Fox News busted themselves for helping to spread disinformation regarding President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal earlier this week, according to an internal research memo that has been publicly revealed.
Written by Fox News senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy, the document identifies four frequent Fox News guests who have spread disinformation and failed to disclose that they had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs.
One of those guests is none other than Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has been trying in vain to dig up — or manufacture — dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden for nearly a year and often carries water for the president on the network.
It turns out that the research conducted by Fox News’ research division found that Giuliani has a “high susceptibility to disinformation” distributed to him by Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash and former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko. Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman also had “strong reported financial links to Firtash.”
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This correlates to a report that Giuliani was in cahoots with Fox News in the effort to dig up dirt on Biden.
Both associates have been indicted in the United States, and Parnas cooperated with the impeachment investigation by handing over documents to the House Intelligence Committee and even incriminated several high-ranking Republicans for being involved in the extortion scheme, including Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).
“Reading the timeline in its entirety—not a small task—makes clear the extensive role played by Rudy Giuliani and his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, in spreading disinformation,” the memo says right on the front page.
And that’s not all. Former Trump attorneys Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing have also spread disinformation on Fox News programming.
“Notable are the roles of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing in spreading disinformation and their parroting of beneficial narratives while employed by Firtash,” the memo says, going on to note that neither disclosed their “financial motives and representation of Firtash while spreading false and misleading stories.”
But wait! There’s more. A frequent guest on Trump propagandist Sean Hannity’s show and whom Trump has repeatedly cited as part of his defense is also named.
“John Solomon played an indispensable role in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign,” Murphy wrote, going on to list many of Solomon’s sins which include ”non-disclosure of conflicts, use of unreliable sources, publishing false and misleading stories, misrepresentation of sources, and opaque coordination with involved parties.”
The memo was first revealed to the public by former Fox News producer Marcus DiPaola.
Here’s the front page of the internal Fox News Trump-Ukraine timeline. I’ll start tweeting some of the highlights shortly. pic.twitter.com/HWGX5sZUh8
— Marcus J. DiPaola (@marcusdipaola) February 6, 2020
Despite the clear wording in the memo, Fox News senior vice-president Mitch Kweit disputed reports about it in a statement to The Daily Beast, accusing news outlets of taking it “out of context” and politicizing it to “damage the network.”
“The research division of FOX News produces a briefing book for all major stories, which serves as a standing collection of extensive data on major topics for internal use by all those in editorial functions,” Kweit said. “The Ukraine briefing book is nothing more than a comprehensive chronological account of what every person involved in the Ukraine controversy was doing at any identifiable point in time, including tracking media appearances of major players who appeared on FOX News and in many other outlets. The 200 page document has thousands of data points and the vast majority have no relation to FOX News—instead it’s now being taken out of context and politicized to damage the network.”
Again, the context here is that four frequent Fox News guests engaged in a blatant disinformation campaign on Trump’s behalf to mislead the public about his Ukraine scandal. That’s just a fact, one of the few Fox News has provided over the years.
Featured image via screen capture
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