Maria Bartiromo’s Fox shows pushed the indicted FBI informant’s story more than 200 times in 2023
Written by Matt Gertz
Research contributions from Rob Savillo, Tyler Monroe, Harrison Ray, Ben Van Bloem & Noah Dowe
Published
Fox’s Maria Bartiromo has responded with conspiracy theories and minimization after the Justice Department indicted Alexander Smirnov, an FBI informant who allegedly fabricated his accusation that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter each took hefty bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. Her initial reaction was to decry Smirnov’s arrest as an “intimidation tactic” aimed at silencing “whistleblowers,” and as the story has played out, she hosted House Republicans who argued that his story “wasn’t an important part” of their investigations into the Bidens and blamed the FBI for their credulity.
It’s no wonder that Bartiromo is trying to help Republicans memory-hole the critical role Smirnov’s story played in the GOP’s effort to impeach Joe Biden over the foreign business interests his son held before his election. Bartiromo’s two programs, Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria and Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, featured references to the now-indicted FBI informant’s claims at least 219 times in 2023, according to a Media Matters review of show transcripts. The former, a three-hour weekday program, featured 181 such claims over 62 episodes, while the latter broadcast the remaining 38 claims over 9 episodes.
Bartiromo and her guests treated Smirnov’s alleged fabrications as the linchpin of the GOP’s corruption case against Joe Biden. The host herself described Smirnov’s story as “the most serious charges ever leveled at a President” and evidence that Biden had been “compromised” via a “bribery scheme.” And a slew of Republican members of Congress used appearances on her show to call the since-indicted informant's claims “the most damning piece of evidence” against Biden, and a “bombshell” establishing “a pay-to-play scheme for quid pro-Joe” that one representative said “convinced me now beyond a shadow of a doubt that Joe Biden is corrupt and he is compromised.”
Republicans and their Fox mouthpieces launched a monthslong frenzy in May 2023, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. James Comer (R-KY) publicly demanded the FBI produce the documentation of an informant’s report to the bureau, known as an FD-1023, “alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national” by an unnamed “whistleblower.” The document Grassley released two months later indicated that in 2020, the informant, since revealed as Smirnov, alleged that Mykola Zlochevsky, founder of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, on whose board Hunter Biden served, had told him that he had paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million bribes each to help the company.
Right-wing media credulously trumpeted the dubious and unverified allegations in the FD-1023 memo because it seemed to support their conspiracy theory that Joe Biden, as vice president, corruptly forced the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop a purported probe of Burisma for Hunter’s benefit. This wildly wrong tale has been debunked over and over again — including during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment — but the tantalizing claim that Joe Biden had taken a bribe gave it new life and made it the crux of the GOP’s current impeachment effort.
Bartiromo’s programs were among the most prominent venues for the credulous dissemination of Smirnov’s claims. Media Matters found that she personally highlighted the informant’s story at least 126 times on her two shows in 2023. Bartiromo routinely treated the allegations as credible -- here are some examples of her coverage (transcripts via Nexis, bolding added):
MARIA BARTIROMO: The Communist China threat is in plain sight and yet we have questions on whether or not Joe Biden is, you know, compromised. We are waiting on the DOJ and the FBI to provide this memo that apparently the whistleblower says puts Joe Biden right in the middle of the influence peddling scheme where he accepted money from a foreign national and made a policy decision on behalf of America in response. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 5/4/23]
BARTIROMO: These are the most serious charges ever leveled at a President and the mainstream media will not report it at all. And so, you're saying that on the very day that we see this doc -- you and your colleagues saw the document where apparently what I've got here is, a Burisma executive said $5 million to Joe Biden, $5 million to the other Biden. On the same day, we have confirmation that there was a bribery scheme and Biden was paid off to make policy changes that Trump is indicted. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 6/9/23]
BARTIROMO: Explosive new allegations against President Biden. A newly released FBI informants file alleges Joe and Hunter Biden coerced a Burisma executive into paying them $5 million each to get [a] Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company fired. The file also shows that Burisma hired Hunter to protect them through his father and that the executive was pushed into paying In the money. The executive even calling Hunter Biden stupid claiming that his dog was smarter than Hunter Biden but he needed to pay the money to protect the company. Back in 2018, Joe Biden bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 7/21/23]
BARTIROMO: A whistleblower testimony that says you accepted $5 million from Burisma executives, as your son did as well, the influence peddling and the charges of bribery against President Joe Biden. We're not going to let that go off of the front page. I'm sorry. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 10/4/23]
Bartiromo, once a respected business reporter, spent the Trump years reinventing herself as an apologist for the former president’s worst impulses who would provide him with softball interviews even by Fox’s standards.
