Fox News promoted a discredited claim that the United States may have paid a ransom to recover Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from the Taliban. That’s in addition to the U.S. release of five Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have been exchanged for Bergdahl. The U.S. has flatly denied the charge and neither host Martha MacCallum nor guest Brit Hume offered any evidence to substantiate it. Yet, they presented it as a legitimate “question.”

In their discussion, MacCallum and Hume deliberately suggested that money changed hands and that this, as Hume said, could “sharpen the question” as to why President Obama released the Taliban prisoners.

However, the United States has already explicitly denied that any cash was exchanged. Media Matters notes:

The White House has flatly denied that money was exchanged for Bergdahl’s release. While a ransom was previously considered as a possibility in the prisoner swap negotiations, a National Security Staff spokesperson explicitly denied the idea last week, according to the Houston Chronicle.

In fact, after Fox’s lengthy speculation, an official White House Twitter account reiterated the fact that no cash was exchanged in response to right-wing claims.

Watch MacCallum and Hume ignore the evidence as they push their narrative in the video below, from the June 9th America's Newsroom, via Media Matters: