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Tag: maria bartiromo
As Biden Scandals Fizzle, Trump Family Grifting Still Sizzles

As Biden Scandals Fizzle, Trump Family Grifting Still Sizzles

Back when Rep. James Comer previewed his committee's blockbuster probe of President Biden, the Biden family, and their allegedly corrupt connections with foreign investors, someone asked whether he also intended to investigate the Trumps.

"With respect to investigating President Trump, there have been so many investigations of President Trump," retorted Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, during that interview last January. "I don't feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the past six years."

Yet perhaps now that the Kentucky Republican has dug around the First Family for several months and produced nothing but innuendo, he may wish to reconsider that free pass for the Trump family — whose money-grubbing on foreign shores is bigger than anything attributed to the Bidens by an order of magnitude.

Consider the humiliating spectacle of Comer's press conference on Wednesday, May 10, when the Indiana Republican excitedly presented what he has discovered about the Bidens, and specifically the president, whom he has accused repeatedly of "involvement" in tainted overseas business deals. Described in Politico as "highly anticipated," the big event was undeniably a bust. (Even Republicans said so.)

Despite a panting recitation of bank accounts held by the president's brother James Biden and his son Hunter Biden — as well as other family members who appear to have benefited from foreign partnerships and consultancies — Comer failed to produce any tiny scrap of evidence implicating Joe Biden. He could not show that any of the Bidens whose names he dragged had committed a single illegal act. He could not prove that the president knew or approved of any of his relatives' business or legal activities.

And Comer came up empty when asked what, if anything, those arrangements had to do with Joe Biden's official responsibilities as president or vice president — since all those deals appear to have occurred while he was no longer serving in the Obama administration, and before he ran for president in 2020.

Comer's performance provoked mocking reviews from Democrats and "the liberal media," as might be expected, but the response from the right was almost equally dismissive. Steve Doocy, the Fox & Friends anchor, complained that "you don't actually have any facts" to prove influence peddling by the president... of all those names, the one person who didn't profit is — there is no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally," as a visibly flustered Comer fumed.

Both Comer and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, his ally in the Senate, have promised revelations from a "highly reliable source" who, according to them, has disclosed bad acts perpetrated by the Bidens to the FBI. Unable to obtain any such incriminating information, however, Comer had little to offer when queried by Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, except that he and Grassley are determined to pursue "Plan B."

"What is Plan B?" she asked, then shot Comer an irritated glance when he replied, "Well, stay tuned, Maria. You'll be the first to know, I can assure you," and then descended into stuttering and muttering about "the deep state."

The plain fact is that these Republicans, like generations of their hackish ilk on Capitol Hill, spend enormous amounts of time and treasure fabricating conspiracy theories of corruption supposedly perpetrated by their political enemies, as they did with both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Remember Whitewater? Benghazi? Her emails? Actual corrupt conduct by powerful figures abusing public office for private gain seems to trouble them not at all.

We know that because as soon as Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his gang took control of the House, they put the boobish Comer in charge of government oversight. And Comer's first action as chair was to terminate the committee's ongoing probe of Trump's efforts to enrich himself as president and to release his accountants from their court-ordered obligation to produce the former president's tax records.

Even as the Biden "scandal" seems to fizzle, the Trump scandals may still sizzle. You will recall that the former president and his son-in-law Jared Kushner both have reaped juicy profits in their recent dealings with the Saudi regime, raising obvious implications for their conduct in the White House. Those questions may yet be examined in a broader probe to discover exactly how Trump violated the Constitution's emoluments clause during his presidential term.

Stay tuned, Maria.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Fox News

New Tapes: Trump Campaign Directed Bartiromo To Push January 6 (VIDEO)

New audio revealed as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News — which Fox allegedly failed to provide to Dominion in the discovery process — shows how Fox News and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo took directives from the Trump campaign to promote the campaign’s plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election results on January 6, 2021.

The new evidence was revealed by former Fox producer Abby Grossberg as part of her separate lawsuit against the network for allegedly setting her and Bartiromo up as scapegoats for Fox’s clear pattern of spreading lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. While the paper trail released so far in the case shows that Grossberg herself promoted conspiracy theories in the pursuit of ratings, she has also brought forward additional evidence that has already produced big legal results in the Dominion case. The judge in the case reportedly sanctioned Fox on Wednesday for failing to turn over Grossberg’s audio recordings in a move that will give Dominion an opportunity to conduct further legal discovery at Fox’s expense.

