Roger Stone, Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes Worked Together to Attack Adversaries of Fox News
A new Politico report details how Steve Bannon, Roger Stone and Roger Ailes coordinated to “monitor and undermine the ousted Fox chief’s perceived adversaries” during his time at the network.
The report takes a deep dive into Ailes’ extensive efforts to discredit the reporting of Gabriel Sherman, who wrote The Loudest Voice in the Room, a revealing biography of the disgraced former Fox News chief.
Per Politico, Stone — a longtime advisor to President Donald Trump and self-described master of the political dark arts — was “paid for off-air work that included keeping tabs on Sherman.”
Stone was also paid to write articles attacking Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, who Ailes saw as a threat to Fox’s monopoly on the conservative media.
Stone declined that he was paid to monitor Sherman, instead insisting he was acting as a personal liaison between Ailes and his biographer.
According to Politico, Trump’s chief strategist was also involved in the war against Sherman:
The network of allies Ailes employed to neutralize threats also extends into the White House itself, according to three people familiar with the situation who said Bannon, the White House chief strategist, coordinated with Fox in Breitbart’s publication of negative stories about Sherman.
Bannon at the time had a close relationship with Fox News, which promoted his conservative documentaries.
The Politico report then describes a meeting between Ailes and Bannon weeks before the release of Sherman’s biography in 2014, in which Bannon “advocated an all-out ‘go to war’ approach” to discrediting the book.
Breitbart, which at the time counted Bannon on its board, published a number of articles critical of Sherman, under a pseudonymous byline: ‘Capitol Confidential.’
The Politico piece also details how New York mayoral candidate Bo Dietl, a former Fox News contributor, is cited in a number of lawsuits against the network as a private investigator deployed by Ailes to unearth dirt on his perceived adversaries.
Though he has denied reports that he investigated Sherman, Dietl “admitted to the Wall Street Journal that he had investigated Andrea Mackris, a former Fox producer who sued Bill O’Reilly for sexual harassment in 2004, and Gretchen Carlson, whose accusations against Ailes prompted his ouster last year, on behalf of the network.”
[image via screengrab]
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