Fox News abruptly walked away from a press conference hosted by New York Attorney General Letitia James after she announced that the state is suing former President Donald Trump and his adult children for fraud.
The network was covering the press conference live, but cut off just as Ms. James began describing the specific crimes the Trump family is being accused of.
“Some of this is really inside baseball if it’s not your tax dollars in New York,” Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner said. “And some might even accuse it of being political because we’re 48 days before the midterm elections.” He then added without explanation: “And both presidents, current and past, are certainly looking to help candidates.”
Ms. Faulkner is known as a “straight news” anchor on Fox News and not one of its political commentators.
He told viewers that Fox News was “definitely going to cover” the case and said “the big headline in all of this is the announcement of the New York state case of Letitia James.”
“Let’s move on,” he said, ending the segment.
Fox News after all showed almost 40 seconds of the press conference, while the other major cable news networks – CNN and MSNBC – covered 35 minutes of the press conference and continued coverage of the case after it ended.
Despite Ms. Faulkner’s claim that the press conference was about “inside baseball” information — implying that it was more detailed and technical than the average Fox News viewer needs to know — the network has covered much more specialized content in the past.
The network gave significant airtime to Hunter Biden’s laptop story in 2021, which involved intricate details of the president’s son’s work in Ukraine. According to a media matters analysis, it devoted three times as much airtime to that story as it did to the coronavirus pandemic. Fox News also covered regionally-focused parent groups protesting “critical race theory” in elementary schools and — though only on its Fox News Nation online streaming platform — aired Tucker Carlson’s “End of Men” scrotum tanning documentary.
Regarding the case, Ms. James said her office has sent a criminal referral to federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the IRS regarding alleged crimes by the Trump family.
The civil suit seeks at least $250 million in damages and a permanent ban on companies named to prevent Mr. Trump and his adult children – minus Tiffany Trump – from serving as officers of a New York company. status.
Ms James said Trump had “repeatedly and consistently manipulated asset prices to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms” than would otherwise have been offered. He claimed they did this to “pay less tax” and satisfy debt covenants.
