An internal Fox News report on Ukraine scandal coverage warns about disinformation — on Fox News — by frequent guests, including Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, according to a copy obtained by The Daily Beast.
The first page of the research briefing book was also posted Thursday on Twitter by a former Fox News freelance producer.
Giuliani is described in the 162-page report, “Ukraine, Disinformation & the Trump Administration,” as having a “high susceptibility to disinformation.”
The report also singles out John Solomon, a frequent guest of Sean Hannity and a former right-wing columnist for The Hill. He’s widely considered the key source of baseless conspiracy theories concerning Ukraine, including that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Concerns about Solomon include allegations of “non-disclosure of conflicts, use of unreliable sources, publishing false and misleading stories, misrepresentation of sources, and opaque coordination with involved parties,” the Fox report states, according to the Beast.
“John Solomon played an indispensable role in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign” on Ukraine, according to the document.
Married Trump supporters Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, lawyers who have been frequent Fox News guests, have also spread “disinformation” concerning Ukraine while employed by Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. He is fighting extradition to the U.S. to face bribery-related charges.
The research report was created by Fox News senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy, who produces research as part of the Fox “Brain Room” that provides information and data for network programming, according to The Daily Beast.
The four people singled out in the report have appeared 348 times on Fox News weekday programs since 2018, according to Media Matters. About 203 of them were on Hannity’s program alone.
A Fox News senior vice president, Mitch Kweit, said the report was “being taken out of context and politicized to damage the network,” The Guardian reported.
He called the briefing book “nothing more than a comprehensive chronological account of what every person involved in the Ukraine controversy was doing at any identifiable point in time.”
