Ex-Fox News Host: Many Reasons To Believe Network Axed Stormy Daniels Story

After The New Yorker wrote that Fox News quashed a scoop on Stormy Daniels ’ alleged affair with President Donald Trump  during the 2016 presidential campaign, one of the network’s former stars said there’s a good chance that’s true.

Abby Huntsman , who had co-hosted “Fox & Friends” before moving over to ABC’s “The View,” said Monday that “there are many reasons to believe” the New Yorker report is accurate, adding that it could be a “real problem for Fox.”

“And it’s a problem for the journalists that work there that want to break these stories,” she said. “That is why they’re there to do their job.”

Huntsman, who labored on both the news and opinion sides of Fox News (and early worked for HuffPost), defended the integrity of the network’s journalists and urged viewers to distinguish between its objective and subjective programming.

“If you’re going to turn on Sean Hannity at night, you have to know that you’re going to get probably stuff supporting Trump,” she said. “That’s his take. But the news side of Fox they take very, very seriously there and there are, as we always say, wonderful people that work there.”

According to The New Yorker’s deep-dive report into the relationship between the president and Fox News, which was written by Jane Mayer, then-FoxNews.com reporter Diana Falzone uncovered evidence in 2016 of Trump’s past sexual relationship with Daniels, a porn actress. Through emails she’d obtained between Trump and his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen, Falzone allegedly also found proof of a hush-money deal in the works. 

But the story stalled, passed from editor to editor. Ken LaCorte, who was running the website at the time, told Falzone to “just let it go” because Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch “wants Donald Trump to win” the election, according to the New Yorker report.

LaCorte denied The New Yorker’s account. In January 2018, in response to a story by CNN’s Oliver Darcy  that revealed the spiking of Falzone’s story, LaCorte told Mediaite  that he killed it because it was lacking evidence and he therefore wasn’t “comfortable publishing” it.

While Daniels has spoken about her alleged relationship with Trump for many months, matters worsened for the president last week when Cohen testified about the hush money before the House oversight committee, producing a copy of a check bearing Trump’s signature.