Fox’s Bartiromo: White House playing up Russia-Ukraine crisis to distract ‘from what Hillary Clinton did’

Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo suggested on Wednesday that the increasing tensions between Russia and Ukraine are part of a “ruse” orchestrated by the Biden administration to “take everybody’s attention away from what Hillary Clinton did.”

“Was this a ruse?” Bartiromo asked Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) on her morning show. “Was this whole thing an effort to take everybody’s attention away from what Hillary Clinton did?” 

Bartiromo was referencing relentless coverage Fox News and other right-of-center outlets have been giving in recent days to a development in special counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the 2016 Russian collusion investigation.  

In a filing late last week, Durham alleged that a tech executive “exploited” access to White House data in order to find damning information about Trump. The executive alluded to in Durham’s filing once worked on behalf of Democrats and Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 presidential campaign, and several right-wing figures, including Trump, have pointed to the filing as evidence that Clinton “spied” on Trump and his associates. 

“I know Jake Sullivan worked for Hillary Clinton,” Bartiromo said of President Biden’s national security adviser. “And he was one of the people who was peddling this Russia collusion lie for four years.” 

“They’re scrambling, there’s not doubt about it,” Tuberville responded. 

Clinton broke her silence on the Durham filing on Wednesday afternoon, saying “Trump & Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones.” 

“The more his misdeeds are exposed, the more they lie,” she said.