Rudy Giuliani reportedly worked with a high-profile legal guest and commentator for Fox News in an effort to obtain damaging information on Joe Biden related to the work done by the former vice president’s son in the Ukraine.
According to Fox News, two of the network’s own habitual guests–Joseph DiGenova and Victoria Toensing–worked on the secretive project and only answered to one person: President Donald Trump.
Chris Wallace broke the story on Sunday morning:
We have new information to report. Fox News has learned the president’s private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was not acting alone in trying to get dirt from Ukrainian officials on 2020 rival Joe Biden. Two high-profile Washington lawyers, Joe diGenova, who’s been a fierce critic of the Democratic investigation, and his wife Victoria Toensing were working with Giuliani to get oppo research on Biden.
“According to a top U.S. official, all three were working off the books apart from the administration,” Wallace continued. “The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump.”
DiGenova and Toensing are frequent guests on various Fox News programs, including shows hosted by Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and others. DiGenova is also a prolific opinion writer for the Fox News website.
Wallace also reported additional information about the U.S. aid payment said to have been dangled in the balance by Trump over his request for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into long-dormant corruption allegations against Hunter Biden.
“Fox News has also learned the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Counsel were unanimous in supporting military aid to Ukraine,” Wallace noted. “President Trump decided to withhold that aid this summer–on his own.”
DiGenova’s work on the project–and Wallace’s report about said work–underscores and/or explains an ongoing rift between the hard news division of the conservative-leaning network and the typically reflexively pro-Trump slant of Fox News’ editorial division.
Last week, DiGenova tore into Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano by insulting his intelligence and insisting on the 45th president’s innocence amidst the avalanche of news related to the announced–but so far still informal–impeachment inquiry.
Napolitano made headlines by asserting that Trump admitted to a crime when he admitted to asking Zelensky to look into the younger Biden because he effectively tried to “solicit aid for his campaign from a foreign government.”
Napolitano later argued Trump committed “an impeachable offense.”
Fox host Tucker Carlson had his own doubts about Napolitano’s assessment and quizzed DiGenova as to whether he agreed with Napolitano about Trump’s alleged criminality. He did not:
Well, I think Judge Napolitano is a fool. And I think what he said today is foolish. No, it is not a crime. Let me underscore emphatically that nothing that the president said on that call or what we think he said on that call constitutes a crime. And even if he had said you’re not going to get the money it would not be a crime.
The context in which DiGenova defended president Trump against criminal allegations has now shifted substantially in light of Wallace’s Sunday morning report that his own colleague was involved in the plot to source Ukrainian dirt on the Biden family.
Giuliani, for what it’s worth, appears to have denied the allegation that he worked with DiGenova and Toensing on the Ukraine project.
When asked if he had worked with other attorneys to get the anti-Biden goods by Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures, Giuliani said: “No. I didn’t work with anybody to try and get dirt on Joe Biden.”
[image via screengrab/Fox News]