On Wednesday night, MSNBC host Alex Wagner played exclusive audio excerpts from the key pieces of evidence that Grossberg had preserved and Fox had allegedly withheld from Dominion, including a phone call on November 8, 2020, in which then-Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani admitted that he did not have evidence for his outlandish claims about Dominion. (Bartiromo and other Fox hosts continued to host Giuliani, anyway.) In another phone call, from December 5, 2020, an unnamed Trump campaign official admitted that Georgia’s statewide recount of ballots was “pretty darn close to what the machine count was,” and that the secretary of state’s office found that “that there weren’t any physical issues” with the voting machines. In a key piece of audio that Wagner played Wednesday night, the Trump campaign official also gave one of the earliest signals that the campaign intended to use the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress in an attempt to overturn the election results, and that then-Vice President Mike Pence would supposedly “have to decide” which votes to count.

In another key section from the December 5, 2020, phone call that Grossberg’s lawyer provided to Wagner, the unnamed Trump campaign official suggested that media outlets should cover this date as a supposed milestone for determining the election — indeed, this had been his entire purpose for getting on this phone call.

Bartiromo immediately picked up on the Trump campaign’s instruction. On both her weekday morning Fox Business show, as well as her Sunday show on Fox News that Grossberg regularly produced, Bartiromo pushed the January 6 date many, many times, furthering the Trump campaign’s efforts to move the goal posts from its many legal and electoral defeats. These examples included instances in which Bartiromo either mentioned the date first, or she was clearly teeing up the guest to talk about the date, which Bartiromo depicted as an alleged point in time when Congress or Pence could realistically overturn the election.

  • On December 8, 2020, which was known as the “safe harbor” date against any legal challenges for the election results, Bartiromo hosted then-Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, asking her, “So what do you see as, you know, today's date in terms of the safe harbor date? How does that complicate your challenges?” Ellis responded that “the ultimate date of significance is January 6,” which she said justified the campaign’s continued litigation. This was three days after Bartiromo’s call with the Trump campaign official. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 12/8/20]
  • On the December 13 edition of her Sunday show, Bartiromo hosted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), asking him, “I want you to walk us through what happens on January 6,” which she described as “another date, as we approach a potential transition” of the presidency. Jordan then described the efforts that congressional Republicans would make to object to the election results, in order to prevent the “potential transition” that Bartiromo had described. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 12/13/20]
  • On December 14, the date when the Electoral College delegates voted across the country, Bartiromo hosted then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “What's your take on where we are?” she asked. “Is it the end of the line now for the president's campaign to stop and overturn this election as the Electoral College will meet, or are you looking at January 6 as a pivotal date or what?” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 12/14/20]
  • The next day, December 15, Bartiromo read a news headline about the Electoral College results. Following a video clip of President-elect Joe Biden calling for the country “to unite, to heal,” Bartiromo said in a seeming rebuttal: “The next major step in the election process is on January 6. This is the date we are looking forward to, when Vice President Mike Pence is going to preside over the joint session of Congress while they officially tabulate the electoral votes.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 12/15/20]
  • On December 18, Bartiromo hosted former pro football player and future Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker and his son, right-wing social media personality Christian Walker. Bartiromo played a video clip that Christian Walker had posted in which he declared, “The electors might have cast their votes today. They're not counted until January 6, when Congress meets. … This isn’t over yet.” Bartiromo responded: “I just love that.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 12/18/20]
  • On December 20, Bartiromo hosted Herschel and Christian Walker again on her Sunday show, once again praising Christian Walker’s online video and telling him, “You were basically underlining Section 1, Article 2 in the Constitution.” After Christian declared on “January 6, the vice president will count the votes,” Bartiromo did not challenge the apparent contention that Pence could determine the election results, but instead just praised Christian further: “Yes, and that's pretty much what you said on Instagram, which was great. It went viral.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 12/20/20]
  • On the January 3, 2021, edition of her Sunday show — the weekend prior to the joint session of Congress — Bartiromo hosted multiple Republican members of Congress who were planning to challenge the election results. At the conclusion of one segment, she remarked to Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL): “If you're going to object to six states, and then you’ve got a two-hour debate, we’re not going to learn the results here until — well, we're not going to learn on January 6, that’s for sure. This goes into January 7.” (The electoral votes were indeed certified after midnight, under what had become truly unprecedented circumstances.) [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 1/3/21]


