Fox News killed Stormy Daniels hush money report before election: New Yorker

An editor at Fox News killed a report prior to the 2016 presidential election revealing that President Trump engaged in an affair with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels years ago, The New Yorker reported on Monday.

According to the magazine, former FoxNews.com reporter Diana Falzone “had obtained proof” of the affair and confirmed it with several key sources, including Daniels and her ex-husband.

{mosads}Falzone had also reportedly obtained emails between Daniels’s attorney and Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen that showed that Cohen had proposed to pay cash to Daniels in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement.

But the report was never published, according to The New Yorker, which added that former Fox News executive Ken LaCorte ultimately told Falzone to “let it go.”

“Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert [Murdoch] wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go,” LaCorte reportedly said. 

A Fox News spokesperson pointed to comments by Noah Kotch, a former editor-in-chief and vice president of Fox News Digital who told CNN early last year that Fox didn’t publish the story because it was “unable to verify all of the facts.”

“Like many other outlets, we were working to report the story of Stephanie Clifford’s account in October 2016 about then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump and a possible payment by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. In doing our due diligence, we were unable to verify all of the facts and publish a story,” Kotch, who joined Fox in 2017 and left last year, said at the time.

According to The New Yorker, LaCorte denied making that comment to Falzone, but one of Falzone’s colleagues confirmed having heard the account.

Falzone later sued Fox and reached a settlement that includes a nondisclosure agreement, which prevents her from speaking about the Daniels story, the magazine added.

The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2018 — one year after Trump became president — that Cohen had arranged a $130,000 payment to Daniels just weeks before the 2016 presidential election in an effort to keep her quiet about the alleged affair with Trump.

–This report was updated at 2:17 p.m.