solomon, john hill

congrats, BLT

merri ok

see GOP STEAL ELECTION

ECHO ESCALATOR?

see bannon hanty

// FOX FEEDBACK?

fired from the hill STILL (220?) WORKS FOR FOX?! and presumably less eligible for the pension plan b/c in theory a jrnlist?

WESTERMAN 1% LCV

he was hired to do mgr online vid but strayed into reporting?

spoke too soon Just the News sorta bak?

GAI?

see miller 3 am 1st legal ~ Fani

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November 3, 2026, coverage of the midterms on Real America's Voice

STEVE BANNON (HOST): I'm going to go to John Solomon.

...

JOHN SOLOMON (JUST THE NEWS): So, this is starting to sweep across the country, a blue wave and many different things, including governorships that have long been in Republican hands.

So you're seeing this continue to sweep across the country. Same trend lines, safe red seats, safe red governorships beginning to tilt blue. This is definitely going to be a blue wave tonight. Darline Graham, perhaps the most perplexing, just because he's someone who seemed reluctant in the job. And ultimately, there were other candidates who had better statewide organizations in South Carolina. That one's going to be a candidate decision. South Carolina was probably a savable senate seat with the right candidate. But tonight, it looks like Darline Graham is going down. Iowa's going to be a tough night, I think, for Republicans. Wisconsin has very quickly flipped to the blue column. Tom Tiffany, a great guy on our network often. But, right now, now with about 35% of the voting down about 10 points. So the trend lines are pretty clear. I think the coalition that Donald Trump put together in 2024, young males, Hispanic voters, independent voters has tilted to the left. They're willing to give socialists a chance because they don't think the economy's been fixed.

And then some of the core constituencies of the Republican Party when you dig into these exit results like I've been doing, Steve, evangelical voters way down, the young voter, the young conservative voter way down, that Charlie Kirk voter that was so energized in '24 way down in the fall. You can see how how this night is shaping up and what lessons we take from this. The one interesting thing though, socialists are doing very well tonight. The overall national sentiment is Americans do not want socialism. So they're just picking socialists out of anger over the economy, but it is not an embrace of socialism, It's a rejection of the current economy.

BANNON: What — Let's go back to Darline Graham. She was a reluctant candidate, but pushed by Hannity and other people at Fox as a tribute to Lindsey Graham, who, as you know, had a huge contention on the right, the anti-war right, or people didn't want to get into the situation in in the Middle East. What is the lesson we can learn? Because it's pretty stunning that you win the governorship in South Carolina, and you're going to lose the senators?

SOLOMON: Yeah. Listen. If Ralph Norman's in that seat, you probably won both both seats tonight. At the end of the day, Donald Trump has always been an instinctual politician that has normally served him very well, and his record over the last ten years is extraordinary. His comeback in 2024, anything unlike anything we've seen in American history, his rallies.

Tonight, some of the candidate decisions are part of the problem. The bigger problem is the instinctual decision to do the war, which triggered the gas prices. That fractured his coalition and gave Democrats — and now, the — what's interesting in in watching MS NOW or whatever we call these days and the left, they're interpreting this as an embrace of socialism.

It is not. It is a rejection of the current state of the economy and gas prices predominantly. Data centers somewhere downstream in some of these places. But this is an economic election. It is not embrace of socialism.

And quite frankly, when you look at the Hispanic vote, which broke from Republicans tonight, like the young vote, there's still a lot of distrust of socialism among Hispanics. There's a lot of connectivity with the Hispanic voter when it comes to abortion and cultural issues and family issues, small business. One of the lessons tonight is that the Fox era of the Republican Party is probably coming to an end. You've seen Fox's ratings collapse a little bit. You see the president being uncomfortable with them.

There is a new type of constituent that needs to be engaged, a real American that needs to be engaged. They're Hispanic. They're young. They're a working class. The cultural wins, the communication wins that the Republican Party need to be made before the next election have to be made in conversations like we have every day on this network.

It starts with a conversation getting back to what we promised people we would do. And I think the old coalitions are fracturing. The older evangelical vote starting to fade into history. You got to replace that with something Hispanics and Catholics are a possibility. But there's a realignment going on, an exciting realignment going on.

But I do think some of the mainstays of the Republican Party, the Fox News, the Christian coalition, they frayed in this election. And it is a challenge for the Republican Party to put together a new coalition in time for 2028. It's very doable. Fix the economy, get back to the issues at one in '24, stay true to the MAGA Trump phenomenon, fix the wars. There's still a coalition to be regathered, but tonight, it fractured and it fractured under very clear circumstances, the economy and not sticking to your promises and bad candidates in some cases.

But all of these are fixable issues. This is not a seismic shift in politics. It is a blue wave rejection of the state of the economy. Very fixable for '28, but some sort of conversation has to happen in the Fox News style of having that conversation with Republicans. That era is over.

The evangelicals always carrying the Republican bacon. That era is over. It's going to be about winning young people, about winning Hispanics, about winning the working class and putting that in together, being an economic-first Republican party. Those are the messages that are very inherent in tonight's results.

BANNON: Talk to me about, before we go to break in about 90 seconds, the — did the Christian — did the evangelicals, give me the math on that, did they turn out?

SOLOMON: Yeah. They're they're down about 5%, which is a big — that's a big loss in the coalition. In Texas, it's a little bit more. So maybe the whole sinner phenomenon is real with Paxton.

But Hispanics broke in a big way. By the way, Hispanic Catholics could be an enormous part of the Republican Party for the future, but there hasn't been the investment in a real relationship with Hispanic voters.

...

SOLOMON: It's got to start with having a Hispanic news channel that's reliable, not Univision, things that, you know, RAV and I and others are working on right now. Lots of opportunity.

I mean, the the nice thing about this election is there's a road map for what Republicans can do, and I think Democrats are going to misread the road map tonight as an embrace of the far-left socialism. It's not.

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John Solomon says the Supreme Court may “debate about what goes on in California” in regards to election results because of the DOJ noncitizen voter cases

10/29/26

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John Solomon says the Supreme Court may "debate about what goes on in California" in regards to election results because of the DOJ noncitizen voter cases

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trump’s Truth Social account shares more links to John Solomon’s Just the News than any other news site

Written by Matt Gertz

Research contributions from Kayla Gogarty, John Whitehouse & Gideon Taaffe

Published 10/21/26

President Donald Trump has shared links to Just the News, the right-wing agitprop site helmed by White House staffer John Solomon, in at least 367 Truth Social posts or reposts since he returned to the White House last January — more than any other news outlet over that time period.

Trump’s manic social media posting provides a window into his information diet. The president regularly responds in real time to Fox News segments that strike his interest, a phenomenon I’ve described as the Fox-Trump feedback loop. His zealous White House aide Natalie Harp, nicknamed “the human printer” because her role includes providing the president with printouts of articles, also helps him generate posts promoting MAGA online content.

Using a machine-learning model, Media Matters designed a script that researchers deployed to search an _{archive}_ of Trump’s Truth Social feed since January 20, 2025, and found that the president produced more posts and reposts with links to Solomon’s website than any other single news outlet, totaling at least 367 instances. Fox News accounted for the second-most linked outlet in these posts and reposts, with 257.

Such posts became more frequent in the leadup to and since June, when Solomon announced he was joining the Trump administration as a special government employee.

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Trump often simply shares the headline and link to Just the News articles in his posts. But the president has also, in response to that reporting, accused Democrats of “TREASON!!!” over his 2019 impeachment; said that the “thugs” involved in the Justice Department’s investigation of the Trumpian election subversion plot which culminated in the January 6 insurrection “should all be investigated and put in prison”; and claimed of former special counsel Jack Smith, who oversaw that probe: “He is a CRIMINAL AND SHOULD BE IN JAIL. A MAJOR LOWLIFE AND FAILURE. An ugly person, both inside and out! I beat him badly, and love watching him squirm now.”

Solomon once worked for mainstream outlets like The Washington Post and The Associated Press, but carved out a niche over the last decade by generating “phantom scandals” that spread through the right-wing propaganda apparatus. Solomon’s work — and that of Just the News, where he is editor in chief — provides journalistic scaffolding for pro-Trump counternarratives and conspiracy theories.

Just the News does not attract a massive audience — the website is not among the 50 biggest news sites in the United States. But Solomon’s fans include Sean Hannity and Steve Bannon, who regularly host him on their programs, and he “gained President Trump’s favor through his work questioning the federal investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russians who meddled in the 2016 election,” The New York Times reported in May.

Solomon joined the administration the following month as “chairman of the newly formed and vaguely defined Government Transparency Task Force,” and now plays an unprecedented dual role in the MAGA information system. Solomon manufactures pro-Trump narratives by using his position at the White House to select and release government documents on topics like past investigations into Trump or election security, and briefing reporters at other outlets on those documents often without including key context. He then writes up his own version for Just the News based on that spin and tours other right-wing media outlets to discuss the narrative he manufactured.

Trump’s news diet, as reflected by the articles whose links he shares on Truth Social, overwhelmingly comes from right-wing outlets like Just the News, Fox News, and Newsmax.

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House makes bipartisan effort to renew Trump's Great American Outdoors Act, restore national parks

Members of Congress are engaged in a bipartisan effort to renew President Donald Trump's legacy "Great American Outdoors Act" to help restore national parks and historic sites, with funding having expired roughly a year ago.

The initial bill, passed and signed into law in 2020, is considered one of the most significant conservation laws in decades and permanently mandated $900 million in annual funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and created the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund.

Jet Ski Ports For Sale

EZ Dock

U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart says, “If you want to get a message to the president, talk to" John Solomon and Amanda Head

October 1, 2026

image of John Solomon with audio wave background

Audio

Citation

From the October 1, 2026, edition of Just The News' John Solomon Reports

AMANDA HEAD (CO-HOST): Tim, I want to ask about the president's involvement in this because people look at someone who is, you know, a real estate and a business mogul and probably wears Brioni suits, and they wouldn't necessarily think that he would be that involved, but as I understand it, he deserves a lot of the credit for this. Right?

TIM STEWART (GUEST): He really does. You know, I don't think the Trump administration, either in the past administration or the current one right now, gets enough credit for all the work that they did. And, you know, when we talked about this a week or 10 days ago, John and — I got to salute you guys.

We talked about it at 6:30 on a Thursday night, if I recall. We talked about how important this program was. And 7 o'clock on that Thursday night, the president came out and spoke to a group of sportsmen there in the Rose Garden at the White House and said, I was proud to sign the Great America Outdoors Act and I want to sign the Great Outdoors Act part two. Let's get it done.

I tell people, look, if you want to get a message to the president, talk to John and Amanda. They're the ones who actually get it done for you. So thanks for giving us the opportunity to talk about that last time.

JOHN SOLOMON (CO-HOST): It was a great conversation.

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John Solomon hyped Trump prosecutor Joe diGenova's work just days before diGenova resigned

Solomon a day before diGenova resigned: “Joe diGenova, the FBI, Kash Patel, Todd Blanche are getting their horses together now. For the first time, there is a buzzing accountability machine.”

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published 09/11/26

A day prior to Joe diGenova’s abrupt resignation from his position running Trump's “Grand Conspiracy” probe, diGenova ally and “special government employee” John Solomon — whose task force just declassified documents related to the probe, including notes from the FBI's interview of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn — was seemingly caught flat-footed, boasting of diGenova's role as part of a “buzzing accountability machine.”

On September 10, diGenova resigned from his Justice Department appointment running Trump’s “Grand Conspiracy” probe into Democratic political figures, law enforcement officials, and other perceived enemies of the Trump administration.

During the September 9 episode of his program Just the News No Noise, Solomon interviewed Flynn, who also praised diGenova, calling him “absolutely the right person” for the probe and a “pit bull-type prosecutor.” Solomon also claimed that the latest documents release was “about providing evidence to Joe diGenova and the prosecutors of the U.S. attorney's office in Miami and Fort Pierce.”

Solomon also appeared on Steve Bannon's War Room on September 8 ahead of the documents’ release, claiming that “there are some major cooperating witnesses that have now flipped to the state to working with Joe diGenova,” which will “accelerate the ability to bring accountability.”

Following diGenova's resignation, Solomon took to social media to reassure followers that the “Grand Conspiracy” investigation is still ongoing and that prosecutors are “continuing the work Joe started with a roadmap that includes subpoenas and some cooperating witnesses.” Meanwhile, Ryan Reilly reported for NBC that “a person familiar with the investigation” said that “Justice Department leaders had lost confidence in diGenova because they believed he was unfocused, moving too slowly and pursuing a path unlikely to succeed.”

Here is Solomon and Flynn's exchange on September 9:

Video

Citation

From the September 9, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's Just the News No Noise

JOHN SOLOMON (HOST): It isn't just about clearing Mike Flynn's name, though that's very important. It's also about providing evidence to Joe diGenova and the prosecutors of the U.S. attorney's office in Miami and Fort Pierce. They are now beginning to bring grand jury witnesses to begin securing indictments against those who weaponized the government from the summer of 2016 to January of ’25. Everything from the FBI and Russia collusion all the way to Jack Smith.

In that process, they have secured cooperation for one or two really significant FBI personnel. That's a really important thing. When someone in the middle of the drama says, we lied, we made it up, we didn't do that, that wasn't the truth, we set it up, it changes the ability of prosecutors to make a case, particularly in a partisan divide like we are in America.

Joe diGenova, the FBI, Kash Patel, Todd Blanche are getting their horses together now. For the first time, there is a buzzing accountability machine. And this — these documents today are already in the hands of prosecutors. They have it down in Florida. It would be called an overt act. It happened eight, nine years ago, which means it can't charge it itself.

…

MICHAEL FLYNN (GUEST): I just want to say, I appreciate what the Government Transparency Task Force is doing. You are working to get to the bottom of it, and I think that there's going to be more to come. In fact, I know there's going to be more to come.

I think that Joe diGenova is absolutely the right person at Fort Pierce and with this grand jury. I mean, Joe — and for people to know, I mean, Joe was one of the lawyers that I was consulting after I had gotten rid of my original lawyers and working closely with Sidney [Powell] to help us out. So, Joe is the right man to take this on. He is a pit bull-type prosecutor anyway, and he has the big strategic picture that I think that the country needs to have in a prosecutor that's going to dig and expose the truth. And that's what you guys did with this Transparency Task Force breaking story that you broke.

...

We have to bring these people to account. We have to — and I do believe that Joe diGenova is the right guy to build these various conspiracy cases to show that these people were undermining, not only guys like me, but they were undermining a duly elected president of the United States. They were undermining the Constitution of our country, and they and they basically did it, you know, in a very, almost — I would just say a criminal fashion. I mean, it's beyond corruption. It's criminal. And people are going to have to be held accountable.

Bartiromo “got fired because she wanted to come forward the last couple of weeks and talk about John Solomon, ... the task force, Pulte, all of it”

09/04/26 12:38 PM EDT

Cleta Mitchell: “We had three networks that didn't cover the president's speech. I want to know what their relationship is with China.”

08/28/26 1:33 PM EDT

John Solomon is spreading another flimsy election fraud claim

08/07/26

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Steve Bannon: Maria Bartiromo "got fired because she wanted to come forward the last couple of weeks and talk about John Solomon, ... the task force, Pulte, all of it"

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machIne reboot gop steAL CLETA

AN 8 26

Cleta Mitchell: “We had three networks that didn't cover the president's speech. I want to know what their relationship is with China.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 08/28/26

Video

Citation

From the August 27, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's Just the News No Noise

JOHN SOLOMON (HOST): I want to turn to something that is now sort of a repeat theme and just what the White House Transparency Task Force is getting out there. We knew in 2020 that Venezuela hacked the machine. We knew that there were five foreign powers who could hack our machines, that had the capability in 2020. We knew that China took 220 million of our voter files, and we knew that illegal aliens were getting on the voter rolls. And we knew now, in 2020 we knew that these foreign-made parts were there. That's the first time that the intelligence community learned that there were foreign parts, the Chinese parts, in our machines. Six years passed with almost no action until President Trump jumps into the breach this last month. How did we go six years with an intelligence community knowing all these threats and almost no action?

CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): You know, John, that is such a good question, because let me add to that. And you referenced it today in the Just the News article. In 2019, Sen. Wyden and Sen. Klobuchar introduced a bill. They had 40 co-sponsors and many of the — most Democrats — and that would have strengthened the oversight of the voting machines, the voting technology. And Sen. Wyden gave a floor speech on the Senate floor in July 2019, where he was castigating his Republican colleagues for not paying attention to the intelligence reports and the threats that had been conveyed to the intelligence committee, to the Senate Intelligence Committee, about the vulnerability of the voting systems.

Now, as soon as Biden gets elected, and when President Trump, who is looking at the 2020 election and saying, gee, there seems to be a lot wrong here, the Democrats completely went silent. Not only that, they wanted to silence anyone who was criticizing the voting technology. Don't forget all the things that they have done, that they did, and continue to try to silence those of us who ask questions.

So my question is, how is it that the Democrats were so concerned about it? Look at the videos of Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. The movie that they made, Kill Chain, about the vulnerabilities of the voting machines. And suddenly after 2020, they forgot all of that. And now they say that we're crazy people because now we see that the intelligence community knew things and they didn't tell anybody. And they particularly kept it from President Trump and then subsequently President Biden. I mean, John, we wouldn't know any of this if you hadn't gone into the administration temporarily as a special government employee to get all of this out in the public. But my question is, it's still going on, this gaslighting, this disregarding.

We had three networks that didn't cover the president's speech. I want to know what their relationship is with China, why they wouldn't want to have covered the president's speech in which he told the truth about China's interference. And I want to know where those Democrats are today who were so concerned in 2019. Now we have the proof of it, and there's nowhere to be heard. And in fact, all they want to do is tell us to be quiet.

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John Solomon is spreading another flimsy election fraud claim

Solomon, a right-wing media personality and the leader of a Trump White House task force, is reviving a closed case from Arizona in 2020

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published 08/07/26

After another failed scramble to prove President Donald Trump’s claims that China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, White House task force leader and right-wing media personality John Solomon is now attempting to retry a Maricopa County, Arizona, election website hacking case that was investigated, reported on, and closed years ago. NBC News reported that the case was highlighted by the White House yet “did not offer any evidence that any election was stolen or affected by widespread fraud.”

Solomon has been leading the effort declassifying intelligence documents the Trump administration is using to claim the U.S. election system is not secure. On July 16, Trump delivered a much-hyped primetime speech fearmongering about what those documents had uncovered. Afterward, Lawfare wrote that the speech “was most notable for what it did not contain: evidence that any malign activity affected the result. Much of what he described was already known. None of it showed that votes were changed, fraudulent ballots were counted, or the election was stolen. None of it showed that intelligence officials had concealed such evidence."

On August 6, Solomon published a story to his website, Just The News, on a “hack” of the Maricopa County voter records just before the 2020 election, writing that the Department of Justice under then-President Joe Biden had failed to prosecute the alleged hacker “even after the FBI got the suspect to confess, according to declassified documents made public Thursday by the White House.”

MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson summarized the story during an interview with Solomon, saying, “More than 600,000 voter files ripped off Arizona site in 2020 by hacker — the DOJ caught him, the hacker confessed, and then nothing happened.”

Video

Citation

From the August 6, 2026, edition of The Benny Johnson Show streamed on YouTube.

While speaking with Johnson, Solomon spun up hypothetical scenarios of election interference that did not occur in 2020, suggesting “a foreign power or a bad actor” could alter voter registration data or cast fraudulent absentee ballots. Solomon also claimed that “until Donald Trump finally made it public, we were kept in the dark” about voter files being hacked.

In an interview with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, Solomon spun the story further claiming it was proof “that great, giant sugar pill we were force-fed at the end of the November 2020 election that we had just endured the most secure election in U.S. history … was absolutely not true.” Solomon told Bannon “Today, we learned that in Maricopa County — where we were told don’t look here, nothing to see in Maricopa County — on the eve of the election, the United States intelligence community … detected a major breach in Maricopa County, the largest county in Arizona. It indicated that 600,000-plus voter files were stolen by a hacker.”

“There were some concerns that those hacks may have gone through foreign locations,” Solomon continued. “The FBI jumped on the case — the FBI proved exactly what the intelligence community believed happened.”

Video

Citation

From the August 6, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

In reality, the case was reported by the media in 2021, after Trump began spreading false claims about the Arizona election results — including suggesting “the election server was hacked” and “the voting system was breached.”

FactCheck.org explained that “the county said there was no hack, and it isn’t possible for hackers to change votes because the ballot tabulation equipment is a ‘closed air gapped system,’ meaning it isn’t connected to the internet.” The July 2021 report also shared a Maricopa County social media post that claimed, “The event in question involved an individual inappropriately accessing and downloading publicly available info. The website is in no way connected to the Election Management System.”

That same month, the Arizona Daily Star reported that a subcontractor working on the state Senate's audit of Arizona's election administration spoke about “problems” that were “related to a breach of the voter registration system the county itself reported,” claiming “that shows that at least one element of the county’s election system had been ‘hacked.’” The article went on to explain that “county election officials said all that was accessed was a site where people could register to vote, not the actual server where voter registration records are stored. All that anyone obtained was someone’s voter registration number, with no access to personal information, they said.” (The audit ultimately confirmed Biden’s victory in Maricopa County and “found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.”)

The FBI's official record when the case was closed in 2023, which was uploaded by Solomon’s Just the News, stated:

On November 2, 2020, Maricopa County Recorder's Office (MCRO) notified FBI Phoenix that an intruder that had scraped approximately 633,000 voter records, including 930 sensitive voter records, from the MCRO's website. … [The individual] admitted to developing a PowerShell script to scrape voter data after discovering the vulnerability in the MCRO website. After MCRO fixed the vulnerability, [the individual] got scared and deleted the data he'd scraped.

The FBI concluded that “investigators did not find indications of a domestic or foreign influence on [the individual]'s actions,” and the investigation was closed after “federal, state, and local prosecuting offices” all declined the case.

Even Solomon's own story noted that “voter registration files do not include ballots, and there's no evidence votes were changed in the incident,” before creating hypothetical scenarios that “if bad actors gained access to such files they could hamper the ability of voters to cast ballots in the future.”

Despite Solomon's claims that “today, we learned” about this supposed election interference, his latest story looks like just another desperate rehashing of old information to fearmonger about the upcoming midterms.

On Steve Bannon’s War Room, John Solomon scrambles to substantiate Trump’s claims of Chinese election interference

07/31/26 3:35 PM EDT

What you need to know about John Solomon, the man driving Trump's latest election fraud nonsense

07/16/26 6:00 PM EDT

Misinformer John Solomon, who reportedly pushed for Trump’s prime-time speech, has spent months claiming China interfered in the 2020 election to help Joe Biden

07/16/26

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On Steve Bannon’s War Room, John Solomon scrambles to substantiate Trump’s claims of Chinese election interference

07/31/26

On Steve Bannon’s War Room, John Solomon scrambles to substantiate Trump’s claims of Chinese election interference

What Solomon claims is "a pretty big bitch slap of the mainstream media” appears to be just watering down the definition of election interference

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published 07/31/26

The Trump administration's quest to prove a foreign government interfered in the 2020 election face-planted rather publicly this month. But rather than dig up more compelling evidence to prove the case, John Solomon, the conservative media figure and head of the White House task force leading these efforts, is seemingly on a mission to water down the definition of “election interference.”

On July 16, President Donald Trump delivered a much-hyped primetime speech fearmongering about election security. As Lawfare put it, the speech “was most notable for what it did not contain: evidence that any malign activity affected the result. Much of what he described was already known. None of it showed that votes were changed, fraudulent ballots were counted, or the election was stolen. None of it showed that intelligence officials had concealed such evidence.”

The U.S. intelligence community concluded in 2021 that it had “high confidence” that “China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election,” and there were “no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US election.” Following Trump's July 16 speech, Solomon admitted to reporters that “the intelligence community has zero evidence that … a foreign power flipped the vote in 2020, '22, or '24.”

But now, while Solomon has been attempting a media tour to stir up hype around Trump's speech, the White House on July 30 released a flimsy and unsigned fact sheet that claims China “and their proxies bought, stole, or hacked as many as 220 million Americans’ voter registration data,” and therefore the country’s efforts had passed the threshold for “election interference.”

On former Trump strategist Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, Solomon argued his reinterpretation of the intelligence community's findings is a slam dunk, telling Bannon, “What the chiefs say today is the targeting of those files constitutes an act of election interference under the definition of the intelligence community.” Solomon whined that the media have been claiming there was no election interference by China but this fact sheet proves otherwise, declaring, “Today was a pretty big bitch slap of the mainstream media.”

Video

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From the July 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Solomon also relayed to Bannon that his White House task force has “a little bit more to reveal on election integrity and vulnerabilities that still need to be plugged,” adding, “I think we will have a long hot summer and maybe a long hot fall of revelations of just how bad the intelligence and FBI was during the Comey-Wray era.”

Video

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From the July 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Solomon repeated the same points on Real America's Voice's morning show American Sunrise, telling the hosts “a lot of mainstream media like The New York Times and the AP tried to downplay” the claims Trump made in his speech, but he insisted that China has data “that is harmful to America's elections going forward” and “could interfere with the election.” On his own show, Just the News: No Noise, Solomon claimed, “In the future, China has the capability to do mischief in our elections like vote on your behalf.”

However, in a new report responding to the White House fact sheet, The Washington Post assessed that “the declassified documents do not contain evidence that China ever tampered with voter rolls or ballots, or had the ability to, consistent with U.S. spy agencies’ consensus that China did not try to tamper with election infrastructure in 2020.”

The task force did not provide additional evidence to support those claims. Instead, it pointed to one of the documents released on July 16 saying a Chinese hacker obtained “publicly available U.S. voter registration information” from commercial websites in January 2022, too late to have any bearing on the 2020 election.

...

U.S. officials did not know why the Chinese hacker took the information, the memo said, but it could “in theory” be used for future hacking or “election influence.”

The article also reported that “because no official state or federal database containing nationwide registered voters exists, the document suggests the data came from a party or company, not from penetrating an official election system,” despite claims from the White House that China previously targeted “a nationwide set of 204.8 million voter records” in 2019.

Without evidence that the hackers broke into the systems that states use to operate elections, there would be no way for them to add, delete or modify voter registrations.

...

Experts also noted that the Trump administration has not taken any action to punish China for obtaining the data, indicating the danger is not as severe as the White House was suggesting.

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ADMIT POST SP NO VOTES FLIPPED AS FLAK DRAGGED HIM AWAY

MMA 7 26

John Solomon is on a media tour hyping claims from Trump's election address

BULWARK SOMMER 7 26

TRUMP’S PRIMETIME ADDRESS Thursday is shaping up to be a grab bag of conspiracy theories, all of them intended to help Republicans take control of the midterms. He might declare that Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are somehow fake senators; or announce a national emergency on voter fraud. The latest reporting suggests Trump will claim China tried to steal the 2020 election.

Whatever Trump does, it’ll be because of John Solomon—a star conservative reporter who is, somehow, also a White House staffer. For nearly a decade, Solomon has had a hand in the creation of nearly every major MAGA grievance narrative, from the Russia investigation to Ukraine to 2020 election fraud. Solomon has a pretty clear M.O.: He’ll spin a story that seems like a massive exposé, getting it trumpeted on Fox News and throughout the right-wing media ecosystem before it has a chance to deflate under scrutiny, as it usually does.

Now in his gig as a short-term White House staffer, Solomon has been digging up the raw material necessary for both prosecuting Trump’s enemies and the expected attempt at electoral chicanery.

Yet this narrative impresario and his brand of quasi-journalism remain largely unknown outside the world of right-wing media.

In 2007, when Solomon was an investigative reporter at the Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review was already complaining that his stories amounted to the “John Solomon special”: front-page revelations that, when scrutinized, turned out to be little more than a “steady stream of mediocrity.”

Now, thanks to his role in the Trump administration, Solomon has a chance to work that magic on a much larger scale.

Typically, MAGA muckrakers are liars or crackpots, like Mike Lindell, or that one rogue falconer (but not the one you’re thinking of). Compared to these folks, Solomon is a veritable Walter Cronkite. He has a serious journalistic background after working for Post and the Associated Press, and he dresses in ties and navy suits. His veneer of seriousness provides a valuable service for the MAGAverse. Watching him can almost feel like watching a grizzled mainstream investigative journalist who just happens to validate Trump’s obsessions.

A story from the final days of the first Trump administration shows how much Solomon lives in the Trumpworld pocket. The day before Joe Biden’s inauguration, then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows called Solomon to the White House to review a binder of newly declassified files from the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump and Russia—just the kind of document handout Solomon loves.

Meadows wanted Solomon to publish the contents of the binder on Inauguration Day. Solomon’s staffers at his website, Just The News, scrambled to scan them all. Then a new envelope arrived for Solomon, with new files “he was permitted to write about,” according to a lawsuit Solomon later filed against the Justice Department.

Unfortunately for Solomon, the whole plan got botched when a White House staffer recalled the files for further redaction. The binder disappeared back into the new Biden administration. Solomon’s fervor for getting access to them again led to a special favor from Trump, who named Solomon as one of his personal representatives at the National Archives, where he would have the freedom to again pursue the story (to give you a sense of Solomon’s perceived reliability to the ex-president, the only other person designated as Trump’s representative at the time was Kash Patel). It was a decision intended to redound to mutual benefit, and sure enough, Solomon eventually published the files in April 2025.

HOW DID SOLOMON WIND UP as Trump’s favorite journo? After leaving the Post in 2008, Solomon moved between journalism nonprofits and conservative media for a while, powered by a personality once described as “charming and garrulous and brimming with swagger.”

He reached a new level of prominence on the right when he became an executive at The Hill in 2017. His portfolio there was superhuman: simultaneously launching a TV channel, drumming up ad business, and filing news and opinion articles. As you might expect, it was a situation rife with conflicts of interest, with one staffer warning that Solomon was up to “reputation-killing stuff.”1

Solomon’s first big moment at The Hill came with his coverage of the Uranium One faux-scandal, during which he heavily insinuated—but did not come close to proving—that Hillary Clinton had approved the sale of rights to a key American uranium reserve to Russia in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. At the time, Republican anxieties about Trump’s own Russia ties were in overdrive, so Solomon’s articles gave them the tantalizing feeling that the “real” Russia scandal was that Clinton was the true Putin patsy.

In March 2019, Solomon waded into even murkier waters: the bizarre series of events that led to Trump’s impeachment over efforts to pressure Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. Solomon inexplicably began to target American ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in articles for The Hill, portraying her as disloyal to Trump and weak on corruption. A month after Solomon’s series began, Trump fired Yovanovitch.

House Democrats later alleged that Solomon’s columns were part of a smear campaign run by Rudy Giuliani and a web of right-leaning Ukrainians and Americans, in a complex deal meant to convince Ukrainian officials to investigate the Bidens.

Solomon met regularly with figures involved in digging up dirt on the Bidens. The group became known as the BLT Team, named after the BLT Prime restaurant in the Trump International Hotel in Washington where they met. The gang included Giuliani, the prolific Ukrainian-American schemer Lev Parnas, and husband-and-wife legal team Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova. He even shared a draft of a story with the group before publication—a major journalistic taboo.

DiGenova and Toensing seem to have made something of a cottage industry out of this. They represented at least one Ukrainian involved in the scheme. They had also, perhaps not coincidentally, represented a key Uranium One “whistleblower.” And they were also Solomon’s own lawyers, even though he used them and their clients as sources in his articles without disclosing that relationship. Once again, all of this flies in the face of journalistic standards.

Conflicts of interest aside, much of Solomon’s reporting on Ukraine was simply wrong, according to experts on the byzantine world of Ukrainian politics. Even as Solomon became a regular on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show (and used that relationship to make himself valuable to the BLT Team, according to Parnas), an internal Fox News research document I reported on at the time acknowledged that Solomon was involved in a Ukrainian “disinformation campaign.”

“It was primarily non-truths and non-sequiturs,” one State Department noted of Solomon’s reporting during the first Trump impeachment investigation.

Solomon left The Hill in October 2019. The newspaper skewered him in an internal review, with some of the editor’s notes added to his Ukraine’s articles running nearly as long as the articles themselves.

DESPITE QUESTIONS ABOUT SOLOMON’S credibility during his run at the Hill, his star on the right continued to rise. In 2020, he launched Just The News, a conservative news outlet where he has run pro-Trump stories without even the thin layers of editorial oversight he faced at prior media outlets.

Solomon is also becoming a right-wing media mogul, adding minor conservative brands The Post Millennial and (the historically significant) Human Events to his holdings in November. In June 2025, the publisher of RealClearPolitics accused Solomon of convincing some of that website’s donors to withdraw their support in an attempt to soften it up for a takeover, too.

IAF

Solomon also helped launch and continues to provide office space to a foundation that doles out millions of dollars to a network of conservative media outlets and think tanks, including his own site. As Mother Jones reported, few if any of those funding connections are disclosed in Solomon’s journalism when he cites groups that have benefited from the nonprofit’s largesse. Mother Jones describes the sort of ideologically driven news sites in the foundation’s network as “pink slime,” a name that comes from “by-products added as filler to ground beef.”

But Solomon’s biggest honor came this summer, when Trump made him a special government employee tasked with helping “identify some documents, some secrets” to be declassified and released to the public. He is eligible to serve in the role for up to 130 days. Solomon, who said he’s not being paid for the White House declassification work, announced in June that he was stepping down as Just The News’s editor-in-chief, although he continues to host his show and publish articles on the Just The News website.

Solomon isn’t the only member of the BLT Team joining the administration. In April, diGenova was sworn in as a counselor to the Justice Department operating out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, where he’s reportedly working with a grand jury to indict Trump critics like former CIA director John Brennan. The judge overseeing the proceedings—and making decisions on whether to approve things like subpoenas for witness testimony or documents—is infamous Trump loyalist Aileen Cannon, who ran interference for the president during special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents investigation between Trump’s terms in office. Earlier this spring, Cannon blocked the release of Smith’s final report on his investigation’s findings.

Toensing came out of retirement in May to be sworn in as a “deputy chief for civil rights in the criminal section” in the same prosecutor’s office, according to a statement filed in court by District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.

“Ms. Toensing has extensive obligations in that [Florida] District related to a grand jury proceeding,” Pirro wrote, suggesting that Toensing too is working on some kind of urgent grand jury case against perceived Trump enemies.

