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Jesse Watters

Still Lying: Fox Totally Falsifies GOP 'Star Witness' Testimony On Biden

Following the July 31 testimony to the House Oversight Committee by former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, right-wing media outlets arrived at what should have been a very uncomfortable crossroads: They had relentlessly hyped a narrative that Archer would seriously incriminate President Joe Biden, but Archer denied that Joe Biden had talked business with his son’s associates and instead confirmed Hunter had sold only the “illusion” of access to his father. The full release of the transcript further busted right-wing narratives about any vast Biden family corruption linked to the president.

Fox News had an easy solution to this dilemma, however: It has simply claimed repeatedly that Archer had said the opposite of all these things. The brazenness with which the network is voicing these falsehoods is another example proving that Fox is simply a political propaganda outlet rather than any kind of news organization.

False: Joe Biden participated in nefarious business calls and dinners with Hunter Biden

The closest that House Republican investigators got to linking Joe Biden with his son’s business deals was that the two of them frequently spoke on the phone, and that Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone while in the company of his own business associates. But in his testimony, Archer explicitly said the two Bidens had been checking in on each other, making small talk — as well as discussing Beau Biden’s terminal cancer — and not discussing business.“Say, where are you, how’s the weather, how’s the fishing, how’s the — whatever it may be, whatever,” Archer said, describing the calls. “It was very, you know, casual conversations about — you know, not about cap tables or financials or anything like that.” Archer also said that while Joe Biden did attend several dinners with his son and some of his associates, but these dinners remained casual and they did not discuss business, instead discussing the U.N. World Food Program on which Hunter Biden then also served.But as Fox News hosts and guests tell it, Archer described proof of an intricate involvement between Joe Biden and his son’s business partners.

  • Fox News contributor Leo Terrell claimed the phone calls were “proof that Joe Biden knew what was going on” with Hunter Biden's business. Terrell proclaimed that “Joe Biden lied to the American people. He lied, and this witness has proven that he lied” when the president previously stated that he had no involvement with his son's business. Terrell continued, “Joe Biden getting on the phone and basically stating, ‘Hello,’ he made that call, is proof that Joe Biden knew what was going on.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 8/1/23]
  • Fox guest and former Senate Republican staffer Garrett Ventry boasted that Archer’s “explosive testimony” showed Joe Biden “was potentially involved” and “certainly had knowledge” of Hunter Biden’s business. Ventry claimed that “we learned the day before [from] Devon Archer's explosive testimony that Joe Biden potentially was involved in Hunter Biden's business dealings, he certainly had knowledge of them.” Ventry further claimed that the indictment of former President Donald Trump for attempting to obstruct the 2020 election was really meant to be a distraction from this “explosive” evidence from Archer. [Fox News, America Reports, 8/2/23]
  • Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters declared, “The full transcript of Biden's former business partner, Devon Archer, has just been released and it confirms everything that Joe Biden and the media have been lying to you about.” In fact, Archer’s testimony disproved everything that Watters and right-wing media have claimed. [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/3/23]
  • Fox host Maria Bartiromo said that Archer’s testimony about Hunter Biden putting his father on speakerphone “contradicts President Biden's repeated denial that he had no knowledge of his son's business deals.” In fact, Archer said that they did not discuss business during these speakerphone exchanges. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 8/6/23]
  • Conservative pundit Peter Schweitzer falsely claimed that Archer “unequivocally said any people discussing or claiming that he [Joe Biden] was not involved with his son's business is totally and completely incorrect.” Archer actually said that he was never aware of Hunter Biden discussing business with his father. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 8/6/23]

False: Hunter Biden sold access to Joe Biden and obtained changes in U.S. policy

Right-wing media has repeatedly mischaracterized conclusions from the testimony as proof that Hunter Biden sold access to then-Vice President Joe Biden. Archer’s testimony showed that Hunter Biden sold the “illusion of access” with no actual influence from his father. Archer further confirmed: “He did not ask him — to my knowledge, I never saw him say, do anything for any particular business,” nor was he aware of anything Joe Biden ever did in that direction.

  • Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett: “Devon Archer absolutely demolished Joe Biden's lies that he knew nothing, had no involvement. Archer confirmed that Hunter was selling access to his father and promises of influence.” Archer confirmed that Joe Biden was not involved in his son’s business deals, and that Hunter Biden sold an “illusion” of access rather than the real thing. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/3/23]
  • Right-wing author David Marcus: “There's no question left as to whether Joe Biden was involved in Hunter Biden's scheme to sell influence. Joe Biden was absolutely involved. The only question is did he know he was involved?” Again, Archer actually testified under oath that Joe Biden was not involved in his son’s business dealings. [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/7/23]
  • Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel: “The important thing we learned this week from Devon Archer is that whenever Hunter Biden wanted to show that he had access to Washington, his dad willingly got on the phone. He came to the meetings, and it was all designed to help Hunter suggest he had access to the wheels of power.” Archer said that Joe Biden got on the phone with his son as they discussed Beau Biden’s terminal cancer and to check-in with each other emotionally. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/4/23]
  • Fox & Friends guest Brett Tolman: “This is the vice president of the United States getting on calls with foreign leaders in order to sell to them access and sell to them capability of helping them when they get in trouble.” This statement has no connection to reality. Archer testified that whenever Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone, the result was an exchange of friendly hellos. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/1/23]

False: Joe Biden fired Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to help Burisma

Fox News has continued to push the years-old smear campaign that led to then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, claiming that as vice president, Joe Biden pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the energy firm Burisma when Hunter Biden was on the company’s board.In fact, Archer confirmed that Shokin’s firing was consistent with a longstanding anti-corruption policy. Furthermore, Archer explained that “the firing of Shokin was bad for Burisma because he was under control,” meaning that Shokin was not seriously prosecuting Burisma and might have let the company off easy on any corruption charges. For example, Shokin’s lack of cooperation with a U.K. investigation had already led to the head of the company’s assets being unfrozen. Archer’s testimony is consistent with voluminous other reporting over the years demonstrating that Shokin was removed by the Ukrainian government at the urging of American and European officials concerned that the prosecutor was himself corrupt. (The international groundswell to remove Shokin actually predated Biden’s involvement.)Fox News, however, has fully resurrected this zombie narrative:

  • Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt stated that Joe Biden “went over there and he fired the prosecutor that was investigating the company for corruption.” For her proof of this, Earhardt cited an article in the right-wing Washington Examiner. Archer confirmed that Shokin’s firing was part of an anti-corruption policy. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/1/23]
  • New York Post columnist Miranda Devine said Joe Biden “withheld a billion dollars or threatened to withhold a billion dollars of U.S. aid from Ukraine unless they fired the very prosecutor who was investigating the company” that employed Hunter Biden. In reality, Archer said that Shokin’s firing was “bad for Burisma.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/1/23]
  • Fox News host Todd Piro: “Burisma was worried that people would legally mess with them, those people being Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor. So who could they get? Joe Biden.” Shokin was precisely not messing with Burisma, as the head of the company’s assets had been unfrozen “because of a lack of cooperation from the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 8/3/23]
  • Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy falsely claimed that Joe Biden “used his influence to help get a prosecutor fired, who happens to have been investigating the company that was paying his son $83,000 a month.” Archer confirmed that Shokin was not effectively investigating Burisma and his role as prosecutor was viewed as “good” for the company. [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 8/4/23]
  • Former Trump acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker: “Joe Biden brags about firing the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. This is a prima facie case.” Shokin was failing to investigate Burisma. [Fox News, Life, Liberty & Levin, 8/6/23]

False: Joe Biden is compromised by foreign governments

Archer testified that he and Hunter Biden “didn’t raise capital from the Chinese,” and that they never spoke about any alleged prospects of Chinese investments being important to his family. But in Fox News’ telling, Archer’s testimony was proof that Joe Biden is in hock to foreign governments, especially China.

  • Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed that “Joe Biden and his family have gotten, you know, enormously wealthy off of this kind of influence peddling. … These countries have something over him. He is compromised.” Archer shot down claims that foreign business dealings were of importance to Joe Biden. [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 8/5/23]
  • The Hill media columnist Joe Concha: “You have a president that can be compromised by the likes of China, Ukraine, Romania, you can go down the list. … If that’s the case, then this makes Watergate look like a smash-and-grab.” Archer denied claims that Joe Biden had been bribed. [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 8/7/23]
  • Fox News host Pete Hegseth claimed that “the Biden family can be bought and the Chinese will pay big bucks for it, or should I say big Yuans.” Archer said that he and Hunter Biden did not raise money from China. Instead, Hegseth switched from citing Archer to then relying on an article from serial smear merchant John Solomon for this particular claim. (Solomon’s article involves Hunter Biden’s business activities from 2017 and 2018, a time when his father did not hold any public office.) [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/4/23]
  • Bartiromo claimed that Archer said “what he called the brand was what China, Ukraine and Russia all wanted to pay for, with Joe Biden at the seat of — with Joe Biden at the seat of power as the vice president of the United States.” Archer specifically shot down claims that Joe Biden had been bribed. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 8/6/23]

