Fox News Correspondent Jennifer Griffin Fact-Checks Tucker Carlson’s Wild Claim About Biden Administration: ‘100% Not True’

AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin fact-checked her former colleague Tucker Carlson on Thursday over a claim he made about Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

In a post on the social network X, Carlson wrote:

The Biden administration is openly threatening Americans over Ukraine. In a classified briefing in the House yesterday, defense secretary Lloyd Austin informed members that if they don’t appropriate more money for Zelensky, “we’ll send your uncles, cousins and sons to fight Russia.” Pay the oligarchs or we’ll kill your kids.

After X owner Elon Musk asked, “He really said this?” Carlson replied, “He really did. Confirmed.”

Griffin, however, rejected Carlson’s claim, citing two unnamed sources who attended the briefings.

“This characterization of Austin’s remarks is 100 percent not true, acc to two sources who were in the briefings,” she wrote. “Austin warned that it is not hyperbole to say Putin won’t stop at Ukraine. If he enters NATO territory US troops could be called to fight; cheaper to fund Ukraine now.”

In recent years, Griffin has repeatedly fact-checked and pushed back on comments made by her Fox News colleagues, which prompted Carlson to refer to her as a “so-called reporter” and “flack” in 2022, more than a year before he was ousted from the network.

In August, Carlson again took aim at Griffin, calling her “a mouthpiece for the Pentagon and the CIA,” and accusing her of “knowingly telling lies on their behalf.”

While Carlson did not mention Griffin by name, he said, “There are very well-known national security reporters, and I’m thinking of one female national security reporter in particular who just reads lies from the national security state.”