Solomon has openly admitted that his role declassifying government documents is central to helping that same grand jury, suggesting the once-ridiculed group involved in crafting the anti-Biden Ukraine narrative is now helping Trump pursue his enemies through the Justice Department.

Referring to the administration’s push to declassify files about investigations into the president, Solomon told Benny Johnson in April that “those documents will help this prosecutorial team in Miami” by taking away the need for the sorts of secret and time-intensive processes that would otherwise be needed to make use of them in court.

But Solomon’s decades-old reputation for letting down his audience is starting to reach conservatives, too. Popular conspiracy theory blog Conservative Treehouse has grown skeptical of Solomon’s promises, even adding a bolded warning label of sorts to a preview of Trump’s Thursday speech so readers wouldn’t get too excited.

“Caution should be noted as newly appointed Special Government Employee John Solomon is responsible for the content,” the post read.

Emerald Robinson, an anchor at Mike Lindell’s online channel, wasn’t excited either.

“LOL why would anybody trust John Solomon based on his record?” she wrote on X.

When you’ve lost Lindell’s crew…

SOMMER

REF 1 https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/joseph-e-digenova-sworn-counselor-attorney-general APR 20

U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quinones swears in Joseph E. diGenova as Counselor to the Attorney General

MIAMI – Today, Joseph E. diGenova was sworn in as Counselor to the Attorney General, assuming a senior advisory role within the U.S. Department of Justice.

In this capacity, diGenova will advise the Attorney General on significant legal, policy, and enforcement matters, drawing on decades of experience in federal prosecution, complex investigations, and national legal practice.

“Joe diGenova brings a lifetime of experience, judgment, and proven leadership to this role,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida. “He understands the mission of the Department of Justice and the responsibility we carry to enforce the law fairly, protect the American people, and uphold the Constitution. I am confident he will serve with distinction.”

Counselor to the Attorney General Joseph E. diGenova with Southern District of Florida Leadership

diGenova has served in some of the most demanding legal roles in government and private practice. From 1983 to 1988, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he led one of the largest and most complex prosecutorial offices in the country. During his tenure, he supervised major public corruption, national security, and violent crime prosecutions, earning a reputation for disciplined, results-driven leadership.

Following his government service, diGenova built a distinguished career in private practice, representing clients in high-stakes criminal, civil, and congressional investigations. He has also been a frequent legal commentator and advisor on matters involving federal law enforcement and constitutional issues.

diGenova received his undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati and his law degree from Georgetown University.

As Counselor to the Attorney General, diGenova will support the Department’s mission: to protect Americans, enforce the rule of law, and ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice.

Contact

Public Affairs Unit

U.S. Attorney’s Office

Southern District of Florida

USAFLS.News@usdoj.gov

Updated April 20, 2026

REF2 $

U.S. Installs a Trump Loyalist to Lead ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Case Into Trump Foes

A former lawyer for President Trump’s campaign, Joseph diGenova, is said to be planning to split time between Miami and Fort Pierce, where a grand jury overseen by a Trump-favored judge sits.

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Joseph diGenova, 81, who served as a U.S. attorney in the Reagan era, has been given the title of counselor to the attorney general and detailed to the Southern District of Florida.Credit...Tom Williams

Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer write about the Justice Department.

April 18, 2026

As a sprawling inquiry expands into whether former federal officials committed crimes in investigating President Trump, two unusual factors could ease the way toward securing the indictments he craves.

A former lawyer for Mr. Trump’s campaign, Joseph diGenova, has been selected to lead the inquiry after a career prosecutor in Miami was removed from that post this week, a senior law enforcement official said on Saturday.

And at least part of the investigation appears to be using a grand jury based in Fort Pierce, Fla., overseen by a federal judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who issued rulings favorable to Mr. Trump during the classified documents case against him, the official added. Mr. diGenova is expected to split his time between Miami and Fort Pierce.

Together, the moves show how the Justice Department under Mr. Trump’s control has been willing to embrace politically charged tactics and unorthodox personnel decisions in its efforts to satisfy his demands to prosecute his perceived foes — even as other prosecutors loyal to him have encountered forceful pushback from courts against his wide-ranging retribution campaign.

Mr. diGenova, 81, who served as a U.S. attorney in the Reagan era, has been given the title of counselor to the attorney general and detailed to the Southern District of Florida, where the U.S. attorney, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, another Trump loyalist, is supervising the inquiry.

Mr. diGenova’s appointment comes after Maria Medetis Long, a senior career prosecutor in Miami who had been in charge of the investigation, was abruptly removed from the case. Ms. Medetis Long, who leads national security investigations for Mr. Quiñones’s office, is said to have objected to moving forward with a portion of the inquiry focused on John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.....

REF 3 POLITICO

By Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein

02/23/2026 09:41 AM EST|Updated: 02/23/2026 12:51 PM EST

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon permanently barred the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s final report describing President Donald Trump’s stockpiling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and allegations that he obstructed government efforts to reclaim them.

Cannon lit into Smith for a “brazen stratagem”: compiling the detailed report even after she ruled in July 2024 his appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional and dismissed the case against Trump and two co-defendants. The Justice Department had appealed Cannon’s decision but dropped the case altogether after Trump’s election.

“Special Counsel Smith and his team went ahead for months, undeterred, preparing [the classified documents report] using discovery collected in connection with this proceeding and expending government funds in the process,” Cannon wrote in a 15-page ruling issued Monday. “To say this chronology represents, at a minimum, a concerning breach of the spirit of the Dismissal Order is an understatement, if not an outright violation of it.”

The Trump-appointed judge said releasing the report now would “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice” and amount to a “manifest injustice” because the case never reached a jury. It could also risk revealing information protected by attorney-client privilege and grand jury secrecy, she said.

“While it is true that former special counsels have released final reports at the conclusion of their work,” Cannon wrote, “it appears they have done so either after electing not to bring charges at all or after adjudications of guilt by plea or trial. The Court strains to find a situation in which a former special counsel has released a report after initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.”

Aides to Smith, who is now an attorney in private practice, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Judge Cannon’s courage and judicial resolve on these important due process issues should be recognized and taught in law school classrooms across America,” Trump’s lawyer Kendra Wharton said in response to the ruling.

Cannon has drawn scrutiny for rulings that favor Trump and cut against longstanding practice and precedent. She delayed the classified documents case for months when she installed an independent overseer to review materials seized from Mar-a-Lago — until a federal appeals court overturned her decision.

Cannon rejected the speedy schedule that Smith sought for the criminal case and threw it out on the day Trump was formally nominated at the 2024 Republican National Convention, a week after the assassination attempt that nearly took his life.

In her ruling, Cannon emphasized that “all parties” agreed that Smith’s report should not be made public. That is technically true, because after Trump was sworn in to his second term last year, the Justice Department took the position that the report should never be released. Trump’s private lawyers and Trump’s former co-defendants, Carlos de Oliveira and Walt Nauta, also opposed release of the report.

However, two legal groups who favor release of the report — American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute — sought to formally intervene in the dismissed criminal case to argue in support of disclosure. Cannon denied them permission to do so. The groups’ appeal of that decision remains pending at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Judge Cannon’s decision to permanently block the release of this extraordinarily significant report is impossible to square with the First Amendment and the common law,” said Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight Institute. “There is no legitimate basis for its continued suppression.”

Numerous individuals and organizations, including news outlets, have also sought Smith’s report under the Freedom of Information Act. Unless a higher court overrules Cannon, her order effectively blocks such requests.

The first volume of Smith’s final report addressed Trump’s actions to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election and evidence supporting Smith’s election-related criminal case against Trump. That volume of the report was made public by the Justice Department in January 2025, days before President Joe Biden left office.

Before retaking office, Trump asked Cannon to block both volumes of the report, but Cannon concluded at the time she didn’t have the power to intervene in matters stemming from the election investigation.

REF 4? CT DOC TOE 40K CS 200 PP VAUGHN INDEX?

Status Report – #25 in TOENSING v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (D.D.C., 1:24-cv-02444) – CourtListener.com

JEANINE FERRIS PIRRO United States Attorney By: /s/ Thomas W. Duffey THOMAS W. DUFFEY Assistant United States Attorney 601 D Street, NW Washington, DC 20530 (202) 252-2510 Attorneys for the United States of America /s/ Matthew D. Hardin MATTHEW D. HARDIN, D.C. Bar # 1032711 Hardin Law Office 101 Rainbow Drive # 11506 Livingston, TX 77399 (202) 802-1948 MatthewDHardin@protonmail.com

Now comes the Plaintiff, Victoria Toensing, and the Defendant, the United States Department of Justice (“Department”), by and through undersigned counsel, and hereby submit this Joint Status Report pursuant to the Court’s May 27, 2026, Minute Order. This report follows a June 18, 2026 meeting of the parties and their counsel at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. In attendance at the meeting were undersigned counsel, Plaintiff Victoria Toensing and her husband, Joseph diGenova, and Patrice Parker Hale from the Department of Justice.

Defendant’s Statement The Department represents that it has completed its review and has processed in excess of 41,000 pages. There remain outstanding 29 pages that need to be returned from the Office of Information Policy, which are expected to be returned by the middle of next month. The Department anticipates providing a Vaughn index to Plaintiff addressing approximately 1,000 pages withheld in full pursuant to FOIA Exemptions, and certain partially redacted records to which Plaintiff has conveyed its challenges. This Vaughn will be provided to Plaintiff by July 31, 2026, as contemplated by this Court’s May 18, 2026 Minute Order. The Department is not claiming that records at issue in this case are classified.

....

Plaintiff’s Statement Plaintiff appreciates the opportunity to confer with the Department and its counsel on June 18, 2026. As previously indicated, Ms. Toensing recently began serving as Deputy Chief for Civil Rights in the Criminal Section, of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, and Ms. Toensing has extensive obligations in that District related to a grand jury proceeding.

The brief postponement of the conferral allowed Ms. Toensing to better serve our country’s pressing interests in effective and efficient criminal justice. The June 18, 2026 meeting in D.C. was productive in terms of allowing the parties to better understand their respective positions and to agree on a path forward for this litigation. As indicated at ECF No. 22, Plaintiff has received less than 200 pages of records, such that Plaintiff has difficulty understanding how 41,000 pages were processed with so few pages produced. The Department has now clarified that it withheld in full approximately 1,000 pages of records. Still, the Department apparently asserts that approximately 40,000 pages of records were non-responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request. Plaintiff reserves the right to challenge the accuracy of Defendant’s assertions as to the volume of responsive records on summary judgment.

...

REF 5? Benny Johnson

@bennyjohnson

John Solomon Just Blew My Mind with His Prediction About Deep State Accountability Solomon says President Trump is about to begin declassifying documents at lightning speed in an operation he is calling “Hypersonic Clarity." He believes this massive document dump could pave the way for a grand conspiracy case against the intel agency spooks that have weaponized the government against Trump and millions of Americans for over a decade. "We’re gonna get a level of transparency in a release and declassification of documents unparalleled in American history. The president's setting up something that I think will be unbelievable." "I do think there will be some accountability. It’ll never be enough for what we went through the last 12 years... I think there’ll be a speed of disclosure and a speed of prosecution that we didn’t see in past years." Solomon says prosecutors only need to flip one top deep state actor to make the whole conspiracy case stick — just like taking down a mob boss. This is what we’ve all been waiting for.

MMA 7 26

What you need to know about John Solomon, the man driving Trump's latest election fraud nonsense

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 07/16/26

In a new piece for MS NOW, Media Matters Vice President Julie Millican details the many reasons not to trust right-wing journalist John Solomon, who is reportedly helping orchestrate President Donald Trump's Thursday prime-time speech on election fraud:

Creating “phantom scandals” has made Solomon a key element of the right-wing media’s propaganda machine. He gained prominence for his quest to discredit Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation during Trump’s first administration — first while working for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Circa News, and later after becoming executive vice president of digital video at The Hill. Many of the “phantom scandals” Solomon pursued served to rewrite history by claiming that it was really Democrats with corrupt relationships with Russia who worked to undermine Trump in the 2016 presidential election — not the other way around.

...

Enter Rudy Giuliani.

As the House Democrats’ impeachment reports found, Solomon was one of the most critical figures in Trump and Giuliani’s plot to extort the Ukrainian government into meddling in the 2020 U.S. election on Trump’s behalf. As I laid out at the time, Giuliani, then Trump’s personal attorney, worked with con men and Trump cronies to pursue an “investigation” into Ukraine that he said showed both Ukrainian collusion with Democrats in 2016 and evidence that then-Vice President Joe Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine to benefit his son.

...

Solomon has also advanced election denial conspiracy theories, which have recently fixated on China. Since March, he has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was not secure because China allegedly accessed voter registration data in multiple states. In Solomon’s telling, the Democrats and the so-called deep state hid this information from the public, while China tried to submit fake ballots on Biden’s behalf. (The United States National Intelligence Council, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, however, all concluded that there was no evidence of foreign interference in the 2020 election.)

In June, Trump appointed Solomon a “special government employee” to run a “task force” related to declassifying documents about the 2020 election. Around the same time, Trump nominated Bill Pulte — who Solomon has said he knows “pretty well” — to become acting director of national intelligence.

Solomon is now in a position to potentially create a “phantom scandal” directly from the White House, and right-wing media figures like Bannon have suggested such a narrative could be a “predicate” for Trump to declare a national emergency over election security ahead of the midterms.

Read the whole thing at MS NOW.

For more Media Matters coverage of Trump's speech and the unfolding effort by the president and his media allies to undermine the midterm elections, see here, here, and here.

Ahead of tonight’s speech, Fox praises Trump as a leader on election security — ignoring his repeated efforts to undermine it

07/16/26 12:23 PM EDT

Misinformer John Solomon, who reportedly pushed for Trump’s prime-time speech, has spent months claiming China interfered in the 2020 election to help Joe Biden

07/16/26 1:42 PM EDT

Steve Bannon says Trump's Thursday night speech must be a “predicate” for a “national security emergency executive order” on elections

07/15/26

MMA

Misinformer John Solomon, who reportedly pushed for Trump’s prime-time speech, has spent months claiming China interfered in the 2020 election to help Joe Biden

Solomon's new role on a White House task force, along with Trump's expected address, appear to be part of an effort to relitigate the 2020 election and undermine the midterms

Written by Hanne MacDonald & Jack Wheatley

Published 07/16/26

John Solomon, the conservative media figure and “special government employee” who reportedly played a key role in “urging” President Donald Trump’s upcoming speech, has been touring right-wing media for months claiming China interfered in the 2020 election.

On July 16, Trump is planning to deliver a prime-time address to the nation which will reportedly “focus on voting machine security and alleged efforts by foreign nations to influence U.S. elections,” including “allegations that Beijing compromised U.S. voter data and evidence the CIA knew about the action and didn't share that information with Mr. Trump during his first term.”

According to MS NOW, “It is not clear whether the president will present any credible new evidence that the 2020 election was stolen,” but Trump is “expected to release declassified intelligence documents” as part of a push “being driven by” acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte and Solomon, “a former journalist who has frequently amplified election fraud claims.” From Politico:

Trump’s senior staffers drafted a version of the speech they believe is grounded in claims fully supported by the intelligence. But another camp — including acting DNI Bill Pulte and right-wing media figure John Solomon — is pushing Trump to go beyond what his senior advisers are comfortable with.

Aides worry the president could insert material they do not believe can be substantiated, an especially sensitive prospect as the White House asks television networks to carry the speech (readers may recall the costly lawsuits settled by Fox News, Newsmax and OANN).

Solomon, a longtime proponent of right-wing conspiracy theories who also played a key role in Trump’s first impeachment, recently joined a White House task force that NBC News reported is “gathering thousands of pages of documents from U.S. intelligence agencies, with plans to declassify some of them, which would give President Donald Trump an opportunity to amplify new accusations about past elections.”

In recent months, Solomon has used his website, his online shows, and repeated right-wing media appearances to circulate claims that China interfered in the 2020 election — allegations which Trump is expected to repeat during his prime-time address. Since March, Solomon has argued that the 2020 election was not secure with China accessing voter registration data, suggested that China attempted to illegally submit fake ballots for Joe Biden, and claimed that Democrats and the government hid intelligence reports about China's actions. He also used these claims to push for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act (previously the SAVE Act) — which experts say would create new barriers for voters and potentially disenfranchise millions.

Misinformer John Solomon has a new White House role to declassify documents — reportedly in support of Trump's efforts to relitigate 2020 and undermine the midterms

Solomon “has a history of bending the truth to his storyline” with exaggerated claims and conspiracy theories

- Media Matters named Solomon the 2019 Misinformer of the Year for his record of stretching facts in his stories to fit broader pro-MAGA agendas. Solomon became a key figure working alongside Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to dig up dirt on Joe Biden related to Ukraine and to discredit investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Solomon laundered Giuliani’s conspiracy theories in his columns published by The Hill; the publication later found that “Solomon failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation. In other cases, the sources were his own attorneys.” In 2019, ProPublica wrote that Solomon’s work was “the starting gun that eventually set off the impeachment inquiry into the president.” A 2012 profile by the Columbia Journalism Review said that Solomon “has a history of bending the truth to his storyline. As a reporter for the AP and The Washington Post, he dug up his share of genuine dirt, but he also was notorious for massaging facts to conjure phantom scandals.” [Media Matters, 10/17/19, 12/26/19; Politico, 2/19/20; ProPublica, 10/25/19; Columbia Journalism Review, 7/9/12]

- Solomon — host of Just the News No Noise and John Solomon Reports — has temporarily stepped aside as editor-in-chief of Just The News and is now working for the Trump administration as a “special government employee” on a White House “task force to investigate elements of the 2020 election.” NBC News reported that Solomon’s task force “is gathering thousands of pages of documents from U.S. intelligence agencies, with plans to declassify some of them, which would give President Donald Trump an opportunity to amplify new accusations about past elections. … The group has been charged with gathering information from federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including related to the 2020 presidential election, signs of ballot irregularities, potential voting machine issues and possibly beyond.” Another report said that Solomon “has requested access to files related to an analysis that dissented from a U.S. intelligence assessment in 2021 that found no indications ⁠that a foreign actor had tried or succeeded in altering ‘any technical aspect’ of the 2020 vote.” In describing his unpaid role at the White House, Solomon said he will be releasing “some documents, some secrets and things you should know about when it comes to weaponization, election integrity, other things.” [Just the News, Just the News No Noise, 6/18/26; The New York Times, 5/29/26; Reuters, 7/13/26; NBC News, 6/30/26; Media Matters, 6/4/26, 7/6/26, 7/2/26]

- Trump is preparing to deliver a prime-time speech on July 16 reportedly focusing on “voting machine security and alleged efforts by foreign nations to influence U.S. elections,” including “allegations that Beijing compromised U.S. voter data and evidence the CIA knew about the action and didn't share that information with Mr. Trump during his first term.” According to NPR, the address may be used to “amplify election lies before an audience of millions in an effort to boost Republican prospects before midterms that threaten to hobble Trump for the remainder of his term.” MS NOW reporting also noted that the speech comes after efforts by Pulte and Solomon to declassify documents in their new White House roles. Intelligence officials are concerned that the release of these files may expose sources and methods, as well as “sow confusion and erode public trust in elections.” [MS NOW, 7/14/26; CBS News, 7/15/26; NPR, 7/15/26]

- The Brennan Center for Justice: “Experts agree that there is no evidence of foreign interference” in the 2020 election. The Brennan Center has noted that “influence and interference are not the same, but President Trump and his supporters conflate the two concepts when raising the specter of foreign meddling in U.S. elections.” In reality, “the only confirmed instance of election interference was in 2016, when Russia’s intelligence agencies hacked into election board infrastructure, including registration databases,” and investigations have found “no evidence of interference in the 2020 federal elections.” Additionally, “the Intelligence Community’s last report on the 2024 elections stressed that although foreign actors remained intent on using influence to undermine U.S. democracy, it had not uncovered any acts of interference.” As MS NOW also reported, there were “extensive reviews by the U.S. intelligence community under both the Trump and Biden administrations” and they “found no credible evidence calling the 2020 election into question.” [Brennan Center for Justice, 3/27/26; MS NOW, 7/14/26]

- Solomon’s appointment to the White House task force and Trump's upcoming prime-time address about election security come as Trump attempts to change voting processes before the upcoming midterms under the guise of “election integrity.” Trump has been promoting the SAVE America Act (previously the SAVE Act), which experts say would create new barriers for voters and potentially disenfranchise millions of Americans — an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice says it “would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress” — as he calls for the GOP to “nationalize the voting” and rails against voting by mail. For months, pro-Trump election deniers and prominent right-wing media figures such as Steve Bannon have been urging Trump to declare a national emergency ahead of the midterms to “justify dictating new rules to state and local governments” related to voting and elections. Some election deniers have also reportedly been “circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election” for Trump to use to declare a national emergency [Brennan Center for Justice, 2/11/25, 2/2/26, 2/10/26; NPR, 4/13/25; USA Today, 7/13/26; Truth Social, 7/24/26; Media Matters, 10/28/25, 6/30/26, 7/10/26; Real America's Voice, War Room, 6/29/26; The Washington Post, 2/26/26]

Since March, Solomon has been on a right-wing media tour claiming China interfered in the 2020 election

Solomon has been making the case on his own shows and website that China hacked the 2020 election

- Solomon published an article in March suggesting China interfered in the 2020 U.S. election by accessing voter registration data. He wrote: “Voter registration data is not the same as ballots, where Americans choose their candidates. But it contains sensitive personally identifying information, including driver's license data and partial Social Security numbers. The data is considered so sensitive that several Democrat states are currently trying to keep the Trump Justice Department from obtaining it and liberal groups claim it is a holy grail of election integrity.” Solomon added, “In the hands of a foreign power, such data could be used to mimic social personas designed to influence elections or to make absentee ballot requests to cast fake votes, something the FBI feared China might be doing during the 2020 election, according to recently declassified documents.” [Just The News, 3/16/26]

- Solomon repeated the claims on his show John Solomon Reports, where he said “China clearly had access to voter registration data, much like they did in Great Britain. It was kept secret by the intelligence community, according to its own ombudsman.” He added that there “may be some serious issues in the elections that were kept from us.” [Just the News, John Solomon Reports, 3/24/26]

- Solomon said on his other show that “you now have proof that the deep state” hid information about China accessing voter registration data because it “did not want to further the president’s policies.” [Real America's Voice, Just the News No Noise, 3/18/26]

- In an April article for Just the News that repeated claims of 2020 election interference by China, Solomon wrote, “Memo newly declassified by DNI Gabbard shows concerns about integrity of American voting were far greater than the public was told by previous administrations.” The article explained: “Though officials say that an ongoing second Trump administration investigation has found no evidence yet that vote-counting machines were directly compromised in the 2020 election, the memo shows how such machines could be vulnerable to intrusions in the future and made clear that the voter registration databases that were breached by China and Iran were easy targets.” [Just the News, 4/20/26]

Solomon has repeatedly claimed the 2020 election was not secure because China accessed voter registration data

- On War Room, Solomon said “we have now learned six years too late” that Americans in 2020 were “force-fed a fake story that it was the most secure election in American history.” He reiterated that “China had infiltrated voter registration data in numerous states,” suggesting “that could have a profound effect on senators who thus far have been kicking the can down the road on the SAVE America Act. … It might change your notion about adding more election security measures to the 2026 election.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 5/13/26]

- On The Sean Hannity Show, Solomon called claims of China accessing U.S. voter registration data “one of the largest penetrations and impacts on election security in American history.” Solomon continued, “There’s a whole assessment that China could go make fake ballots or they could go deregister people so when they showed up in the polls to vote for Trump, they couldn't vote.” [Premiere Radio Network, The Sean Hannity Show, 5/8/26]

- Solomon: “In 2020 they told us it was a perfect election, the most secure election in history. Over the last two weeks, Tulsi Gabbard has declassified two bombshell documents — one revealing that alongside of Iran, China infiltrated the voter databases of many states — multiple states.” [Premiere Radio Network, The Sean Hannity Show, 4/22/26]

- On War Room, Solomon claimed “2020 wasn't a perfect election” because “Iran and China hacked voter registration databases.” He added, “We've been sold the story that this was a secure election. It wasn't.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 4/21/26]
- Solomon argued that U.S. intelligence officials knew the 2020 election was not “the most secure in American history” because “we now have confirmed that both Iran and China hacked into voter registration databases and used that data for … malinfluence measures.” [Real America's Voice, American Sunrise, 4/21/26]

Solomon has claimed that China attempted to submit fake ballots for Joe Biden

- Solomon suggested that China had plotted to submit fake ballots in 2020 “to swing the election to Joe Biden.” Solomon said that China “reached more than a dozen states' voter registration databases,” then “sent tens of thousands of fake driver’s licenses to the United States in the summer of 2020” with the goal of voting “in the names of Americans and try[ing] to swing the election to Joe Biden.” [The First, I’m Right with Jesse Kelly, 4/22/26]

- Discussing his reporting on Fox News, Solomon claimed China was “hacking in and getting data from our voter registration databases, doing some early influence campaigns, maybe sending some driver’s licenses that could be used to file fake ballot registrations.” [Fox News, Hannity, 3/19/26]

- Solomon connected claims that China accessed U.S. voter registration data to a plot to fake driver's licenses to the U.S. to interfere with the 2020 election. Solomon explained, “Voter data is accessed by Chinese intelligence. Then China sends driver's licenses to Chicago O'Hare airport and the FBI’s Chinese intelligence sources tell them it was an effort to send those licenses here so someone could file fake ballot requests and vote and stuff the ballot box for Joe Biden.” The claim that fake drivers' licenses seized at Chicago O’Hare International Airport were connected to voter fraud was previously debunked; Reuters wrote in 2020 that the licenses “had no apparent connection to Democratic Party registration or the upcoming election.” [Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 3/19/26; Reuters, 9/10/20]

- Solomon claimed that once China had voter registration data, it “could do malign influence operations on social media” or “file votes in the names of other people. That’s a very real fear.” [The First, I’m Right with Jesse Kelly, 3/18/26]

- Solomon said on the Stephen Gardner Show that “at our request here at Just the News,” Gabbard had declassified “documents showing that China had infiltrated at least a dozen and as many as 18 states’ voter registration databases. Once you have a state’s voter registration data, you have the holy grail of being able to manipulate elections.” He also stated: “We now know that there were people who voted illegally, rules were changed without legislatures’ approval. So these narratives that the left created are now being debunked by real evidence.” [Rumble, Stephen Gardner Show, 5/19/26]

Solomon has claimed China has an “alliance with the Democratic Party” and the government hid that China accessed voter registration data

- On The Glenn Beck Program, Solomon claimed, “It is pretty clear that China either has a preference with the Democratic Party or some sort of alliance with the Democratic Party, based on what the FBI wrote.” Solomon cited a June 2025 article he wrote for Just the News reporting that Trump FBI Director Kash Patel had “turned over to Congress an intelligence report raising concerns that China had mass-produced fake U.S. driver's licenses to carry out a scheme to hijack the 2020 election with fake mail-in ballots for Democrat Joe Biden.” The article went on to note that “the newly declassified intelligence reports from August 2020 weren’t corroborated or fully investigated.” [TheBlaze, The Glenn Beck Program, 3/23/26; Just the News, 6/16/25]

- On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Solomon claimed that the Biden administration “knew our voter registration data was breached, that it had been accessed by China,” and said that keeping it secret was “a real disservice to the American public.” Solomon also claimed, “There are scores of raw intelligence reports that show Chinese meddling in the American election, and there’s one report raising concern that Ukraine was engaged in a plot to do something bad in the 2024 election to help Joe Biden.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 3/17/26]

- On War Room, Solomon claimed that “we've all been kept in the dark” about “infiltrations of the voter data in 2020 by China.” He added, “If Russia does it, it's a bad thing. If China does it, apparently we just keep mum about it.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 3/16/26]

- On Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast, Solomon claimed China may have engaged in “ballot box-stuffing,” saying, “We have new evidence that China was considering doing that, maybe in concert with some Democrats, in 2020.” [Rumble, Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., 3/30/26]

- Solomon claimed that “for the first time, there’s evidence that the Democratic Party might have been working with foreign powers to have them intervene in our elections.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 3/26/26]

- On The Sean Hannity Show, Solomon claimed that “our own intelligence community harbored its own deep dark secret” since 2020 that China had “gained access to U.S. voter registration data in America.” Solomon added, “There are several blue states trying to block Trump's Justice Department from reviewing that data to make sure we don't have illegal aliens or noncitizens on the voter rolls. So it’s so sensitive we don’t trust our own government, but it turns out China penetrated it in America and for the last six years we’ve all been kept in the dark.” [Premiere Radio Network, The Sean Hannity Show, 3/19/26]

Solomon has used his claims to promote the SAVE America Act, which experts say would disenfranchise millions of voters

- Discussing his reporting on War Room, Solomon said the federal government needs to engage in “hand-to-hand combat that would win the SAVE Act” and argued, “We still need voter ID.” Solomon also said that administration officials should “call the senators one-by-one and say here’s what we found in your state. … You can have a briefing senator-by-senator saying sir, in your state China accessed your voter data registration. In your state, thus far we found x number of noncitizens who made it through your state’s very good system, which means we still need voter ID to prevent this.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 3/23/26]

- Solomon also encouraged the White House to “have a briefing in the White House press room” and “walk the press through the evidence” after Bannon suggested that there has been “no urgency” on the Save America Act. Solomon added, “Once they see the evidence, it’s kind of hard to ignore. It’s pretty clear evidence.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 3/23/26]

- Solomon argued that the federal government should explain to senators “why the SAVE America Act is important to your state and your constituents” because “your state was one of the states that was penetrated by China.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 3/20/26]

Why It Matters

The Trump administration appears to be trying to undermine the midterm elections

Solomon's task force appointment appears to be part of broader efforts by the Trump administration and right-wing media to undermine the midterm elections.

In recent months, Trump and his right-wing media allies have advocated for the SAVE America Act and other policies which experts warn would create voting restrictions and barriers that “would stop millions of American citizens from voting.”

Meanwhile, right-wing media and election deniers have boosted and intensified conspiracy theories and narratives about foreign interference in the 2020 election, as the Trump administration also uses its levers of power to reinvigorate old claims that have been previously investigated and debunked.

Finally, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has suggested both Solomon's task force and Trump's prime-time address could serve as a “predicate” for the president to issue a “national security emergency executive order” — part of a plan that right-wing election deniers have cheered for Trump to give himself supposedly “king-like powers” over the midterms.

Fox contributor and Giuliani collaborator John Solomon is the 2019 Misinformer of the Year

12/26/19 4:44 AM EST

The plot to subvert the midterms is getting stranger and more dangerous

07/02/26 10:05 AM EDT

John Solomon has been calling for retribution against Trump's enemies; now the White House is poised to hire him

06/04/26

mma

OMFG

The plot to subvert the midterms is getting stranger and more dangerous

Right-wing media figures including Steve Bannon, John Solomon, and Cleta Mitchell appear to be weaving together a narrative about interference by China in US elections to justify a national emergency to curtail voting rights

Written by John Knefel

Published 07/02/26

Over the last several weeks, the outlines of a plot have begun to emerge that could signal how President Donald Trump, along with MAGA media figures and activists, could attempt to severely curtail voting rights under the pretext of declaring a national emergency posed by China.

The details of the scheme remain publicly vague, and may not yet come to pass, but the short version looks something like this: First, the White House would declassify and release documents purporting to show foreign interference in U.S. elections, especially by the Chinese Communist Party.

Next, Trump would use that supposed “proof” of a stolen election to declare a national emergency, thereby — according to those pushing this idea — giving him extraordinary powers over the upcoming midterms. That move would serve as a way to advance the anti-voting rights measures in the SAVE America Act, like forcing voters to prove their citizenship, without having to actually pass the law — which Congress, so far at least, appears reluctant to do.

The main players here come not only from the fever swamp backwaters of MAGA media, but also from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the White House. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is a central node, attempting to advance the operation on his War Room podcast, aired on right-wing network Real America’s Voice, long a major source of misinformation about the 2020 election.

The main players here come not only from the fever swamp backwaters of MAGA media, but also from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the White House

Bannon’s RAV colleague John Solomon, whose role in the plot appears to be running the declassification effort, was recently appointed to a White House “task force” into supposed election integrity. Solomon was Media Matters’ Misinformer of the Year in 2019 for his role in laundering misinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine through his opinion columns.

Also in the mix is Peter Schweizer, who founded the Government Accountability Institute with Bannon and has moved from spreading misinformation about the Clintons to claiming that China is taking over the United States by exploiting birthright citizenship.

Then there’s Cleta Mitchell, a right-wing lawyer who was on the January 2021 call when Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to tip the state his way. She referenced Schweizer in a June 20 appearance on War Room, positively paraphrasing an argument he made on his podcast acknowledging that much of the voting activity he wants to suppress is actually legal.

“Peter Schweizer put it pretty well last week in a podcast that he does with Eric Eggers, and the question they posed is: If fraud is made — if election fraud is made legal, is it still fraud?” Mitchell asked. “Because what's happened in California over the last decade is that the far-left Democrat, socialist, Marxists, communists have completely upended every vestige of election integrity.” (Bannon had teed her up by referencing the Los Angeles mayoral primary, claiming without evidence: “They stole it right in front of our face and laughed at us the entire time.")

Video

Citation

From the June 20, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Mitchell is supported by a loose array of election deniers who have called on Trump to issue an executive order to seize “king-like powers” over voting systems, supported by the national emergency decree.

Bill Pulte, the newly installed acting DNI, and his recently appointed chief of staff, former Republican National Committee official Christina Norton, also appear to figure heavily into the plan. On June 20, Bannon said Pulte’s role at DNI is “to get to the bottom of the 2020 stolen election.” Ten days later, Bannon described Norton as “one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC” and said Pulte is “signaling where he's going on this” with her hiring, adding that “my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election."

The same day, NBC News reported that Solomon’s task force “is gathering thousands of pages of documents from U.S. intelligence agencies, with plans to declassify some of them, so President Donald Trump can amplify new accusations about past elections.” In describing his unpaid role at the White House, Solomon said he will be releasing “some documents, some secrets you should know about when it comes to weaponization, election integrity, other things."

Solomon’s recent media footprint offers clues about what he is likely looking to find, declassify, and present — possibly out of context. The subhead of a May 6 article of Solomon’s states: “The evidence continues to stack up that the U.S. intel community sought to downplay China's actions in 2020 as Trump sought reelection.” Then, during a May 19 interview, he said: “We do know the FBI had grave suspicions that China was trying to rig the election, probably with help from people on the ground, to help Joe Biden specifically."

The Supreme Court’s narrow June 30 decision to protect birthright citizenship could turbocharge the Bannon-Solomon-Pulte scheme, in part by providing fodder for anti-Chinese sentiment on the right. On Solomon’s website, Just The News, an article about the birthright citizenship case referenced Schweizer’s book and hyped the supposed China menace.

Birthright citizenship abuse via birth tourism, when foreign nationals travel to the United States on temporary visas specifically to give birth, is an issue that Trump addressed early in his second term.

Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer detailed this practice extensively in his 2026 book, “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,” in which he described how China has industrialized the practice on a large scale through an organized industry.

Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute told FactCheck.org that “birth tourism is a very small occurrence – of the 3.6 million U.S. births annually, a tiny fraction is due to foreign women who are not regularly domiciled in the U.S. coming here for the purpose of giving birth to secure U.S. citizenship for their child.”

And as the American Immigration Council’s Dara Lind noted: “Consulates have a ton of discretion under existing law to deny someone a visa. And suspicion of birth tourism _has_ served as a reason to deny visas in the past. If the problem is insufficient enforcement, good news, you can solve that problem without changing the law or Constitution!”

Bannon stated plainly on June 29 that Solomon’s “task force” and “also Pulte” would be central to creating a “predicate” for the declaration of a national emergency and subsequent executive order achieving the anti-voting rights goals of the SAVE America Act.

On June 30, Bannon interviewed another of his RAV colleagues, Wayne Allyn Root, who further elaborated what a national emergency declaration could look like.

“Stop talking about the SAVE Act and do a national security emergency for elections, which is the SAVE Act, which contains everything that's in the SAVE Act, Steve, and more and more,” Root said.

Just days earlier, on June 24, Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill to pressure Congress to pass the stalled out SAVE America Act, which he referred to as a “National Emergency."

The “predicate” Bannon is hoping to manufacture could also be for other election initiatives the administration is working on — such as trying to force courts to give the administration access to various state voter rolls — an issue the administration is facing significant resistance to.

Whether this harebrained plot congeals into an active conspiracy to subvert the midterms remains to be seen, but given that Trump has already tried to overturn one election it would be a mistake not to take these rumblings seriously. There may indeed be an emergency — it’s just not the one that Bannon and company are talking about.

---

mma

John Solomon has been calling for retribution against Trump's enemies; now the White House is poised to hire him

Written by Sophie Lawton

Research contributions from Reed McMaster, Jack Winstanley & Media Intel Staff

:{Published 06/04/26

The White House has reportedly started vetting right-wing journalist John Solomon for a “special government employee” position working on government “transparency.” Solomon, Media Matters' Misinformer of the Year, has a history of appearing on right-wing media to spread disputed claims about supposed government weaponization, and he has heavily supported President Donald Trump's Department of Justice's “grand conspiracy” campaign, calling for “accountability” for those he claims have wronged Trump.

In various appearances on right-wing media, Solomon has claimed the Trump administration is planning on starting a declassification project which he named “Hypersonic Clarity,” saying on April 16, “We're going to get a level of transparency and a release of declassification of documents unparalleled in American history.”

According to Solomon, the released documents will “help this prosecutorial team in Miami” working on the Trump administration's "grand conspiracy" case, which The New York Times calls part of Trump's “wide-ranging retribution campaign."

Speaking to MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson, Solomon claimed, “I do think there will be some accountability,” but he added, “There will never be enough for what we went through the last 12 years."

:{Video

Citation

From the April 16, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube

On the same day, Solomon appeared on Steve Bannon's War Room to claim again that Trump will start his so-called “Operation Hypersonic Clarity” to “get everything declassified quickly” in order to seek indictments for former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey in the Miami grand conspiracy case.

Solomon also mentioned that he thinks there will be “a request to expunge President Trump's impeachment from the congressional record” because of the supposed conspiracy against him, which Solomon has also pushed for on his Just the News website.

Last November, Solomon complained that the Department of Justice was not doing enough to “reprioritize weaponization” investigations, telling Bannon, “I'm really worried that Donald Trump doesn't have the team that can bring accountability at the Justice Department."

The New York Times reported that in his possible new White House role, Solomon would likely be working on declassifying documents related to Russiagate and the 2020 election, both subjects which the Trump DOJ is attempting to encompass in the grand conspiracy case. Solomon has spoken about each of these topics in interviews throughout the last year, alleging government corruption, weaponization, and criminal conspiracy by the Biden and Obama administrations.

After the announcement of the grand conspiracy case in July 2025, Solomon appeared on Fox News' Hannity to claim Trump was “investigated falsely for things like Russia collusion, Ukraine interference, his own documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago,” adding, “This is a criminal conspiracy." Per Media Matters' internal database, Solomon has appeared on Hannityat least 275 times since August 2017.

:{Video

Citation

From the July 14, 2025 edition of Fox News' Hannity

In a May 19 interview on Rumble podcast The Stephen Gardner Show, Solomon claimed, “We do know the FBI had grave suspicions that China was trying to rig the election, probably with help from people on the ground, to help Joe Biden specifically.” Then, citing documents that had been declassified at his request, Solomon suggested China manipulated the 2020 election using states' voter registration databases.

Speaking to Bannon on March 9, Solomon predicted the Trump DOJ would pursue investigations into Maricopa County, Arizona; Fulton County, Georgia; and other “blue states or blue areas of states” due to their “long history of irregularities and misconduct and quite frankly just incompetent election counting,” particularly in the 2020 and 2024 elections.

Beyond asserting disputed claims about Russiagate and election security, Solomon has also called for “accountability” against Democrats he claims wrongly prosecuted Trump and his allies:

During an appearance on Fox News'Hannityin December, Solomon claimed released emails “show” the Biden administration pressured the FBI into conducting the raid on Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago, calling it “a potential Fourth Amendment violation of President Trump's civil liberties” that could result in “criminal charges.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [12/16/25]

In an interview with Bannon on May 7, Solomon claimed that “the accountability machine is starting to deliver results” by indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center and James Comey, and possibly John Brennan and New York Attorney General Letitia James.Solomon said, “The people that abused and weaponized the system are finally facing some form of accountability,” adding, “This isn't retribution. It isn't going after people just because they oppose Donald Trump. It's going after people because there's significant evidence of criminality and it's gone unpunished for a long time.” Real America's Voice, *War Room*, [5/7/26]

Following Trump's State of the Union address in February, Solomon told Bannon that “Donald Trump will have his army out in bundles in November” if the Justice Department delivers “accountability for the double jeopardy abuses of American civil liberties” as part of “a conspiracy to get Donald Trump.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [2/25/26]

Discussing the Trump DOJ's grand conspiracy case, Solomon told Bannon, “If we don't punish the behavior that we now know exists out there in its most egregious form, the temptation to do this the next time Democrats are in power is going to be enormous. You are going to handicap the future of this country and destine it to be a banana republic because the Democrats got away with it this time.” Bannon earlier warned Solomon, “If we don't stick the landing on this — and what I mean landing, I mean some indictments, right? And some perp walks, you're going to lose 5-10% of the hardest core of the MAGA base.” Real America's Voice, *War Room*, [8/4/25]

:{Video

Citation

From the August 4, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Speaking with Bannon about the FBI's “Arctic Frost” investigation into the fake electors scheme to support Trump in the 2020 election, Solomon claimed, “I think some of the people who were part of Arctic Frost are going to get both congressional and grand jury subpoenas. People will be hauled before the court and forced to answer them."Solomon later added, “I think people could end up going to prison for this.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [10/30/25; CNN, 11/17/25]

Following Comey's indictment by the Trump DOJ in September 2025, Solomon claimed, “I think other government officials are in danger of being indicted in the coming weeks,” adding, “This is the beginning of a large accountability round-up in government.”Fox News, *Hannity*, [9/25/25]

Speaking about the grand conspiracy case last July, Solomon claimed, “Maybe for the first time there's a serious effort to investigate this and to bring accountability all the way back from ‘16 all the way through ‘24.” Solomon also said the investigation will mean anyone Trump's DOJ claims was involved in the “continuous criminal conspiracy” will be treated “like a drug cartel or an organized crime organization like the mafia.” Real America's Voice, *War Room*, [7/23/25]

In a November 2025War Roomappearance, Solomon said, “I expect from my reporting there will be 150 subpoenas dropped between now and the end of the year” from the grand conspiracy case. Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [11/7/25]

---

6 26

[

Media Matters for America

John Solomon has been calling for retribution against Trump's enemies; now the White House is poised to hire him

The White House has reportedly started vetting right-wing journalist John Solomon for a "special government employee" position working on...

2 weeks ago](https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/john-solomon-has-been-calling-retribution-against-trumps-enemies-now-white-house)

[

Fox News

John Solomon reveals government officials' warning of 'incredible political dirty trick' against Trump

Just the News founder John Solomon says unidentified officials approached him in 2017, warning he was uncovering what he alleges is a...

Apr 14, 2026](https://www.foxnews.com/media/john-solomon-alleges-government-officials-warned-incredible-political-dirty-trick-trump)

[

Just The News](https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/trump-threatens-us-will-charge-toll-fees-strait-hormuz-if-iran)

---

mma

### John Solomon claims to Steve Bannon that the FBI will be investigating elections in five “particularly blue states or blue areas of states” including Maricopa and Fulton counties

03/09/26

---

// JRNL Fail

The Trump administration’s chum cycle

Media allies are fed bogus information they use to promise prosecutions of the president’s enemies

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 12/18/25 11:39 AM EST

The promise of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to his MAGA media allies, was that Trump loyalists installed at the heads of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies would finally reveal the “deep state” corruption behind the myriad investigations into his misdeeds and bring his political enemies to justice. While the administration’s actual document releases have proven little, its strategy of chumming the water with red meat for the MAGA base has worked on the Trumpist propaganda corps, which has taken the bait and used it to demand a wave of arrests and prosecutions.

In the latest such salvo, Fox News Digital reported Tuesday morning that “the FBI did not believe it had probable cause to raid President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022, but moved forward amid pressure from the Biden Justice Department,” citing “newly declassified documents” to which the outlet apparently received exclusive access. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and FBI Director Kash Patel quickly promoted Fox’s story; so did Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who said he had received the “shocking new docs” that day and alleged they proved that the FBI’s search of the president’s home had been a “miscarriage of justice.”

But as legal reporters who had followed the Trump documents case swiftly noted, the GOP’s spin was nonsense.

The FBI agents’ worries about probable cause, documented in the emails Fox News Digital reviewed, predated the acquisition of Mar-a-Lago surveillance video showing “Trump aides secretly removing boxes of records,” which convinced the bureau’s leaders that probable cause had been reached.

Even Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon rejected the Trump legal team’s argument that “the dissenting views” by FBI agents would have “altered the evidentiary calculus in support of probable cause.”

And concerns aside, a magistrate judge signed off on the search warrant — and when FBI agents executed it, they found reams of unsecured classified material in various rooms of Trump’s home/private club.

The right’s propaganda apparatus nonetheless sprang into action.

MAGA slop artists like Benny Johnson rushed to social media to hype the “massive” story and demand “charges and arrests” in response.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon discussed the “blockbuster” story during his December 16 show with right-wing propaganda magnate John Solomon, who suggested the documents were “the most important document to date” and “could lead” to criminal charges or a civil suit from Trump.

That night, Solomon was on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show telling millions of viewers that the news, which Hannity termed “a bombshell revelation,” could trigger “legal consequences.” (Trump himself subsequently posted a clip of the segment on social media, then denounced “the FBI’s CRIMINAL RAID.”)

On Newsmax, host Greg Kelly even declared that “Jack Smith belongs in jail” over the Mar-a-Lago search, a bizarre conclusion given that Smith was prosecuting war crimes in Europe at the time and would not become special counsel until two months later.

Video

Citation

From the December 17, 2025, edition of Newsmax'sGreg Kelly Reports

We’ve been seeing iterations of this pattern throughout this first year of Trump’s second term: The Trump administration chums the waters by handing over documents related to one of the myriad past investigations into the president’s actions; the president, top Trump officials, and Republican officeholders say they show a massive scandal; and mainstream reporters point out their narrative is farcical while MAGA media stars call for the indictment, arrest, prosecution, jailing, and perhaps execution of their political enemies.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard triggered a firestorm in July with her bogus claim that former President Barack Obama directed a “treasonous conspiracy” against Trump in 2016. While the documents she cited as evidence, originally provided to Fox, proved nothing of the sort, her claim was nonetheless accepted as gospel by MAGA media figures who spent weeks regurgitating her claims and demanding arrests of a litany of purported culprits. The president himself even posted to Truth Social an AI video featuring Obama being arrested and imprisoned.

In August, the purported “Clinton Plan” emails in a newly declassified annex to special counsel John Durham’s 2023 report supposedly unveiled a “plot” against Trump, leading to calls for Hillary Clinton’s imprisonment (Durham had assessed that the emails in question were forgeries created by Russian intelligence).

Two months later, it was FBI documents purporting to show that special counsel Jack Smith had been “spying” on GOP senators that led to right-wing outrage and calls for his arrest (the FBI had reviewed the toll records of senators in order to establish who Trump and his alleged co-conspirators were trying to contact before and during the January 6 insurrection).

And now it’s the Mar-a-Lago search coming under scrutiny based on similarly dishonest readings of documents the administration has released.

Maybe this is all part of the Plan B that DOJ “Weaponization Working Group” head Ed Martin laid out in May — to “name” and “shame” people who the Justice Department proved unable to indict. If that’s the case, a rude awakening may be in store for the right-wing media figures who predicted “justice” was coming — and for the audiences who believed them.

But one can’t put anything past an authoritarian president who has installed loyalists who treat the Justice Department as his personal law firm, purged the law enforcement apparatus of anyone who thinks otherwise, and frequently demands probes into his political foes that his underlings scuttle to carry out.

The constant right-wing celebrations for Trump’s revenge tour can only increase the pressure on law enforcement to try to somehow bring cases against his foes. Indeed, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered a grand jury probe into Gabbard’s nonsensical accusations in August; three months later, Reuters reported that prosecutors were drafting grand jury subpoenas “to investigate Obama-era intelligence officials.”

We’ll see where that goes in 2026.

// MMA

### Tulsi Gabbard’s Russiagate conspiracy theory can’t even survive a softball Fox News interview

08/06/25 12:43 PM EDT

### NY Times reported John Durham found the “Clinton Plan” emails were likely created by Russian spies. Right-wing media are running with them as legitimate.

08/01/25 4:44 PM EDT

### Why the right-wing media apparatus is suddenly yelling about Jack Smith supposedly spying on GOP senators

10/07/25

===

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RWW 11 25

Mark Meckler reports that he is now the CEO of the right-wing Just The News network.

---

Marc Morano

Weekly update ⋅ November 14, 2025

Brazil culls thousands of trees to make highway for climate COP30 meeting

Sky News Australia

... Marc Morano joined My Kenny to detail the events unfolding in the leadup to the summit.

Brazil Carves Through Amazon Rainforest for New Highway to Ferry Global Climate ...

AMAC

... Marc Morano, Director of Communications for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, told the Just the News, No Noise TV show. CFACT promotes a ...

Tens of thousands of trees in the Amazon rainforest have been wiped out to prepare for a global summit on saving the environment, the latest in seeming climate-change hypocrisy.

In northern Brazil, near the city of Belém, a strip of rainforest about eight miles long was cleared to build a four-lane highway in advance of the COP30 climate summit that began on Monday. The highway, dubbed Avenida Liberdade, is intended to handle the surge of delegates and dignitaries expected for the gathering, but has drawn sharp rebuke from climate activists and fueled perceptions of hypocrisy about climate change concerns.

“But It’s Sustainable,” Say Defenders

Defenders of the project say it includes “sustainable” features like solar-powered lighting, bike lanes, and wildlife crossings that will provide a climate-friendly example for future projects. However, critics are pointing out the blatant irony of cutting down a protected rainforest for a climate conference that is itself aimed, among other things, at halting deforestation.

“They ripped the hell out of the Rainforest of Brazil to build a four-lane highway for Environmentalists to travel. It’s become a big scandal!” U.S. President Donald Trump, who has long been a critic of climate change activism, posted to Truth Social on Sunday.

Unlike his predecessor, Trump’s administration is not sending an official delegation to the United Nations-backed conference. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told the *Daily Mail* that the president would “not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.”

The clearing of the forest has raised the ire of both climate change activists and skeptics alike.

Eight Miles of Rainforest Chopped Away

“We’re looking at eight miles of a virgin tropical Amazon rainforest were clear cut there, so that they could put in this highway to allow the private jets and to allow all the SUVs and limousines of all the world leaders and celebrities that are pumping in here the next two weeks, they could have a freer time getting around the city,” Marc Morano, Director of Communications for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, told the Just the News, No Noise TV show.

CFACT promotes a “positive, alternative voice” on the environment and advocates for market forces and technological innovation to overcome environmental challenges. “So they had to cut, in other words, they had to cut the forest down so they could bring more people to show…you can’t make these kinds of absurdities up,” he added.

Even those on the other side of the climate debate spectrum slammed the move. A Canadian climate activist who advocates for a Green New Deal pointed out that “A new four-lane highway that cuts through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest was cut for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém,” Mike Hudema posted to X. “You can’t be a climate leader if you’re cutting down one of the world’s greatest climate solutions to do it.”

“Do as I Say, Not as I Do”

This is not the first time that climate leaders have drawn criticism for failing to live up to their own standards. For example, former Biden administration climate czar, failed presidential candidate, and former Secretary of State John Kerry, has frequently come under fire for his family’s heavy use of a fuel-guzzling private jet while he attended climate conferences aimed at reducing carbon emissions.

A Fox News investigation found that Kerry’s family jet had released more than 300 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere just a year into the Biden administration. President Biden had appointed Kerry as his administration’s climate czar shortly after he took office in January 2021.

At the same time, Kerry called the “climate crisis” an “urgent national security threat” and proposed shutting down power plants and implementing a carbon credit system to limit emissions.

Most famously, former Vice President Al Gore, who made millions on global warming hysteria, like Kerry and so many liberal media figures, doesn’t practice what he preaches. The National Center for Public Policy Research, a 501(c)3, nonpartisan, independent conservative think tank, reported that “Al Gore’s Nashville home consumed 20 times more electricity than the average American household” and that “Gore guzzles more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years.”

Locals Left Without Compensation for Losses

Local residents say the damage is immediate. One acai berry harvester, Claudio Verequete, told the BBC that trees he relied on for income “have already been cut down” and he has “no compensation.”

Conservationists also warn about the “fish-bone effect” of the road: once the main corridor is carved through the forest, new access routes follow, fragmenting the ecosystem and increasing deforestation risks, the BBC reported.

The Brazilian state government of Pará, where the conference is being held, has floated such a highway since at least 2012. However, prior attempts were shelved primarily due to environmental concerns.

The infrastructure project only overcame the backlog after Belém was chosen as the site of the climate conference. In addition to the new highway, the government is expanding airport capacity and building a new city park.

Steven Richards joined Just the News in August 2023 after previously working as a Research Analyst for the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) in Tallahassee, Florida.*}:

Reprinted with Permission from Just The News – By Steven Richards

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.*

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MMA

November 5, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

JOHN SOLOMON (GUEST): The DOJ, as I keep saying on your show, is grossly trailing behind the FBI. It is not resourced for the mission that Donald Trump gave them. The budget cuts they agreed to — they didn't reprioritize weaponization in a way that got them the staff. There are tens of thousands of pages of documents sitting, waiting to be produced to Congress.

And yesterday, to give you a sense of where our attorney general is, she did an Epstein documents 2.0 on all of us. She did it. She put out this tweet, got a lot of traffic, great Fox News story. Oh my god, guess what I discovered? I discovered that Joe Biden gave up Donald Trump's phone and Mike Pence's phone to Jack Smith. That's great, madam attorney general, except that story came out in April. She wasn't even aware that that wasn't a new development, but an old development that had been discussed by Senators Grassley and Johnson for months. If you want to fix the perp walk problem, if you want to fix the — opportunity to bring accountability, Kash Patel has the evidence. The prosecutors, with the exception of Halligan, are lagging far behind the evidence, and that sand clock is ticking down not only on statute of limitations, but on the time that occurs in between elections.

...

I don't think DOJ is getting there. When you see that there was a six-month delay in this document. When you see the Attorney General present something new that is old — she's so far behind the facts. I'm really worried that Donald Trump doesn't have the team that can bring accountability at the Justice Department.

That's just my reporting. And by the way, that's what many Justice department and members of Congress have been saying to me privately over the last three weeks four weeks.

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just the news solomon bs

justthe news

USAID 'Disinformation Primer' targets gamers, advertisers, memes, 'right not to be disinformed'

...ng further than the Treasury Department's tacit support for debanking alleged "hate groups" after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, a State Department component that "strengthen[s] resilient democratic societies" developed a more sweeping plan for financially choking off disfavored narratives a month later.

The U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a "Disinformation Primer" that appears to have been started in "late 2020," judging by a reference to the most up-to-date "social media initiatives" by Facebook and Twitter "to address disinformation and misinformation."

It was still being written at least 10 days into the Biden administration, referring twice to the Jan. 31, 2021 Myanmar military coup, which the primer says "underlined issues of internet freedom and disinformation."

State turned over the 88-page document, dated February 2021 and marked "internal use only," as part of a 102-page production in response to Freedom of Information Act litigation by America First Legal.

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The primer was "conceived and developed by Joshua Machleder and Shannon Maguire at USAID, together with" the University of Chicago organization formerly known as the National Opinion Research Center, the introduction says.

It thanks dozens of individuals at universities and government institutions including the National Endowment for Democracy and U.S. Institute for Peace "for sharing their time, opinions, and expertise," and current and former USAID staff for "opinions and feedback."

USAID didn't respond to requests for comment on its view of the primer now.

"Just as human rights advocates have argued that internet access is a human right and that there is a fundamental right to access of information, there is also a right not to be disinformed," the primer says in a section laying out 10 steps for USAID and partners to take in "countering and preventing disinformation."

These include partnering with other governments, supporting "media monitoring and fact-checking initiatives," and "form[ing] synergies" with "civil society, media, social media platforms, internet governance forums, and other donors" to prevent disinformation, especially working with "data scientists, social scientists, and journalists."

miller?

AFL gave the FOIA production to the Foundation for Freedom Online, which published an analysis Thursday by executive director and former State communications official Mike Benz, managing director Allum Bokhari and graduate student Oscar Buynevich.

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The primer mentions "advertising" 19 times and advertisers or advertisements a dozen times, showing USAID support for the "well-established tactic of the censorship industry – financial blacklisting," FFO's analysis says.

While much of the report promotes the more-speech-is-better approach, such as funding local journalism, a section on "supply-side responses" – written in the passive tense – implies both governments and activists should pressure advertisers to flee alleged sources of disinformation.

Most advertisers are "unaware of the disinformation risk of the domains featuring their ads due to the automated process of ad placement," the "Advertiser Outreach" subsection says.

"Thus, cutting this financial support found in the ad-tech space would obstruct disinformation actors from spreading messaging online," it says. "Efforts have been made to inform advertisers of their risks, such as the threat to brand safety by being placed next to objectionable content, through conducting research and assessments of online media content."

While the primer says it provides examples of advertiser outreach in an annex on "emerging solutions," none of the examples explicitly mentions advertising. The annex does include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's public awareness campaign about pineapple on pizza.

FFO highlighted the primer's support for the supply-side "Redirect Method," piloted by Moonshot and Google's Jigsaw in 2016, "an open-source methodology that uses targeted advertising" on platforms such as Google Adwords "to connect people searching online for harmful content with constructive alternative messages."

It was used to "target individuals susceptible to ISIS radicalization via recruiting measures" and "is being adapted in several countries to combat vaccine hesitancy and hate speech," the primer says.

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The Redirect Method is a "precursor" to Google's "prebunking" initiative, which the Alphabet-owned company said last year it was expanding into Germany and India, FFO said. Prebunking is based on inoculation theory, which treats disfavored narratives as a virus.

FFO notes the primer touts the work of former Harvard misinformation researcher and Hunter Biden laptop truther Joan Donovan, who advocates prebunking.

Comedian Jon Stewart publicly challenged Donovan's work and former Facebook policy chief Eliot Schrage reportedly did so privately as a Harvard Kennedy School adviser, both questioning who gets to decide what counts as "disinformation."

USAID separately thanked State's Global Engagement Center staff for "their review and feedback."

GEC has funded and promoted internet games that teach children to view populism as disinformation – a form of prebunking – and promote "social justice."

It also funded the Global Disinformation Index, which pressures advertisers to cut off alleged sources of disinformation, predominantly conservative publishers – drawing the ire of congressional Republicans and a lawsuit by two publishers.

The primer calls for targeting "gaming sites," including Amazon-owned Twitch, because "problematic information more regularly originates from networks of alternative sites and anonymous individuals" than from state actors.

USAID put scare quotes around "mainstream" twice to describe sources outside of gaming communities. While these "conspiracy theories may seem farcical or preposterous to an outsider," the primer warns, mainstream sources covering gaming communities "may unknowingly provide wide coverage of misleading information."

The primer also puts scare quotes around "research" to describe gamers taking the initiative to educate themselves, "collectively reviewing and validating each other to create a populist expertise that justifies, shapes and supports their alternative beliefs."

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Malinformation, sometimes described as true but inconvenient, also makes an appearance in the primer. It's defined as "deliberate publication of private information for personal or private interest" that is "taken out of context," as well as the "deliberate manipulation of genuine content" and "hate speech."

Memes are "a common means" for malinformation to spread, the primer warns. "[T]he most effective are humorous or critical of society ... but researchers note they also can be dangerous."

The supply-side section acknowledges the "inherent contradiction between the democratic ideal of free speech and the regulation of online content" and warns that democracies that pass anti-disinformation laws can embolden "authoritarians" to do the same.

One way to have their cake and eat it too is for democracies to adopt "co-regulatory models" such as the "industry-led Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) and the government-led Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs)," the primer says.

MMA

Why the right-wing media apparatus is suddenly yelling about Jack Smith supposedly spying on GOP senators

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/07/25

Republicans and their right-wing media allies yesterday spun out frothy allegations about former special counsel Jack Smith purportedly “spying on Republican senators” in order to forestall tough questions about the state of the Justice Department. But their dark conspiracy theory immediately collapses under scrutiny.

Attorney General Pam Bondi was slated to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for what seemed fated to be a grueling hearing. Potential avenues for congressional oversight could include the unprecedented weaponization of her department as an extension of President Donald Trump’s will; the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein saga, including the location of the Epstein “client list” she once claimed to possess and a potential presidential pardon for the notorious sex offender’s chief accomplice; and the legal authority for the deployment of the U.S. military on American streets.

But FBI Director Kash Patel, his deputy Dan Bongino, and the stenographers at Fox News were happy to try to help her out of that tough spot. On the afternoon before the hearing, Fox News Digital reported that “former Special Counsel Jack Smith was allegedly tracking the private communications and phone calls of nearly a dozen Republican Senators as part of his investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots.” The October 6 article was based on a document “recently discovered by FBI Director Kash Patel and exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital,” which states that an FBI special agent “‘conducted preliminary toll analysis’ on the toll records associated with” eight senators and one member of the House as part of Smith’s probe, which at the time was called Arctic Frost. The story also included quotes from Bongino, whom the report said would be meeting with the affected members of Congress that day.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, subsequently posted the document on social media, saying that it “shows the Biden FBI spied on 8 of my Republican Senate colleagues.” He added, “BIDEN FBI WEAPONIZATION = WORSE THAN WATERGATE.”

Their allegations were quickly promoted by MAGA media outlets and on Tuesday morning were highlighted by Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as they sought to shield Bondi from criticism.

But legal reporters explained that there’s not much to the story — the FBI needed to review the toll records of senators in order to establish who Trump and his alleged co-conspirators were trying to contact before and during the January 6 insurrection.

Smith’s final report cites such toll records in a footnote for its statement that “at around the same time as he issued his 6:01 p.m. Tweet [telling his supporters occupying the U.S. Capitol to leave], Mr. Trump tried to reach two U.S. Senators, and he also directed Co-Conspirator 1 to call Members of Congress and attempt to enlist them to further delay the certification” of the electoral votes, as MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reported.

“It actually seems sort of obvious that if you’re investigating a former president of the United States for trying to subvert an election, you’d probe some of contacts he and alleged co-conspirators had with people he was trying to enlist/pressure to overturn the results,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney noted.

“In other words, if you start from the premise that the entire probe was political, then seeking lawmakers’ toll records would be inherently bad,” Cheney added. “But if you view the probe as righteous or justified, then it’s not hard to see why those records would be pertinent.”

You won’t have trouble guessing which side the MAGAsphere came down on. Trump gave clemency to all the January 6 defendants, including those convicted of assaulting police and seditious conspiracy, still falsely claims to have won the 2020 election, and clearly believes that the only thing wrong with his election subversion plot was that it was unsuccessful. On Monday, his loyal propagandists at Fox and Newsmax leaped into action to promote the purported FBI bombshell.

On Fox, Newsmax, “stunning” story shows Smith conducted an “enemies list investigation,” is “going to go to jail

Just minutes after Fox News Digital published its story, Fox host Will Cain declared it “pretty stunning.” He went on to claim that Democrats had engaged in “projection when it comes to authoritarianism. But if this doesn't fit the bill, this doesn't fit the definition, what is the definition of authoritarianism?”

His guest, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX), replied, “This is the quintessential definition of it.”

Later that night, Fox host Jesse Watters claimed that the story shows that “Biden's FBI was spying on Republican senators.”

His prime-time colleague Sean Hannity hosted right-wing journalist John Solomon, who declared that “Arctic Frost is starting to look like an enemies list investigation” and “a really troubling diagram of how the deep state was working under Joe Biden. The FBI, the DOJ working hand and glove to spy, pry, into the lives, the conversations, and the data of Republicans.”

Solomon went on — somehow maintaining a straight face — to accuse the FBI of potentially “intruding on a constitutionally protected event” because, in the time period for which the bureau sought the toll records, Congress had been certifying the election (except when they were evacuated in the face of a violent mob of Trumpists).

Video

Citation

From the October 6, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity

The rhetoric was similarly over-the-top in the prime-time hours of Fox competitor Newsmax.

“Jack Smith, bad guy, and I think he's just been busted in something really bad,” host Greg Kelly said at the top of his segment on the report. He described the FBI’s actions as “illegal,” adding, “Jack Smith, I think you’re going to go to jail.”

Fellow host Rob Schmitt didn’t seem to understand what the story was actually about, even as he promoted it to his audience. He told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), “You had your phone tapped by Jack Smith,” and asked the senator to “illustrate to us how big a deal this is.” Johnson gently corrected Schmitt, saying that investigators had only obtained “metadata,” before claiming that the report “should shock and outrage every American.”

(Newsmax quickly updated its chyron from “FBI: JACK SMITH TAPPED PHONES OF GOP SENATORS” to “FBI: JACK SMITH SNOOPED ON GOP PHONES.”)

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MMA

January 6 “false flag” claim made it to the president

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 09/29/25

The right-wing conspiracy theory that hundreds of plainclothes FBI agents who were deployed to respond to the riotous mob at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, had actually incited the crowd in a “Fedsurrection” spread through the right-wing conspiracy echo chamber over the weekend and reached President Donald Trump in just over 36 hours after its inception.

Elements of the right-wing media, led by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, spent years concocting an alternate narrative of January 6 in which the rioters were heroes, any violence was actually caused by federal agents, and the resulting prosecutions of perpetrators constituted a brutal campaign of government repression.

Following Trump’s return to office, his pardoning of the rioters, and the firings and demotions of prosecutors and FBI agents who handled their cases, this is effectively the position of the United States government.

Given those dynamics — and the president’s willingness to promote any lie, no matter how far-fetched, as long as it fits his biases — false claims supporting the narrative of January 6 as an “inside job” can spread with alarming speed.

Late on September 25, right-wing journalist John Solomon’s Just the News outlet published a story with the headline “FBI Bombshell: 274 agents sent to Capitol for J6, many later complained they were political ‘pawns.’”

“The FBI secretly deployed more than 250 plainclothes agents to the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, an operation so disorganized it unleashed searing frustrations among many of the FBI's rank-and-file that the bureau had lost its core competencies to ‘wokeness’ and allowed its employees to become ‘pawns in a political war,’ according to an after-action report kept from the public for more than four years,” Solomon and Steven Richards wrote in the article’s first paragraph.

Solomon and Richards did not reveal until the story’s 11th paragraph that the agents had been deployed “after the violence started.” The pair lifted up complaints from FBI agents that in an emergency situation — in which thousands of people had laid siege to the U.S. Capitol, assaulting scores of law enforcement officers and threatening the safety of the entirety of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House, as well as Vice President Mike Pence, who were assembled to count the electoral votes — those agents had been hurriedly assigned riot control duties even if they lacked training and gear for that purpose.

Solomon and JustTheNews both shared the story on X using the text of the headline. And right-wing conspiracy theorists quickly responded by assuming that the report fit their assumption that January 6 was a false flag operation.

Retired Gen. Mike Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser during his first term, said of the story: “The question this begs is; was there sedition or conspiracy committed on the part of the DOJ & FBI at the time?”

“You don’t just have 274 FBI agents or employees show up to execute this massive of a ‘fedsurrection.’ This required foreknowledge (intent),” he added.

MAGA poster Bill Mitchell likewise claimed that the FBI agents had been “infiltrators.”

Trump himself quickly adopted this misreading of the JustTheNews report. He posted to a Truth Social midday on September 27 that “it was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed… 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax.” He added that the reporting showed that “FBI Agents were at, and in, the January 6th Protest, probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists, but certainly not as ‘Law Enforcement Officials,’” and demanded the identities of the FBI agents involved.

