John Solomon, Who Helped Spread Conspiracy Theories About Ukraine, Launching a Site Devoted to ‘Facts’

John Solomon, the controversial conservative journalist whose newspaper columns in The Hill helped spread conspiracy theories cited in the anonymous whistleblower complaint that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment, is launching a new media venture, Just the News. It is scheduled to go live in about two weeks, he told Mediaite in a phone interview.

“We’re going to cover Washington for the people outside of it,” Solomon said, adding that the site will publish “original news reporting” on politics, governance, national security and the economy, among other things. “People just want facts,” he told Mediaite. “They feel like too often when they read a story somebody is trying to lead them to a conclusion or they’re injecting opinion or conjecture.”

If that sounds rich coming from Solomon, who left The Hill in October, he has no compunction about it. His stories for The Hill alleged, among other things, that Joe Biden conspired to dethrone a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to protect his son from being investigated and that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. They were published as opinion pieces and have been contested by impeachment witnesses, but he stands by them.

In a deposition, for example, State Department official George Kent characterized Solomon’s work as, “if not entirely made up in full cloth,” then “primarily non-truths and non-sequiturs.”

“I dispute the idea that I’ve been debunked or refuted,” Solomon told Mediaite. “I think if people go back and look at my columns they will see that every fact in my column is attributed to a document or interview that you can watch yourself,” he said. “And there’s this very strong factual basis for all the columns I did.”

Solomon, who is 53, told Mediaite that he is self-funding Just the News for now, but he added that there are some investors who are interested in supporting the operation if he sells equity. He did not name the investors.

The idea for the venture, which also includes a podcasting arm, has been gestating for about the past two years, according to Solomon. “It struck me back then that there was an opportunity in the marketplace to bring journalism back to its roots,” he said. “Not to follow the pack, but to follow the facts.”

But Solomon held off on pursuing Just the News because he had recently been brought on as an executive vice president to develop digital video for The Hill, he told Mediaite. During this time, Solomon also published his series of incendiary columns, which played a key role in influencing Trump, acquitted Wednesday in the Senate’s impeachment trial, to ask that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky investigate the Bidens in exchange for military aid.

Solomon worked closely with Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, to spread conspiracies about Ukraine, according to a recent ProPublica report, which also noted that The Hill had misgivings about Solomon’s credibility as a journalist before he began pushing such conspiracies. Rather than preventing him from publishing pieces while he worked as an executive, though, the newspaper simply labeled him an opinion writer, appending a note to Solomon’s columns that “the views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill.”

His columns, however, were not really opinion pieces and have been dismissed as specious, partisan investigations, damaging The Hill’s reputation. In January, Politico reported that Jimmy Finkelstein, The Hill’s owner, was seeking buyers for the paper — though he denied this —  two months after Bob Cusack, Hill editor-in-chief, announced that the publication would be conducting an internal review of Solomon’s columns.

Lisa Dallos, a spokeswoman for The Hill, told Mediaite that the review is still ongoing. “The Hill’s review continues with a collective intensity and thoroughness which is needed and expected on a subject of importance,” she said in an email. “We cannot put an exact timetable to something this significant. We are confident it will be completed in the near future and rest assured we will be sharing the results when it is properly completed.”

Solomon told Mediaite that his departure from The Hill had nothing to do with the controversy over the columns, and that he left on good terms with the publication. (Dallos did not respond to a request asking for confirmation that this was the case). He said he invites the review: “I welcome the scrutiny.” He declined to comment on whether he is participating in the review.

Solomon’s credibility has been in question since he began writing for The Hill, but his history as a journalist is also somewhat checkered. Despite that, he has published important investigations, including a report for the Associated Press on pre-9/11 government oversights. The Columbia Journalism Review has written that “Solomon has a history of bending the truth to his storyline.”

Previously, Solomon served as an investigative reporter for the Washington Post and as the executive editor of the Washington Times, among other roles. More recently, he has been publishing on his eponymous website, JohnSolomonReports.com, whose tagline is “Reporting Truth.”

“The one thing I’ve always prided myself on is I tend to report against the grain,” Solomon told Mediaite. “When other people are reporting one way I try to look at things from a different perspective and see if they’re missing something.”

He has a devoted following in the right-wing mediasphere, with more than 400,000 Twitter followers. Solomon became a Fox News contributor when he left The Hill, and he has frequently appeared on Sean Hannity’s show — though recently his appearances have become less common, as CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out in his January 30 newsletter.

Solomon disputed this. “It’s simply not true,” he said, claiming that he has been on Fox “three to seven times a week every week since I became a contributor” in October.

Solomon most recently appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show on January 31, where he accused former national security advisor John Bolton, now a Trump foe, of taking money from Ukrainian oligarchs.

As he prepares to launch his new site — of which he is the CEO and editor in chief — Solomon told Mediaite that he is looking forward to pursuing a diversity of stories. “There’s many new avenues to be investigating in Washington,” he said. “A lot of new stories to be taking a look at.”

“We want to always keep a neutral voice,” he said, “and we want to be factual.”

He is planning to include a button — tentatively labeled “Dig In” — on each story, which readers can click to view the supporting materials used to put the article together. The button, Solomon claimed, “will be our way of showing the American public that we’re sticking to the facts.”

Solomon, who is based in Washington, D.C., anticipates that by spring the newsroom will employ 25 to 50 journalists, with some hires to be announced next week, he said. The conservative journalist Daniel Wattenberg has already signed on to be the outlet’s managing editor, and the evangelical journalist David Brody and the TV reporter Sharyl Attkisson have come on as podcast hosts.

Solomon said he plans to continue reporting while running day-to-day operations and hosting a twice-weekly podcast, “John Solomon Reports,” which launched last month.

“I don’t think it’ll be anything different,” he said, “than what I’ve done in the 30 years of my career.”