“About thirty minutes before the town hall was due to start, a senior aide started getting text messages from a person on the inside at Fox. Holy s–t, the team thought. They were images of all the questions Trump would be asked and the planned follow-ups, down to the exact wording. Jackpot. This was like a student getting a peek at the test before the exam started,” Isenstadt writes.

“Trump was pissed” about the questions, which he thought were too aggressive, but the campaign “workshopped answers” with him, Isenstadt reported.

While it's unclear who might have had access to the town hall questions, there is no shortage of Fox employees who value Trump’s political success over questions of journalistic integrity. The network effectively fused with Trump’s first-term White House, as several network hosts served as his advisers and a revolving door opened up between Fox and his administration. The network’s fawning coverage of his 2024 campaign helped him win the GOP primary and the general election, and he has since named 17 current or former Fox staffers to top posts in his second administration.

(A Fox spokesperson told CNN that “we take these matters very seriously and plan to investigate should there prove to be a breach within the network,” a comical sentiment based on the network’s past handling of Trump-related ethics violations.)

For his part, Trump subsequently claimed that a campaign receiving the questions from a news outlet source before a high-profile event should trigger serious consequences for the host outlet.

Following his disastrous September 2024 debate performance, Trump alleged on his Truth Social platform that “People are saying that Comrade Kamala Harris had the questions from Fake News ABC. I would say it is very likely.” He went on to claim that if that were the case, “ABC’s license should be TERMINATED.”

The former president’s claims were total garbage and a reflection of his poor information diet. Trump subsequently made clear he was running with the claims of a random X poster — whose profile stated “Black Insurrectionist--I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS” — who claimed to be in possession of an affidavit from an “ABC whistleblower” which alleged that “the Harris campaign was given sample questions."

ABC categorically denied Black Insurrectionist’s claims, and the document he eventually released was rife with inconsistencies (which did not stop several prominent MAGA influencers and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo from running with it). The Associated Press subsequently revealed that “Black Insurrectionist” was a white man who has “repeatedly been accused of defrauding business partners and lenders."

Trump’s threats of government retaliation, however, are deadly serious.

The Federal Communications Commission does not license broadcast networks — but it does license individual broadcast stations, including the eight owned and operated directly by ABC and the hundreds of additional affiliates. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Biden appointee, responded to Trump’s call by suggesting it runs afoul of the First Amendment.

But when Brendan Carr, a Republican FCC member and the author of Project 2025’s chapter on the commission, was asked about the controversy during a House hearing, he “would not answer if he believed the FCC had grounds to revoke the ABC license after the debate.” Trump has since named Carr to replace Rosenworcel as FCC chair — and Carr subsequently suggested in a letter to Bob Iger, CEO of ABC’s parent company, Disney, that his FCC would closely scrutinize ABC’s affiliate agreements.

Trump is an authoritarian who looks for any opportunity to punish news outlets he doesn’t like. But if Isenstadt’s story is accurate, he has no problem taking all the help he can get from favored ones.