Trump’s post brought a new wave of right-wing conspiracymongering over the report, with various MAGA figures claiming that it showed there had been a “Fedsurrection” in which FBI agents acted as “provocateurs.”

FBI Director Kash Patel stepped in to try to tamp down the situation. Without admitting that Trump was wrong, he said in a statement to Fox News Digital that “Agents were sent into a crowd control mission after the riot was declared by Metro Police – something that goes against FBI standards,” for which he blamed “corrupt leadership.”

Faced with the same situation, presumably Patel would have allowed the January 6 insurrection to proceed, rather than violating standards by sending FBI agents to quell it?

By Sunday morning, the false claim about the FBI agents had been thoroughly baked into mainstream GOP discourse.

When CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) whether rule of law applies “to people who stormed the Capitol on January 6,” Johnson replied, “I’m glad you brought that up,” citing “new information over the last couple of days” about how “there were 274 FBI agents in the crowd on January 6.”

Tapper quickly cut him off, saying that according to Patel, “They were sent there to do crowd control because of everything that was going on. They weren’t — it wasn't a false flag operation, as President Trump suggested.”

But Johnson, who was among the members of Congress evacuated to a secure location during the riots, replied, “Well, Jake, wait a minute. Hold on, Jake. How do you know that? Right? There's a lot of questions.”

He added: “There's videos, and it's always been disputed, what involvement some of those persons engaged in, what involvement they had. Did they spur on the crowd? Did they open the gates to allow them in? I don't know. These are questions. But they should be answered.”

Johnson went on to say that a House subcommittee newly established to reinvestigate the attack would get to the bottom of the situation.

The campaign by the Trump administration and MAGA media in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination to depict political violence as purely a phenomenon of the left raises some obvious questions, among them, “What about January 6?” A pro-Trump mob, summoned to Washington, D.C., by the president and incited by his calls for them to “fight,” descending on the U.S. Capitol and assaulting numerous law enforcement officers while sending Congress into hiding would surely seem to qualify.

The answer is that on the right, the January 6 rioters have been reimagined as the good guys.

### January 6 and the people who knew better

01/06/25 2:12 PM EST

### The right’s propaganda machine gets its Jan. 6 pardons

01/20/25 7:59 PM EST

### Sean Hannity once celebrated the FBI “rank and file.” Now he’s touting Trump’s purge.

02/05/2

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AN 9 25

On Thursday, September 25, John F. Solomon and Steven Richards of the right-wing website Just the News reported that on January 6, 2021, the FBI "deployed more than 250 plainclothes agents to the U.S. Capitol" in an "operation so disorganized it unleashed searing frustrations among many of the FBI's rank-and-file that the bureau had lost its core competencies to 'wokeness' and allowed its employees to become 'pawns in a political war,' according to an after-action report kept from the public for more than four years."

But according to Politico's Kyle Cheney, that characterization of the FBI presence at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 is "wildly" misleading.

Solomon tweeted the Just the News article, posting, "Breaking: FBI Bombshell: 274 agents sent to Capitol for J6, many later complained they were political 'pawns.'"

But Cheney, on September 26, responded to Solomon with a tweet of his own, explaining, "This story is being wildly misrepresented — these were not undercover agents embedded in the crowd. They were part of the multi-agency law enforcement response *after* the Capitol was attacked, as the documents themselves make clear."

Cheney, in a separate tweet, elaborated, "In fact, the 'bombshell' here was reported by the inspector general 10 months."

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Former Newsmax reporter Breanna Morello asked Cheney, "Where does it say they responded after? Can you link the source please?" — to which the Politico reporter responded, "In the doc itself: 'responded to the Capitol,' Including group that responded to pipe bomb, explosives in van and team that helped clear inside the building. Long known FBI had large number of personnel on the scene as part of many agencies/departments that assisted."

Liberal journalist and former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann had a scathing response to Solomon and Richards' reporting in Just the News.

Olbermann tweeted, "Yes. OTOH Solomon is so rabid he doesn't realize the implication of his lie here is: Trump-controlled FBI 2025 leaks that Trump-controlled FBI 2021 sent plants into a Trump crowd to foment a Trump coup on January 6. Seems kinda...self-incriminating."

In a different September 26 tweet, the former MSNBC host told Solomon, "So Trump's FBI led by a Trump Appointed Director leaks that Trump's previous FBI led by a different Trump Appointed Director sent agents into a Trump crowd to aid a Trump coup to benefit Trump? In other words Trump just confessed to J6. Gotcha. Cool."

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RWW

09/24/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Katherine Kelaidis @ Vox: MAGA’s first martyr

The killing of Charlie Kirk could turn the movement into a faith that outlives Donald Trump.

William Bredderman and Aneela Mirchandani @ Mother Jones: Inside the Hidden Conservative Network Bankrolling an “Ecosystem” of Right-Wing News

John Solomon’s Informing America set out to create an echo chamber to shape public opinion. It’s working.

The Throckmorton Initiative: David Barton Appointed Texas History Advisor

State Board of Education picks Barton for advice on history.

Jonathan Greco @ KOCO: Ryan Walters says every Oklahoma high school will have a Turning Point USA Club America chapter

Turning Point USA, which was co-founded by Charlie Kirk, helps organize and educate students in conservative principles.

Will Neal @ The Daily Beast: Trump Goon Threatens Sandy Hook Hero for Suing Alex Jones

InfoWars founder celebrates after DOJ asks questions about FBI special agent who responded to the Connecticut school shooting.

Matt Ford @ The New Republic: The Roberts Court Is Winning Its War on American Democracy

Twenty years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts took the oath of office and ushered in a new era for the Supreme Court. His 2005 confirmation vote marked the transition from the Rehnquist court—where a narrow majority of conservatives and moderates had largely maintained the status quo on abortion, affirmative action, and voting rights—into something much more reactionary.

===

REF

Inside the Hidden Conservative Network Bankrolling an “Ecosystem” of Right-Wing News – Mother Jones

GFX

“Now more than ever, the world needs an honest newsroom.” With these words, the little-known Informing America Foundation was awarded the $250,000 Gregor G. Peterson Prize in “venture philanthropy” last December for its “high-quality journalism.”

If few had heard of IAF, hinted the nonprofit’s CEO, Debbie Myers, it was by design. “We stay very much under the radar,” she said, accepting the prize at the 2024 annual summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate-funded group that works to advance conservative policies at the state level. IAF’s goal, Myers explained, was to create an “ecosystem” of news. The group boasts of funding a network of thousands of platforms that have quietly shaped public opinion by stoking an array of right-wing conspiracy theories, from the alleged corruption of Joe Biden to the supposedly nefarious mission of the US Agency for International Development, along with more recent attacks on critics of President Donald Trump.

Myers, who once led Gingrich 360, Newt Gingrich’s multimedia production firm, is a longtime TV executive who helped produce shows such as Little People, Big World; Talk Soup; and Punkin Chunkin. Her “partner in crime” in launching IAF in 2021, as she described him as he joined her onstage, is John Solomon, a former investigative reporter for the Associated Press and Washington Post and a DC fixture who has drawn criticism for pushing right-wing stories and smearing Democrats with the kind of allegations that a Post ombudsman once described as “‘gotcha’ without a gotcha.”

In 2019, Solomon was at the forefront of efforts to tie Biden to shady dealings in Ukraine on his son Hunter’s behalf, penning a series of columns for The Hill that reported dubious information from Ukrainian prosecutors with an axe to grind. A 2020 review of his work by the paper called its reliability into question, concluding Solomon had “failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation.”

In the wake of the controversy, he set up the independent outlet Just the News and launched a podcast, John Solomon Reports. In an email, Solomon defended his Hill reporting’s accuracy and claimed he has no formal role at IAF, while confirming he provides it an office at the same K Street address as Just the News and another Solomon enterprise, Bentley Media Group. In 2021, Myers and Solomon also formed the Affinity Media Exchange, an advertising business that soon inked a deal with Trump’s Truth Social to be one of the platform’s ad representatives.

IAF’s tax filings, which say its mission is funding “investigative, explanatory, data-driven and multimedia journalism,” show it brought in close to $8 million in contributions during its first year, with the largest nonprofit donation coming from the family foundation of Diana Davis Spencer, whose late father, an investment banker, once chaired the Heritage Foundation. In subsequent years, millions have flowed to IAF through donor-advised charities that do not disclose the source of their initial contributions.

IAF, in turn, has doled out funds to an array of right-leaning outlets, including Just the News and Off the Press, run by Joseph Curl, a veteran of Drudge Report and the Washington Times. ADN América, aimed at Spanish speakers, received more than $1 million from IAF in the site’s first three years of operation. The foundation sent another million-plus to Performance One Media, which owns Real America’s Voice, the right-wing network best known for carrying Steve Bannon’s War Room. Real America’s Voice gave Solomon his own nightly show in 2022, which he has used to promote IAF allies.

IAF has also directed more than $1.7 million to Star News Digital Media, a conglomerate of 12 mostly battleground state sites whose names suggest a local focus but that actually push pro-GOP partisan news. Star News’ Tennessee Star, for instance, featured a section called “KamaLawfare” prior to the 2024 presidential election that highlighted incidents from Kamala Harris’ prosecutorial tenure in California, but seemed to ignore top news events in the state. One day this past June, the homepages of Star News outlets in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Virginia looked almost identical, all covering transgender youth health care in California, New York City’s mayoral race, and a Florida sheriff’s threats against anti-Trump protesters.

Media observers have dubbed such agenda-driven news sites “pink slime”—so named for by-products added as filler to ground beef. Pink slime news is a growing phenomenon, according to University of Cincinnati journalism professor Jeffrey Blevins, rising as partisan interests take advantage of the devastated newspaper market. “We saw these news deserts popping up,” he says. “It was very cheap to put in a website and say, ‘Okay, we’re doing local news.’ Local news is always seen as being more credible.” Sites like the Tennessee Star, he explains, use that perception to push “poor-quality” coverage “funded by some outside political interest.”

In 2023, the most recent year tax records are available, filings show IAF’s largest contribution—more than $1 million—went to the Institute for Citizen Focused Service, a secretive nonprofit set up by Interior Department officials from Trump’s first term. In turn, ICFS has funneled money to Pipeline Advisors, which holds a portfolio of local outlets—including the Midland Times, Austin Journal, Federal Newswire, and others—that have also been described as pink slime. All told, IAF says its news “ecosystem” includes “more than 2,000 hyperlocal platforms and 10 national platforms” reaching an audience of more than 50 million people.

One hallmark of IAF-connected organizations is that they often promote the same allegations and storylines. This is no accident: At the award ceremony last December, Myers provided a glimpse into how IAF works, explaining that each morning, the team gathers on a call to choose the stories they believe the mainstream media is ignoring. After hanging up, “we amplify each other,” she said, “and get it to the hands of the American people.”

Star News outlets regularly repackage Just theNews articles. Just the News writes stories based on Off the Press coverage and vice versa. They do not disclose their financial links. For example, Just the News covered the 2021 launch of Off the Press without noting that either organization was funded by IAF.

The network’s thousands of platforms have quietly shaped public opinion by stoking an array of right-wing conspiracy theories.

Solomon’s podcast often features guests from the broader IAF universe, including Mike Benz, a right-wing influencer and former Trump State Department official whose attacks targeting USAID as a “censorship octopus” helped fuel Elon Musk’s crusade to feed the agency to the “wood chipper.” Benz, a onetime alt-right Twitter troll, has appeared on Solomon’s show to rail against social media censorship and US foreign aid. In such appearances, he’s been identified as the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online—which is not a foundation, but which launched as a project of an organization called Empower Oversight that has also been heavily funded by IAF. An Empower Oversight spokesperson said the group served as FFO’s fiscal sponsor through February 2023. That year, Benz was paid $253,889 by ICFS.

In 2022, Benz began issuing reports from his one-man think tank positing a conspiracy to silence conservatives online. IAF-funded outlets have presented a drumbeat of interviews with him, in which he argued that outfits battling online disinformation—from media watchdogs like NewsGuard to the US military and Big Tech—were actually undertaking a project to suppress conservative voices. The interviews presented Benz as an independent expert—“Mike Benz exposes State Department’s use of USAID as an ‘intelligence cloak,’” said one Just the News headline—without revealing that his think tank was little more than a website whose existence seems to have been made possible by IAF. The interviews got repackaged as news by other outlets in the IAF stable, expanding their reach.

Empower Oversight, the organization that originally backed Benz, was formed in Virginia in 2021, just one day before IAF was registered in Washington, DC. IAF supplied Empower Oversight with the sole grant it received that year, a $400,000 allocation whose purpose, according to tax filings, was to “develop an infrastructure to cultivate, protect and work with whistleblowers.” Since its founding, Empower Oversight has focused heavily on typical MAGA obsessions, including the Russian collusion probe, purported FBI involvement in January 6, and Hunter Biden.

Empower Oversight is headed by Jason Foster—a longtime aide to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley—whom ProPublica exposed in 2018 as an inflammatory blogger who wrote under the handle “Extremist.” According to ProPublica, Foster, a “partisan combatant” known for his “conspiratorial thinking,” was the main force behind the Senate Judiciary Committee’s scrutiny of research firm Fusion GPS and ex–British spy Christopher Steele, author of the 2016 memos alleging collusion between Trump and Russia.

Empower Oversight, which continues to receive most of its funding from IAF, represented Gary Shapley, an IRS criminal investigator who alleged that the Biden administration sandbagged a tax fraud investigation into Hunter Biden. (Earlier this year, Shapley briefly served as Trump’s IRS director.) Shapley’s allegations were heavily promoted by members of the IAF network, including Just the News, the Tennessee Star, and other Star News outlets such as the Pennsylvania Daily Star and the Arizona Sun Times.

During the Biden years, Empower Oversight’s work followed a familiar formula: First, it would file a battery of Freedom of Information Act requests to a federal agency, usually related to some right-wing intrigue or a query Grassley’s Senate office had submitted to that department. Empower Oversight then would frequently follow up with a lawsuit alleging deficiencies in the agency’s response. With the help of Solomon’s Just the News, it turned routine records requests and civil complaints into a PR bonanza, while fueling a narrative that the Biden administration and its supposed deep state allies were suppressing information.

While Benz did not respond to our requests for comment—and hung up when we called—he’s arguably delivered the most impact for IAF’s supporters. In April, the State Department shuttered its Global Engagement Center, which focused on combating foreign disinformation but which Benz had alleged was a government tool of anti-conservative censorship.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio rewarded Benz with an exclusive interview announcing the move. The next day, Just the News announced that the “censorship nerve center” had been shut down, and multiple Star News platforms dutifully signal-boosted the news. All cited Benz as merely a “former State official.”

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on phone only safe space?!

an 7 25

robt r

Anyone wanting to understand the brouhaha over Pam Bondi’s refusal to turnover (or even acknowledge) the Epstein files need look no further than what the Supreme Court just did.

In McMahon v. New York the Supremes gave Trump a simple way to revoke federal spending authorized by Congress: just fire everyone responsible for implementing that spending.

The high court is allowing Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon to fire over half the people who work for the Department of Education until there’s a full hearing on the constitutionality of their action. But by then it will be too late to save much of the department.

Note that the Supreme Court made this astounding decision on its so-called “shadow docket” where it doesn’t even have to explain itself (the only record we have is Justice Sotomayor’s dissent).

No matter that Congress created the Department of Education; apparently, Trump can effectively end it. No matter that Congress in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act prohibits a president from unilaterally refusing to spend money that has been authorized by Congress; apparently, Trump can disregard the Act.

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Trump now has unbridled power to repeal federal laws by the simple expedient of firing federal employees who implement them.

Why? How? On what basis? Who’s behind this? We don’t know. We may never know.

Which gets us to the brouhaha over Jeffrey Epstein.

For years, Trump has talked darkly of a “deep state” — a secret cabal intent on destroying America by harming the nation’s children.

Such as, perhaps, six justices who let him shut down the Education Department without even setting out their reasons?

Recall “Pizzagate,” the QAnon conspiracy theory that in 2016 allegedly linked Democrats to a ring of child sex-traffickers. It’s still around but has morphed into a less partisan conspiracy theory involving an alleged worldwide elite of child sex-traffickers.

Jeffrey Epstein and his death fit perfectly. Many right-wing media personalities have posited that the billionaire convict was murdered in prison as part of a cover-up of a sprawling sex-trafficking conspiracy.

Senior Trump administration officials built up great fanfare around the release of the supposed Epstein “client list.”

Even JD Vance accused the government of hiding the list. “If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case,” Vance said, “you should be ashamed of yourself.”

But that was back in 2021, before Vance became part of the, um, conspiracy.

In February of this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi acknowledged the existence of Epstein’s client list. She said the client list is “sitting on my desk right now.”

Now the Trump-Vance administration says Epstein’s client list doesn’t exist.

The Epstein case illustrates Trump’s “deep state” no less than does an unsigned “shadow docket” Supreme Court decision allowing Trump to wipe out the Department of Education.

The phrase “Epstein didn’t kill himself” — a rebuttal to the official explanation of Epstein’s death — has taken on a cultural meaning way beyond the facts of the case. It means an unaccountable elite doing evil things in secret.

Trump built his political base on that premise. Once in office, he said time and again, he would expose that unaccountable, secret, evil elite.

No wonder 70 percent of voters believe “law enforcement is withholding information about powerful people connected to Epstein,” including 61 percent of Trump voters. And 58 percent of voters said Trump “maybe was or definitely was” involved in a cover-up.

Conspiracy theories thrive when elites act in secret. I have no idea whether Epstein killed himself or was murdered. But Wired Magazine’s metadata — showing that the FBI’s “raw” surveillance video from the night Epstein killed himself is seemingly missing 2 minutes and 53 seconds — got my attention.

As did the Supreme’s bonkers secret decision in McMahon.

And I’m no conspiracy theorist.

After hyping the promised release, a joint FBI and Department of Justice report last week said they had found no evidence of a list — or that Epstein, who died by suicide in his prison cell in 2019, had been murdered — prompting outcry from within MAGA circles.

As Bondi faces heightened scrutiny for her repeated attempts to dodge questions about the Epstein files, Loomer also teased that “there are people in the White House who agree with me that Pam [Bondi] spent too much time on Fox News and her statements were inconsistent and undermined what messaging is today about the Epstein files.”

Other prominent MAGA-aligned supporters of the president have also warned that Trump could see significant damage to his standing among his base if he does not change course.

Sixty-three percent of voters in a Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday said that they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the files. Republicans were also nearly split. Just 40 percent said they support how he’s handled the files, with 36 percent disapproving and another 20 percent not offering an opinion.

Mike Flynn — who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser in his first term — wrote in a lengthy X post on Wednesday that Trump needed to “gather your team and figure out a way to move past this.”

“The roll out of this was terrible, no way around that,” Flynn wrote. “Americans want America to be successful, therefore, WE NEED YOU TO BE SUCCESSFUL.”

Elon Musk — with whom Trump had a blowup fight last month in which Musk accused Trump of being named in the Epstein files — criticized his former boss for trying to paint the whole situation as a hoax.

“He should just release the files and point out which part is the hoax,” Musk wrote on X Wednesday.

The MAGA meltdown over Epstein “could be his Afghanistan going into the fall,” Mark Mitchell, head of polling and operations at Rasmussen Reports, told Steve Bannon Tuesday on his “War Room” podcast.

“People are trying to say this isn’t a big deal,” Mitchell said. “People are trying to say nobody wants this Epstein information out. It’s an absolute misdirection. This is horrifying. And if it isn’t corrected, it threatens derailing Trump’s agenda, getting rid of his political capital.”

“This is not about a guy who died in 2019, this is about a representation of two-tier justice and about unaccountable government,” Mitchell told Bannon.

On Wednesday, conservative political commentator John Solomon told Bannon that he had interviewed the president, and that Trump supported the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate elements of the Epstein case as part of a broader look into a supposed deep state conspiracy to punish the Republican Party.

“I think he’s frustrated by all the social media chatter by people who don’t really know what’s in the Epstein files,” Solomon said. “He was very pointed about that, let’s stay focused on the things that matter to the American people. ‘I want the answers to Epstein like everyone’, he said, so let the prosecutor do that.”

The Epstein fiasco also prompted Speaker Mike Johnson to split with Trump on Tuesday, calling for the Department of Justice to release all the information it has on the sex offender in the name of “transparency.”

“It’s a very delicate subject, but you should put everything out there, let the people decide it,” Johnson told conservative commentator Benny Johnson, adding that Bondi should explain her previous claims of having the elusive Epstein “client list.”

Just a day prior, the Louisiana Republican had defended Bondi, choosing to defer to the Trump administration instead of criticizing the attorney general.

But Trump appears to remain unmoved despite growing rebellion within his MAGA cohort.

In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump repeated his claims that the whole ordeal was a “hoax” peddled by Democrats and once again defended Bondi’s handling of the case.

“She’s done very good. She says ‘I gave you all the credible information,’ and if she finds any more credible information, she’ll give that too. What more can she do than that?” Trump said, adding that he had “lost a lot of faith in certain people” over their outcry on the administration’s approach to the issue.

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RWW

04/23/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Khaya Himmelman @ Talking Points Memo: Trump’s DOJ Is Taking Cues From MAGA Influencers And Conspiracy Theorists

President Trump’s nominee for D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, and Donald Trump’s Department of Justice more broadly, are taking cues from right-wing influencers — allowing some of the loudest media figures on the right to influence significant decisions, including who gets fired from the DOJ and who and what gets investigated.

ref

Trump’s nominee for D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, and Donald Trump’s Department of Justice more broadly, are taking cues from right-wing influencers — allowing some of the loudest media figures on the right to influence significant decisions, including who gets fired from the DOJ and who and what gets investigated.

It’s the latest way in which Trump’s DOJ has shirked its duty to uphold even the appearance of independence from the White House, and from Trump’s allies and friends in the right-wing social media sphere who have their own political agendas.

“It’s unprecedented for government officials to take direction or suggestions from highly polarized people and act on it within our government, especially when we’re talking about the DOJ,” Wendy Via, president and co-founder of The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said in an interview with TPM. “It eradicates all the DOJ is supposed to be — independent, for justice.”

Most recently, Martin — who has been serving in the role to which he was nominated in an acting capacity since January — targeted a former DOJ prosecutor who was a part of Special Counsel Robert Muller’s team, Aaron Zelinsky, with a letter alleging Zelinsky had somehow intentionally “sent an innocent man to jail.” The most striking part of the letter, though, was that a section of it was pulled directly, without attribution, from an old article on a website run by investigative journalist-turned-MAGA-aligned conspiracy theorist John Solomon.

As Mother Jones points out in a recent report on the letter of inquiry to Zelinsky, Martin’s letter includes a portion that appears to be fully lifted from a 2020 article from “Just the News,” a right-wing outlet started by Solomon.

Solomon started Just the News in 2020 after publishing a series of articles for The Hill highlighting claims by Trump allies who, at the time, were attempting to conjure up allegations of a corruption scheme involving Joe Biden and Ukraine — an effort that eventually led to Trump’s first impeachment in the House during his previous administration.

The April 14 letter accuses Zelinksky of making “false statements” that aided in sending “an innocent man to jail in an attempt to advance the false narrative that the campaign of a serving President had colluded with Russia to win the presidency,” according to Mother Jones‘ reporting. This is a reference to right-wing conspiracy theories that emerged around Trump ally George Papadopoulos’s prosecution.

Just The News did not respond to TPM’s request for comment.

Then in March, the White House appears to have taken a cue from right-wing political activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, firing a career federal prosecutor in Los Angeles without reason.

The prosecutor, Adam Schleifer, had been working on a case against the founder of Fatburger, Andrew Wiederhorn, who, according to the New York Times, was a donor to political action committees that have supported Trump.

Right before Schleifer’s dismissal, though, Loomer posted on X, sharing screenshots of old posts where Schleifer had been critical of Trump. “Why is Biden holdover @AdamSchleiferNY Adam Schleifer still working for the US Attorney’s office under the new Trump administration? He is a Trump hater who has been working at the US Attorney’s office since 2021,” she wrote. “Fire him. He supported the impeachment of President Trump and said he wanted to repeal Trump’s tax plan.”

And in February of this year, Denise Cheung, who was in charge of the criminal division of the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, resigned from her post after refusing to comply with an order from Martin to open a grand jury investigation into Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency grants. The only known evidence that Martin had to support this order for both an investigation and a potential asset freeze was a 5-minute video clip from a right-wing conspiracy theory website, Project Veritas.

The Project Veritas video clip purported to show a former Biden-era EPA employee talking about distributing climate specific funding to non-profit organizations ahead of the start of the Trump administration.

“When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence,” wrote Cheung in her resignation letter to Martin. “As I shared with you, at this juncture, based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described, including sufficient evidence to tell the bank that there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified.”

Via, from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, called the DOJ’s reliance on right-wing influencers and conspiracy theorists “incredibly bizarre.”

“Of all of our agencies, the DOJ, and then of course under that the FBI, are supposed to be the most independent, the least affected by politics,” she added. “When I say it’s unprecedented, I don’t even know what other words to use, because it is so antithetical to who America is.”

---

===

an 9 24 no lnx

Matt Gaetz's 'dangerous' new rumor shot down by Intelligence Committee Democrat

U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz speaking with attendees at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr.

Sarah Burris and Raw StorySeptember 30, 2024

WASHINGTON — Elected officials are quickly responding to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) after he spread rumors that there are five "assassination teams" working throughout the United States with the aim of taking out former President Donald Trump.

Gaetz claimed in a press release Monday that he has a "whistleblower" who is a senior Homeland Security Department official sounding the alarm about the "teams" that aim to take out Trump. Three of the five are from foreign governments, Gaetz told controversial former Associated Press reporter John Solomon.

“… this individual was coming to me, concerned that the force protection around President Trump, even prior to that second assassination attempt, was not sufficient for what it needed to be, and the coordination at that level, at the dignitary protection level is like the bare minimum that we have to do to keep our presidents, our presidential candidates, safe while they’re on the trail,” the Florida congressman said.

Read Also: GOP 'sociopaths' live among us — and it's 'contagious': neuroscientist

But Gaetz's colleagues don't buy it.

Speaking to Raw Story on Wednesday while walking through the House tunnel, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) said, "It's just garbage."

After a potential shooter was spotted outside of Mar-a-Lago complaining about Trump's position on Ukraine, Gaetz claimed that the man, Ryan Wesley Routh, was caught at the border returning to the U.S. from Ukraine. The only news sites willing to publish Gaetz's claims have been right-wing websites. There are no reports of Routh being "at the border." After international travel, he would have gone through Customs and Border Protection at the airport. That has been used to claim that one of the international teams is from Ukraine.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), similarly said that she's never heard of any accusations about such claims.

"Well, there's a lot of crazy stuff being said these days, you know, about people eating pets and other things," Lofgren told Raw Story while on her way to vote on legislation.

"I've never heard of anything like that, and I don't believe it's correct," Lofgren said.

Gaetz isn't on the House Intelligence Committee, which has access to official intelligence gathered from the U.S. and international community about such matters. Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA) is, however, on the committee.

"I have not heard anything like that," Bera told Raw Story while walking through the Capitol. "He might have an active imagination, I don't know."

He suggested that Gaetz "ask for Congress to have a classified briefing or come into the Intelligence Committee," to hear accurate information.

"It's what we've come to expect from Matt Gaetz," Bera said. "It is dangerous."

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, refused to comment on the matter when asked. He confirmed only public information that Iran had potential assassins in the U.S. eager to take out Trump.

He was asked multiple times about whether Gaetz's comments were "dangerous" but refused to comment.

Long-time Democratic lawmaker Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) simply laughed.

"I didn't hear that," the former House Majority Leader said. "So let me look into it."

Raw Story pointed out that Gaetz put the information on his official government website.

"I don't check that much," Hoyer confessed.

===

---}:

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/dhs-knew-5-assassination-teams-after-trump-2nd-attempt-gaetz

rep . Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said Thursday that a senior Homeland Security Department official approached him as a whistleblower shortly before the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life and alleged U.S. officials are aware that five different "assassination teams" are pursuing the former president.

Gaetz told Just the NewsEditor in Chief John Solomon during an interview on the Human Events Daily television show on Real America's Voice network that he believes three of the teams are foreign inspired and two are domestic based.

Trump was the subject of a second assassination attempt over the weekend while golfing at his Palm Beach course. Secret Service engaged with an armed suspect after one agent noticed the barrel of an AK-47 protruding from the bushes where he was hiding. The suspect fled and was later apprehended. Authorities have arrested Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, and charged him with firearms violations in connection with the incident.

"I had a senior official from the Department of Homeland Security in my office before the second assassination attempt, saying that what he has assessed is that there are five known assassination teams in the United States, three inspired by other governments, two that are here, that are known domestic assassination teams," Gaetz said on "Human Events Daily."

"And with that, this individual was coming to me, concerned that the force protection around President Trump, even prior to that second assassination attempt, was not sufficient for what it needed to be, and the coordination at that level, at the dignitary protection level is like the bare minimum that we have to do to keep our presidents, our presidential candidates, safe while they're on the trail," he went on.

"Five teams that we know are targeting Trump," he clarified. "And so that raises real questions about why certain teams were being pulled off of the Trump deal detail and put on, for example, the Jill Biden detail."

"Now we don't want anything bad to happen to Jill Biden, but at the same time, the threat envelope for her was substantially different than the threat envelope around President Trump, and it would not have necessitated pulling assets away from the Trump detail for the Joe Biden detail or the John Bolton detail or any other details that were beefed up at the same time, the requests from the Trump detail and from the Trump campaign for more security, were going unanswered, frankly," he concluded.

U.S. authorities have charged a Pakistani man, Asif Merchant, with working with Iran to attempt to hire a gunman to kill Trump before Merchant was arrested on July 12, one day before the first assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pa. They have not disclosed any other plots publicly involving the former president.

Several Senate and House members who have been briefed on the two assassination attempts against Trump told Just the News on Thursday afternoon they have not been told during their briefings about five teams or plots but they are aware there are multiple Iran-inspired plots targeting multiple U.S. officials.

One senior federal law enforcement officials and one intelligence official, both speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed to Just the News that U.S. authorities have been aware of multiple plots tied to Iran or other terrorists seeking to assassinate current or former U.S. officials.

The intelligence spans several years and has led to significantly enhanced protections for figures like Trump, former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former national security advisers John Bolton and Robert O'Brien, the officials said. Most, the sources said, involve retribution for the assassination of a former top Iranian general during the Trump years.

In addition to the Merchant charges, Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab was arrested by federal agents in 2022 and later pleaded guilty to charges of exchanging money as part of an attempt to illegally smuggle Iraqi foreign nationals via the Mexican border into the U.S. to assassinate Bush, America's 43rd president.

---

iii. Order the Defendant to comply with the Plaintiff’s request pursuant to the Georgia Open Records Act and to provide any applicable records; iv. Grant the Plaintiff reasonable attorney’s fees and costs incurred in filing this action; and v. Provide such further relief as this Court deems just and proper. Dated: February 21, 2024 Respectfully submitted, /s/ Gene P. Hamilton Gene P. Hamilton Georgia Bar No. 516201 Michael Ding

DC Bar No. 1027252 AMERICA FIRST LEGAL FOUNDATION 611 Pennsylvania Avenue SE #231 Washington, DC 20003 Email: gene.hamilton@aflegal.org Attorneys for Plaintiff* Application for admission pro hac vice forthcoming

---

===

politico 2020

By Kyle Cheney

02/19/2020

John Solomon, the former opinion writer at The Hill whose columns were seen as a central part of a smear campaign against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, failed to identify “important details” about his sources — including that they were under investigation or indictment and were even his attorneys, according toa review of his work by his former colleagues.

In its review of 14 columns, The Hill’s news team said serious doubts about the credibility of Solomon’s Ukrainian sources were evident even before his interviews with them. Those include, most notably, two former Ukrainian prosecutors — Yuriy Lutsenko and Victor Shokin — who were the principal sources behind unsupported allegations of corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

“In certain columns, Solomon failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation. In other cases, the sources were his own attorneys,” The Hill concluded.

The Hill also raised questions — which it says remain unanswered — about Solomon’s relationships with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his associate Lev Parnas, who were central figures driving the suggestion of wrongdoing by the Bidens in Ukraine. Though Solomon has claimed he relied on Parnas as a “facilitator” to connect him with sources in Ukraine, Hill staff said the communications uncovered in the House impeachment investigation pointed to deeper ties.

“The true nature and extent of Parnas’s role in Solomon’s work remain unclear but potentially troubling,” they wrote. “While Solomon has insisted that Parnas was simply facilitating contacts or arranging interviews in his native Ukraine, the number of alleged contacts or apparent references to Solomon in emails, text messages and other materials released by Parnas to congressional investigators raises questions about his involvement.”

The internal review by The Hill of Solomon’s work answers few of the deeper questions about his role in the Ukraine saga. But it underscores the web of contacts that Trump relied on as his eyes and ears in Ukraine, bypassing official State Department channels in order to press the government there to investigate the Bidens, as well as other Democrats based on a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine — not Russia — hacked the Democratic Party in 2016.

Solomon’s columns were routinely amplified by Trump and featured on Fox News’ prime-time opinion shows. They also formed a significant part of the rebuttal to the House’s impeachment charges by Trump’s allies in Congress and his legal team.

The network of Trump associates entangled in the Ukraine scandal also includes Joseph DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, husband and wife attorneys and allies of Trump whom Solomon quoted sporadically over the years on matters related to Ukraine. DiGenova and Toensing also represent Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch with Russian ties who is fighting extradition to the United States on conspiracy and bribery charges. The Hill indicated that Solomon, in his columns quoting Toensing, failed to disclose that the pair also represented him.

“As part of this review, The Hill is adding disclosures — to Solomon’s news stories, opinion columns, and relevant Hill.TV appearances — that should have been made at the time of publication,” the publication wrote.

The Hill found that it failed in part by permitting Solomon to engage in work that had the appearance of investigative journalism despite being labeled as “opinion,” a distinction that readers may have found confusing and that Solomon’s boosters routinely blurred or ignored. The publication also notes that Solomon, who left the publication to start a media company, continues to stand by his work.