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

One America Network’s Shameful Last Days On National TV

One America Network’s Shameful Last Days On National TV

On July 21, Verizon followed in DirecTV’s footsteps and announced it would not be renewing its contract with the far-right conspiracy theory network One America News. Having learned nothing from its catastrophic response to DirecTV, OAN denounced Verizon and encouraged viewers to harass and boycott the “radical Marxist corporation.” And since then, OAN has only further proved its worthlessness.

Without a major carrier, OAN remains focused on national issues like a fear of roving transgender gangs harassing conservatives, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s support for gay men who flash “their genitals to little boys and girls” (she appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race -- a show with no children -- two years ago), and Verizon’s “censorship” of OAN.

Before OAN was officially kicked off national television, however, the network spent its last week much like the years before, warning viewers of “Fauci-funded bioweapons” unleashed against the people, hand-wringing over billionaires “pushing the transgender issue,” speculating about gay men with monkeypox sexually assaulting children, lamenting the need for a literal war against drug cartels, and discussing the left’s grand plot to steal the 2022 midterms, beginning with the “Marxist censorship” of OAN and other right-wing voices.

Prior to the drop, Pearson Sharp, Infowars’ favorite OAN correspondent, delivered one more report about the “predator class” using COVID-19 vaccines to “depopulate the world” by 15 percent.

“They want to kill off the useless people, as they call us,” Sharp ominously said. “And you can already see it happening. … We know these vaccines are hardest on the elderly, so it makes perfect sense that the Bolsheviks in our government would want to wipe out as many retired Americans as possible. Can’t pay Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security if people are dead, don’t you know?”

“These Fauci-funded bioweapons,” Sharp warned, “are products of a rogue globalist government that hates America and hates its citizens, and is doing everything in its power to wipe us out. This is corporate domestic bioterrorism, plain and simple,” and “the predator class in Washington” which is “responsible for this genocide” must pay the price.


OAN’s final days of national carriage also targeted LGBTQ people with bigoted nonsense. For making investments in transgender issues and “quote-unquote, ‘gender care,’” Tipping Point host Kara McKinney labeled Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his cousin, Jennifer -- whom McKinney also deadnamed and misgendered -- “two prime examples of transhumanists trying to play God by reshaping the world through technology.” McKinney said the Pritzkers are an example of billionaires who are “ really pushing the transgender issue” alongside Big Pharma, which she said sees it as “another potential moneymaker” as “COVID starts to wind down at least somewhat.”

Before inisting that he did not want to sound homophobic, Real America’s Ball took news of multiple children testing positive for monkeypox as a potential sign that they had been sexually assaulted by gay men. “How does a kid in Washington, D.C., and a kid in California -- we’re talking toddlers -- get monkeypox if it’s barely ever transmitted through just touching the skin,” Ball asked, exactly describing monkeypox transmission, “because otherwise, you know where I’m going with this.”

Ball’s guest, the anti-COVID-19 vaccine Dr. Brian Tyson, replied that he believed that both children “came from a gay relationship family, or had contact with somebody in the gay community, and I think that that’s really where we’re going with this.” Speculating that one child may be undocumented, Tyson said, “Who knows what’s happened to that kid. And we see bad things happen to kids all the time in those situations.”

“That’s what I’m saying. That’s where I’m going with it,” Ball replied, talking over Tyson’s hedge that “it’s a little too early to draw conclusions on that.”

Speaking of Ball and children, the Real America host also spent part of his last week on national television encouraging parents to hit their children for misbehaving. After a guest blamed “psychotropic drugs” and other “externalities” for mass shootings, Ball suggested parents should ignore medical treatments for behavior problems and just hit them instead.

“We can’t say enough about what we’re doing to our children, folks. The next time you take your kid who you think’s a little bit hyper, or a little bit despondent, or a little bit sidetracked in the classroom, don’t feed him drugs.” Ball continued, “I’m of a different age … and when they said, 'Dan's hyperactive. Dan won't sit still in class. Dan won’t shut his mouth,' nobody said, 'Pump Dan full of drugs' 40 years ago when I was seven or eight. You know what they did? They cracked me one and then I got in line."

