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- Longtime Fox News host Maria Bartiromo denies having gotten into a shouting match with Trump’s AG.
- Speaking on the record for Jonathan Karl’s forthcoming book, former AG Bill Barr said Bartiromo “called me up and she was screaming.”
- “She’s lost it,” Barr recalled of the incident, which Bartiromo denied via a spokesperson.
In the wake of the 2020 election, then-Attorney General Bill Barr said longtime Fox News host Maria Bartiromo called him to complain that the Justice Department was not doing enough to investigate President Donald Trump’s demonstrably false voter-fraud claims, according to a new book by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl.
“She called me up and she was screaming,” Barr said of Bartiromo to the author. “I yelled back at her. She’s lost it.”
The conversation is reported in Karl’s forthcoming book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” which comes out on Tuesday. Insider obtained an early copy of the book.
Bartiromo, who did not speak on the record for Karl’s book, denied Barr’s account in a statement to Insider.
“Maria Bartiromo denied these allegations noting it was Barr who was aggressive with her, yelling and cursing during the call,” Bartiromo’s spokesperson said in an email, similar to the statement given by Fox News to Karl for the book.
During the aftermath of the 2020 election, Bartiromo was an outlier in both her Fox News and Fox Business Network shows, amplifying baseless voter fraud claims and featuring guests such as former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who sought to challenge the election results. Election officials have repeatedly shut down conspiracy theories of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election as false.
Despite promising major revelations, Powell’s election fraud claims have been thoroughly debunked and she’s facing a $4 billion defamation lawsuit from election-tech firms. Fox News has been seeking to dismiss a similar lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.
Fox News projected Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election on November 7 last year. Days earlier, Trump had reportedly been furious with the network when it declared Biden won Arizona, a key swing state that Trump won in 2016. Trump continues to push falsehoods that he won the election.
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