Fox News Goes Full CNN in Report of a Fake Politico Story

A White House official on Monday sued Politico and one of its reporters for $25 million over stories and tweets that he says falsely accused him of “lying, deceit and unethical conduct.”

“Kash Patel, the National Security Council’s senior counter-terrorism director, is seeking more than $25 million in damages in a lawsuit filed in Virginia.

“The lawsuit also names Natasha Bertrand, a Politico reporter and MSNBC contributor, as well as Politico owner Robert Allbritton. The allegations, which center on what the president was told about the situation in Ukraine, go to the heart of the case for impeachment.”

Kashyap Patel is not in the public eye and a libel suit is appropriate.

Fox News reported, “The suit stems from Bertrand’s Oct. 23 story, headlined ‘Nunes Protege Fed Ukraine Info to Trump.’ Patel previously worked for Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, spearheading the Intel Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, before joining the White House in February.”

The entire story was not true.

THE FAKE TALE

Fox News reported, “Patel was ‘so involved in the issue,’ the story said, that ‘at one point Trump thought he was in charge of Ukraine policy for the National Security Council.’ This was attributed to closed-door House testimony by Fiona Hill, a former NSC official.

What’s more, Politico said, ‘Patel’s involvement demonstrates that the president had at least some support for the scheme from within the NSC’ — the scheme being to pressure Ukraine into investigations that would help Trump politically.”

NOT TRUE

In fact, Patel’s suit says, “at no time” before Oct. 30 “had Kash ever communicated with the president on any matters involving Ukraine. Kash never supplied any Ukraine ‘materials’ to the president.”

Democrats fed the story to Politico and they didn’t bother to fact-check. If the press is accountable at all, this is the lawsuit that should win.

FOX GOES FULL CNN

Politico bashed the suit and claimed it was an effort to target Schiff.

Howie Kurtz, who wrote the Fox News article, added, “Schiff is a major target. The suit, which includes its share of Trumpian language, says the defendants “acted in concert” with the congressman or his aides to further the impeachment probe. The alleged purpose was to “destroy Kash’s reputation” as a lawyer and presidential aide to further “Schiff’s baseless Ukrainian quid pro quo hoax.”

The article was written to minimize the dishonest story and support the administration’s detractors who libeled Mr. Patel. Howie wrote it and the Fox editors gave it their blessing.

“Trumpian language?” Really Fox? That is a not-so-subtle way of demonizing the lawsuit. Fox is now CNN.

So far as we can see, the lawsuit was written in English, the language spoken by 63 million Americans.