After serving as a media linchpin in late 2020 for the defeated President Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow his loss in the election, Fox News is burying the breaking story of a new indictment against Republican conspirators who created their own slate of fake electoral votes in Arizona.

Shortly after 7 p.m. ET on April 24, state Attorney General Kris Mayes announced the indictments of the 11 fake electors, declaring: “The scheme, had it succeeded, would have deprived Arizona’s voters of their right to have their votes counted for their chosen president. It effectively would’ve made their right to vote meaningless.” The indictment specifically names the 11 fake electors in Arizona as defendants and also contains redacted names of seven other people who have been charged in the scheme but not yet publicly identified.

In the 20 hours since the news broke, Fox News has not mentioned the story once on air, and it merited only a cursory news headline on sister channel Fox Business. Fox’s conspicuous silence on the bombshell development is noteworthy given the central role the network played in promoting the fake electors plot.

Fox News aggressively promoted the scheme at the time, starting when Trump adviser Stephen Miller appeared on the December 14, 2020, edition of Fox & Friends to announce the move that he said would give Congress “that opportunity as well to do the right thing” by changing the election results from multiple states.

This time, however, the only mention that this breaking story out of Arizona has received at all on Fox’s airwaves was a brief headline on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, where it received no additional editorial comment. Bartiromo herself previously helped to boost the fake electors, and she was later revealed to have taken direct instructions from the Trump campaign to promote the date of January 6 as a time when Biden’s election victory could be overturned. (Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones also teased an upcoming segment on “some breaking news overnight with Arizona, we’re going to have legal analysis for you.” But the program itself never actually aired any segment about the fake electors indictment, seemingly bumping the story in favor of other news.)

NBC News has identified the seven other people charged in the Arizona indictment as: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former White House official Michael Roman, former Trump campaign official Boris Epshteyn, and campaign attorneys John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, and Christina Bobb (the latter of whom was recently hired by the Republican National Committee and given the title of “senior counsel for election integrity”).

The indictment also refers repeatedly to Trump as “Unindicted Coconspirator 1,” describing this person as “a former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election.” Trump was also identified Wednesday as an unindicted co-conspirator in Michigan, where the 16 fake electors in that state were criminally charged last year. (Trump was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the felony prosecution of his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen in 2018.)

One of the Arizona fake electors who has been indicted is Tyler Bowyer, who was the  chief operating officer of the right-wing activist group Turning Point USA, and is now COO at its campaign arm, Turning Point Action. Turning Point USA organized buses to the District of Columbia for January 6, 2021, which included at least one passenger who assaulted police officers and was sentenced to four years in prison. Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk also publicly urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally reject the election results, when he declared: “All Pence has to do is reject electors from states that are compromised. Some people say that's not constitutional. Then try it. Make them sue and get the Supreme Court into action.”

As Kirk also noted, the Trump campaign and right-wing media allies based the scheme on a false comparison to an event from the 1960 election, when a recount in Hawaii flipped the state’s very narrow result from Richard Nixon to John F. Kennedy. In this case, however, the Trump campaign and the indicted fake electors themselves intended to have Pence simply use the fake electoral certificates as a pretext to reject Biden’s officially certified victories in those states, without any court decision or recount actually changing the election results or conferring any state authority to the fake electors.

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network for any of the terms “Tyler Bowyer,” “Kelli Ward,” “Nancy Cottle,” “Jacob Hoffman,” “Anthony Kern,” “Robert Montgomery,” “James Lamon,” “Samuel Moorhead,” “Lorraine Pellegrino,” “Gregory Safsten,” “Michael Ward,” “uncertified,” “grand jury,” “aide,” or “elector” or any variation of either of the terms “elect” or “indict” within close proximity of either of the terms “Arizona” or “AZ” from 7 p.m. ET on April 24, 2024, when a grand jury handed down its indictment of 11 Arizona Republicans charged with conspiring to falsify the 2020 election results in the state, through 3 p.m. ET on April 25, 2024.

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when the indictment of 11 Arizona Republicans charged with falsifying election results was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the indictment. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the indictment with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned the indictment without another speaker engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the indictment scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

Total coverage was less than 1 minute.