The manner in which Grossberg has sought to substantiate the main claim in her lawsuit against Fox — that the network was allegedly setting up her and Bartiromo to take a fall in the Dominion lawsuit — is turning out to be a very strange thing indeed. Fox executives must bear ultimate responsibility for the lies the network helped to spread, but at the same time the new evidence that Grossberg has brought to bear in this case makes Bartiromo look worse and worse by revealing more of her reckless on-air behavior and coordination with the Trump campaign’s effort to subvert a national election result.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Fox Anchors Engaged In Trump Coup Plot

Newly Released Text Messages Show Fox Anchors Plotting Trump's Coup

On Friday, CNN reported on a newly unearthed set of text messages between former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and multiple Fox News hosts, exchanged during the two-and-a-half months between Election Day 2020 and President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021. The texts further reveal the extent to which Fox was integral to Trump’s plot to illegally hold onto power after losing the election. The texts also prove yet again that Fox operates day-to-day as a propaganda arm for the Republican Party, not as a news organization.

Maria Bartiromo Gave Trump Questions And Guidance In Advance Of Interview

CNN reported that Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo gave Meadows the questions in advance of her interview with President Donald Trump on the November 29, 2020, edition of her weekend show on Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures. The texts reveal that Bartiromo also provided Trump with explicit messaging guidance and instructions on how to respond to her softball questions, which she intended to help him better make his case that the election outcome was illegitimate. The segment was Trump’s first TV interview since the election, and it aired roughly three weeks after all the major media outlets, including Fox News, had projected Biden as the winner.

Bartiromo texted Meadows that morning, hours before the interview with Trump, to claim that “the public wants to know he will fight this,” and that people “want to hear a path to victory” and that “he's in control.” (The entire premise of Bartiromo’s line of questioning was false, because a majority of “the public” had just voted for Biden.)

She then laid out the first question she would ask: “1Q You've said MANY TIMES THIS ELECTION IS RIGGED... And the facts are on your side. Let's start there. What are the facts? Characterize what took place here. Then I will drill down on the fraud including the statistical impossibilities of Biden magic (federalist).” (Based on Bartiromo’s word choice, it is possible that she was referring to a piece from a week earlier in the right-wing site The Federalist, titled “5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms.”)

Surely enough, the interview began exactly with that question: “Mr. President, you have said many times that this election was rigged, that there was much fraud, and the facts are on your side. Let's start there. Please go through the facts, characterize what took place.”

Throughout the rest of the interview, Bartiromo provided Trump with a platform to air a litany of lies about the election results, going on for 45 minutes, including his outlandish claims about voting machines being used to change the results. Dominion Voting Systems is currently suing Fox News for $1.6 billion for the network’s role in Trump’s defamation campaign against the voting machine company. Another voting technology firm, Smartmatic, is suing Fox News for $2.7 billion and has also named Bartiromo as a defendant for her role in promoting conspiracy theories that the company played a role in altering the election result.

Separately, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, reported last year that Bartiromo had called then-Attorney General Bill Barr in mid-November 2020, complaining to him that the Justice Department had not taken action against supposed voter fraud. “She called me up and she was screaming,” Barr told Karl. “I yelled back at her. She’s lost it.” Fox News denied the reports of Bartiromo’s unprofessional conduct — though this wasn’t exactly convincing, because Bartiromo had publicly stated her hopes for Barr to intervene and help reverse the election results.

Hannity Was “At War" With Chris Wallace And News Reporters

Another Fox News host who is heavily implicated in the latest texts is Sean Hannity, who was already known to have functioned as Trump’s “shadow” chief of staff and as a constant sounding board for the disgraced former president. Previously released texts had shown that Hannity tried to work on damage control after the failed coup attempt on January 6, and that he had urged the White House to have Trump call off his supporters from attacking the Capitol. (In public, Hannity claimed the attackers were left-wing infiltrators.) Other texts show that Hannity took instructions from Meadows on coordinating get-out-the-vote messaging on Election Day in 2020. The latest revelations demonstrate the extent of Hannity’s efforts to keep Fox News from straying away from the administration’s illegal efforts to cling to power.