“When appearing on television to discuss his Ukraine columns, Solomon was not typically labeled an opinion writer by the broadcast programs. The Hill did not contact television producers to label Solomon as an opinion columnist. It should have,” the review concluded. “Solomon’s subsequent appearances on Fox News where he was often identified as an investigative journalist further potentially blurred the distinction between news and opinion in the minds of some readers.”

cnn feb 2020

new YorkCNN Business —

The Hill on Wednesday released the findings of its months-long review into the work of John Solomon, the former executive at the outlet whose columns pushing right-wing conspiracy theories about Ukraine played a pivotal role in President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry.

The findings of the investigation, which were announced in a memo posted online, were critical of both the work Solomon did while he was at The Hill and the editorial process that allowed the columns to be published.

The Hill said it had added editor’s notes to Solomon’s work on Ukraine.

“In some columns, there was context and/or disclosure that should have been included at the time of his writings,” The Hill said. “In other cases, these editor’s notes highlight what has been learned since Solomon’s columns were initially published.”

[

Related articleJimmy Finkelstein, the owner of The Hill, has flown under the radar. But he's played a key role in the Ukraine scandal](https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/18/media/jimmy-finkelstein-the-hill-ukraine/index.html)

The Hill also acknowledged fault handling Solomon’s work and said that its investigation has made it “reconsider some policies” and “reiterate guidelines” that were already in place.

Some of the action being taken included giving Editor-In-Chief Bob Cusack “enhanced editorial authority over all content on The Hill.com.” Cusack previously did not have oversight over Solomon’s work published by The Hill’s opinion vertical.

Other action included avoiding the “blending of reporting and opinion columns going forward,” which The Hill noted that Solomon’s work attempted to do.

Cusack first announced the review of work done by Solomon, who is currently a Fox News contributor, on November 18, 2019. Solomon’s work has been strongly disputed, including by witnesses who testified during the House impeachment hearings.

Columns by Solomon, who has defended his work but did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday morning,helped shape public perception of Joe Biden’s foreign policy dealings in Ukraine, especially among Trump supporters.

The columns helped trigger the chain of events that led to Trump asking the recently-elected Ukrainian president to probe Biden and his son Hunter. And multiple witnesses referenced the reporting in their Congressional testimonies disputing the veracity of Solomon’s columns.

One, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, said of one of Solomon’s stories, “I think all the key elements were false.” Pressed further on the matter by Rep. Lee Zeldin, a New York Republican, Vindman said, “I haven’t looked at the article in quite some time, but you know, his grammar might have been right.”

The findings of The Hill’s investigation were at times exceedingly critical of Solomon’s work. The Hill said the central idea Solomon advanced about Ukraine and Biden was flawed in many ways and “disputed by officials in both Kyiv and Washington.”

The Hill also noted that for his work Solomon relied on his attorneys, Joseph DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, without disclosing his relationship with them.

“Pressed on why he did not disclose in his writings that Toensing was his attorney, Solomon initially denied he had quoted her while she served as his attorney and then said he would look into it and that if he did write about her, he should disclose the relationship,” The Hill’s findings said. “As part of this review, The Hill is adding disclosures … that should have been made at the time of publication.”

[

Related articleFingerprints from right-wing media figures are all over the Trump impeachment depositions](https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/11/media/right-wing-media-trump-impeachment/index.html)

The Hill additionally raised concerns about Solomon’s reliance on Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer who went to Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, and his contact with Lev Parnas, a former associate of Giuliani involved in the Ukraine scandal who has since been charged with campaign finance violations.

“The true nature and extent of Parnas’s role in Solomon’s work remain unclear but potentially troubling,” The Hill said in its findings. “While Solomon has insisted that Parnas was simply facilitating contacts or arranging interviews in his native Ukraine, the number of alleged contacts or apparent references to Solomon in emails, text messages and other materials released by Parnas to congressional investigators raises questions about his involvement.”

The Hill acknowledged it could have done better handling Solomon’s work. The outlet said, “While Solomon’s columns on Ukraine were labeled as opinion, they read like news stories.” The Hill noted that when Solomon appeared on Fox News to promote his stories, he was “not typically labeled an opinion writer.” The Hill said it “should have” contacted television producers to request a proper label.

“There should be clarity and distinction between opinion writers and news reporters, and opinion columns should not read like news stories,” The Hill said. “The Hill will consider and adopt changes in presentation to differentiate opinion and news more substantially than the current methods.”

===

pro pou

Last March, a veteran Washington reporter taped an interview with a Ukrainian prosecutor that sparked a disinformation campaign alleging Joe Biden pressured Ukrainians into removing a prosecutor investigating a company because of its ties to the former vice president’s son. The interview and subsequent columns, conducted and written by a writer for The Hill newspaper, John Solomon, were the starting gun that eventually set off the impeachment inquiry into the president.

Watching from the control booth of The Hill’s TV studio was Lev Parnas, who helped arrange the interview.

Parnas and his partner Igor Fruman were working with the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to promote a story that it was Democrats and not Republicans who colluded with a foreign power in the 2016 election. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted the duo this month on allegations that they illegally funneled foreign money into U.S. political campaigns.

Interviews and company records obtained by ProPublica show Parnas worked closely with Solomon to facilitate his reporting, including helping with translation and interviews. Solomon also shared files he obtained related to the Biden allegations with Parnas, according to a person familiar with the exchange. And the two men shared yet another only recently revealed connection: Solomon’s personal lawyers connected the journalist to Parnas and later hired the Florida businessman as a translator in their representation of a Ukrainian oligarch.

Solomon’s interview and columns were widely amplified. Giuliani praised them, and Trump said he deserved a Pulitzer Prize. Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Lou Dobbs trumpeted them. They later become a key point in the CIA whistleblower complaint that set the impeachment inquiry in motion.

Parnas’ unusual and extensive involvement in the production of the stories has not been previously reported.

Solomon, 52, told ProPublica his reporting was accurate and defended his sourcing, saying, “No one knew there was anything wrong with Lev Parnas at the time.”

“Everybody who approaches me has an angle,” he said. “My mother has an angle when she calls me.” A lawyer for Parnas, who along with Fruman has pleaded not guilty, didn’t return requests for comment.

More than a year before his Ukraine columns published, The Hill had serious concerns about Solomon’s credibility and conflicts of interest. Hill staffers began raising alarms, including the paper’s publisher at the time, who warned in an internal memo that Solomon was engaged in “reputation killing stuff” by mixing business with journalism.

In response, The Hill’s management took steps to limit Solomon’s reporting — rebranding him as an opinion writer — but did not prevent him from writing his Ukraine series.

“Nothing I did would have put The Hill’s reputation at risk,” Solomon said.

Solomon came to The Hill, which specializes in inside-the-Beltway news, in July 2017 after a decades long career that included stretches at The Associated Press, The Washington Post and The Washington Times. His work has earned accolades, including a series examining what the FBI knew ahead of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He is now a contributor to Fox News.

Brought in as an executive vice president overseeing a new digital video enterprise now known as Hill.TV, Solomon continued to operate as a journalist, publishing news articles in the paper, while also playing a role on The Hill’s business side. That began to trouble colleagues within months of his hiring, according to internal memos and interviews with current and former staffers.

Lev Parnas arrives for his arraignment in the Southern District of New York on campaign finance violations, on Oct. 23, 2019. Parnas, a Ukrainian associate of the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, worked closely with Solomon to facilitate his reporting. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images).

In late October 2017, The Hill published a story on the decisive role of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in the upcoming vote on the Trump administration’s tax bill. The article, authored by two journalists who reported to Solomon, included a quote from the executive director of Job Creators Network, a conservative group that claimed the bill would help small-business owners in Maine.

Soon after, Johanna Derlega, then The Hill’s publisher, wrote two memos to the company’s president, Richard Beckman, worrying that Solomon was tearing down the traditional wall separating the business side and the news coverage. She noted that Solomon had negotiated a nearly $160,000 advertising deal with Job Creators Network, targeting business owners in Maine. Solomon then had a quote from that group’s director inserted in the story.

Solomon “pops by the advertising bullpen almost daily to discuss big deals he’s about to close,” Derlega wrote, adding, “If a media reporter gets ahold of this story, it could destroy us.”

“While I highlight this one example, John has been given the freedom, and possibly financial upside, to work with advertisers while clearly sitting within editorial,” Derlega wrote.

Six months later, in April 2018, Derlega was forced out of The Hill. The Hill’s owner, president and top editors haven’t responded to detailed questions about Derlega’s memos and Solomon’s tenure at the paper. A spokesman for the advertiser, Job Creators Network, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

In interviews with ProPublica this week, Solomon repeatedly declined to discuss his activities on The Hill’s business side, saying, “I just simply can’t talk about anything business related with The Hill.”

A month later, the paper’s editor in chief, Bob Cusack, emailed staff that “effective immediately” Solomon would no longer publish stories under the banner of news but instead would be an “opinion contributor.”

From this new perch, Solomon broke in early spring what seemed to be an explosive piece of news: claims by Yuriy Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s top prosecutor, that a U.S. diplomat, serving under President Barack Obama, presented him a list of people and groups he could not prosecute. Additionally, Lutsenko said that he was reviving a probe into the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, seeking to determine whether Joe Biden, as vice president, interfered with the initial inquiry to protect his son Hunter, who sat on Burisma’s board.

Behind the scenes, Parnas had been central to connecting Solomon with Lutsenko. In a March 2019 email that included the businessman, the columnist wrote that he’d “just got word from Lev that the prosecutor general has agreed to do an interview tomorrow.”

Parnas watched Lutsenko’s interview live, inside the control room of The Hill’s TV studio. Solomon explained that he called in the businessman to act as a translator, but in the end his services were not needed.

Solomon recalls first encountering Parnas through Pete Sessions, the once-powerful Texas Republican member of Congress who is now in the middle of the Trump impeachment inquiry. Sessions accepted campaign donations from Parnas and Fruman, and had met with the two men as they sought to oust an American diplomat in Ukraine. Later, Sessions wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, urging him to replace the envoy Marie Yovanovitch, who had been the subject of extensive criticism in the conservative media. She was later fired and is a key witness for House Democrats trying to impeach the president.

Sessions, who has denied knowledge of the campaign finance scheme laid out by prosecutors, told ProPublica that he has no connection to Solomon.

“I don’t know John,” he said.

Solomon says his personal attorneys, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, a husband-and-wife legal team that regularly represents conservative luminaries, set up his first formal meeting with Parnas. He asserted that his editors “were aware” that he was seeking help from diGenova and Toensing on matters concerning Ukraine.

“I was doing that as an extra layer of protection,” Solomon said. “And so everything — everything — was above board. Everybody knew about it. I was just trying to be careful.” diGenova and Toensing did not respond to a request for comment.

A Brief Guide to Giuliani’s Questionable Friends in Ukraine — “Trump, Inc.” Podcast

Rudy Giuliani has been looking for “corruption” in Ukraine. It’s easy to find among the very people he’s befriended.

As he compiled material for subsequent columns, Solomon and Parnas continued to work closely. In late March, less than a week after the first piece featuring Lutsenko appeared in The Hill, Solomon sent files via Dropbox to Parnas containing financial records purporting to be connected to Biden’s son. Around the same time, Solomon also sent Toensing and diGenova what appeared to be an advance copy of a Ukraine-related story. The Daily Beast reported that the email was included in a State Department Inspector General’s Office package of material turned over to lawmakers.

Solomon acknowledged that Parnas helped set up the Lutsenko interview, but he says he had originally requested it through official channels. Solomon maintains his relationship with the businessman was a typical one a reporter would have with a source. “Lev would call me,” he said, “and offer things he was hearing on the ground and I would look into some things.”

As Solomon’s relationship with Parnas developed, he learned over time that the businessman “was working for many people or several people in Ukraine,” including Giuliani and Solomon’s lawyers. Politico first reported Solomon’s lawyers also represented the Ukrainian oligarch. Giuliani hasn’t responded to messages seeking comment.

Solomon defended his work, including his reporting on the so-called do-not-prosecute list, which he said he went through “enormous efforts” to verify. “At the end of the day,” Solomon said. “it doesn’t matter what Lev Parnas did. It matters what I did.”

But a month after Lutsenko’s Hill TV appearance, the former Ukrainian prosecutor backed off of his allegations. He told a Ukrainian-language publication that he himself was the one who asked the U.S. ambassador for the list of supposedly untouchable figures. The State Department said there was never any list, calling it an “outright fabrication.” And Lutsenko told the Los Angeles Times last month that he saw no evidence of wrongdoing that would justify an investigation into Biden’s son’s business dealings in his country.

Justin Elliott contributed to this report.

===

trms doku 9 24

How a Veteran Reporter Worked with Giuliani's Associates ...

ProPublica

https://www.propublica.org › article › how-a-veteran-re...](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-a-veteran-reporter-worked-with-giuliani-associates-to-launch-the-ukraine-conspiracy)

Oct 25, 2019 — Lev Parnas, recently indicted for foreign influence in US elections, collaborated closely with The Hill's John Solomon to fuel spurious allegations involving ...

[### Lev Parnas, ex-Giuliani associate, testified allegations ...

NBC News

https://www.nbcnews.com › politics › joe-biden › lev-p...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/lev-parnas-ex-giuliani-associate-testifies-allegations-bidens-are-fals-rcna144250)

Mar 20, 2024 — In an interview with NBC News after his testimony, Parnas argued that the impeachment inquiry hearings are "pushing the same Russian ...

[### The Hill finds John Solomon 'failed' to identify key details of ...

Politico

https://www.politico.com › news › 2020/02/19 › hill-jo...](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/19/hill-john-solomon-failed-disclose-details-115976)

Feb 19, 2020 — The Hill's news team said serious doubts about the credibility of Solomon's Ukrainian sources were evident even before his interviews with them.

[### Lev Parnas

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Lev_Parnas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Parnas)

Lev Parnas (born February 6, 1972) is a Soviet-born American businessman and former associate of Rudy Giuliani. Parnas, Giuliani, Igor Fruman, John Solomon, ...

[### Parnas calls out GOP rep at hearing for 'doing the bidding' ...

The Hill

https://thehill.com › homenews › house › 4545008-par...](https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4545008-parnas-calls-out-gop-rep-hearing-doing-bidding-russia/)

Mar 20, 2024 — Lev Parnas, a convicted former aide to Rudy Giuliani, named members of Congress on Wednesday he alleged were “doing the bidding” of Russia ...

[### Written Statement of Lev Parnas, March 19, 2024

United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability - (.gov)

https://oversight.house.gov › uploads › 2024/03](https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Parnas-Lev-Written-Statement.pdf)

PDF

Mar 19, 2024 — me with a mission to travel the globe finding dirt on the Bidens so that an array of networks could spread misinformation about them.

8 pages

[### The Hill criticizes John Solomon's Ukraine columns ...

CNN

https://www.cnn.com › 2020/02/19 › media › the-hill-j...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/19/media/the-hill-john-solomon-columns-investigation-results/index.html)

Feb 19, 2020 — The Hill on Wednesday released the findings of its months-long review into the work of John Solomon, the former executive at the outlet ...

===

mma mg 1 24

After years of convoluted attempts by Republicans and right-wing media to somehow prove that China had compromised President Joe Biden via his son Hunter Biden’s business interests, Democrats revealed on Wednesday that China directed millions of dollars straight to Donald Trump’s businesses while he was serving as president.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee detailed the transactions in an extensive new report titled “White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump.” Based on records obtained through litigation, the report finds that the government of China and two state-owned entities spent at least $5,572,548 at Trump Tower in New York City and the Trump International Hotels in Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, Nevada.

The report also finds that “the ability of Trump family businesses to secure trademarks in China improved markedly and rapidly after Trump entered office,” describes these payments and similar ones to Trump-owned businesses from other countries as unconstitutional “foreign emoluments,” and links the payments to how “Mr. Trump inexplicably took positions favorable to specific Chinese interests” as president.

As The New York Times noted in its writeup, “the transactions … offer concrete evidence that the former president engaged in the kind of conduct that House Republicans have labored, so far unsuccessfully, to prove that President Biden did as they work to build an impeachment case against him.”

Indeed, the right has tried to damage Biden’s political standing by suggesting that he had been compromised by foreign payments to his son’s businesses since at least 2018, when conservative activist Peter Schweizer tried to repeat his success in damaging Hillary Clinton’s campaign. While such claims have collapsed time and time again, they’ve nonetheless become the heart of Republicans’ ludicrous push to impeach Joe Biden.

They’ve also led right-wing media figures to offer comments that seem comically detached from reality given the direct payments detailed in the Democratic report. Commentators have cited payments to Hunter Biden’s businesses as evidence of “the real Biden crimes, potentially treasonous corruption charges after years of selling Joe Biden's power all over the world, including places like China,” said that “we have to know why and where is the president compromised” given that “more money is flowing into the Bidens' bank accounts from China than all the other countries,” and argued that if Joe Biden “can be compromised by the likes of China,” that would make “Watergate look like a smash-and-grab.”

The right’s inept efforts to paint Joe Biden as compromised by China

The insinuations in Schweizer’s book spawned major lines of attack from Rudy Giuliani, John Solomon, Sean Hannity, and other Trumpists that revolved around the bogus conspiracy theory that Joe Biden had taken corrupt action in Ukraine when he was vice president due to his son’s position with a Ukrainian company. Trump’s obsession with this falsehood led him to try to leverage U.S. military aid to Ukraine to get that country’s president to announce an investigation into the Bidens, yielding Trump’s first impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in 2019.

The attacks took on new urgency and refocused on Hunter Biden’s business interests in China in the waning days of the 2020 presidential campaign, when Trump and Fox tried to turn disgruntled former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski into a household name. Bobulinski had alleged that Joe Biden had met with him in 2017 as part of a joint business venture involving Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and Chinese oil company CEFC China Energy Co.

Right-wing outlets desperately trumpeted the Bobulinski story even as less credulous reporting revealed that the venture reportedly “never received proposed funds from the Chinese company or completed any deals” and corporate records “show no role for Joe Biden,” who denied any role in the business and was in any case neither in public office nor running for one at the time. And Bobulinski himself acknowledged that when they met, Joe Biden did not ask about the proposed deal.

The right’s Hunter Biden push failed to lift Trump to victory in 2020. But they responded with more of the same, spending the first years of Joe Biden’s administration trying to damage his political standing with similar attacks. And when Republicans won the House in 2022, they pledged to follow through with investigations into what Trumpists like Hannity termed the “Biden Crime Family.”

The House Republican investigations produced a series of reports detailing tangential issues to smear Joe Biden that soared on right-wing media outlets and crashed everywhere else.

In one particularly farcical case, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer alleged that a Hunter Biden business entity “made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden” after it “received payments from Chinese-state linked companies & other shady entities,” which purportedly proved that “Joe Biden knew & benefitted from his family's business schemes."

Fox host Jesse Watters, over onscreen text that read “China Paid Hunter’s Company, Who Then Paid Joe,” said this showed that “China, after being threatened by Hunter, wired millions of dollars to him, and then Hunter started sending his dad payments.” For Hannity, Comer had revealed that “not only did Joe Biden discuss his son's business ventures, but he also received direct payments from one of Hunter's corporations.”

In reality, Joe Biden took over many of his son’s expenses during a period when Hunter was in the depths of drug addiction and Joe Biden was out of office. That included buying his son a truck to use. Hunter Biden made three payments, each for $1,380, to repay his father for the initial payments on the truck before taking over future payments directly.

This was happening at the same time the Chinese government was trying to curry favor with Trump — the sitting president — by making payments directly to the companies he owned and that his sons oversaw. And those revelations from the House Democratic report are the tip of the iceberg as far as corruption during Trump’s presidency is concerned.

While Fox shills like Watters have been contorting the facts to declare Joe Biden “a money laundering operation for foreign nationals,” they’ve curiously missed the massive influence peddling that happened right before their eyes. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that to change — as of posting, Fox had not mentioned the Democratic report.

---

Sean Hannity: People would be furious if Trump and the Trump organization were making millions from China | Media Matters for America

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): To be very honest, I think we're making a big mistake if we don't get to the bottom of this. I cannot, for the life of me, you know, imagine what the media and how the country and the left in this country would be reacting if Donald Trump and the Trump Organization or the Trump family were making tens of millions of dollars from our top geopolitical foes like China and Russia. I can't imagine the left in this country not going insane, but lo and behold, here we are.

Meanwhile:

Donald J. Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments during his presidency, according to new documents released by House Democrats on Thursday that show how much he received from overseas transactions while he was in the White House, most of it from China.

...

Using documents produced through a court fight, the report describes how foreign governments and their controlled entities, including a top U.S. adversary, interacted with Trump businesses while he was president. They paid millions to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas; Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York; and Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza in New York.

...

“By elevating his personal financial interests and the policy priorities of corrupt foreign powers over the American public interest, former President Trump violated both the clear commands of the Constitution and the careful precedent set and observed by every previous commander in chief,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, wrote in a foreword to the report.

Among the countries patronizing Mr. Trump’s properties, China made the largest total payment — $5.5 million — to his business interests, the report found. Those payments included millions of dollars from China’s Embassy in the United States, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Hainan Airlines Holding Company.

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On Steve Bannon's show John Solomon calls the Republican National Committee “a cancer” | Media Matters for America

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The Heritage Foundation uses fringe right-wing media to promote itself as it struggles to stave off competitors

The conservative think tank once defined conservative politics. Now Heritage is turning to the right-wing fringe in an attempt to recapture its glory days.

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

PUBLISHED 11/03/23

The right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation has increasingly used fringe, extremist media outlets to spread its message as it struggles to maintain its central position in the conservative movement. Its staff and fellows have appeared on the conspiracy theory network Infowars, on the show of a Hitler-praising antisemite, and on MAGA-aligned fringe programs defined by their nativism and commitment to spreading disinformation — all while Heritage fights to keep its spot atop the conservative policy world.

Founded in 1973, Heritage took center stage in the conservative movement in the following decade during the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Since then it has consistently been one of the most cited think tanks in the country. It also has a long history of pushing right-wing ideas, including denying the reality of climate change, opposing LGBTQ rights, and promoting for-profit prisons and harsher sentences throughout the 1980s and ‘90s.

Heritage’s role in determining policy has historically extended beyond just the Republican Party. It helped to shape what became known as welfare reform under former President Bill Clinton, causing deep and extreme poverty to skyrocket. Heritage also popularized the idea of including an individual mandate in health insurance reform, first during Mitt Romney’s time as governor of Massachusetts and later during debate over the Affordable Care Act.

The think tank saw its stock rise during former President Donald Trump’s time in office, but since his loss in 2020 it has faced stiff competition from new organizations looking to define and control the messaging and policy of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. Still, with revenue of at least $102 million as of 2021 — significantly more than similar organizations like the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute — it's still a major force in conservative politics.

Heritage is a longtime sponsor of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, and it’s organizing a massive effort to staff the next Republican administration. Its more than 115 fellows and employees are often cited as subject experts in mainstream media outlets, and they show up across as well. Heritage also acts as a publisher of faux-intellectualpolicy papers — the thrust of which are often later debunked — as well as more broadly targeted op-eds and social media content.

For as much as Heritage attempts to present itself as respectable, the presidency of Joe Biden appears to have ushered in a new era at the organization as its personnel increasingly appear on fringe, extreme right-wing programs. As Media Matters has previously reported, Tom Homan — a Heritage visiting fellow and former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — appeared on a Hitler-praising antisemite’s show and pushed the racist “great replacement” theory. Media Matters also reported that Heritage research fellow Peter St Onge recently appeared on Alex Jones’ Infowars network and repeated a debunked conspiracy theory that falsely claims the Department of Justice designated conservative parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists.

One recent example shows how Heritage seeds radical ideas in far-right media, creating its own content to further amplify its messages. On October 18, Lora Ries, the director of Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center, published an op-ed at The Daily Signal (a media outlet run by Heritage) opposing Palestinian refugee resettlement to the United States. This issue is largely a moot point, as Israel — with the help of Egypt — has maintained a complete siege of Gaza. Even if Palestinians in Gaza were allowed to leave in large numbers, many are reasonably fearful that they will never be allowed to return and would face the prospect of a second Nakba, the term for the forced dislocation of roughly 750,000 Palestinians in 1948.

“To import a population of pro-Hamas Palestinians would be certain suicide for Americans,” Ries wrote, adding, “This population has no interest in assimilating into American culture and governance, or in expressing loyalty to America or American allies.”

Heritage then turned the piece into a for X (formerly known as Twitter), which was subsequently roundly criticized. (Heritage later removed the video from X.)

Ries has spread anti-immigrant messaging more generally on Just the News, hosted by John Solomon, a conservative writer with a history of spreading false information; One America News, a far-right Fox News competitor; and No Spin News, hosted by disgraced former Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly.

The immigration center Ries runs at Heritage also lists Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, as a visiting fellow. Like Ries, Morgan has been a guest on Solomon’s show — he went on to implicitly demonize Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities by suggesting they are harboring terrorists — and fearmongered about migration levels with Sebastian Gorka. (In addition to his perch at Heritage, Morgan is also a senior fellow at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group.)

Morgan has also appeared on War Room, the podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and a hotbed of anti-migrant demonization and election denialism — and Heritage personnel. In addition to Morgan, Bannon has also hosted Heritage President Kevin Roberts; distinguished fellow in economics Stephen Moore (for an episode titled “Stolen Elections Have Consequences”); and research fellow E.J. Antoni, among others.

Where Bannon is the standard-bearer for Trump-style nativism, Heritage fellows have found a receptive audience among the more explicitly Christian right as well (Bannon’s occasional ecclesiastical rants notwithstanding). Roberts and Antoni have both also been guests on The Charlie Kirk Show, whose host has increasingly embraced Christian fundamentalism. Moore — the economics fellow — has been on Huckabee on TBN, and Heritage senior legal fellow Sarah Parshall Perry has appeared on Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, both of which are televangelist programs.

One of Heritage’s most active figures is Hans von Spakovsky, who manages the think tank’s election law reform initiative, which in reality means he spreads myths about voter fraud that have been debunked and discredited. He has appeared numerous times on Fox News, One America News, and streaming programs including The Dan Bongino Show, Just the News, and America First with Sebastian Gorka. On April 28, 2022, Von Spakovsky appeared on the The Jenna Ellis Show “to discuss election litigation”; on October 24, 2023, Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count for her role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Heritage no longer dominates the conservative policy world the way it once did, but its deep pockets and long history means it still wields considerable influence. Yet by all appearances, Heritage has fully embraced the far-right fringe of the movement it attempts to define, further delegitimizing itself in the process.

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baaack?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/foxs-viktor-shokin-interview-misses-basics-ignores-what-fox-already-knows}:

no lnx many

Fox’s Viktor Shokin interview misses the basics, ignores what Fox already knows

Viktor Shokin was pushed out for corruption, regardless of what Fox News tries to manufacture

WRITTEN BY JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES & JOHN KNEFEL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JOHN WHITEHOUSE & JULIE MILLICAN

PUBLISHED 08/25/23

On August 25, Fox News previewed an interview of former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin by network host Brian Kilmeade that is set to air in full on August 26. In the preview segment, Shokin accused President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden of “corruption” and “being bribed” to push for the prosecutor’s removal from office in 2016. In fact, there was widespread agreement at the time across the political spectrum in the United States and the European Union that Shokin should be fired for being soft on corruption, including State Department allegations that Shokin himself was corrupt. Additionally, at the time of his removal, Shokin wasn’t actively investigating Hunter Biden or Burisma, an energy company that had hired Hunter Biden to serve on its board of directors. Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer recently testified that it would have been better for Burisma if the Ukrainian government had kept Shokin because he was unlikely to move against the company.

Shokin’s claims are part of a longstanding smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani on behalf of former President Donald Trump, which ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment. Fox News knew Shokin’s claims were baseless then and continues to know it now, but the network is airing Shokin’s baseless allegations regardless.

Pushing for Shokin to be fired was the policy of not only the United States, where it was supported by leading Republicans, but also the international community

European nations, the United States, and over 100 members of Ukrainian parliament had pressured the Ukrainian government for months to fire Shokin. The international community concluded that Shokin was “turning a blind eye to corrupt practices” and “defending the interests of a venal and entrenched elite.” [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2/11/16; The New York Times, 3/29/16]

In 2015, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt called Shokin “an obstacle” to anti-corruption efforts. Ukraine’s refusal to act on anti-corruption measures, including keeping Shokin, resulted in the International Monetary Fund threatening to withhold $40 billion in aid. The European Union applauded his removal. [The Wall Street Journal, 9/22/19]

Protests in Ukraine demanded Shokin’s removal after he launched an investigation into an anti-corruption watchdog group and had fired various anti-corruption prosecutors. The group, Anti-Corruption Action Center, had publicly criticized Shokin. [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 3/28/16; Kyiv Post, 3/25/16]

In 2016, Republican Sens. Rob Portman, Mark Kirk and Ron Johnson and Democratic colleagues addressed a letter to then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, calling for him to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary.” The bipartisan letter was also signed by five Senate Democrats, underlining that removing Shokin was the consensus view in Washington, D.C. — not a pet project of the Biden family. [CNN, 10/3/2019]

Johnson would later lead a committee that investigated Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma and failed to uncover any evidence of wrongdoing. The New York Times noted, “In fact, investigators heard witness testimony that rebutted those charges,” and Johnson acknowledged there were no “massive smoking guns” in the report. [The New York Times, 9/23/20]

George Kent, the State Department’s expert on Ukraine, testified during Trump’s first impeachment trial that Shokin’s corruption led to his removal. Shokin was fired over corruption allegations and was not actively investigating Burisma when he was removed. The Washington Post reported in 2019 that Kent confirmed that Joe Biden called for the removal of “a corrupt prosecutor general … who had undermined a system of criminal investigation” into Ukrainian corruption cases, and “destroyed the entire ecosystem that we were trying to create.” Kent, who was the No. 2 official in the embassy at the time, explained that Biden was following the official U.S. government position that Shokin must be removed because he was “an impediment to the reform of the prosecutorial system, and he had directly undermined in repeated fashion U.S. efforts and U. S. assistance programs.” In fact, Kent testified that the idea to fire Shokin originated in the State Department before being pitched to others, including then-Vice President Biden. [The Washington Post, 11/19/19; Media Matters, 11/12/19]

At the time of his removal, Shokin was not actively investigating Burisma, and Hunter Biden was never the subject of an investigation into the company

Former Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Kasko said in May 2019 that the investigation into Burisma had been “shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.” Shokin had stalled investigations into Burisma and its co-founder Mykola Zlochevsky. In 2014, he undermined an attempt by British authorities to freeze $23 million worth of Zlochevsky’s assets. [Bloomberg, 5/7/19]

Devon Archer testified that he was not aware of any Shokin-led investigation into Burisma. He also testified that he had no reason to believe that then-Vice President Biden called for Shokin’s removal “was driven by anything other than the U.S. Government’s anticorruption policy in Ukraine,” and confirmed that firing Shokin “was bad for Burisma because he was under control.” [Media Matters, 8/3/23]

Investigations involving Burisma targeted Zlochevsky, who had been accused of “abuse of power, illegal enrichment and money laundering,” rather than the company itself. Shokin had allegedly “dragged his feet” on these investigations, and Hunter Biden, as a board member, was not a target. [The Wall Street Journal, 9/22/19]

Fox News knew its sourcing on the Ukraine conspiracy theory was unreliable

Conservative writer John Solomon was a key distributor of Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy theories regarding Shokin’s firing.From March 20, 2019 — when Solomon published his first story on the Ukraine conspiracy theory — through October 2, 2019, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times, including 51 appearances on Sean Hannity’s prime-time show [Media Matters, 10/17/19]

During that period, Fox News senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy produced an internal “research briefing book” that “openly question[ed] Fox News contributor John Solomon’s credibility, accusing him of playing an ‘indispensable role’ in a Ukrainian ‘disinformation campaign,’” according to The Daily Beast. Murphy’s research came from what was known as Fox’s “Brain Room,” which the network later disbanded, and described Solomon as having “played an indispensable role in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign.” [The Daily Beast, 2/6/20]

Murphy’s research book also advised that Giuliani had a “high susceptibility to disinformation” that was being fed to him by unreliable Ukrainian sources. [The Daily Beast, 2/6/20]

Fox News continues to accuse Joe Biden of taking bribes regarding Shokin’s firing even when confronted with contradictory evidence. On August 9, a panel discussion on The Five descended into chaos after co-host Jessica Tarlov attempted to get her co-panelists to acknowledge recent testimony from Hunter Biden business associate Devon Archer. Archer “was asked, if someone concluded … that Joe Biden was bribed, would you disagree with that? ‘Yeah, I would.’ Devon Archer said that,” Tarlov said to the panel. [Fox News, The Five, 8/9/23]

Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who would later be arrested for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was the lynchpin to the entire scheme

Solomon’s reporting laid the groundwork for Giuliani’s investigations in Ukraine, which ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment. Some of Solomon’s key sources were “disgraced former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko and the allies of Dmytro Firtash, an indicted Ukrainian oligarch and accused high-level Russian mafia associate,” who “have been seen as forces driving Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump’s political enemies.” [Media Matters, 10/17/19; The Daily Beast, 2/6/20]

Giuliani ultimately sent his findings to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, complete with “unproven allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden” with the goal of undermining a future Biden presidential run. Giuliani used his documents “to bolster unproven allegations that Biden pressured Ukraine in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who has been involved with a business interest there, and that the Obama administration was using Ukraine to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.” [NBC News, 10/3/19]

After Trump’s phone call attempting to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was revealed, Giuliani engaged in a press strategy to redirect the focus back to the Bidens. Some mainstream outlets took the bait, with headlines like “Scrutiny over Trump’s Ukraine scandal may also complicate Biden’s campaign” and “Why Trump’s Ukraine scandal could backfire on Biden.” [Media Matters, 9/23/19]

https://www.mediamatters.org/rudy-giuliani/rudy-giuliani-and-oans-chanel-rion-say-fox-news-shokin-claims-are-same-what-they-did

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mma 5 23

HANNITY (HOST): We get to the 2020 election and what happened? They had Hunter Biden's laptop since December of 2019. They verified it according to John Solomon [NOTE NO ID AFFILIATION] in the spring of 2020.