“Maria Bartiromo is unquestionably the single best person in all business media, and she is the fairest and she's actually true MAGA,” Trump adviser Steve Bannon said in 2023. “There's been no better supporter of President Trump or the MAGA movement.”
Bartiromo’s reflexive support for Trump made her programs ground zero for ludicrous conspiracy theories about fraud rigging the 2020 presidential election. She launched Fox’s coverage attacking Dominion Voting Systems with an interview with pro-Trump election denier Sidney Powell. (The interview came after Powell forwarded Bartiromo an email from “one of Ms. Powell’s original sources on Dominion” who “intimated that her information had come from a combination of dreams and time travel.”) That segment and similar ones from Bartiromo’s show and other Fox programs triggered Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against the network, which Fox settled last year for a record $787.5 million.
The Dominion debacle resulted in no meaningful consequences for Bartiromo, so her willingness to carry water for pro-Trump conspiracy theories hasn’t changed — and Republicans still flock to her show to peddle nonsense. Twenty-two different Republican members of Congress pushed the Smirnov tale at least 60 times on her show in 2023, Media Matters found. Rep. James Comer (R-KY) had the most of those claims, with 10.
Here are some examples of their hyperbolic rhetoric on Bartiromo's Fox shows (transcripts via Nexis, bolding added):
REP. RUSSELL FRY (R-SC): I think it's a bombshell. This is really big stuff. I mean, up to this point, this is the first time that we have a direct link, alleging or showing that Biden may have had direct influence here. And so before we've had the Suspicious Activity Reports related to his family. We've had the Hunter Biden laptop that there are references made, but nothing directly tying really strongly. And here we have really a bombshell whistleblower coming out alleging that there is a document that shows that there is an elaborate scheme to be with a foreign national. I think it's a grave concern to all Americans. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 5/4/23]
SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): Now, we've got a whistleblower that came forward to Senator Grassley's, saying the FBI knew as far back as 2017 a credible human source was reporting that about a $5 million payment to then Vice President Biden to change policies for some business or some entity in Ukraine. So, this is incredibly troubling. The deep state knows what it's done, what it's done wrong. They know how to hide the ball. That's why we need other whistleblowers with integrity that understand some of the wrongdoing to come forward to Congress. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 6/7/23]
REP. ANNA PAULINA LUNA (R-FL): What I can say is, absolutely just as we had speculated and had heard that this goes back to when Joe Biden was the Vice President, that, again, there was two separate transactions of $5 million, one to Joe Biden and one to his son Hunter Biden. It is from Burisma. I can tell you that the source had met multiple times to get this information that the FBI also in that document had redacted information that talked about an individual who has actual proof, an email -- whether it's emails, text messages, electronic correspondence, to actually get that information. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 6/9/23]
REP. CORY MILLS (R-FL): And at the same time, you have where is the Zlochevsky, who is the owner of Burisma, has now reported as a whistleblower that he has over 17 recordings of both him and Hunter Biden and also of him and Joe Biden, who he has referred to as the Big Guy. They talk about the $5 million in the pay-for-play. They talk about the Burisma scandal. We know that you have federal document 1023 that has just been released, not only to the Senate, but also to the House Oversight Committee. This seems to me, Maria, like they're trying to ensure that they have an indictment on President Trump because they know he gets larger television ratings so that they can try and go ahead and conveniently bury the fact that Hunter and Joe Biden and the Biden crime family are not having plausible evidence with a series of their LLC web chains on how they are laundering money for a pay-to-play scheme for quid pro-Joe. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 6/13/23]
REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY): Well, the document, again, is from a credible informant. It says that Joe Biden was taking a bribe. Now, let's look at what this document also says. It said from the oligarch that the investigators will never be able to find this or it will take them over 10 years to find this because of the way we funneled the money through various different banks. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 6/15/23]
