Former Fox News reporter Diana Falzone, whose Stormy Daniels story was spiked by Fox News, will provide Congress with documents related to her investigation, as per breaking news tonight. According to Falzone's attorney, the material will prove very damaging to Fox.
Earlier this week, Falzone’s attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, made a not-so-subtle suggestion to Congress that it call on her client to testify about the spiking of her reporting on Donald Trump’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels and the hush money he paid to silence her. According to Jane Mayer’s blockbuster report in The New Yorker, Falzone had the story in October, before the election, and Fox killed the story because “Rupert wants Donald Trump to win.” As Smith explained, a request from Congress would override the nondisclosure agreement Falzone entered into when she settled a discrimination suit against Fox.
Since then, the former editor of FoxNews.com, Ken LaCorte, has defended his decision not to run the story as a “no-brainer,” based on journalistic standards. Today, he published Falzone's article with an explanation behind his decision. (My post on the matter, including LaCorte’s response to my question, is here.)
However, tonight, MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber broke the news that the House Oversight Committee has requested from Falzone “all documents related to women alleging extramarital affairs with President Trump, payments by the president or anyone on behalf of him to silence those people.”
Melber noted that the Congressional inquiry is about potential campaign violations, not Fox News per se. But Smith, on the phone with Melber, hinted that the material to be turned over will further stain Fox.
SMITH: The idea that a presidential candidate was paying off a porn star would be blockbuster and perhaps a news organization really interested in news would have run with this story and put lots of resources into the story and done whatever they needed to do to get such a story. We’ll see what the evidence shows about how Fox reacted to this story
Even worse, Smith claimed the decision to kill the story came from someone higher up than LaCorte.
SMITH: We think that we will be able to show that Ken LaCorte is a liar.
[…]
For one thing, he didn’t stop the story and that’s gonna be evident.
MELBER: You’re saying that whole narrative that he wrote, that he was the one personally intervening, himself, that he wasn’t even involved in overseeing that story?
SMITH: Yes.
MELBER: Was it someone more senior than him?
SMITH: Yes.
Smith laughed after Melber asked if that was “someone famous.” She merely replied that Congress will be the one to decide whether or not to hold the hearing in public.
Watch Melber break the news below, from MSNBC’s March 14, 2019 The Beat with Ari Melber.
These demonic frauds can’t lie with documents attached to their names.