© Chip Somodevilla / GettyRep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
House Committee on Oversight and Reform chair Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) wrote to former Fox News reporter Diana Falzone last month demanding that she turn over any documents relating to Trump's alleged extramarital affairs.
An article in the New Yorker last month alleged that Fox News executive Ken LaCorte spiked the story to protect Trump - a claim LaCorte has vehemently denied, saying the story lacked corroborating evidence and that the network was merely practicing responsible journalism, as were other outlets who declined the story.
That article seems to have motivated Cummings's letter - a letter that not only seeks personal dirt on the president, but seeks information that might be used to review Fox News' editorial decisions. The committee's letter suggests that Fox News may have violated campaign finance rules if it tried to help Trump by suppressing the Daniels story.
Falzone has said she will cooperate with the committee, despite an agreement with Fox that prevents her from speaking about the story. In an op-ed at Mediaite, LaCorte says he supports Falzone's desire to talk about the story publicly, but that he will refuse to cooperate with the committee's effort to exercise oversight over the free press.
LaCorte writes:
In the country's escalating partisan fights and media attacks, two bad ideas have surfaced.
One was from President Donald Trump, who tweeted that Saturday Night Live's constant mocking of him could, in fact, be an "advertisement without consequences" and wondered if the Federal Election Commission should investigate. It's a silly notion that should be ignored.
The other was from a lawyer for a former Fox News reporter who, in trying to get her client from underneath a non-disclosure agreement, baselessly speculated on MSNBC that I and Fox may have broken campaign contribution laws because I wouldn't publish a half-cooked Stormy Daniels story two weeks before the 2016 election. It's another silly notion that, unfortunately, Congress is now acting on.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) took the bait, and is now bringing newsroom debate into his House Oversight Committee for investigation. In a letter sent to the former reporter, Diana Falzone, he asked for her working documents on the story, as well as an interview with the committee.
Falzone's lawyer announced that she would comply with the committee. I won't.
If House Oversight can launch an investigation based on the ridiculous notion that publishing, or even more bizarrely not publishing, a story can be construed as an in-kind campaign contribution, then no journalist in America is safe from government intimidation. It's a vast overreach of power, and I won't have any part of it.
To be clear, I fully support Fox News lifting Falzone's non-disclosure agreement so that she can make her case publicly, without leaks or lawyers. But neither editorial decisions nor joke writing should be a subject of government approval.
Perhaps this is all a PR stunt disguised as an investigation. I wouldn't be surprised to read an anonymous source close to the House Oversight investigation leak out that, lo and behold, Fox News is really horrible, faux news after all.
Or, perhaps Trump and Cummings are ushering in a new era of criminalizing "wrong" journalism and comedy. Whether its cries of "lock her up!" or "traitor," we've seen a desire to shift political disagreements into courtrooms, so perhaps it's the media's time for similar treatment. I hope not.
Whatever it is, House Oversight committee members should be ashamed that an important investigative arm of Congress is being used in this manner.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Reader Comments
It is far better for the well-being of the nation for politicians to be continuously wasting time and effort squabbling among themselves and doing all sorts of completely inane things than for them to be effective at passing even more laws that wastefully spend more money, further increase the already overbearing powers of gov't and diminish the liberties of the people, and lavish more perks and privileges on the governing class and their enablers and sycophants in and out of gov't.