But yet, we had FBI agents that were meeting weekly in the months leading up to the 2020 election pre-bunking the Hunter Biden laptop story by telling them directly, "You're likely going to be the victim of a misinformation campaign. It may be about Hunter. It may be about Joe Biden. You better be ready." But they knew the laptop story was coming and they knew Rudy Giuliani had a copy of it.

JEANINE PIRRO (GUEST): Well, you know what the problem is with that? The problem is that is election interference. That is a crime. It's not only a constitutional violation of the First Amendment and the right of the press to be able to discuss things that are in the news. But they literally interfered with an election. We know that by the polls that came out afterwards that indicated that people would have changed their votes.

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an raw 12 22

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday said that former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was wrong to accuse him of covering up data from Hunter Biden's laptop.

In a with Newsmax, Giuliani claimed that Pompeo had "buried" the laptop's hard drive.

“I gave it to Hannity in early 2019, then toJohn Solomon, then to Mike Pompeo, who also buried it,"Giuliani said."And you should know that now that he’s running for president — and I will tell you the whole story about that at some point. I’ll write it out."

On Tuesday, Pompeo told Real America's Voice host David Brody that he could not "make sense" out of Giuliani's claims.

"Not much to say," Pompeo told Brody. "I feel bad for Rudy. You know, Sean Hannity, John Solomon, Mike Pompeo: noted leftists. Right? I feel bad. I'll leave it there."

The former secretary of state encouraged Giuliani to write out his grievances.

"I can't — I don't know," Pompeo said. "I have no idea. First, he said I gave them everything and then he kind of said, well, I gave them half. I don't know how to respond other than to say that we never covered up anything that was important to American national security."

"I was the secretary of state," he pointed out. "I'm not sure why Hunter Biden's laptop would have been particularly relevant to my particular role at that time. But if he wants to write it out, I'm happy to respond to something once I can make sense of it."

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.

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msnbc every time they get what demanded, it gets worse for trump?

https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/john-solomon-representative-trump-national-archives-many-his-claims-about-case-are

no lnx many vids

John Solomon is a representative for Trump to the National Archives. Many of his claims about the case are false.

Trying to gain control of the story, Solomon himself released a May 10 letter from acting National Archivist Debra Wall and immediately misled about what it said

WRITTEN BY JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES

PUBLISHED 08/25/22

John Solomon, former President Donald Trump’s official representative to the National Archives and Records Administration, released a letter that reveals in plain detail that Trump and his legal team did not cooperate with the National Archives, and that the August 8 Mar-a-Lago search occurred only after they repeatedly sought to delay the FBI’s involvement. Despite these facts, Solomon has made numerous appearances in the right-wing media, including on Fox News, to spread misinformation and spin about the letter.

Dated May 10, the letter from acting National Archivist Debra Wall to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran details the back-and-forth between Trump’s lawyers and the National Archives in retrieving over 700 pages of classified material from Mar-a-Lago. It clearly lays out how Trump did not fully cooperate with the National Archives and the Department of Justice, outlining the five-month process to retrieve the documents.

Solomon’s website Just the Newswas the first to publish the damning document late on August 22.The next morning, he appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room:Pandemic to put a confusing pro-Trump spin on the story.

Video

CitationFrom the August 23, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

In Solomon’s version, the FBI mysteriously heard that the National Archives retrieved documents from Mar-a-Lago and wanted to look through them. The bureau asked President Joe Biden, who told the DOJ and the FBI to go right ahead and look through the documents, completely ignoring that Trump maintains executive privilege over them.

This is completely false. Here’s a breakdown:

CLAIM: “The White House counsel's office authorized the National Archives to send information they had gotten in the boxes of Trump – voluntarily returned to the archives – and send it to the FBI. That launches a criminal investigation.”

REALITY: Solomon conveniently leaves out that the Presidential Records Act not only allows, but requires this course of action.As Wall details in the letter, the National Archives’ initial review of the documents returned in January found “items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials” – a label given to the most sensitive secrets in government. This prompted the agency to inform the DOJ. The Presidential Records Act empowers the National Archives, the president, and the DOJ to oversee the handling of presidential documents, including the power of “the Archivist and the Attorney General [to] jointly investigate the unlawful removal or destruction of government and presidential records.”

CLAIM: Next, Solomon says that “President Trump would have had the right … to go to court and say, I have executive privilege, I might have declassified these documents,” but “the current president waives the executive privilege of the past president.” He repeated this point again later on in the interview.

REALITY: His argument that Biden and the DOJ should have allowed Trump to take his executive privilege claim to the courts is debunked by the letter itself. Wall consulted the Office of Legal Counsel, which advised her that “there is no precedent for an assertion of executive privilege by a former President against an incumbent President to prevent the latter from obtaining from NARA Presidential records belonging to the Federal Government where ‘such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of current business of the incumbent President’s office and that is not otherwise available.’”

The precedent that Solomon and other Trump allies refer to when they argue this point applies only to congressional or judicial oversights, not executive branch examination and investigation. To be clear, a former president cannot exert executive privilege claims over a current president, the head of the executive branch itself, when the information pertains to the current business of the administration.

Then, referring to the same case as Solomon, Wall laid out what it actually means for Trump:

“To the contrary, the Supreme Court’s decision in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977), strongly suggests that a former President may not successfully assert executive privilege “against the very Executive Branch in whose name the privilege is invoked.” … The Court specifically noted that an “incumbent President should not be dependent on happenstance or the whim of a prior President when he seeks access to records of past decisions that define or channel current governmental obligations.”

The Office of Legal Counsel advised that Trump had no privilege over these documents. There was no need to start a court fight to rehash the same issue; as Wall’s letter noted, “the question in this case is not a close one.”

CLAIM: Solomon claims that on May 8, “the Biden White House says it's over, we're passing privilege. We're giving the documents to the FBI.”

REALITY: This is false. Biden delegated the decision to Wall; he did not make it himself. From the letter:

The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported “protective assertion of executive privilege.”

As Politico’s Kyle Cheney explains, “there was no way a former president's claim could override an incumbent administration's need for the review. … Trump allies touted portions of this letter that were revealed by Solomon earlier in the evening, saying it showed Biden had been involved in the process. That's a requirement of any NARA matter involving privilege.”

CLAIM: Solomon argues that “there's an escalation driven by the Biden White House against its likely rival in 2024. … I think most Americans are going to be troubled to find out the current president [was] siccing the FBI on the former president,and I think that’s the way these documents read when you look at it. ”

REALITY: The letter makes clear that the “escalation” came only after numerous attempts by the Trump legal team to delay an FBI investigation. After being granted an initial delay until April 29, the Trump team requested an additional delay based on executive privilege claims, which the National Archives and the Office of Legal Counsel found to be legally unfounded. As the letter painstakingly explains, “The Executive Branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the Federal Government itself, not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.’”

CLAIM: Solomon says that “in mid-April, there's a discussion – the FBI hears from the National Archives that they got the boxes. They want to see what's in the boxes.”

REALITY: Solomon’s word choice is misleading. Rather than implying that a nosy FBI “want[s] to see what’s in the boxes,” it would be more accurate to say that the bureau needed to investigate the documents, as is procedure per the Presidential Records Act. Nonetheless, this is not what the letter says. It says that the National Archives informed the DOJ, “which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them.” The FBI heard “from the National Archives that they got the boxes,” because the National Archives and DOJ needed the bureau to investigate whether the boxes contained classified documents.

Under federal law, “The Archivist is not authorized to independently investigate removal or recover records.” Engaging the FBI was a necessary step.

CLAIM: Solomon claims that Trump’s team asked for time to sort out privileged materials and “within a few days of that, those conversations going on, the National Archives came back and said ‘We don’t care about your privilege claims.’”

REALITY: He is putting a false spin on the timeline here. Trump’s lawyers were advised on April 12 that the National Archives would allow the FBI to examine the returned records. They sought and were granted a delay until April 29.

The rejection he’s referring to is the second request for a delay on April 29, two and a half weeks after Trump’s lawyers were notified that the FBI needed to examine the documents. At the time of writing the May 10 letter, Wall noted, “It has now been four weeks since we first informed you of our intent to provide the FBI access to the boxes so that it and others in the Intelligence Community can conduct their reviews.”

CLAIM: Solomon closes by arguing, “This is a chilling potential fact for not only former presidents, but any future president – if any future president knows that the guy who beats him at the polls or succeeds him at the polls can then turn around and release all the documents that a prior president might have considered privileged because he got important advice to do his job, who's going to put anything on paper? Who's going to want to get that advice knowing that could happen?”

REALITY: Solomon ignores that the documents the FBI was sent to recover still legally belong to the federal government, not Trump. Rather than trying to “turn around and release all the documents that a prior president might have considered privileged,” Wall’s letter said that the classified documents in question would need to be reviewed by national security officials to assess “the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported” by the former president.

Responding to the Trump team’s objections, she explained that “there is no reason to believe such reviews could ‘adversely affect the ability of future Presidents to obtain the candid advice necessary for effective decisionmaking.’ … To the contrary: Ensuring that classified information is appropriately protected, and taking any necessary remedial action if it was not, are steps essential to preserving the ability of future Presidents to “receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of [their] duties depends.”

Further, what Solomon complains about has been possible since 1978; any president since the Presidential Records Act was put in place could release such documents. Trump does not hold executive privilege over the executive branch itself.

Nonetheless, Solomon was not the only pro-Trump figure on War Room spinning the National Archives letter.

Former Trump adviser Boris Ephsteyn also appeared on Bannon’s August 23 show and claimed that Politico’s coverage of the letter somehow exonerates Trump:“The only thing that matters in the Politico article is that it proves once and for all, fully proves that A) there was full cooperation and compliance, as we've been saying consistently, and B) that the Biden administration absolutely and fully participated in this plan to raid and attack Mar-A-Lago. There's no two ways about it.”

Video

CitationFrom the August 23, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

The Trump team was not in “full cooperation and compliance.” They sought to delay the investigation at least twice and submitted challenges with no legal basis. The May 10 letter shows that the Biden administration, as Cheney again points out, was remarkably detached from the investigation: “The language about consultation with the White House shows Biden was *more hands off* with the Mar-a-Lago docs than he was with the Jan. 6 records held by NARA. In both cases, archivist consulted with OLC, but in latter Biden delegated privilege decisions to NARA.”

The previous day, president of the Article III Project and regular War Room guest Mike Davis complained that before ordering the Mar-a-Lago search on August 8, Attorney General Merrick Garland did not “take the time to go to the Office of Legal Counsel within his own Justice Department,” whose opinions “are binding on the executive branch.” Davis asserted this meant that Garland knew the Mar-a-Lago search was “unlawful” and “unnecessary.”

Of course, we now know that the Office of Legal Counsel was consulted by the National Archives before the May 10 letter, and its “binding” legal opinion rejected Trump’s defenses. But these facts haven’t stopped right-wing media from spreading other pro-Trump spin and misinformation around the Mar-a-Lago search.

In an August 23 article, Fox News adopted the same false framework with the headline “Biden signed off on FBI review of Trump records, National Archives letter reveals.”

And Solomon has introduced a dubious new line of attack blaming former President Barack Obama.

Video

CitationFrom the August 23, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's Just the News

JOHN SOLOMON (JUST THE NEWS): Joe Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, actually managed to change the rules. After 9/11, George Bush had put a rule into place that a prior president got to protect his own privilege. If he and the president couldn’t – the sitting president – couldn’t agree on the release of records, that the prior president’s claim to executive privilege was predominant. Barack Obama came in in 2009 and he got rid of that and said, I, the incumbent president, I get the only say on this. … Barack Obama actually set in motion the raid that ultimately ended up in a raid at Mar-a-Lago on Donald Trump’s property.

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8 22

https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/kash-patel-said-he-and-john-solomon-are-mission-show-mar-lago-documents-were

https://theintercept.com/2022/08/23/ron-johnson-january-6-fake-electors/

no lnx twt vid

Playing Dumb: Sen. Ron Johnson’s Role in Jan. 6 Plot Is Hiding in Plain Sight

The Republican senator from Wisconsin won’t say why he agreed to hand fake slates of electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021.

Robert Mackey

August 23 2022,ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL in Wisconsin last week, Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, acknowledged but attempted to downplay his role in a plot to overthrow American democracy on January 6, 2021.

Asked by Matt Smith of WISN-TV Milwaukee if he would be willing to testify to the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, Johnson argued that he had spent only “a couple seconds” that day furthering a scheme to keep the defeated president, Donald Trump, in office by falsifying Electoral College results.

As he struggled to minimize his role in the plot by Republican operatives in Wisconsin to submit a slate of electors who would ignore Trump’s defeat at the ballot box, Johnson appeared to contradict himself multiple times in the interview. Moments after telling Smith that he “had nothing to do with the alternate slate,” the senator admitted that he had, in fact, sent text messages on January 6 to connect his chief of staff with a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin who wanted Johnson to hand-deliver fabricated electoral votes for Trump to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

As text messages released by the January 6 committee in June showed, the scheme quickly fizzled because an aide to Pence told Johnson’s chief of staff that the vice president would not accept the fake electoral votes from the senator. Since then, whenever he has been asked why he agreed to facilitate the plot, Johnson has drawn attention to how quickly it failed, as if that somehow exonerated him.

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 21: A text exchange between a staffer for Sen. Ron Johnson and an aide to former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence appears on a video screen during the fourth hearing on the January 6th investigation in the Cannon House Office Building on June 21, 2022 in Washington, DC. The bipartisan committee, which has been gathering evidence for almost a year related to the January 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, is presenting its findings in a series of televised hearings. On January 6, 2021, supporters of former President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol Building during an attempt to disrupt a congressional vote to confirm the electoral college win for President Joe Biden. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)A Jan. 6, 2021, text exchange between Sen. Ron Johnson’s chief of staff and an aide to then-Vice President Mike Pence is revealed by the House January 6 committee at a hearing in June. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images]

“My involvement in that attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple seconds. I got — I think I fielded three texts and sent two,” Johnson told Smith. “I had virtually no involvement. Literally, my involvement lasted seconds.”

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Johnson refused to explain why he had agreed to act as a go-between with Pence for Jim Troupis, the Trump campaign lawyer in Wisconsin who wanted the fake electors for Trump from Wisconsin and Michigan to be counted instead of those for Biden, who had been elected by the popular vote in those two states.

Johnson’s frequently hapless efforts to evade direct questions about his role in the plot began with outright falsehoods in June, when the text exchange between his chief of staff and the Pence aide on January 6 was projected on a big screen during a hearing of the House select committee.

Pressed by reporters that day to explain what his role had been, Johnson tried to dodge questions by pretending to be on the phone and then falsely said that he had no idea who had passed the fake slates of electors on to his office.

Later the same day, the senator again lied to reporters by saying that “interns” were to blame for accepting the slates of fabricated electors and that he “had no idea” who had delivered them to his aides.

Two days later, Johnson himself revealed that he knew all along that Troupis was the source of the fabricated electoral votes by providing more text messages to the conservative activist and columnist John Solomon. The texts published by Solomon, embedded in a column that accused the January 6 committee of making too much of the senator’s role in the plot, also showed that the senator had put Trump’s lawyer in touch with his chief of staff, Sean Riley, just six minutes after being asked to pass on the fake electoral votes.

A screenshot of a Jan. 6, 2021, text message to Sen. Ron Johnson from Jim Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin. The text was obtained by John Solomon, a conservative activist and columnist.]

A screenshot of Jan. 6, 2021, text messages sent by Sen. Ron Johnson to Jim Troupis and Johnson’s chief of staff, Sean Riley. The texts were obtained by John Solomon.

Solomon also obtained and published a longer version of the text exchange between Riley and the Pence aide, Chris Hodgson — which was apparently copied from Riley’s phone.

A screenshot of a Jan. 6, 2021, text exchange between Sean Riley and Chris Hodgson, an aide to then-Vice President Mike Pence. The texts were obtained by John Solomon.]

The longer version of the exchange shows that Pence’s aide explained that the fake Electoral College votes “were supposed to come in through the mail.” That text suggests that the vice president’s office was not taken by surprise by the effort to submit false electoral votes and was perhaps just sticking more rigorously to the letter of the law governing presidential elections, which states that the results of the Electoral College votes in each state are supposed to be sent to the vice president by registered mail, not hand-delivered.

In an interview with a sympathetic right-wing radio host in Wisconsin two days after the committee pointed to his role, Johnson stressed that the text messages showed that his documented role in the plot lasted just over an hour. “My office’s entire involvement in this thing lasted 70 minutes,” Johnson told radio host Vicki McKenna. “My involvement was probably seconds, maybe a minute or two,” he said.

By focusing so intently, in interview after interview, on the time stamps of the text messages about the fake electors plot he sent and received on January 6, Johnson seems to be drawing attention away from the question of why he instantly agreed to help Trump’s lawyer, Troupis, push the plot forward.

And when Johnson claims, as he did to the right-wing Wisconsin radio host, that he barely knew Troupis at the time, he is banking on listeners in McKenna’s ultraconservative audience not knowing that Troupis was a central figure in the effort to undermine the certification of the electoral vote and that Johnson had given Troupis a public platform to push his lies about election fraud just three weeks before January 6.

On December 16, 2020, Johnson chaired a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee dedicated to “Examining Irregularities in the 2020 Election,” which featured testimony from Troupis and Jesse Binnall, another Trump lawyer who had unsuccessfully filed suit to overturn the results of the presidential election in Nevada.

A week later, Johnson used his official Twitter feed to share false claims of electoral fraud in Wisconsin that Troupis had made at the hearing.

Just one week before that hearing, on December 9, 2020, Troupis had received detailed written instructions about how to create a fake slate of electors for Trump from anotherlawyer working with the Trump campaign, Kenneth Chesebro, an ally of John Eastman,whose plan for halting congressional certification of the Electoral College results on January 6, 2021, had been embraced by Trump. As the New York Times reported last month, Troupis also wrote to a Trump adviser on December 7, 2020, that submitting alternate slates of electors in swing states was part of a plot to give Pence a reason to delay congressional certification of the Electoral College results on January 6.

some lnx solomon: https://justthenews.com/government/jan-6-panels-ron-johnson-narrative-exposes-ills-one-sided-hearing

:{...just one week before that hearing, on December 9, 2020:{, Troupis had received detailed written instructions:{:{ about how to create a fake slate of electors for Trump from another lawyer working with the Trump campaign, Kenneth Chesebro, an ally of John Eastman,}: whose plan for halting congressional certification of the Electoral College results on January 6, 2021, had been embraced by Trump. As the New York Times reported:{ last month,Troupis also wrote to a Trump adviser on December 7, 2020, that submitting alternate slates of electors in swing states was part of a plot to give Pence a reason to delay congressional certification of the Electoral College results on January 6.}:

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an Before he was elected mayor of New York City in 1993, Republican Rudy Giuliani was a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York — and he had a reputation for being tough, focused and aggressive. But now, ironically, Giuliani finds himself being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice. His home and office in Manhattan were recently searched as part of a DOJ investigation of his Ukraine-related activities of the Trump era. And CNN's Marshall Cohen offers some insights on those search warrants in an article published on May 7.

Cohen explains, "The Justice Department's criminal investigation into Rudy Giuliani involves an international cast of characters: Trump White House allies, Republican lawyers, Ukrainian oligarchs, diplomats, right-wing journalists and other figures who aren't household names…. Giuliani has denied all wrongdoing and claimed the investigation itself is unconstitutional."

Cohen goes on to offer a "breakdown" of "the dozen Americans and Ukrainians who CNN has confirmed were mentioned by name in the search warrantsagainst Giuliani." Although there may be others mentioned in the warrants, Cohen notes, the people discussed in his article are the ones CNN has confirmed.

The 12 include Florida-based businessmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman; Florida-based businessman David Correia, an associate of Parnas and Fruman; former Ukraine prosecutors general Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko; Kostiantyn Kulyk, a former Ukrainian official who worked under Lutsenko; attorneys Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova; conservative pundit John Solomon, known for his work with The Hill and the Washington Post in the past; former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko; Glib Zagoriy, who served in the Ukrainian parliament; and Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor General Gyunduz Mamedov.

In 2019, then-President Donald Trump was impeached by House Democrats after trying to bully Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into helping him dig up dirt on now-President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. And House Democrats who pushed for the impeachment, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff of California, stressed that Trump seriously crossed the line by asking a foreign leader to investigate a political rival and withholding military aid to Ukraine in the hope of getting that investigation.

Trump loyalist Giuliani tirelessly railed against that impeachment in 2019 and went out of his way to smear the Bidens, promoting the far-right conspiracy theory that the real election interference in 2016 wasn't Russia interfering on behalf of Trump, but Ukraine interfering on behalf of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Cohen notes that Parnas, who paid Giuliani for half a million dollars of consulting work in 2018, "publicly flipped on Trump and Giuliani and implicated them in the anti-Biden schemes in Ukraine" and "assisted House Democrats with their impeachment inquiry against Trump in 2019." And Fruman, Cohen points out, "worked closely with Parnas and Giuliani to dig up dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine."

Shokin, according to Cohen, "allied with Giuliani to spread false claims of corruption against (Joe) Biden" and "falsely claimed he was fired because he was investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where Biden's son served on the board."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Ukraine scandal

Solomon is one of the most critical figures in Trump and Giuliani’s plot to extort the Ukrainian government into meddling in our 2020 election to help the president.

Trump hired Giuliani in late 2018 for his legal team responding to the special counsel Robert Mueller’ investigation into Russian electoral interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Purportedly as part of this effort, Giuliani worked closely with a team of players to create a two-pronged conspiracy theory that both smeared former Vice President Joe Biden as well as discredit the Mueller report by showing that it was really Ukraine that interfered with our 2016 election.

Giuliani’s team included Solomon, two now-indicted con men Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and the pro-Trump legal duo (and Fox News fixtures) Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova. They worked together to secure interviews with discredited and disgraced former Ukranian prosecutors and government officials to weave a complex conspiracy theory alleging that corrupt Ukrainian officials colluded with equally corrupt American officials to frame Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort in order to discredit Trump and benefit his 2016 political opponent Hillary Clinton. (Manafort is currently serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence due to his work in Ukraine.) At the same time, according to their theory, the Ukranian government was also aiding Biden in supposedly getting investigations into the Burisma gas company shut down because his son Hunter served on the board. Through this disinformation campaign, they targeted the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch whose anti-corruption initiatives in Ukraine put her in the crosshairs of the very Ukranian officials Giuliani needed to concoct this conspiracy theory.

Solomon’s columns at The Hill was the primary vehicle through which they injected this narrative into the public. Giuliani has stated that he “turned my stuff over to John Solomon,” but as more information about their work comes to light, Solomon’s involvement appears more direct. Instant messages recently released by the House Intelligence Committee show Parnas working as an intermediary between Solomon and at least two of the corrupt Ukranian prosecutors used to support this conspiracy, Yuri Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin. Giuliani appears to have made a deal with Lutsenko: If Lutsenko gives them dirt on Biden, he’ll get Yovanovitch fired.

At the same time, the messages show Parnas serving as an intermediary for Solomon to interview Lutsenko, even appearing to send him advanced copies of Solomon’s columns prior to publication. ProPublica reported that Parnas even was in the control room when Solomon interviewed Lutsenko for The HillTV. Solomon’s resulting columns set the stage to make public a behind-the-scenes smear campaign targeting Yovanovitch and Biden. Parnas played a similar role in facilitating interviews between Solomon and Viktor Shokin, the disgraced former Ukrainian prosecutor who was fired in 2016 as a result of pressure by the United States and the international community.

Another key player in this scheme is Firtash, a Ukranian pro-Russian oligarch and former business associate of Paul Manafort who is in Austria fighting extradition to the United States to face charges related to a bribery conspiracy. In the summer of 2019, Firtash fired his legal team to hire diGenova and Toensing, who were working closely with Parnas, Giuliani, and Solomon. (As it turns out, diGenova and Toensing also represented Solomon.) Parnas has recently claimed that Firtash agreed to work with Giuliani and his cronies to help them discredit the Mueller investigation in exchange for getting his extradition case dropped. Parnas alleged that Solomon played a key role in helping him connect with Firtash, saying “Basically I was given certain documents by John Solomon that would validate to Dimitri Firtash that I was in the loop and that I knew what was going on, because Mr. Firstash is a gentleman that just doesn't see anybody.”

All told in 2019, Solomon published dozens of columns in The Hill aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation and planting the seeds of this new Ukrainian element of the conspiracy theory. Solomon brought the conspiracy theory to Fox News and Fox Business, where he has appeared at least 92 times since March 20 through the end of 2019 to push elements of the conspiracy theory, in some cases alongside his attorneys diGenova and Toensing. None of the three ever disclosed their relationship to each other. Hannity gushed over Solomon’s work, hosting him at least 65 times during this same time period. Solomon’s efforts paid off when Fox News announced in October 2019 that it was hiring him as a contributor; he had recently announced he was leaving The Hill.

Solomon’s work also became a critical part of Trump’s impeachment inquiry. Multiple witnesses testified that his reporting was inaccurate but nonetheless led to Yovanovitch’s removal.

“Just the News”

In the same week that incriminating evidence has been released showing Solomon’s deep role in the Ukranian scandal, Solomon announced his latest venture, Just the News. Solomon is pitching the outlet as the answer to “the growing need for fact-based, impartial news and compelling digital content” that will feature “fact-based news without an agenda, with a neutral voice and with unprecedented transparency.” In reality, readers should expect anything but.

Solomon began his career as a mainstream reporter and has leveraged that experience to provide him cover for the decades of right-wing propaganda he has advanced since. A 2012 Columbia Journalism Review profile noted that “Solomon has a history of bending the truth to his storyline” and that he “was notorious for massaging facts to conjure phantom scandals.”

And “conjure phantom scandals” he does. For instance, prior to his involvement in the Ukraine disinformation campaign, Solomon was a key player in advancing the manufactured Uranium One scandal, another thoroughly debunked and discredited conspiracy theory that was first deployed to damage Clinton’s 2016 presidential election campaign.

Solomon revived and revised the conspiracy theory in 2017 -- when Trump needed an assist in his efforts to discredit the Mueller investigation -- by reporting without evidence that “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation” when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state as part of a scheme to ensure the Uranium One deal’s success. He suggested that Mueller, as FBI director, had covered up Russia’s attempt to bribe the Clintons. In November 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed U.S. Attorney John Huber to investigate, and The Washington Post recently reported that Huber is winding down his two-year review without bringing any criminal charges or finding any “other known impacts.”

While Solomon was at Circa in 2016-2017 -- and continuing into his time at The Hill -- he emerged as a key figure on Hannity’s Fox show. Circa under Solomon fueled Hannity’s show with pro-Trump stories on a nightly basis. It was during this stretch, all the way into 2019, that Hannity was working to spin a counternarrative to the charges of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Solomon’s “slanted reporting” was a fundamental part of Hannity’s conspiracy theories.

A quick glance at “trusted reporters” Solomon has partnered with to provide “honest journalism” at Just the News shows a familiar cabal of discredited journalists with a penchant for advancing right-wing conspiracy theories. For instance:

Peter Schweizer

Peter Schweizer is a Breitbart senior editor-at-large and president of conservative think tank Government Accountability Institute, both of which have been heavily funded by the pro-Trump billionaires Robert and Rebekah Mercer and which were previously headed by former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon. Schweizer is also the creator of several popular conspiracy theories about the Clinton family, including originating the aforementioned Uranium One allegations.

Even prior to Solomon’s involvement, the story of Hunter Biden’s role with Ukrainian gas company Burisma first gained traction on the right when Schweizer wrote about it in his 2018 book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends. Schweizer’s claims garnered airtime on Fox but had largely receded until Solomon revived it with his reporting in March 2019. Schweizer’s next book, Profiles in Corruption, is set to release January 21 and promises to target 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.

Sharyl Attkisson

Sharyl Attkisson is a former CBS news reporter who left the network in 2014 due to her shoddy reports about the Obama administration.She was also “widely criticized within medical-research circles” for her reports about vaccines. Sources close to CBS News executives told Politico in 2013 that the network was concerned her reporting was “wading dangerously close to advocacy,” including her obsessive promotion of then-colleague Lara Logan’s disastrous *60 Minutes* Benghazi report. CBS News ultimately retracted and apologized for the report, and Logan took a leave of absence but never returned to CBS.

After leaving CBS, Attkisson also embarrassed her next employer, The Daily Signal, with faulty reporting falsely claiming that “Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to ‘separate’ damaging documents” about the Benghazi attack prior to handing them over to investigators. Attkisson also published a book, alleging that the Obama administration hacked her personal computer, TV, phone, and home security system in retaliation for her often-incorrect Benghazi reporting. (CBS News did find that her work-issued laptop was breached using “sophisticated” methods, but no cyberattacker was ever named.) Attkisson kept changing her story about who did the hack and which devices of hers were hacked, but a 2015 federal investigation found no evidence that her personal computer was hacked. Attkisson also falsely accused Media Matters of accepting a payoff to specifically “target” her.

In 2015, Attkisson got a show with Sinclair Broadcast Group, the right-wing, pro-Trump TV network, and the disgraced reporter fit right in. Before her Sinclair show launched, Attkisson happened to be responsible for one of the earliest cycles of campaign-era Trump spin, when Trump promoted her misleading insistence that Trump called then-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) a war hero four times. Trump was plainly being sarcastic in each of the four instances he called McCain a “war hero,” including the now-infamous line: “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

Attkisson conducted a typically softball interview with Trump in 2017, inviting him to make unchecked, demonstrably false claims about a wide range of issues.

David Brody

David Brody is the chief political analyst for the Christian Broadcasting Network, a provider of generally right-wing Christian programming. Brody has a history of hostility toward LGBTQ people, once attacking a male blogger as a Republican senator’s “angry girlfriend.” Brody also opposed a transgender Obama appointee simply for being trans, writing, “There will be those who say all that matters is whether or not Simpson is qualified for the job. … Here's a newsflash for you: The transgender thing doesn't play well with millions of conservative Evangelicals.” Brody also declared that Trump was the “Big Winner” of the racist birther campaign against President Barack Obama, because Obama did ultimately release his birth certificate.

Brody has granted Trump at least 10 interviews since his 2016 campaign and continues to drive talking points that align with the administration’s positions. On a 2017 episode of Fox & Friends, Brody complained that calls for Christian leaders to denounce white supremacy, including the then-recent murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, showed that “the fix is in, if you will against evangelical Christians, white evangelical Christians in this country.” Brody was also one of many right-wing media figures piling onto Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) with a deceptively edited clip purporting to show her saying that people should be afraid of white men. In reality, she was criticizing religious profiling.

Lee Smith

Lee Smith is a pro-Trump author, who recently published The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History. The book advances the conspiracy theory that a “deep state” plot to take down Trump “officially began July 31, 2016 with the counterintelligence investigation that the FBI opened to probe Russian infiltration of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.”

Smith has described the impeachment inquiry as “a secret ritual conducted by a cult” with “Speaker Pelosi as the high priestess of the cult and Adam Schiff as a high priest.”

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In the middle of gaslighting the country on Ukraine, John Solomon launches a new gaslighting website

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https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/while-gaslighting-country-ukraine-john-solomon-launches-new-gaslighting-website

JULIE MILLICAN

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BOBBY LEWIS

PUBLISHED 01/17/20 7:30 AM EST

Ukraine scandal

Solomon is one of the most critical figures in Trump and Giuliani’s plot to extort the Ukrainian government into meddling in our 2020 election to help the president.

Giuliani’s team included Solomon, two now-indicted con men Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and the pro-Trump legal duo (and Fox News fixtures) Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova. They worked together to secure interviews with discredited and disgraced former Ukranian prosecutors and government officials to weave a complex conspiracy theory alleging that corrupt Ukrainian officials colluded with equally corrupt American officials to frame Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort in order to discredit Trump and benefit his 2016 political opponent Hillary Clinton. (Manafort is currently serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence due to his work in Ukraine.) At the same time, according to their theory, the Ukranian government was also aiding Biden in supposedly getting investigations into the Burisma gas company shut down because his son Hunter served on the board. Through this disinformation campaign, they targeted the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch whose anti-corruption initiatives in Ukraine put her in the crosshairs of the very Ukranian officials Giuliani needed to concoct this conspiracy theory.

Solomon’s columns at The Hill was the primary vehicle through which they injected this narrative into the public. Giuliani has stated that he “turned my stuff over to John Solomon,” but as more information about their work comes to light, Solomon’s involvement appears more direct. Instant messages recently released by the House Intelligence Committee show Parnas working as an intermediary between Solomon and at least two of the corrupt Ukranian prosecutors used to support this conspiracy, Yuri Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin. Giuliani appears to have made a deal with Lutsenko: If Lutsenko gives them dirt on Biden, he’ll get Yovanovitch fired.

Another key player in this scheme is Firtash, a Ukranian pro-Russian oligarch and former business associate of Paul Manafort who is in Austria fighting extradition to the United States to face charges related to a bribery conspiracy. In the summer of 2019, Firtash fired his legal team to hire diGenova and Toensing, who were working closely with Parnas, Giuliani, and Solomon. (As it turns out, diGenova and Toensing also represented Solomon.) Parnas has recently claimed that Firtash agreed to work with Giuliani and his cronies to help them discredit the Mueller investigation in exchange for getting his extradition case dropped. Parnas alleged that Solomon played a key role in helping him connect with Firtash, saying “Basically I was given certain documents by John Solomon that would validate to Dimitri Firtash that I was in the loop and that I knew what was going on, because Mr. Firstash is a gentleman that just doesn't see anybody.”

All told in 2019, Solomon published dozens of columns in The Hill aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation and planting the seeds of this new Ukrainian element of the conspiracy theory. Solomon brought the conspiracy theory to Fox News and Fox Business, where he has appeared at least 92 times since March 20 through the end of 2019 to push elements of the conspiracy theory, in some cases alongside his attorneys diGenova and Toensing. None of the three ever disclosed their relationship to each other. Hannity gushed over Solomon’s work, hosting him at least 65 times during this same time period. Solomon’s efforts paid off when Fox News announced in October 2019 that it was hiring him as a contributor; he had recently announced he was leaving The Hill.

Solomon’s work also became a critical part of Trump’s impeachment inquiry. Multiple witnesses testified that his reporting was inaccurate but nonetheless led to Yovanovitch’s removal.