In its final days of national carriage, OAN also called for military action against drug cartels. With no concern for the possibility of starting a war with Mexico, or U.S. airstrikes on U.S. soil, host Addison Smith called for “using the unfathomable power and strength of our military to deal with Mexican drug cartels” and compared the would-be war to ongoing U.S. special operations and drone campaigns.

“The Mexican drug operation is one of, if not the, biggest threat to this nation right now,” Smith warned. “If our United States military has a job to deal with any group, that should be target number one, and we could do it very easily.” His guest, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX), agreed that the U.S. should “use every means necessary to secure our southern border, to protect the American people against the Mexican drug cartels.”


OAN’s final days on national television were a shameful mess of the vitriol and dangerous conspiracy theories it is known for, down to the network’s explanation of why it was leaving Verizon. According to Sharp, “there’s no chance in hell” Democrats will allow Republicans to win control of Congress in November, so they will cheat as they did in 2020, “and the process starts, of course with a massive, widespread, coordinated campaign of censorship,” which naturally included DirecTV and Verizon dumping OAN.

“It's essentially institutionalized discrimination,” Sharp complained as his network’s time ran out. “It’s appalling to think that the criminals in Washington are colluding with the criminals in the media to prevent you, the American people, from figuring out just how much of the Constitution they're willing to shred to stay in power.”


Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

One America News Promotes Election Deniers

One America News Promotes Election Deniers In Key State Races

In the lead-up to the 2022 midterms, far-right conspiracy theory outlet One America News has relentlessly promoted Big Lie supporters running for key statewide elected positions. It’s the latest iteration of the pro-Trump network’s ongoing effort to undermine U.S. elections: platform and potentially elect allies who've promised to turn OAN's favorite election conspiracy theories into state policy.

OAN has played a major role in promoting election-denying GOP candidates Doug Mastriano, Kari Lake, Mark Finchem, Matt Deperno, Kristina Karamo, and Burt Jones. According to a Media Matters review of OAN appearances since the 2020 election, these candidates have racked up more than 100 combined appearances on OAN, often through sycophantic interviews and campaign plugs disguised as news reports. A majority of these interviews aired before DirectTV booted the network off its largest distribution platform on April 4.

Fox News has seemingly aired just five interviews with these election denialist front-runners, who are instead turning toward more fringe conservative outlets for coverage. As a network dedicated to election lies and still able to hold Donald Trump’s attention, OAN is uniquely poised to promote right-wing election deniers running for office across the country. Two OAN hosts, The Real Story’s Natalie Harp and Weekly Briefing’s Christina Bobb, even recently left the network to help the former president’s Save America PAC elect election-denialist candidates.

Mastriano, Deperno, Karamo, and Jones have now won their primaries and will join other OAN-backed candidates like Ohio Republican congressional nominee J.R. Majewski in the general election. Polls predict that Lake and Finchem will join their cohorts after Arizona’s August 2 primary. All six of these candidates have ties to anti-government and extremist movements, including Stop the Steal, QAnon, the Oath Keepers, and the ongoing campaign to overturn the 2020 election.

Doug Mastriano (Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Nominee)

On May 17, state Sen. Doug Mastriano -- a QAnon-promoting “Stop the Steal” adherent being advised by former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis -- won the crowded Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial primary. The following night, “the next Pennsylvania governor” fittingly celebrated with his “good friends” on OAN; the network had spent the past 20 months promoting his proposed state election audit and calling Mastriano an “election integrity warrior.”

According to Media Matters’ internal database, Mastriano hasn’t appeared on a weekday Fox show since May 2020. In contrast, Mastriano has appeared on OAN at least 34 separate times – mostly for interview segments and live coverage about his attempts to recreate the bogus Maricopa County, Arizona, election audit in Pennsylvania. Mastriano traveled to the Arizona audit site last June, where he was promptly interviewed by then-OAN hosts Christina Bobb and Natalie Harp. (At the time, Bobb was using her OAN-promoted nonprofit to fund far-right lawmakers' trips to the audit, which OAN did not disclose to viewers.)

Like Bobb, Mastriano has been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee for his involvement in the Capitol insurrection, including attempts to pressure GOP leadership into adopting a fake slate of electors. Six days before the insurrection, Real America host Dan Ball praised Mastriano for his attempt to overturn Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results, since “the numbers don’t add up.”

OAN also aired live coverage of the sham hearing on supposed election fraud that Mastriano spearheaded at a hotel in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in late November 2020. Less than two weeks before the January 6 insurrection, host Chanel Rion even praised the “domino effect” Mastriano’s “forum” had on efforts to overturn election results in Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia.

In a recent appearance discussing efforts to restore “election integrity” on Real America, Mastriano similarly boasted that “anything you see in Wisconsin, in Arizona, in Georgia had its roots actually in the hearing in Gettysburg.”

Appropriately, Mastriano seemingly announced his campaign for governor on the January 8 edition of Weekly Briefing, breaking the news to Bobb after lying about Pennsylvania’s 2020 election. He then asked OAN viewers to “help get us across the line” and become “the next governor of Pennsylvania” – then compared insurrectionists jailed for participating in the January 6 Capitol attack to Japanese Americans held in internment camps during World War II.

The former OAN host was particularly close with the GOP candidate. While at OAN, Bobb appeared on Mastriano’s radio show. Months later, Mastriano treated Bobb’s family to a “private tour” of Gettysburg.

Kari Lake (Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate)

OAN has hosted Kari Lake over 25 times since she announced her gubernatorial campaign last June, with the network consistently promoting the serial election liar. Though the presumed GOP nominee, tied to Nazi sympathizers and QAnon conspiracy theorists, has been a frequent presence on OAN and other fringe media, she hadn’t appeared on weekday Fox News until a June 27 interview on Special Report.

While appearing on OAN, Lake has pushed a variety of OAN-endorsed election conspiracy theories and lies. She repeatedly pushed the debunked “Sharpiegate” conspiracy theory, was a vocal proponent of the pointless Arizona election audit, and has told OAN that, as governor, she “would not have certified” or would “decertify” the 2020 election. (There is currently no legal pathway to decertify an election.)

In a June 1 Real America interview, the former local news anchor told host Dan Ball, “I believe these journalists, some of them have blood on their hands. Think about what happens when you have a stolen election." She continued, “Their day will come when they will have to face their maker, and it's not gonna be pretty." Minutes later, Ball doubled down on his endorsement of Lake and directed viewers to her campaign site.

OAN has also tapped Lake to spread anti-vaccine misinformation and LGBTQ hate. In a Real America segment attacking LGBTQ representation in children's cartoons last August, Lake complained about the “whole LGBTQ+ agenda that seems to be being pushed on our children.” Against clips of Muppet Babies character Gonzo coming out as nonbinary, Lake claimed that media's “whole intent is to divide us, separate us into groups, and put wedges between us.” She concluded, “In some ways, I hope they go under, because they’re not serving America, they’re destroying free press.”

Mark Finchem (Arizona Secretary Of State Candidate)

Since current frontrunner and election denialist Mark Finchem launched his bid to become Arizona's next secretary of state last May, OAN has hosted him over 21 times; Finchem has not appeared on Fox News. The QAnon supporter and “Stop the Steal” adherent tied to an anti-government extremist group is OAN’s pick to stop leftists from enacting "totalitarian control” of the United States.


The House Select Committee recently subpoenaed Finchem over his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election – efforts which OAN regularly promoted. As the secretary of state candidate explained to Natalie Harp last November, Finchem helped draft an evidence book meant to sway then-Vice President Mike Pence into supporting an illegal alternate slate of electors for Trump.

On OAN, the Trump-endorsed candidate has pushed debunked conspiracy theories about “fictitious voters” and “sovereign fraud” to justify calls for “ending mail-in voting” and investigating election workers for “racketeering.”


Last July, Finchem assured Harp he would not have certified the 2020 election had he been secretary of state. Finchem falsely claimed that “under the 10th Amendment and the legal doctrine that the kid who steals a candy bar cannot keep a candy bar when he gets caught,” the ability to decertify elections is “a state right. it's an unenumerated power that the state legislatures have.” Finchem has also called for Arizona to “decertify, reclaim, and then petition other states to invoke the 12th Amendment" to rerun the 2020 election nationwide.

