During an interview with MSBNC’s Ari Melber on Monday evening, the lawyer for a Fox News reporter, whose story on the Stormy Daniels hush payments was spiked during the 2016 election, revealed that her client was under a non-disclosure agreement with Fox, which could be lifted by a congressional subpoena.
“(Fox) denies it but this is really easy, maybe Congress should subpoena my client and all of her records. And then we will see exactly what Fox News had,” Nancy Erika Smith said of her client, Diana Falzone. Smith is a leading civil rights lawyer and also represented former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes.
Falzone was working on the hush money story during the election, but it was reportedly killed by an editor who told her that Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch wanted President Trump to win the election, according to an explosive New Yorker report published last week.
“Have you or your client been contacted by, say House Judiciary or Oversight?” Melber asked.
“Not yet, but a subpoena will trump an NDA,” she said. “It would add to the investigation into whether Fox is really a news organization or if it is a campaign arm of Donald Trump or whether just killing this story was an illegal campaign contribution, worth, what? Obviously they thought it was worth something.”
A Fox News spokesperson did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment.
Lawyer for Fox reporter whose story on Stormy Daniels payment got killed during election: Congress should subpoena my client, that will "trump" her Fox NDA pic.twitter.com/6lpounxrop
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) March 12, 2019