On December 6, 2020, Meadows sent Hannity a link to an article in The Hill, highlighting a segment from that morning’s edition of Fox News Sunday in which the show’s then-host Chris Wallace pointedly interrupted Trump’s former secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, after Azar had referred to Joe Biden as “Vice President Biden.”

“He's the president-elect, sir,” Wallace replied, repeating that point again in their conversation.

In texts to Hannity, Meadows castigated Wallace and Fox, writing, “Doing this to try and get ratings will not work in the long run and I am doubtful it is even a short term winning strategy.”

“I've been at war with them all week,” Hannity replied.

Meadows later asked on December 11, 2020, for Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott’s direct phone number — noting that he wished to avoid making a call to the network’s main switchboard. Hannity asked the next day whether Meadows had gotten through to Fox executives, again declaring, “I’ve been at war with them.” (As it turned out, Meadows had not yet called Scott, as he had been too busy working on the Trump administration’s lame-duck pardons.)

Keep in mind that the major news networks had all projected Biden as the winner a month before, on November 7 — and yes, that included Fox. The network, however, undermined its own decision desk’s projections by attempting to subvert the election results nearly 600 times in just the two weeks after the election call.

To the degree that tension existed between the opinion and alleged “straight news” sides at Fox, that conflict has since been resolved by Chris Wallace’s decision a year later to quit the network. Wallace said recently that he had been fine with opinion content on the channel, but he had reached his limit. “When people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”

Hannity, of course, is still at Fox, where he is launching smear campaigns, parroting Kremlin spokespeople, and helping Trump to continue pushing the Big Lie.

Sean Hannity wrote one cheesy Trump campaign ad — and he may have written yet another one that never aired

This latest batch of text messages also reveals that Hannity lied last year about the extent of his connections to the Trump campaign — seemingly confirming a story that Hannity had previously described as being “full of shit.”

Last year, Wall Street Journal senior White House reporter Mike Bender published a book about the 2020 election and its aftermath, titled Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost. The book revealed that Hannity had actually written a Trump campaign ad, which insiders even referred to as “the Hannity ad” and “the one Hannity wrote.” The specific ad in question was an attack spot that seemed to deploy every anti-Biden talking point at once, referring to him as a “47-year swamp creature” who had “accomplished nothing,” and tying him to the so-called “radical, socialist Green New Deal.” Trump’s campaign staff reportedly ridiculed it.

“Inside the campaign, the spot was mocked mercilessly, mostly because of the dramatic, over-the-top language and a message that seemed to value quantity over quality,” Bender wrote. The campaign came up with a solution to the problem, by running the ad only during Hannity’s own show on Fox News: “If Trump and Hannity watched the spot on television – and were satisfied enough to stop asking about the commercial – that seemed to be the best result of the ad. The cost of that investment: $1.5m.”

Hannity, however, denied the story in very strong terms. “The world knows that Sean Hannity supports Donald Trump,” he told Bender. “But my involvement specifically in the campaign — no. I was not involved that much. Anybody who said that is full of shit.”

On December 8, 2020, however, as Hannity and Meadows commiserated via text, Hannity bemoaned that the campaign had not done more on the topic of election fraud during the campaign — including regarding an ad he had written for them.

“I was screaming about no ads from Labor Day on,” he wrote. “I made my own they never ran it. I'm not pointing fingers. I'm frustrated.” It is possible here that Hannity may have been referring to yet another campaign ad that he wrote, but which still went unaired.

Hannity’s vulgar denial to Bender of the earlier campaign ad not only reveals that he is a liar, but there’s more. In this instance, he also lied to a news reporter at The Wall Street Journal, the most prominent of the Murdoch media empire’s journalistic front operations and a perpetual doormat for the opinion side. The fact that he would lie to one of his colleagues from another Murdoch publication clearly demonstrates the sense of leverage Hannity has over anyone who thinks they really can report news while working at a Murdoch outlet.

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.