“Just the News”

Solomon began his career as a mainstream reporter and has leveraged that experience to provide him cover for the decades of right-wing propaganda he has advanced since. A 2012 Columbia Journalism Review profile noted that “Solomon has a history of bending the truth to his storyline” and that he “was notorious for massaging facts to conjure phantom scandals.”

Peter Schweizer

Sharyl Attkisson

Attkisson conducted a typically softball interview with Trump in 2017, inviting him to make unchecked, demonstrably false claims about a wide range of issues.

David Brody

Lee Smith

Smith has described the impeachment inquiry as “a secret ritual conducted by a cult” with “Speaker Pelosi as the high priestess of the cult and Adam Schiff as a high priest.”

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Months after promising it and long after most people who paid attention knew the truth, The Hill published its internal review of former columnist John Solomon’s role in the Trump-Ukraine scandal. At The Hill, and now at Fox, Solomon promoted smears against key Democratic figures in an effort to aid the president through impeachment.

The review of Solomon’s actions at The Hill were conducted by the publication’s news staff under the direction of Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. The Hill claims that this undertaking makes the review independent, but the participation of its own staff indicates that it’s not really “independent” — which would have required some kind of outside oversight.

Further, the report is flawed in that it largely focuses on Solomon’s work in the Ukraine scandal, and ignores others stories in which he committed similar transgressions. For example, the report omits Solomon’s reporting on the Uranium One narrative and his misleading use of documents.

Despite these shortcomings, the report is still quite damning of both Solomon’s behavior and The Hill’s longtime tolerance of it.

The review explains how Solomon misused his official title as an opinion columnist, while seemingly offering up investigative news reports — and The Hill didn’t do anything about it, thus creating an opportunity for Fox News to further spread Solomon’s stories around. In fact, Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity have frequently called Solomon an investigative journalist for work that The Hill classified as opinion.
The Hill’s review goes into Solomon’s crucial omissions of his sources’ own agendas: “In certain columns, Solomon failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation. In other cases, the sources were his own attorneys.” Those attorneys are Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, also closely tied to Fox.
The review also further exposes Solomon’s role in working with Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who ran a shadow foreign policy campaign in Ukraine to smear Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Solomon is still appearing on Fox, even though Fox's own research department has a 162-page report detailing Solomon's propaganda work.

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Opinions

In its own document, Fox News rips Fox News host Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity on the set of his show on Aug. 7, 2019. (Frank Franklin II/AP)

Erik Wemple

Media critic

Feb. 7, 2020 at 12:06 p.m. PST

Each night, Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity engage in some shallow blather during the “handoff” between their ratings-killing programs. In Thursday night’s version, Hannity told Carlson, “You know the deep-state story is even getting bigger. There’s a whole new one developing. I’ll tell you about it privately.”

Cute, Hannity....

https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/hills-john-solomon-review-newspaper-tries-wash-its-hands-fox-news-contributor

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/reporter-disgraced-by-ukraine-scandal-gets-scathing-review-from-his-former-outlet-but-key-details-are-missing-from-the-story/

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Reporter disgraced by Ukraine scandal gets scathing review from his former outlet — but key details are missing from the story

Written by Cody Fenwick February 19, 2020

President Donald Trump’s sprawling Ukraine scandal consumed Washington politics for months and led to the third Senate impeachment trial of a president in U.S. history. Among the casualties in the uproar was the reputation of John Solomon, a writer for The Hill and personality on its online streaming channel, who was directly implicated in spreading misinformation at the heart of the scandal.

A new piece published by The Hill on Wednesday heavily scrutinized Solomon’s work for the outlet, pointing out conflicts of interest, errors in judgment, and failures on his part and that of the editorial process. But there are key questions that remain unanswered about Solomon’s role at The Hill, questions that demand more scrutiny for the outlet itself as it enabled the disgraced reporter.

Solomon and the Biden story

Solomon, who no longer works for The Hill but contributes to Fox News, received a scathing review in the new piece. In particular, his writing about former Vice President Joe Biden’s connections to Ukraine demonstrate significant failures on journalistic ethics.

His writing played a major role in supporting the false narrative that Biden had corruptly involved himself as vice president in Ukrainian politics to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who was working for the energy company Burisma in the country. As is now well known, Biden, with the backing of President Barack Obama’s administration, intervened in Ukraine in 2016 to oust Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Solomon’s columns, The Hill noted, supported the widely debunked notion that Biden was attempting to protect his son by undermining Shokin’s efforts to investigate Burisma. This allegation formed the basis of Trump’s demand over the course of many months in 2019 that Ukraine investigate Biden, his potential 2020 rival. The House of Representatives later determined this action to be a corrupt abuse of power, an illegitimate interference in the upcoming election, and an attempt to solicit a bribe.

But the claim remains unsupported and is contradicted by known facts, and Solomon’s basis for pushing the allegations appears highly dubious. Shokin, who was widely viewed as corrupt, was one of the people Solomon interviewed for his research, The Hill reported, even though his “reliability as a source is in question.”

“In certain columns, Solomon failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation,” the piece noted.

And Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer who acted as his point person in the Ukraine matter, said he was a key source for Solomon’s reporting as well, though Solomon denies it. Solomon did, however, work with Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who has since been indicted on charges of conspiracy and campaign finance law violations. The Hill said the extent and nature of Solomon’s work with Parnas “remain unclear but potentially troubling.” Parnas has turned over evidence that indicates extensive involvement with Solomon, Giuliani, and others.

Solomon also quoted or referred to lawyers Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, who represent clients with interests in Ukraine and some of the figures in the broader scandal. But Solomon did not disclose when referencing the pair that they also represented him legally. And The Hill noted that Solomon shared a draft of one of his columns with Parnas, diGenova and Toensing, in violation of the outlet’s editorial policy.

Was The Hill concerned about Solomon before his role in the Ukraine scandal was revealed?

In response to these and other serious problems in Solomon’s work, The Hill announced it will devote itself to implementing eight lessons learned from the episode. It also has added editor’s notes to Solomon’s columns to add more context or disclosures “that should have been highlighted at the time of his writings.” While this kind of public admission of failure and commitment to accountability is welcome and appropriate, there are some gaps in the outlet’s account.

Most notably, one event recounted in the piece remains underexplained: “Solomon also wrote numerous news articles for The Hill in 2017 and 2018. An editorial decision was made to label Solomon’s work as opinion as of May 14, 2018.”

For close followers of political journalism, this fact was always notable about Solomon’s work. Though The Hill typically has a sharp delineation between opinion pieces and news pieces, Solomon’s writing clearly blurred the line. For example, one headline read: “Ukrainian Embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016.” This sounds like it would be a normal news story at The Hill, but it was nevertheless labeled as an opinion piece.

The Hill acknowledged this problem:

While Solomon’s columns on Ukraine were labeled as opinion, they largely read like news stories.Adding to the potential confusion between opinion and news, Solomon was identified as “an award-winning journalist” in his column tagline. When appearing on television to discuss his Ukraine columns, Solomon was not typically labeled an opinion writer by the broadcast programs. The Hill did not contact television producers to label Solomon as an opinion columnist. It should have.

Lending further support to an impression that the columns were more like news stories, rather than opinion columns, Solomon’s Ukraine columns were longer than typical opinion pieces, in many cases contained what could be viewed or was identified by him as original reporting, and stuck to one general topic. This may have suggested to many readers it was an investigative series, which normally resides in the news department, rather than opinion. Solomon’s subsequent appearances on Fox News where he was often identified as an investigative journalist further potentially blurred the distinction between news and opinion in the minds of some readers.

Every news outlet is free to set its own standards, and the delicate balance between news, analysis, and opinion can be handled in a variety of ways. But The Hill acknowledged that Solomon’s work violated the standards it tried to set for itself, with the effect of potentially confusing readers.

But most critical is that The Hill changed the way it described Solomon’s columns’ in 2018. While once they were considered news, they were afterward considered opinion. What changed? No explanation is given.

The change is critical because it points to The Hill’s responsibility for Solomon’s work. Were his editors suddenly concerned about the nature of his work? Did they feel he was less credible than he had been before? Did they believe his previous credibility had been overrated? Importantly, pieces by opinion contributors such as Solomon in The Hill bear the tagline: “The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill.”

If there were concerns about Solomon’s reliability and the accuracy of the reporting, they were certainly warranted. As the review and subsequent events have shown, Solomon’s claims and reporting in his columns were highly dubious and in violation of journalistic standards.

But if this was the reason for designating his columns as opinion rather than news, the switch was wholly insufficient. As the review published Wednesday noted, “opinion” pieces aren’t free from the standards of journalism; they are “vetted for accuracy, conflicts of interest, and other relevant factors; when statements of fact are found to be incorrect, or conflicts of interest are found to have been undisclosed or overlooked, The Hill routinely corrects those or adds clarifications to columns.”

The worry, then, is that The Hill had reason to suspect Solomon’s reporting was dodgy, but it kept printing his columns anyway. Why would it have done this? One possible reason: Solomon’s pieces were quite popular and gained traction in right-wing circles. As the review noted:

Starting in March 2019, Solomon wrote a series of columns on Ukraine, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, as well as U.S. diplomats in Ukraine. Solomon discussed his columns on television, most notably on Sean Hannity‘s opinion show on Fox News. These appearances amplified the reach of Solomon’s work at The Hill.

The publication of Solomon’s columns was enormously consequential. It helped further a negative narrative about Biden that is, by all appearances, entirely baseless, which could have impacted his standing in the 2020 primary election. It may have even helped lead to the impeachment of Trump.

It’s worth asking, then, what The Hill’s editors knew about Solomon’s work and when they knew it.

AlterNet reached out to The Hill with questions about Solomon’s role and why his pieces were designated as opinion. This story will be updated with any response.

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Leaked documents show Fox News believes its guests are blatantly promoting ‘disinformation’: report

Written by Alex Henderson February 7, 2020

Throughout the Ukraine scandal and the impeachment of President Donald Trump, much of the commentary at Fox News went out of its way to be favorable to the president and unfavorable to Democrats (although Chris Wallace and legal analyst Andrew Napolitano were willing to offer some critical analysis and part company with their colleagues at times). This week, the Daily Beast has obtained a copy of an internal Fox News briefing book that shows serious doubts within the network about the credibility of guests who have discussed Ukraine with Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and other Trump sycophants at the right-wing cable news outlet.

The 162-page briefing book, according to Daily Beast reporters Will Sommer, Maxwell Tani and Andrew Kirell, is titled “Ukraine, Disinformation, & the Trump Administration” and was created by Fox News Senior Affairs Specialist Bryan S. Murphy. The book is highly critical of what Trump supporters ranging from Rudy Giuliani (Trump’s personal attorney) to attorneys Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova to Fox News contributor John Solomon have had to say about Ukraine.

Solomon, in the book, is accused of playing an “indispensable role” in a “disinformation campaign” with Ukraine — while Toensing and diGenova are accused of “spreading disinformation.” And the book alleges that Giuliani promoted disinformation in his effort to oust Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. During House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry last year, Yovanovitch testified that Giuliani pushed to have her removed from that position.

The research book, according to Beast reporters, “is especially critical of Solomon, a former opinion columnist at The Hill whose opinion pieces about Ukraine made unsubstantiated claims about its government interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Solomon’s pieces for The Hill fueled Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine, which eventually, helped lead to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.”

Solomon, the Beast reporters point out, has often been featured on Hannity’s show and portrayed as a crusading investigative reporter. But the briefing book accuses Solomon of “non-disclosure of conflicts, use of unreliable sources, publishing false and misleading stories, misrepresentation of sources and opaque coordination with involved parties.”

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empty whl

Republicans are not outraged by John Solomon’s hit job in the Hill targeting an Ambassador who has served presidents of both parties, they’re not outraged that Mike Flynn was writing an op-ed to be placed in the Hill that was paid for by the Turkish state even while getting Top Secret briefings with Trump as candidate.

They are, however, outraged that a Hill op-ed by Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US points out that America has made past commitments to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/sean-hannity-and-fox-news-are-up-to-their-hair-plugs-in-the-lev-parnas-affair/

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Sean Hannity and FOX News are up to their hair plugs in the Lev Parnas affair

Written by News Corpse, Daily Kos January 17, 2020

With each new day there are new and damning revelations affirming Donald Trump’s criminal behavior related to Ukraine and efforts to manufacture dirt on Joe Biden and subvert the 2020 election. The latest bombshells come from Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, whose nefarious activities include extorting Ukrainian President Zelensky and surveilling former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovich.

Parnas was interviewed on MSNBC Wednesday by Rachel Maddow in a wide ranging discussion that made it clear that Trump “knew exactly what was going on” and was lying about his feigned ignorance of Parnas and his mission. But the evidence of Trump’s guilt is abundant. Also interesting is the evidence of Hannity’s guilt, and that of Fox News.

Proof is emerging of Hannity’s relationship with the Giuliani Crew. Hannity himself is in bed with Parnas. They have had communications that resulted in Hannity tweeting about bogus allegations of Ukrainian interference in the U.S. election to help Hillary Clinton. That tweet was deleted, but remains archived. Trump, however, didn’t delete his subsequent tweet promoting Hannity’s story on the subject that same night. Likewise, The Giuliani Crew also communicated with Don Trump Jr, who posted a tweet attacking Yovanovich. So their is an unbroken chain of propaganda circling around between Trump, Giuliani, his Ukraine mob, Fox News, and back to Trump and his crime family.

What’s more, Parnas had much to share about the complicity of Fox News in Trump’s plot to coerce Zelensky into helping him smear Biden. The Giuliani team worked with right-wing author John Solomon to disseminate their lies. At the time Solomon worked for The Hill, but is now employed by Fox News. So naturally Hannity unleashed a furious assault on Parnas and the network that hosted him. Hannity’s rage was so intense that he lapsed into the sort of incoherent outbursts you might hear from a paranoid schizophrenic on a street corner shouting at passing cars (The video wouldn’t load on dKos, but you can see it here). He began…

“Yesterday, last-ditch effort, Hail Mary, smear job, yup the congenital liar attached new documents to the articles of impeachment. Including so-called evidence from a former Giuliani contact. Oh by the way on conspiracy TV. The guy is facing federal charges from the Southern District of New York. You don’t really want to mess with those people.”

Did you follow that? Apparently Hannity is upset that new incriminating evidence about Trump has come out. But he can’t rebut any of it, so he unloads a barrage of nasty adjectives. He glosses over the fact that Parnas is working with Trump’s lawyer, but hones in on his having been indicted. And while Hannity is adamant that that’s a problem for Parnas, it doesn’t seem to be a problem for other Trump comrades who are under indictment or already convicted, including his campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his national security adviser Michael Flynn, his personal attorney Michael Cohen, and his fixer Roger Stone. Hannity continued…

“So [Parnas] goes right to state-run MSDNC conspiracy channel media. Keep in mind when people like him, trying to stay out of jail, think about this, how many times have we heard from the liberals ‘oh you can’t waterboard, or use enhanced interrogation because people will say anything, they’ll lie to make it end.’ Well people trying to stay out of jail, in my humble opinion, they’ll say anything.”

Now Hannity thinks that MSNBC is “state-run” media. You have to wonder what state Hannity thinks that it’s being run out of. It must be the “Deep State.” And it’s cute that Hannity is trying to connect an indicted defendant giving testimony to waterboarding. No one has tortured Parnas. He is simply doing what many defendants do when faced with prosecution. He’s turning state’s evidence. That’s a voluntary action to secure a lighter sentence. And it does not have the pitfalls of torture, where victims will indeed say anything to make it stop. A defendant providing testimony must tell the truth or any agreement made with prosecutors is null and void.

However, Hannity’s description of defendants saying anything to stay out of jail actually fits Trump much better. After all, he is known to be a pathological liar anyway. And he doesn’t have any agreement with prosecutors to worry about voiding. He’s lying through his capped teeth to avoid prison. And he clearly doesn’t care what he says, or how ludicrous the lie, if he thinks it will either deflect from his guilt or help him to evade accountability. The whole lot of them are neck deep in criminal behavior. And if more disclosures like those Parnas is serving up come to pass, they are all going to be sharing a cell block.

sorts of frauds, miscreants, liars, grifters, and charlatans are drawn to right-wing media. Even amid such a wretched group, it stands out when multiple witnesses testify to Congress that a conservative columnist colluded with agents of the president to advance a fabricated story intended to blow up an entire presidential election. Even more so, he did that while aiding in a plot to extort a foreign government into supporting the effort, which has led to the president of the United States being impeached.

For all of that and more, **John Solomon is the 2019 Misinformer of the Year.

Media Matters' President Angelo Carusone announced the "award" on Morning Joe, and explained how Solomon was the "proximate cause" of Trump's impeachment.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/report-points-to-trump-1-as-the-ringleader-of-a-global-conspiracy/

"huge" rudy

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Report points to Trump, ‘-1,’ as the ringleader of a global conspiracy

Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board December 4, 2019

The House Intelligence Committee released its report Tuesday. In it were phone call records showing frequent contact between Rudy Giuliani and the White House. The records suggest in the most granular detail yet that the president of the United States is the leader of an international criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people.

But the call records do more than that. They offer a teachable moment. They provide an illustration, in miniature, of what a conspiracy looks like, and why it’s morally and legally wrong for the head of the world’s oldest democracy to engage in such conduct.

The House Intelligence report does not say Giuliani called Trump. Instead, it says the president’s personal attorney called a number designated as “-1.” Adam Schiff, the panel’s chairman, said his committee is investigating whether “-1” is Trump’s phone. The timing of calls and other strong circumstantial evidence, however, point to him.

Joe Biden announced his candidacy on April 25. Leading up to that date, Giuliani, Lev Parnas and John Solomon were in frequent contact, according to the call logs. Parnas was one of Giuliani’s henchmen. He’s now under federal indictment for campaign-finance violations. Solomon was a reporter for The Hill, a Washington newspaper.

As mentioned in previous editions of the Editorial Board, Parnas, under Giuliani’s direction, connected Solomon to Yuriy Lutsenko. Lutsenko used to be Ukraine’s top prosecutor. He was hugely corrupt, because he was intimately linked to Vladimir Putin. In interviews with Solomon, Lutsenko alleged that Joe Biden, when he was the vice president, tried to shield his son, Hunter Biden, from criminal investigation in Ukraine (a lie) and that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered with the 2016 presidential election (also a lie.) Lev Parnas was deeply involved in Solomon’s “journalism.” He was present at his interviews with Yuriy Lutsenko, according to reporting in Pro Publica.

This we knew. What didn’t know was the timing.

On the same day Joe Biden announced his presidential campaign, John Solomon wrote a falsehood-laden column “alleging that Ukraine had planted Russia collusion allegations against the Trump campaign,” according to the Post. “The column also described Biden’s efforts to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor and questioned whether Biden had acted to protect his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company facing an investigation, as the fired prosecutor has alleged.”

Coincidence? Unlikely.

The very same day, April 25, Giuliani received a call from “-1” (i.e., Trump). Giuliani then called Sean Hannity at Fox. A while later, Trump appeared on Hannity’s show to comment on Solomon’s report in The Hill. “That sounds like big, big stuff,” he said.

It could have been a coincidence, but again, unlikely. As I noted last week, Parnas’ attorney said he met regularly with the “BLT Team,” a name taken from the restaurant where the group convened several times a week on the second floor of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The BLT team included Parnas, Giuliani, Solomon, attorneysJoe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, and US Rep. Devin Nunes’ chief aide.

Coincidence isn’t the right word to describe a president’s dirty lawyer getting a dirty prosecutor to tell a dirty reporter the president’s Democratic rival is dirty, and then getting a dirty TV host to ask the president to comment on the dirty reporter’s dirt.

The right word to describe all that is conspiracy.

Which can be criminal. Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chief, is now serving time in federal prison for defrauding the United States. Legally, conspiracy doesn’t require an underlying crime. Prosecutors were only required to show Manafort conspired to “impair or obstruct the lawful function of any part of the government.”

I don’t know if the president’s conduct meets a statutory standard. I do think it meets a political one. Trump, as “-1,” is the ringleader of a global conspiracy to defraud the American people of their right to consent to his leadership. There is no such thing as legitimate consent when presidents collude with enemies foreign and domestic to obstruct the free and fair process by which all Americans exercise self-governance.

This is a giant of a scandal. It dwarfs Watergate. It boggles the mind of ordinary Americans to contemplate the wide array of seedy underworld characters involved in a vast global conspiracy. (Another side of this involves another dirty former Ukrainian prosecutor who did a favor for a Ukrainian mobster fighting extradition to the US. Dmitry Firtash, the mobster, got Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor, to say Biden was dirty. That wonGiuliani’s attention. His friends diGenova and Toensing went to the US Department of Justice to plead with the US attorney general to go easy on Firtash.)

As I said, giant.

But these call logs bring the vastness of the conspiracy down to a human scale. Donald Trump talked to Giuliani, who talked to Parnas, who talked to Lutsenko, who talked to Solomon, who talked to Giuliani, who talked to Hannity, who talked to Donald Trump.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-the-hills-john-solomon-undermined-journalism

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How The Hill’s John Solomon undermined journalism

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington MonthlyDecember 6, 2019

With the release of the report from the House Intelligence Committee on their impeachment hearings, Trump’s enablers are outraged that Representative Adam Schiff got access to the phone records of key players in Giuliani’s extortion scheme. According to Byron York, of particular concern is the fact that those records include telephone calls by John Solomon.

Finally, the publication of John Solomon’s records raised still other issues, this time about freedom of the press. In the excitement over the Democratic report, there was little or no discussion about the problems that might arise from the House Intelligence Committee publishing a journalist’s phone records. But in the past, at least when President Trump was not involved, similar issues have been a concern of press advocates…

Searching media coverage Tuesday and Wednesday, there was little or no discussion on whether Schiff’s disclosure touched on Solomon’s First Amendment rights. Solomon is the target of much criticism in mainstream reporting, but he is a journalist who should enjoy the same protections as others in his profession.

York isn’t the only one complaining. The guy who smeared a U.S. ambassador with a mountain of lies in order to get her fired actually had the nerve to talk about a lack of decency.

The problem with claiming that someone like Solomon deserves the protections of the first amendment is that he wasn’t acting as a journalist. While he calls himself an “investigative journalist,” he’s not simply a conservative reporter as some would suggest. He’s been a political operative for years now.

I first noticed stories by Solomon when I began tracking down the origin of the smears about the Clinton Foundation. He wrote volumes spreading those lies. As it turns out, one of his sources was Victoria Toensing, a pattern that has persisted to the current impeachment hearings about Ukraine. At the time, Toensing was representing an undercover FBI informant who claimed he could blow the whistle on Clinton corruption.

What we eventually learned is that the Justice Department determined that they had “serious credibility concerns” with Toensing’s client and that there were inconsistencies between his testimony and the documents they had obtained as part of their investigation.

You might, however, notice a pattern here when I point out that, while Solomon was collaborating with Toensing, the same lies about the informant were being repeated by Trump on Twitter and by Representative Devin Nunes on Fox News. The cast of characters looks very familiar, doesn’t it?

Solomon went on to write about the Trump-Russia investigation. He specifically focused in on the Steele dossier and often quoted anonymous sources that sounded an awful lot like members of the House Intelligence Committee.

Since March, Solomon has been writing articles related to Giuliani’s Ukrainian racket – including smears against Ambassador Marie Yavanovitch, claims that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, and attacks on the Bidens. He admitted that Lev Parnas is the one who connected him to the source of much of his material—former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko.

Documents shared with congress by the State Department inspector general give us an inside look at how these kinds of stories were coordinated.

Included in the roughly 50-page packet was an email from Solomon to Toensing, diGenova, and Parnas previewing an article he’d written that was not yet published…

After that email became public, Solomon claimed he was simply fact-checking the piece before it was published. But Toensing, diGenova, and Parnas are not mentioned in the article, raising the possibility that the trio, who had been working to find evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens in Ukraine, had been working directly with Solomon on the story.

In other words, Solomon was running the article by his handlers to get their input and/or approval prior to publication.

Just as we saw with the efforts to smear the Clinton Foundation, the team of Toensing and diGenova would sign on as lawyers to represent people who had dirt on Trump’s opponents to sell, usually in exchange for favorable treatment by Trump’s Justice Department. Parnas or Toensing connected those people with Solomon, who wrote the stories that were spread by Devin Nunes, Donald Trump, and a whole host of right wing news outlets. In the midst of all of that, Solomon was also a client of Toensing and diGenova.

It is in that sense that I would challenge Solomon’s claims to be a journalist. Just like Giuliani, Toensing, diGenova, Parnas, and Nunes, he was working as a political operative on Trump’s behalf. Beyond the fact that he spread lies that benefited the most corrupt individual to ever serve as a U.S. president, he contributed to the undermining of journalism, which is equally disturbing. Any time a political operative disguises themselves as a journalist, it infects the entire culture with suspicions about who we can trust.

Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.

Giuliani reveals he was feeding information to John Solomon

11/20/19 5:50 PM EST

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manafort, solomon black ledger nunes

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/19/republicans-use-impeachment-hearings-smear-ukrainian-helped-expose-manafort

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Republicans Urge Americans to Follow Them Through the Fox News Looking Glass on Ukraine

Robert Mackey

November 19 2019

AMERICANS WHO DO NOT get all of their information about Ukraine from Fox News or right-wing Twitter and Facebook feeds have no doubt been baffled by the Republican cross-examination of witnesses called to give public testimony in the House impeachment hearings.

There have been frequent, context-free references to something called “the black ledger,” invocations of the supposedly nefarious role of George Soros in supporting Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, and even suggestions that Donald Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, who is serving seven and a half years in federal prison for financial crimes stemming from his work in Ukraine, might have been framed.

All the President’s Crimes

Read Our Complete Coverage

All the President’s Crimes

The resulting spectacle has confused viewers unfamiliar with a series of conspiratorial reports about Ukraine from the conservative columnist John Solomon, whose work has been promoted relentlessly on Fox, and caused many to simply tune the proceedings out. Virginia Tilley, a political scientist at Southern Illinois University, suggested on Twitter that making the impeachment hearings nearly unwatchable might even be the Republican strategy.

Virginia Tilley

@unpetrifiedop

Scariest thing about our national crisis: lying GOP has made even impeachment hearing so repellent that few can bear to listen. They win by just repelling us with inane babble, demoralizing the principled with shrieking stupidities. Is this how democracy dies? Through BS fatigue?

This bizarre performance stretched into a second week on Tuesday, as Republicans sought to distract from the testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council expert on Ukraine, and Jennifer Williams, a Russia adviser for Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom heard President Donald Trump press his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to open sham investigations of his Democratic political rivals.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the senior Republican on the House intelligence committee, devoted a significant part of his opening statement at Tuesday’s first hearing to complaining that recent criticism of Solomon’s shoddy, misleading reports on Ukraine’s supposed “meddling in the 2016 election to oppose the Trump campaign” was some sort of plot directed by the mainstream media’s Democratic “puppet masters.”

Justin Baragona

@justinbaragona

Devin Nunes uses his opening statement this morning to blast reporters for being very nasty and unfair to John Solomon.

Embedded video

“The media,” Nunes said, “is furiously smearing and libeling Solomon.”

Nunes went on to claim that there was a “concerted campaign by the media to discredit and to disown some of their own colleagues,” including Solomon and New York Times reporter Ken Vogel. What that characterization elides, however, is that there are good reasons to question the work of both Solomon and Vogel, who have helped propel far-right conspiracy theories about Ukraine by choosing to focus on certain facts and omit others. Solomon, whose work is now being reviewed by his former employer, The Hill, also recently joined Fox News as a contributor, which makes him a primary source of information about Ukraine for Americans overly reliant on Fox News, including the president of the United States.

In the hearings, the government officials called to testify so far have seemed at a loss when asked by Republicans to comment on claims of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election presented as fact by the president’s defenders in Congress.

Bill Taylor, the senior American diplomat in Ukraine, looked dumbfounded last Wednesday when he was asked by Steve Castor, the lawyer for House Republicans, if he would agree that the decision by a Ukrainian journalist and lawmaker to publicize evidence of Manafort’s crimes during the 2016 campaign proved that “there were elements of the Ukrainian establishment that were out to get the president.”

Heath Mayo

@HeathMayo

In a single clip, you can see here the utter disconnect between Taylor’s reality-based worldview and the conspiracy-based partisan blinders of the current GOP. This is precisely the reaction Castor deserved.

The GOP used to be more like Taylor.

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As Fox News viewers are well aware, the so-called black ledger mentioned repeatedly by Castor refers to a book of handwritten accounting records discovered among the papers of the deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party after he fled to Russia following a popular uprising in 2014.

Those records, which were posted online by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau in August 2016, appeared to document secret payments, including $12.7 million to Yanukovych’s former political adviser, Manafort. One day after the records were made public, Sergii Leshchenko, a Ukrainian investigative journalist who was elected to parliament after the uprising, displayed pages from the ledger at a news conference in Kyiv, and Manafort resigned from Trump’s campaign.

[111819_corruption-1574129738In August 2016, Sergii Leshchenko, a Ukrainian investigative journalist then serving in parliament, showed reporters records of apparent secret payments to Paul Manafort, a former adviser to Ukraine’s deposed president. He was accompanied by Sevgil Musayeva-Borovyk, the editor of Ukrainska Pravda, which published the leaked records, and Anton Marchuk, an anti-corruption expert. Photo: Sergii Leshchenko, via YouTube]

Leshchenko, an anti-corruption activistwho continued to work as a journalist while serving in parliament, has never been, as Castor suggested, a pillar of Ukraine’s establishment, so the idea that his publication of pages from the ledger was akin to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election is absurd.

Leshchenko himself explained in a September Washington Post opinion piece that his motivation for exposing Manafort’s corruption was not, as Republicans now claim, part of a Ukrainian government plot to defeat Trump.

“I will always be angry at Manafort,” Leshchenko wrote. “His work contributed greatly to Yanukovych’s election victory in 2010; Yanukovych then used his position as president to enrich himself and his inner circle. I have no doubt that Yanukovych paid Manafort for his services out of the funds he robbed from Ukrainian taxpayers.”

“My desire to expose Manafort’s doings was motivated by the desire for justice,” he continued. “Neither Hillary Clinton, nor Joe Biden, nor John Podesta, nor George Soros asked me to publish the information from the black ledger. I wanted to obtain accountability for the lobbyist whose client immersed Ukraine in a blood bath during the Revolution of Dignity and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine, when Yanukovych called on Russia to send troops.”

Despite claims by Manafort to the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, that the ledger was a forgery, bank records described in an FBI search warrant, and reviewed by the Associated Press, confirmed that at least $1.2 million in payments listed in the records next to Manafort’s name were actually deposited in one of his firm’s bank accounts in Virginia. (A record of one of those deposits was subsequently made public by Leshchenko.)

Andrew Kramer, the New York Times foreign correspondent who first revealed the secret payments to Manafort, also reported at the time that others in Ukraine who were named in the ledger had confirmed that the records were genuine.

Undeterred by the fact that there is no credible evidence that these records were forged, the lawyer for the House Republicans suggested on Friday to Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was forced out following a smear campaign by Trump loyalists, that “some have questioned whether the information that Mr. Leshchenko published was all correct, or whether it was doctored.” Yovanovitch, who is clearly not a dedicated viewer of Fox News, said that she had never heard that false claim.

Justin Baragona

@justinbaragona

So the GOP's counsel is now apparently on a fishing expedition, introducing conspiracies straight from Hannity world about the Ukrainian black ledgers featuring Paul Manafort and asking Marie Yovanovitch whether she's aware they may have been "doctored"

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“It is a real document, with real signatures,” Leshchenko told me in a telephone interview in September, explaining that it had been examined by Ukrainian law enforcement experts. “Giuliani is continuing to misinform American society” about the ledger, Leshchenko added, “by saying it’s fraudulent.”

On Friday, Leshchenko, who has been appalled by the Republican effort to rehabilitate Manafort by attacking him, drew attention on Twitter to a section of Yovanovitch’s testimony where she told Castor: “I think from a Ukrainian perspective — I realize we are looking at this from an American perspective — from a Ukrainian perspective, what Mr. Leshchenko and others who were looking into the black ledger were most concerned about was actually not Mr. Manafort, but former president Yanukovych and his political party and the amount of money that they allegedly stole and where it went.”

Leshchenko

@Leshchenkos

To Steve Castor re his question Masha Yovanovitch. 1) Black Ledger was never found phony document. 2) Expertise of Ukraine law enforcement authorities proved that there are authentic signatures 3) Mr. Manafort was paid by money stolen from my country https://youtu.be/UbC-y-V-FtY?t=1948 …

YouTube ?@YouTube

When Castor then asked Yovanovitch if she could see why Trump might have seen the publication of records damaging Manafort by a Ukrainian lawmaker as an attack on him, the former ambassador replied that Leshchenko is an investigative journalist, “and he got access to the black ledger and he published it as I think journalists would do.”

“I don’t have any information to suggest that that was targeting President Trump,” she added.

But if there is no credible evidence that the payment records incriminating Manafort were fake, how did the president’s defenders on cable news and in the House impeachment inquiry get this idea? In an interview with CNN in September, Giuliani referred to the ledger as “a completely fraudulent document that was produced in order to begin the investigation of Manafort.” People in Ukraine who knew about this plot, he claimed, “were trying to get to us, but they were being blocked by the ambassador, who was a Obama appointee, in Ukraine, who was holding back this information.”

That was a reference to extremely dubious reporting from Washington by Solomon, who relied on the word of a disgraced Ukrainian prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky. Last year,Kholodnytskywas wiretapped by Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption bureau and caught on tape advising suspects in a corruption probe on how not to get caught. Kholodnytsky told Solomon that the ledger “was not authenticated.”

After Kholodnytsky was caught in that sting operation, Ambassador Yovanovitch, who was the top American diplomat in Ukraine until May, called for him to be fired. Kholodnytsky retaliated by helping Solomon and other right-wing pundits smear Yovanovitch as an anti-Trump, deep-state plotter, prompting the State Department to recall her from Kyiv.

Solomon’s other main source for the claim that the ledger was false turns out to have been Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort’s former Ukrainian business partner,who has been linked to Russian intelligence and was indicted last year and charged with obstruction of justice by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Despite the questionable nature of his sources, Solomon’s reporting that the black ledger records were fake has been accepted as fact by the president and his surrogates. In June, two years after the bank records of payments to Manafort’s firm had been revealed, Solomon appeared on Fox Business Network, telling Lou Dobbs that the black ledger “was likely false, likely fake, a fraud.”

