Feedback Scoop: Trump Promotes Fox News ‘Bombshell’ That Came From Giuliani
President Donald Trump tweeted a big scoop from Fox News on Thursday morning. The source of that scoop, it turns out, was Rudy Giuliani, the increasingly unhinged cable news pundit-lawyer, who also happens to be Trump’s personal attorney.
How’s that for a feedback loop?
Trump tweeted Thursday:
“The Ukraine controversy continues this morning as new documents obtained by @FoxNews show that a former Ukrainian prosecutor said that he was forced to back off looking into a firm tied to Hunter Biden.” @MariaBartiromo Does anyone other than Fake News protectors have a doubt?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 3, 2019
“Fox News has obtained documents shedding light on the Ukraine controversy,” Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo reported on-air Thursday morning. “The dismissed Ukraine prosecutor is now claiming that he was forced to back off from that investigation into a firm, Burisma Holdings, where Joe Biden’s son Hunter was on the board.”
What Bartiromo did not divulge in the segment is that those “documents” were written by Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer who has been on a wild campaign to cast Joe Biden as corrupt for months. They’re not really “documents” either, they’re notes from Giuliani’s interview with a former Ukrainian prosecutor — widely seen as corrupt — who’s trying to regain his job as the country’s top cop.
Later on Fox Business, Bartiromo spoke to correspondent Griff Jenkins about the “bombshell,” and the Fox News reporter revealed the story was based on Giuliani’s “notes” from his interview with the disgraced prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
Jenkins quoted from Giuliani’s notes: “Mr. Shokin attempted to continue the investigations but on or June or July of 2015, the U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing.”
Fox & Friends has also covered the “potential bombshell,” as Steve Doocy put it, multiple times throughout their three-hour broadcast Thursday morning.
Now, forgive me if I don’t think Giuliani is the most reliable source of information here. One would hope Fox News would have done some extra digging to back up his “notes,” given they are touting the reporting as their own.
Source of the information aside, it’s worth looking at the information itself. According to Giuliani, Shokin told him in January 2019 that he was forced to stop an investigation into Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that Biden’s son Hunter was on the board of, by U.S. officials. That’s based on Shokin’s belief that Geoffrey R. Pyatt — then the ambassador to Ukraine, now the ambassador to Greece — wanted him to stop the investigation.
So now we have Giuliani accusing Trump’s current ambassador to Greece of corruption.
Shokin isn’t the most reliable source of information either. He has claimed before that he was forced out because he was looking into Burisma, but anti-corruption experts in Ukraine say Shokin was not investigating the company and worked to block efforts to root out corruption. He was sacked as part of an international effort to ensure Ukraine cracked down on corruption.
Giuliani once agreed with that. In May, he called the top Ukrainian prosecutor at the time, Yuriy Lutsenko, “a much more honest guy” than Shokin. Then, after Lutsenko said there was no evidence the Bidens violated the law, Giuliani turned on him, casting him as a stooge of Biden and Shokin as a hero.
Now, Shokin is seeking to regain his job as Ukraine’s top prosecutor — and the appeal against his dismissal is scheduled for Thursday. Giuliani will no doubt champion his efforts. Fox News will no doubt cover Giuliani’s efforts as a bombshell and Trump will no doubt tweet that coverage as evidence in his war against facts.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