REP. PAT FALLON (R-TX): I read the 1023 last week, and it convinced me now beyond a shadow of a doubt that Joe Biden is corrupt and he is compromised. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 6/28/23]
REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): That's a key question. Isn't it? Is this President compromised? And yes, I believed and I have believed for some time that this President is compromised. 1023 form that was made public yesterday says it all, when Burisma -- that the executive from Burisma, the owner of Burisma, says that they paid the Biden's $10 million, $5 million to one Biden and $5 million five to another Biden. He names the big guy. And then, lo and behold, Joe Biden threatens the Ukrainian government with a billion dollar -- withholding a billion dollars that they don't fire the prosecutor that's actually looking at Burisma. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 7/21/23]
REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Well, yes, I do think, if you step back, there's sort of three fundamental questions here, Maria. The first one is, what were the Bidens doing to get the money? I mean, 20 different shell companies, nine different Bidens getting paid. What was the service? What was the product? What was the value they add? The only logical explanation here is, it was access to then-Vice President Biden, maybe even, before that, Senator Biden. The second key question is, was he really involved? Was this just Hunter Biden's operation or was Joe Biden involved? It sure looks now like he was, based on this confidential human source and the information we got in the 1023 form, thanks to Senator Grassley. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 7/23/23]
REP. ANDREW CLYDE (R-GA): I think it's pretty evidence that -- pretty evident that Burisma has bought the Biden's and they bought them both of them for $10 million. So the 10 percent for the Big Guy, I think just went to 50 percent and equal partner. This 1023 form that has come out is incredibly -- just incredible evidence of what you see corruption at the very top level, our president is compromised, and the Department of Justice is covering up for him and has been covering up from this. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 7/24/23]
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): The allegations are that Hunter was selling official favors from daddy when he was vice president of the United States. If you look at the FD-1023, the allegation there is, the oligarch who owned Burisma spent $10 million, $5 million to Joe Biden, $5 million to Hunter Biden, in exchange for getting Joe Biden to fire the prosecutor who was prosecuting that corrupt oligarch. We know the second half of the quid pro quo happened. Joe Biden has admitted, he got that prosecutor fired. The allegation is, he was bribed to do it. And, number three, it's important to understand, this is often discussed as Hunter's business dealings. This was not Hunter's business dealings. This was Joe Biden's business. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 8/13/23]
REP. TOM TIFFANY (R-WI): I think the most damning piece of evidence is the $5 million that came from Burisma that really kicked this whole thing off, because President -- then-Vice President Biden confirmed it in an interview. He said, yeah, I shut down that investigation that Shokin was doing in the Ukraine, and there was $20 million that followed that. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 12/12/23]
Media Matters previously found that Fox host Sean Hannity’s program aired 325 segments about Hunter Biden in 2023. Eighty-five of those segments, including 28 Hannity monologues, mentioned the allegation that Joe and Hunter Biden received $5 million bribes, which the Justice Department now attributes to false claims by Smirnov. Like Bartiromo, Hannity has responded to Smirnov’s arrest by seeking to downplay the story he once touted.
Methodology
Media Matters searched transcripts in the Nexis database for all original episodes for Fox Business Network's Mornings with Maria and Fox News Channel's Sunday Morning Futures for any of the terms “Hunter,” “Biden,” “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” “FBI,” or “Smirnov” within the same paragraph as any of the terms “Burisma,” “1023,” “report,” “memo,” “informant,” “source,” or “whistleblower” or any variation of any of the terms “Ukraine,” “bribe,” or “5 million” from January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023.
We included claims, which we defined as an instance of an uninterrupted block of speech by a single speaker stating that former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov claimed Burisma executives bribed President Joe Biden with $5 million. For host monologues, correspondent reports, and headlines, we defined a claim as the speech between read quotes and played clips. We did not consider the speech within the read quote or played clip unless a speaker in the segment positively affirmed the quote or clip either directly before or after the quote was read or the clip was played.