility to vote (i.e. citizenship, etc.). Not only have there been no recent instances of ineligible individuals attempting to register in Parker county, there have only been two in the last 15 years.
3. The DPS office has confirmed that there have been no tents or tables and no one registering voters on their premises, and that if it were the case they would be told to leave, as it is not allowed.
Bartiromo’s history of promoting absurd election conspiracy theories
Bartiromo’s ludicrously thin claims of Democrats trying to register undocumented immigrants to vote in the 2024 presidential election fit neatly within her recent career.
Bartiromo promoted a series of wild claims about election fraud following the 2020 election. Her deeds included hosting Trumpist lawyer Sidney Powell to baselessly allege that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the vote against Donald Trump. She brought Powell on after Powell forwarded her an email from a woman who claimed that Dominion’s software flipped votes from Trump to Joe Biden — and also that “the Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it.”
Her Dominion segments were featured in the company’s defamation lawsuit against Fox, which resulted in her network paying a record settlement. But they had no apparent impact on her standing at Fox: She retains a weekly Fox News show and a three-hour weekday show on Fox Business, giving her platforms where she can ask U.S. senators about unverified thirdhand claims.
That leaves her well-positioned to help Trump if he once again tries to subvert a presidential election.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