Lou Dobbs

@LouDobbs

#DeepState – @jsolomonReports: “FBI agents must use evidence that’s factually true. In this case, they cited the black ledger in 4 search warrants after they knew it was false, fake & a fraud. They knew the docs were wrong & still put it in the search warrant.” #MAGA #Dobbs

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Solomon seems to have concluded that the black ledger records were fake by screening out all evidence to the contrary. That technique was on full display in a long Skype interview he conducted with Leshchenko in July, in which he essentially ignored the Ukrainian’s clear explanation that Manafort’s bank records suggested the ledger was real.

Later in that interview — which was posted on YouTube in two parts (1 and 2) — Leshchenko told Solomon that the ledger was not introduced as evidence in criminal proceedings because the chain of custody for the records was unclear (the pages in his possession had come to him in an email from an anonymous source).

Solomon responded by claiming that the ledger must be fake because the former accountant for the corrupt former president Yanukovych’s party insisted that it “was not an accurate representation of his books, and that his books, the official books of the party, burned during a looting” of the party’s headquarters in 2014.

Treating the accountant’s claim as undisputed fact, Solomon then asked Leshchenko if he had any regrets about releasing some of the ledger, “knowing that it turned out to be not an accurate representation,” of the truth. “No,” Leshchenko replied, since “we have no proof that the black ledger is a fake document.”

The smearing of Leshchenko by Solomon’s fans in Congress comes as other anti-corruption activists, like Daria Kaleniuk of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, known as Anatc, have also found themselves condemned by the president’s allies based on misleading reports from the same journalist. The unhinged accusation against Kaleniuk is that her group is supposedly collaborating in a plot secretly orchestrated by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has funded civil society groups in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.

In his CNN interview in September, Giuliani referred to Kaleniuk’s group as “Soros’s charity or whatever the hell it was, Antac,” and claimed falsely that the activists had “developed all of the dirty information that ended up being a false document that was created in order to incriminate Manafort.”

In fact, Antac, which has received less than 20 percent of its funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations, played no role in the publication of the ledger.

Behind all these lies there is an ugly truth. Under the guise of fighting corruption, the Trump administration and its Republican allies have thrown the full force of the United States government, and Fox News, into supporting what amounts to a counter-revolution in Ukraine. In a stunning reversal, Trump and his supporters have taken the side of the corrupt oligarchs and former officials ousted in 2014, as they seek to claw back power by undermining the reformers and anti-corruption activists supported by the Obama administration, under the leadership of former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Vice President Joe Biden....

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trump inc pod

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-ukraine-scandal-follow-the-money

Ukraine scandal is mostly viewed through the prism of politics — an attempt by President Donald Trump to gain an advantage over a political opponent. But, as most things are, it’s also about money — and we found lots of it flowing between key players in the scandal.

On this week’s episode of “Trump, Inc.,” we follow the money.

First, Let’s Meet Our Cast of Ukraine Players

Richest among them is Dmitry Firtash, an oligarch who has been battling to avoid an extradition flight to Chicago, where he faces federal charges of bribery. The Department of Justice has described Firtash as an “upper-echelon” associate “of Russian organized crime.” (He denies the charges and says the prosecution is politically motivated.)

Firtash made his fortune as a behind-the-scenes middleman selling heavily marked-up Russian gas to Europe. So he wasn’t happy when Vice President Joe Biden pushed Ukraine to roll back corruption. After Biden gave a speech in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2015 saying the energy sector “needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles — not sweetheart deals,” Firtash called it “repulsive.”

Firtash hired attorneys Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, who frequently appear on TV defending Trump over Ukraine. The two also represent journalist John Solomon, whose stories ended up spreading Ukraine disinformation.

And then there’s Lev Parnas, who translated for Firtash’s legal team and is an associate of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. “I’m the best-paid interpreter in the world,” Parnas reportedly said.

Parnas and his partner Igor Fruman were indicted in October over allegedly funneling foreign money into U.S. elections. (They deny the charges.)

Firtash and the rest of the Ukraine players have all been busy with a flurry of intertwined business ventures. Let’s take a look:

Business Venture No. 1: Natural Gas and the Firing of an Ambassador

At the same time Parnas and Fruman were suddenly becoming big Republican donors, they were trying to leverage those new political connections to advance their needs in the natural gas industry in Ukraine. Their goals would have been very profitable for Firtash.

It didn’t work. But they did get something else they were pushing for, specifically, the firing of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. “They were interested in having a different ambassador at post, I guess for — because they wanted to have business dealings in Ukraine, or additional business dealings,” Yovanovitch testified. “I didn’t understand that, because nobody at the embassy had ever met those two individuals."

Business Venture No. 2: Submarines, Yachts, Real Estate and Other Things Rich People Like

Fruman, we’ve learned, has an interesting company, Otrada Luxury Group, that appears to be catering to those with lots of disposable income. A partial list of goods, according to the company’s brochure: jewelry and expensive watches, yachts, speedboats, private planes, high-end real estate and, of course, submarines and amphibious vehicles.

We went to the U.S. address listed on a brochure. It’s a rent-by-the-hour office. No one there seemed to know of Fruman or Otrada.

Business Venture No. 3: Cybersecurity Consulting Starring Giuliani

An intriguingly named company owned by Parnas, Fraud Guarantee, paid Giuliani $500,000 for consulting. The Wall Street Journal dug into the company and could find no actual business or customers. Giuliani said the money came from a domestic source, but he declined to say from whom.

Business Ventures No. 4 and No. 5: Giuliani’s Podcasts

Although nothing came of that effort, Giuliani is still apparently looking to get into the podcast game. He was overheard during a recent lunch discussing a potential podcast focused on the impeachment. “He is considering several options,” a Giuliani spokeswoman told CNN. “Many Americans want to hear directly from Rudy Giuliani.”As ProPublica has reported, Giuliani was also working on a podcast with The Hill, the publication that ended up passing along Ukraine disinformation. Giuliani said he was “never paid” for the work and said it was a “perfectly legitimate situation.” The Hill said it had been planning a “podcast network with a multitude of political voices from all sides.”

And Then There Is the Jewish Refugee Charity

Fruman is also at the helm of a U.S.-based nonprofit that raises money for a Jewish refugee settlement outside Kyiv. The nonprofit, American Friends of Anatevka, sponsored a trip Giuliani was planning to take to Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump’s opponents. Giuliani is also the settlement’s honorary mayor. American Friends of Anatevka is currently advertising a million-dollar match for donations. Its tax returns show it had less than $1,500 in income in 2017.

Listen to it all unfold here.

omg this could finish djt? 10/18/19

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1119 pro pub

giuliani Was Close to a Podcast Deal With the News Outlet That Spread His Ukraine Conspiracies

The president’s lawyer was negotiating a possible deal to co-produce a podcast with the publication — and The Hill’s John Solomon helped with the talks even as his articles were used in a disinformation campaign.

by Mike Spies, Jake Pearson and J. David McSwane

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-a-veteran-reporter-worked-with-giuliani-associates-to-launch-the-ukraine-conspiracy

no lnx many

How a Veteran Reporter Worked with Giuliani’s Associates to Launch the Ukraine Conspiracy

Lev Parnas, recently indicted for foreign influence in U.S. elections, collaborated closely with The Hill’s John Solomon to fuel spurious allegations involving the Bidens and Ukraine.

by Jake Pearson, Mike Spies and J. David McSwane Oct. 25, 2:10 p.m. EDT

John Solomon in his office as executive editor of The Washington Times, in 2008. (Gerald Martineau/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

The 45th President and His Administration

Watching from the control booth of The Hill’s TV studio was Lev Parnas, who helped arrange the interview.

Interviews and company records obtained by ProPublica show Parnas worked closely with Solomon to facilitate his reporting, including helping with translation and interviews. Solomon also shared files he obtained related to the Biden allegations with Parnas, according to a person familiar with the exchange. And the two men shared yet another only recently revealed connection: Solomon’s personal lawyers connected the journalist to Parnas and later hired the Florida businessman as a translator in their representation of a Ukrainian oligarch.

Parnas’ unusual and extensive involvement in the production of the stories has not been previously reported.

Solomon, 52, told ProPublica his reporting was accurate and defended his sourcing, saying, “No one knew there was anything wrong with Lev Parnas at the time.”

More than a year before his Ukraine columns published,The Hill had serious concerns about Solomon’s credibility and conflicts of interest. Hill staffers began raising alarms, including the paper’s publisher at the time, who warned in an internal memo that Solomon was engaged in “reputation killing stuff” by mixing business with journalism.

In response, The Hill’s management took steps to limit Solomon’s reporting — rebranding him as an opinion writer — but did not prevent him from writing his Ukraine series.

“Nothing I did would have put The Hill’s reputation at risk,” Solomon said.

Solomon came to The Hill, which specializes in inside-the-Beltway news, in July 2017 after adecades long career that included stretches at The Associated Press, The Washington Post and The Washington Times. His work has earned accolades, including a series examining what the FBI knew ahead of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He is now a contributor to Fox News.

Brought in as an executive vice president overseeing a new digital video enterprise now known asHill.TV, Solomon continued to operate as a journalist, publishing news articles in the paper, while also playing a role on The Hill’s business side. That began to trouble colleagues within months of his hiring, according to internal memos and interviews with current and former staffers.

Solomon “pops by the advertising bullpen almost daily to discuss big deals he’s about to close,” Derlega wrote, adding, “If a media reporter gets ahold of this story, it could destroy us.”

“While I highlight this one example, John has been given the freedom, and possibly financial upside, to work with advertisers while clearly sitting within editorial,” Derlega wrote.

Six months later, in April 2018, Derlega was forced out of The Hill. The Hill’s owner, president and top editors haven’t responded to detailed questions about Derlega’s memos and Solomon’s tenure at the paper. A spokesman for the advertiser, Job Creators Network, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

From this new perch, Solomon broke in early spring what seemed to be an explosive piece of news: claims by Yuriy Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s top prosecutor, that a U.S. diplomat, serving under President Barack Obama, presented him a list of people and groups he could not prosecute. Additionally, Lutsenko said that he was reviving a probe into the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, seeking to determine whether Joe Biden, as vice president, interfered with the initial inquiry to protect his son Hunter, who sat on Burisma’s board.

Parnas watchedLutsenko’s interview live, inside the control room of The Hill’s TV studio. Solomon explained that he called in the businessman to act as a translator, but in the end his services were not needed.

Solomon recalls first encountering Parnas through Pete Sessions, the once-powerful Texas Republican member of Congress who is now in the middle of the Trump impeachment inquiry. Sessions accepted campaign donations from Parnas and Fruman, and had met with the two men as they sought to oust an American diplomat in Ukraine. Later, Sessions wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, urging him to replace the envoy Marie Yovanovitch, who had been the subject of extensive criticism in the conservative media. She was later fired and is a key witness for House Democrats trying to impeach the president.

Sessions, who has denied knowledge of the campaign finance scheme laid out by prosecutors, told ProPublica that he has no connection to Solomon.

“I don’t know John,” he said.

Solomon says his personal attorneys, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, a husband-and-wife legal team that regularly represents conservative luminaries, set up his first formal meeting with Parnas. He asserted that his editors “were aware” that he was seeking help from diGenova and Toensing on matters concerning Ukraine.

[Read More

A Brief Guide to Giuliani’s Questionable Friends in Ukraine — “Trump, Inc.” Podcast

Rudy Giuliani has been looking for “corruption” in Ukraine. It’s easy to find among the very people he’s befriended.]

But a month after Lutsenko’s Hill TV appearance, the former Ukrainian prosecutor backed off of his allegations.He told a Ukrainian-language publication that he himself was the one who asked the U.S. ambassador for the list of supposedly untouchable figures. The State Department said there was never any list, calling it an “outright fabrication.” And Lutsenko told the Los Angeles Times last month that he saw no evidence of wrongdoing that would justify an investigation into Biden’s son’s business dealings in his country.

Justin Elliott contributed to this report.

Filed under: Trump Administration

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https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/how-conservative-writer-john-solomon-served-conduit-rudy-giulianis-ukraine-conspiracy

At the center of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump lies a disinformation campaign led by his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani that was aided and abetted by conservative writer John Solomon. Through Solomon, Giuliani injected his disinformation campaign straight into the heart of conservative media -- Fox News -- with seemingly full knowledge of at least some at Fox. And eventually, Solomon landed a job at the network.

It is now known that Trump blessed Giuliani to run a shadow foreign policy campaign in Ukraine, in which he sought information that would undermine the intelligence community's findings that Russia interfered in our 2016 election to benefit Trump. Giuliani was also trying to dig up dirt to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, a front-runner to challenge Trump in the 2020 election.

Much attention has focused on Giuliani’s actions and the shady cast of characters he worked with, but less has been paid to the right-wing media figures who colluded with the president’s lawyer to make his smear campaign public -- a plan that came dangerously close to succeeding.

What follows is a case study in how right-wing media work hand in hand with Trump cronies to smear his enemies, undermine democracy, and defend the president at all costs.

Here’s how it went down.

Key Takeaways

Rudy Giuliani, working with con men and Trump cronies, pursued an “investigation” in Ukraine that he claimed showed both Ukrainian collusion with Democrats in 2016 and evidence that then-Vice President Joe Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine to benefit his son.
In March, Giuliani sent the results of his investigation to the State Department to be investigated and to conservative columnist John Solomon.
The same month, Solomon began publishing a series of columns that mirrored the sourcing and claims Giuliani made in his State Department dossier.
Over the next six months, Solomon published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which focused primarily on Ukraine.
During that same time period, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times.
Fifty-one of those appearances were on Hannity, whose host dutifully promoted Solomon’s scoops and wove them into his ever-evolving conspiracy theory that deep state elements in the government have been plotting to overthrow Trump.
On October 5, John Solomon landed a job at Fox.

Key players

Rudy Giuliani -- the president’s personal attorney who has traveled around the globe attempting to dig up dirt on Democrats and discredit the Russia investigation on Trump’s behalf.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- two Soviet-born con men with ties to Ukraine who worked with Giuliani to concoct the disinformation campaign and to get the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine fired, reportedly in the hopes of advancing their business interests in the country. The two have since been arrested for campaign finance violations related to making allegedly illegal campaign donations to Republican candidates and committees, as well as a pro-Trump super PAC. They also reportedly worked for Dmitry Firtash.

Dmitry Firtash -- a Ukrainian pro-Russian oligarch and former businessassociate of Paul Manafort who is in Austria fighting extradition to the United States to face charges related to a bribery conspiracy. At the same time Parnas and Fruman were working with Giuliani, the two were reportedly also working on Firtash’s behalf to push for the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine as part of a plan to install new leadership at Ukraine’s Naftogaz gas company. Part of this plan reportedly would have included Naftogaz paying “Firtash a debt of more than $200 million that Firtash believes he is owed by the company.” NBC reported that while this was happening, Firtash “was playing a key role in the effort by Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani to hunt for dirt on Donald Trump's political opponents in Ukraine.”

Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova -- two attorneys closely tied to Trump who also worked with Giuliani to support his efforts in Ukraine. The duo are known for their role in bolstering conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation and at one point were considered to join Trump’s personal legal team. The two quietly represent Dmitry Firtash in fighting his extradition to the United States. They hired Parnas as an “interpreter” to work with them on the Firtash case while Parnas was also working with Giuliani.

John Solomon -- a conservative columnist who until recently was the executive vice president of The Hill. Solomon was the conduit through which Giuliani, Parnas, Toensing and diGenova planted their stories in order to spread their coordinated disinformation campaign through the media.

Sean Hannity -- Fox News host who is close to Trump and worked with Giuliani to make his show an integral part of their media strategy, providing a place where they could sow the seeds of the smear campaign against Biden. Giuliani and Hannity discussed this strategy in January, and Solomon became a staple on Hannity’s prime-time programming.

The plan

According to Parnas, his friendship with Giuliani began two years ago as they were running in similar political circles and attending the same events. In late 2018, Parnas and Fruman began connecting Giuliani to a network of disgraced former and current Ukrainian officials and prosecutors to dig up dirt on Biden and the 2016 election.

The conspiracy theory they concocted went like this: Ukrainian officials worked with Democrats to find dirt on Trump’s one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort in order to damage Trump. They did so, Giuliani claimed, by fabricating the “black ledger” that showed that Manafort had received millions of dollars from the former pro-Russia Ukrainian ruling party that had been recently overthrown. The revelation of this ledger helped force Manafort’s resignation from Trump’s campaign, and Manafort was eventually prosecuted and convicted of a wide range of crimes as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian electoral interference in the 2016 election.

In addition, according to Giuliani’s conspiracy theory, the Ukrainian Embassy was working with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and in return, the American Embassy and the Obama administration actively blocked investigations in Ukraine that Giuliani claims targeted Democrats’ political allies. As with most conspiracy theories on the right, George Soros is involved in this one too. The theory posits that a Ukrainian good governance, anti-corruption group -- the Anticorruption Action Centre (AntAC) -- was involved in framing Manafort and was corruptly tied to an FBI agent who was investigating Manafort. Giuliani also claims that an investigation into the group was shut down due to U.S. pressure and that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine provided Ukrainian officials with a “do not prosecute” list that included people linked to AntAC. As a bonus, through the “investigation,” Giuliani claims to have been presented with evidence that then-Vice President Biden acted corruptly by withholding U.S. aid to force the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son.

Nothing about this conspiracy theory is true. First, there’s no evidence that the infamous “black ledger” was fraudulent, and several payments listed in the document have been confirmed to be accurate. The Intercept reported: “Sergii Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist and reformist member of parliament who helped publicize the off-the-books payments” said that “Giuliani ‘is a liar’ for saying that the black ledger was a forgery. ‘It is a real document, with real signatures,’ Leshchenko said in a telephone interview, explaining that it had been examined by Ukrainian law enforcement experts.” Giuliani seems to have adopted the false claim about the ledger from Manafort, whose legal team has embraced it since 2017 and whom Guiliani has been meeting with to discuss the materials.

As for Giuliani’s claims that investigations into AntAC were dropped due to political pressure, the State Department has called claims of a so-called “do not prosecute” list “complete poppycock.” And an investigation into the group’s handling of foreign aid money was widely believed to be politically motivated retaliation for the group’s anti-corruption work. Finally, while Biden did pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was roundly criticized for blocking corruption investigations, there’s no evidence that he did so to benefit his son. In reality, the push to get the prosecutor in question, Viktor Shokin, fired was a part of an anti-corruption effort by advocates and international supporters of Ukraine. The United States’ well-established position was that ousting Shokin was a critical aspect of anti-corruption measures. The investigation into the energy company whose board included Hunter Biden was long dormant, and Hunter Biden was never the subject of the investigation.

Nonetheless, Giuliani says he completed his “investigation” in March and sent his findings to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the understanding that Pompeo would investigate. (NBCNews.com, however, reported: “A source with knowledge of the events said ... that Pompeo never promised Rudy Giuliani that he would investigate the contents of the envelope or anything related to Ukraine.”) Giuliani also sent the materials to Solomon.

NBCNews.com obtained a copy of the documents that Giuliani sent to the State Department in March and reported that they contained “a glimpse of an intricate media strategy to spread the story including segments being placed on Fox News.” NBC said the “documents also show that Giuliani, through conservative writer JohnSolomon’s columns in The Hill, attempted to tie former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to the liberal donor George Soros as part of a massive conspiracy to take down Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.” The materials Giuliani sent included interview notes from interviews he conducted with then-current and former Ukrainian prosecutors that “paint the picture of the narrative that Giuliani has been pushing involving the Bidens.”

The media strategy

Giuliani and associates feed story to Solomon

Around the same time Giuliani sent his packet of materials to the State Department, he also sent the materials to Solomon, who began reporting on its contents through the opinion pages of The Hill without identifying the materials as having originated with Giuliani. Solomon’s writing for some time had focused heavily around trying to discredit the Mueller investigation and the notion that Russia meddled into the 2016 elections to help Trump. On March 20, he published the first of many scoops specifically related to Ukraine’s involvement in this effort. Over the next six months, Solomon published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which primarily focused on Ukraine.

In his reporting, Solomon spelled out Giuliani’s conspiracy theory in detail. For instance:

He reported that Ukrainian officials claimed to have “evidence of wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes,” at least some of it related to Biden.
Solomon reported that these officials tried to “deliver their evidence to Washington” but were unable because the American ambassador (Yovanovitch) “blocked” them “from obtaining a visa” to the U.S.
He weaved an elaborate story about Americans working with Ukrainians to dig up dirt on Trump’s one-time 2016 campaign manager Manafort, in order to damage Trump.
He claimed that the infamous “black ledger” that showed Manafort had received millions in undisclosed payments from Ukrainian officials was fabricated andreleased to damage Trump. He also suggested that in January 2016, Obama’s Department of Justice pressured Ukraine to help the department investigate Manafort in response to Trump’s rise in popularity in the Republican primary race (Manafort did not join the Trump campaign until March 2016).
He strongly suggested that the Obama State Department pressured Ukrainian officials to drop an investigation into a Ukrainian good governance group linked to Soros because Soros backed Clinton.
He also claimed the U.S. ambassador’s “do not prosecute” list included people related to this organization, and he strained to link the group to the Manafort investigation by claiming that an FBI agent involved in the investigation is tied to the same group.
And, of course, he claimedthat Biden withheld a billion dollars worth of U.S. aid to shut down an investigation into Burisma Holdings and Biden’s son Hunter through his position on the company’s board.

Solomon’s reporting relies heavily on the sources Giuliani fed him. In an interview with The Washington Post, Giuliani named three current and former Ukrainian prosecutors as persons he interviewed, specifically former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko, and Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of Ukraine’s Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. Giuliani is also known to have met with a former Ukrainian diplomat named Andrii Telizhenko and is linked to Kostiantyn Kulyk -- Lutsenko’s deputy who was indicted on corruption charges in 2016. Eight of the twelve columns Solomon wrote on the topic featured at least one of these five sources.

At least three of Solomon’s columns feature information meant to undermine the validity of the Russia investigation that may have been leaked from the Ukrainian pro-Russia oligarch Dmitry Firtash’s legal team, which included diGenova and Toensing. Toensing and diGenova have been working with Firtash since at least July -- and indeed Solomon published an entire column in July based exclusively off material and anonymous sources from Firtash’s legal team. They appear to have been involved with his case much earlier than July, though.

Included in the material Giuliani sent to the State Department is a March 26 email from Solomon -- titled “Fwd: Outline of Soros reporting, including embedded documents” -- in which Solomon forwarded a draft of his article before it was published to the same three people working with Giuliani who are also known to have been working with Firtash -- Parnas, Toensing, and diGenova. The column was the first of three that mentioned Firtash, and it attempted to tie AntAC -- and through it Soros -- “to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort.” Solomon repeated the suggestion in his August 7 column on Soros’ “secret 2016 access” to State Department officials. In a fourth column, Solomon reported on an affidavit of a former Ukrainian prosecutor that he exclusively received. The affidavit was prepared “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash … for use in legal proceedings in Austria.”

Solomon brings the conspiracy theory to Fox

The next stage in the plan involved Solomon taking his “scoop” to Fox News, specifically to SeanHannity. From March 20 -- when Solomon published his first story on the Ukraine conspiracy theory -- through October 2, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times. Fifty-one of those appearances were on Hannity, whose host dutifully promoted Solomon’s scoops and wove them into his ever-evolving conspiracy theory that “deep state” elements in the government have been plotting to overthrow Trump. Giuliani also appeared on those networks frequently, clocking in at least 64 appearances on Fox News and Fox Business during that time period. Toensing and diGenova appeared over 75 times on the two networks during this period.

The fact that they were working together on these stories, or -- in the case of Toensing and diGenova -- that they were legally representing Firtash, was certainly not transparent to viewers. In perhaps the most egregious example, on the September 26 episode of Hannity, Hannity hosted Solomon to report on an affidavit he obtained from the disgraced prosecutor Shokin, who claimed he was forced to resign to stop the investigation into the company connected to Hunter Biden. Hannity then hosted diGenova and Toensing to discuss it, and the two hailed the affidavit as proof of their conspiracy theory and declared it would “shoot a hole in” Biden’s defense.

However, the affidavit states that it was prepared “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash … for use in legal proceedings in Austria.” In other words, diGenova and Toensing were part of the legal team that produced the affidavit that Solomon later exclusively obtained, wrote up, and then took to Hannity -- a fact not mentioned by any of them. Giuliani has since repeatedly referenced this affidavit in numerous media appearances to support his claims about Biden’s alleged corruption.

Hannity repeatedly gave clues suggesting he knew the full range of stories Solomon would be reporting. For instance, despite the fact that Solomon’s March 20 column did not mention Biden or corruption, Hannity teased on his radio show that day that “I just happen to have a little birdie telling me in my ear that, well, Joe Biden may have an issue here that is bigger than anything ever alleged about Donald Trump.” On September 23, Hannity and Giuliani admitted to having talked about the Biden Ukraine story as early as January.

The payoff

Giuliani repeatedly touted and praised Solomon’s “blockbuster” reporting. He has at least twice opined that Solomon should “get a Pulitzer Prize” and has taken to Twitter to sing Solomon’s praises:

Hannity, too, repeatedly praised Solomon’s “great reporting” as he hyped Solomon’s columns. He regularly described Solomon as a “friend” of the program and declared that mainstream news outlets, like The New York Times, “peddled lies, conspiracy theories and hoax[es]” about the Russia investigation whereas Solomon “was right” all along. On April 25, Hannity asked Trump about Solomon’s and others' reporting around the Russia investigation, and the president replied: “These are great reporters. … These are people that should be getting Pulitzers.” Trump added, “These are the ones that should be winning. It sounds like big stuff. It sounds very interesting with Ukraine.”

Solomon’s efforts paid off. On October 5, Fox News confirmed that John Solomon had joined the network as a contributor. During his first appearance on Hannity as an official Fox News employee, Hannity said: “John Solomon, welcome to the family. It’s been a long time coming, sir.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/trump-is-about-to-become-the-right-wing-smear-machines-greatest-unintended-casualty/

no lnx

Trump is about to become the Right-wing smear machine’s greatest unintended casualty

Written by Daily Kos October 6, 2019

It’s commonly said that the “wheels of justice turn slowly,” and that’s usually true. But once in a while those wheels suddenly pop into reverse, jolting the car backwards and crushing whoever happens to be standing behind the truck.

In what is truly the richest of ironies, Donald Trump is now poised to become just another piece of right-wing roadkill, an unintended casualty of his own disinformation machine, the exact same machine that cemented his electoral victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. By extorting foreign leaders to manufacture dirt involving Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Trump stupidly fell into the trap of believing his own team’s propaganda, a result that those who created the Biden/Ukraine fairy tale in the first place completely failed to foresee. And now he’s looking at impeachment for believing their lies and taking them to their logical conclusion.

The warning signs for Team Trump were there from the start, but they went unheeded. It’s well-documented that Trump the politician (as opposed to Trump the phony media creation) is at his core a deeply stupid, credulous man whose ”agenda” and worldview are shaped entirely by what he sees on Fox News. Couple that with a tendency to surround himself with sycophantic “yes-men” who assure him that all his actions are examples of some titanic genius, and it should have been predictable that this president, watching dumbly as his Hannity-fed heroes droned on and on about supposedly nefarious dealings by the one political opponent he feared the most, would do something extraordinarily idiotic with that information at some point.

Jane Mayer of the New Yorker explains how the “Biden/Ukraine” hoax was invented and spread by the same people who invented the “Uranium One” fiction which Fox News and other Republican sludge generators spawned in order to smear Hillary Clinton in the 2016. The cast of characters for both smears is remarkably similar.

Anyone trying to track the Ukrainian conspiracy stories that were eventually embraced by President Trump is likely to get mired in the same echo chamber of right-wing news purveyors that misinformed voters in 2016. A pivotal source of the allegations against the Bidens, for instance, is the Government Accountability Institute, a Florida-based opposition-research operation that was founded by the former Trump political adviser Stephen Bannon—the same conservative nonprofit that ginned up questionable stories about the Clintons during the last Presidential campaign. In both instances, much of the coverage of the scandal was kicked off by Peter Schweizer, a longtime conservative political writer who is an editor-at-large at Breitbart News and the president of the Government Accountability Institute.

The “Government Accountability Institute” or GAI is funded by a “libertarian” (i.e., I’ve got mine so fuck you) billionaire named Robert Mercer, a major donor to Trump’s campaign, whose interests apparently lie in shaping American society in tandem with his grotesque social whims. As Stephen Bannon himself acknowledged in an email to Mayer, the GAI acted as the primary source for the Biden/Ukraine “story.” Mayer’s article describes the purpose of the GAI as intended to generate baseless smears and worm them surreptitiously into the “mainstream” media where they can be repeated by more “credible” sources, even if those sources are simply busy debunking them.

Bannon designed the organization as a means of transmitting partisan dirt-digging to the mainstream media. He realized that, though mainstream reporters were suspicious of partisan opinion, they were open to damning facts about public figures, regardless of the sourcing. He set out, with Schweizer, to produce material that would generate mainstream coverage, and right-wing outrage.

In 2016 Schweizer published the book “Clinton Cash” which made the baseless accusation that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, had essentially traded away American national security by selling uranium mines to Russia in exchange for contributions to the Clinton foundation. By hawking this over and over through their mouthpieces on Fox News, Mercer, Bannon and Schweitzer had no trouble convincing susceptible viewers eager to believe any right-wing drivel spoon-fed to them that the Clintons were wholly, unimaginably corrupt. The fact that these insinuations were totally false was beside the point. As it turned out, several government agencies having nothing to do with Hillary Clinton approved the deal, which ultimately involved a “negligible” amount of uranium.

Just as with the “Clinton Cash” fable constructed to inflame a drooling base of Fox News knuckledraggers, we now have practically the exact same cast of characters behind the latest baseless smear against Joe Biden—that he somehow intervened with Ukraine to protect his son’s profits.

In March of 2018, Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute once again produced a book that was perfectly timed for the Presidential campaign. “Secret Empires” devoted a chapter to the subject of “Bidens in Ukraine,” which laid out the conflicts of interest posed by the wheeling and dealing of Biden’s son Hunter.

Even though Schweizer conveniently omitted the fact that there was no prove to his insinuations about Ukraine and Joe Biden, that didn’t stop the conservative media from jumping on the bandwagon like flies on the proverbial shit. And, just as before, again we had the same hawking on Fox News of a shabbily-source tome of lies that every credible media source has shot down. But this time an attention-whoring sleazebag named Rudy Giuliani became involved, traveling to Ukraine under the guise of being Donald Trump’s “private attorney,” and attempting to solicit Ukrainian acquiescence and participation in the scam. And as Mayer points out, a couple new characters were now recruited by the Trump campaign itself to stoke the phony story. In particular, John Solomon, formerly a respectable reporter for the Hill but now entrenched in the more lucrative occupation of churning out right-wing trash for profit, was tapped to spread the manure around.

As Giuliani conspired this past spring with questionable Ukrainian sources, Solomon pumped out a string of eye-catching stories echoing those sources’ claims about the Bidens. This appears to have been no coincidence. According to NBC, the Giuliani documents show that Solomon’s columns were part of the Trump team’s strategy. (The New Yorker was unable to reach John Solomon, and a question e-mailed to the editor of The Hill, about whether the publication stood by Solomon’s stories, went unanswered.)

(As you may have noticed, Mayer’s article notes several people whom the New Yorker contacted for comment, but refused to respond)

She explains how the story was churned by Solomon and Schweizer, with lots of mutual dick-sucking apparent on both sides:

In Solomon’s April 1st column, he cited Schweizer’s book. Two days later, Schweizer sent “kudos” to Solomon during an interview on Breitbart News, and added, “We’re talking about potentially legal jeopardy involving the Vice-President’s family.” Schweizer opined that it was “all the sort of thing that needs to be investigated and looked into by a grand jury,” and added, “it’s pretty clear that you have a pattern that the for-sale sign was open with the Biden family . . . and that in itself demands investigation in the United States.”

Republican state television (also known as Fox News) then proceeded to run twelve or more segments hyping this wholly in a single month, seeding it into the right-wing swamp. Of course, dumb Donald was watching like any other addled fool, slurping up every word. Sean Hannity mentioned it on seven separate shows, prompting Trump to respond personally to his hero with this Tweet, praising Solomon’s reporting:

“John Solomon: As Russia Collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges.” @seanhannity @FoxNews

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2019

If Trump was capable of generating a hard-on, it must have happened during April of this year, as measured by the rapid, subsequent merging of the White House and Fox News, first by Giuliani, then of Trump himself, who called the network to declare that further action was needed, and in particular, that he wanted to involve his stooge William Barr in the investigation.

By this time, the stodgy New York Times had become involved in “covering” the “controversy,” and even though the Times threw in a casual disclaimer–nineteen paragraphs into their own story– confirming that the entire farce was bullshit (”No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal.”), as far as Bannon, Schweizer and Mercer were concerned, they had already won the battle. Nevermind that several credible news sources spent the next few months confirming that it was all an invented hoax—the damage was done, and high-fives and clinking shot glasses were doubtlessly being exchanged all around.

Except no one stopped to consider what an irrational, power-mad sociopath like Trump would do with this information, swirling around busily in his brain. As it turns out, he went with his instincts, which, unlike the arc of history, do not bend towards justice but towards extortion. And his attempt to extort Ukraine by withholding Congressional aid until they manufactured some non-existent dirt about Joe Biden has ended up biting him squarely in the ass. He’s going to be impeached, something he existentially has dreaded since he assumed office, because it will forever leave a stain on his presidency that people will use to compare his tenure to that of an untarnished, impeccable, Barack Obama.

Thanks to his slavish devotion to the right-wing propaganda machine, Donald Trump is about to become just another piece of collateral damage. And he has no one but himself to blame.

tag

https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon

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ohn F. Solomon is an American journalist, conspiracy theorist media executive, and a ... In February 2008, Solomon became editor-in-chief of The Washington Times. Under Solomon, the Times ... The New Republic described Solomon's columns for The Hill as "right-wing fever dreams." Independent journalist Marcy ...