Fox’s Maria Bartiromo has responded with conspiracy theories and minimization after the Justice Department indicted Alexander Smirnov, an FBI informant who allegedly fabricated his accusation that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter each took hefty bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. Her initial reaction was to decry Smirnov’s arrest as an “intimidation tactic” aimed at silencing “whistleblowers,” and as the story has played out, she hosted House Republicans who argued that his story “wasn’t an important part” of their investigations into the Bidens and blamed the FBI for their credulity.
It’s no wonder that Bartiromo is trying to help Republicans memory-hole the critical role Smirnov’s story played in the GOP’s effort to impeach Joe Biden over the foreign business interests his son held before his election. Bartiromo’s two programs, Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria and Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, featured references to the now-indicted FBI informant’s claims at least 219 times in 2023, according to a Media Matters review of show transcripts. The former, a three-hour weekday program, featured 181 such claims over 62 episodes, while the latter broadcast the remaining 38 claims over 9 episodes.
Bartiromo and her guests treated Smirnov’s alleged fabrications as the linchpin of the GOP’s corruption case against Joe Biden. The host herself described Smirnov’s story as “the most serious charges ever leveled at a President” and evidence that Biden had been “compromised” via a “bribery scheme.” And a slew of Republican members of Congress used appearances on her show to call the since-indicted informant's claims “the most damning piece of evidence” against Biden, and a “bombshell” establishing “a pay-to-play scheme for quid pro-Joe” that one representative said “convinced me now beyond a shadow of a doubt that Joe Biden is corrupt and he is compromised.”
Republicans and their Fox mouthpieces launched a monthslong frenzy in May 2023, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. James Comer (R-KY) publicly demanded the FBI produce the documentation of an informant’s report to the bureau, known as an FD-1023, “alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national” by an unnamed “whistleblower.” The document Grassley released two months later indicated that in 2020, the informant, since revealed as Smirnov, alleged that Mykola Zlochevsky, founder of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, on whose board Hunter Biden served, had told him that he had paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million bribes each to help the company.
Right-wing media credulously trumpeted the dubious and unverified allegations in the FD-1023 memo because it seemed to support their conspiracy theory that Joe Biden, as vice president, corruptly forced the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop a purported probe of Burisma for Hunter’s benefit. This wildly wrong tale has been debunked over and over again — including during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment — but the tantalizing claim that Joe Biden had taken a bribe gave it new life and made it the crux of the GOP’s current impeachment effort.
Bartiromo’s programs were among the most prominent venues for the credulous dissemination of Smirnov’s claims. Media Matters found that she personally highlighted the informant’s story at least 126 times on her two shows in 2023. Bartiromo routinely treated the allegations as credible -- here are some examples of her coverage (transcripts via Nexis, bolding added):