OANN President Demands Retraction of ‘False,’ ‘Defamatory’ Vanity Fair Claims That Donald Trump Jr. Bought Stake in Network

Reed RichardsonMay 7th, 2020, 11:50 pm
 

One America News Network

One America News Network president Charles Herring published a fiery letter on social media on Thursday, calling out Vanity Fair media reporter Gabe Sherman as well as the CEO of Conde Nast for “false and misleading” claims that President Donald Trump’s eldest son had secretly bought a stake in the fledgling cable news network.

Herring posted his letter on Twitter and name-checked the handle of Sherman and VF‘s parent company.

In his letter demand retraction, Herring specifically zeroed in on a Vanity Fair story from Monday that reported, via several anonymous sources, Donald Jr. had joined with a consortium of investors to acquire part of OANN, which is privately owned by Herring. Sherman further claimed that the OANN stake was a hedge by the Trump family against what they view as an insufficiently loyal and unreliable Fox News and to provide a possible alternative home for the Trump brand should the president lose in 2020.

“Your assertion that OAN has sold a major stake of its business is utterly false and defamatory,” Herring said in the letter. “We will not stand by and allow your lies to be disseminated.”

Calling Sherman’s reporting “littered with anti-Trump sentiment,” the OANN president said “the facts are undisputable and in direct conflict with your false and defamatory statements.” His company, he claimed, has not sold any stakes in the staunchly pro-Trump network “to anyone or any entity, period.” He also added that he has no agreements in place for any future sales of his company.

Herring went on to call for a public retraction of the story’s claims about his having sold a stake in OANN, and called on Sherman and Conde Nast to publicly apologize.

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