On- and off-air, OAN hosts have responded to these claims by repeatedly directing viewers to Finchem’s campaign site, which hosts a petition to decertify the 2020 election results. In February, the network promoted Finchem-backed legislation to decertify the election results of Maricopa, Pima, and Yuma counties. Legal experts and Arizona’s house speaker dismissed the OAN-promoted measure as “legally unsound” and “obviously unconstitutional."

Matt DePerno (Michigan Attorney General Candidate)

On April 23, the Michigan GOP endorsed Matt DePerno — a fringe lawyer who actively worked to overturn the 2020 election — for state attorney general. That night, DePerno tagged OAN’s Bobb in a tweet thanking his supporters for helping him win “this historic victory.”

DePerno, who has not appeared on Fox News, has been interviewed on OAN at least 16 times since the 2020 election, with the network often promoting the candidate and his “groundbreaking lawsuit” to (unsuccessfully) relitigate Michigan’s 2020 election.

Last September, “the next attorney general” promised Harp he would “assemble a coalition to investigate 2020 and prosecute anyone involved in this voter fraud.” One of DePerno’s targets is Michigan’s current Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson. On The Real Story, DePerno has falsely accused Benson of rigging election audits and entertained the host’s unfounded allegation that Benson purposefully kept dead voters on Michigan’s voting rolls to rig the 2020 election.

In a March 3 appearance on The Real Story, DePerno falsely declared the “No. 1 issue in this state” was the 2020 election, saying, “We have to cling to what’s left of the Constitution and claw back everything that’s been taken from us, and I'm the candidate to do that.” Instead of pressing him, Harp thanked DePerno for his “courage” and advertised his website to OAN viewers.

Kristina Karamo (Michigan Secretary Of State Candidate)

OAN has interviewed election-denying conspiracy theorist Kristina Karamo, the Trump-endorsed GOP pick for Michigan's secretary of state, at least 8 times since June 2021. The former poll watcher garnered attention with her December 2020 Fox interviews about supposedly witnessing election fraud in a Detroit polling center. Since then, Fox has not hosted Karamo.

On OAN, Karamo has routinely promised hosts she will recreate the OAN-supported Arizona audit, which experts decried as a “clown show,” in order to restore confidence in elections and the American republic. In one Weekly Briefing appearance last November, Karamo called voter fraud a “national security threat,” and told viewers that “we lack the people in government with the honesty and decency” to enforce the law “if a poll challenger's rights are violated.”

Against a Real Story chyron titled “Saving Michigan,” Karamo claimed on OAN last September that George Soros “injected people like Jocelyn Benson,” Michigan’s current secretary of state, into government in order to rig “one of the top states that determine presidential election outcomes.” (Karamo has spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories targeting Soros in the past, as well.)

One month later, Karamo baselessly called her Democratic opponent an out-of-state plant meant to “corrupt the election system so the people of Michigan can be disenfranchised, to put it plainly.” Harp agreed with Karamo’s comments and encouraged her to come back on OAN.

Burt Jones (Georgia Lieutenant Governor Candidate)

Georgia’s Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, Burt Jones has appeared on OAN over 10 times since Trump endorsed him last September. In the lead-up to Jones’ May 17 primary win, OAN repeatedly promoted Jones' bid to become the second-highest elected official in the state of Georgia.

The state senator— who has not appeared on Fox News— first joined OAN during a Bobb-funded June pilgrimage to check out last year’s Arizona audit, shortly after Jones’ colleagues had stripped him of his committee leadership positions for pushing election lies. On April 15, Jones toldThe Real Story that this resistance from colleagues, including current Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, inspired his campaign: “One of the main reasons why I’m running for lieutenant governor is because that's where a lot of the pushback came from.”


Last December, Harp essentially endorsed Jones, telling him, “You've been such a champion for election integrity, even when the RINOs were against you. Thank you for the work you're doing.” She stressed, “The people of Georgia have to be so excited that you're running having an election integrity champion as lieutenant governor.”

Earlier this year, Bobb asked Jones if people “actually get involved to secure their elections locally, that the election actually is salvageable, it can be saved and you can have a fair election. What do you think?” Jones responded “absolutely,” and once again plugged his efforts to eliminate voting machines and drop boxes.

At the request of OAN hosts, Jones has promised to investigate the 2020 election and fully support OAN-promoted conspiracy theorists “waging war against election corruption.” In January, OAN even recruited Jones for its ongoing campaign encouraging viewers to stop nonexistent election rigging and work the polls.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.