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Media Matters

How Fox is dismissing the unsealed Trump filing

Fox News stars don't want Trump's criminal behavior to be an election issue — because they're running the same scheme again

Written by Matt Gertz

Published

Fox News stars are running cover for Donald Trump after special counsel Jack Smith provided extensive new revelations about the former president’s scheme to use lies about fraud to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, culminating with a mob of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol. The network has spent four years supporting Trump’s subversion plot, covering up his attempt to steal that election, and paving the way for him to try again next month.

“With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results,” states Smith’s filing, which the judge overseeing Trump’s federal criminal prosecution for his 2020 election conspiracy unsealed in partially redacted form on Wednesday. “The through line of these efforts was deceit: the defendant’s and co-conspirators’ knowingly false claims of election fraud.”

The filing includes previously unreported details about Trump’s activities leading up to and on January 6, 2021. It recounts how Republican leaders, including Vice President Mike Pence, had urged Trump to stop pushing election fraud claims that lacked evidence; that some of the claims appeared entirely fabricated; and Trump’s lack of interest in curtailing the mob he had incited — when an aide told him Pence had been taken to a secure location, the then-president allegedly responded, “So what?”

Some at Fox recognized the gravity of this moment. 

“It was in this newly unsealed court paper we're learning that former President Trump resorted to crime in a bid to cling to power after the 2020 election,” Fox anchor Neil Cavuto said shortly after the document became public, apparently paraphrasing Smith's argument. 

But Fox’s biggest stars — several of whom cheered on Trump’s election subversion plot but privately recoiled when it culminated in the attack on the Capitol — either presented Smith’s revelations as old news or ignored them altogether.

  • Fox stars downplayed Smith's filing

    Fox host Laura Ingraham, a sometime Trump adviser during his presidency, texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows amid the insurrection: “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”

    But on Wednesday night, she presented the filing as part of a Democratic conspiracy to move the public discussion away from the vice presidential debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

    “Fewer than 24 hours since Vance wiped the floor with Walz, and with Trump closing in on Kamala in the swing states, Democrats needed to change the subject and fast,” Ingraham claimed. “So they hit the rewind button to January 6.”

    “Anti-Trump Judge Tanya Chutkan, playing an October surprise act of politics, unsealed Jack Smith's motion as part of his superseding indictment against Trump for the events of January 6,” she added. “Now — because that's relevant to the problems all of you are facing tonight. But heck, 33 days before the election, it's better than having to talk about port strikes and high gas prices.”

    She then brought on former Trump acting attorney general Matt Whitaker, who claimed that the unsealing was a “fairly outrageous act by Judge Chutkan, because at the end of the day, you know, she is trying to influence an election” and the filing itself simply provided “the same rehashed story.”

    From the October 2, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle.

    Fox host Jesse Watters provided a similar take the following hour, telling Trump lawyer Alina Habba, “Jack Smith and this crazy judge in D.C., they're dropping all kinds of legal bombs. It happens to be the day after Walz bombs this debate.” Habba responded that the filing was “desperation,” “a distraction,” and “election interference.”

    Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity, who is one of Trump’s closest allies and functioned as an extension of his White House during his presidency, is well aware of the danger posed by Trump’s plot. He privately warned Meadows about how Trump’s planned appearance at a rally of supporters on January 6, 2021, could go wrong, even as he publicly promoted it. After the riot began, he pleaded with Meadows to get Trump to stop it, though he made excuses for the mob on his show that night. The next day, he told then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany that the “key” was “no more crazy people” having access to Trump, and urged an end to “stolen election talk.”

    But on Wednesday, he did not cover Smith’s filing at all.

  • Fox is paving the way for another Jan. 6

    Fox played an indispensable role in setting Trump’s coup plot in motion. 

    The network spent the months leading up to the 2020 election priming viewers to disbelieve its results. When Trump lost but claimed the vote had been rigged against him, Fox spent weeks promoting election conspiracy theories its hosts and executives knew were false. When the incitement that Fox had aided led to an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol, the network’s stars downplayed what Trump had done and hid the damning truth from its audience.

    Trump’s subversion scheme failed — but it didn’t end. He still lies that he won the 2020 election. He replaced Pence with Vance, who refuses to admit that Trump lost that vote. And Trump hints that if he loses, that will mean the election has been stolen — and his supporters will be justified in responding with violence.

    Fox, having seen the disastrous consequences of indulging Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theories, is fully in his corner, preparing the way for another coup attempt. The network’s airwaves are once again filled with baseless demagoguery about potential election fraud. 

    We’ve all seen where this ends.