Former attorney general Bill Barr was screamed at Fox News host Maria Bartiromo as she pushed fake claims of election fraud, according to Jonathan Karl’s new book.
Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show outlines the rightwing TV personality’s key role in pushing lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results.
The day after Fox and other major networks called the election for Joe Biden on 8 November, Ms Bartiromo “used her Sunday show on the network to highlight the most outlandish allegations of election fraud” during an interview with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.
Ms Powell’s “fevered rant” helped to convince Mr Trump that the election had been stolen, the book claims.
“It was all a lie, but Sidney Powell’s deranged theories would have never taken hold if there weren’t people in positions of power and influence who had promoted them - people like Maria Bartiromo,” Mr Karl writes.
A week later, Ms Bartiromo called then attorney general Barr to complain the Department of Justice wasn’t doing anything to “stop the Democrats from stealing the election.”
“She called me up and she was screaming,” Mr Barr told the author.
“I yelled back at her. She’s lost it.”
Mr Karl sought comment from the Fox host as it was “highly inappropriate” for a journalist to demand the attorney general launch a criminal investigation.
Ms Bartiromo responded via a Fox News spokesperson to say Mr Barr’s account of the “screaming match” was incorrect, and he had been the aggressor.
Elsewhere in the book, Mr Karl writes that Ms Bartiromo used her Fox show to “speak directly to the president” about her false election claims.
Prior to being a Trump sycophant on Fox, Ms Bartiromo had been a respected financial journalist.
“Now she had her own show on Fox News and she was using it to boost a series of unfounded allegations designed to overturn a presidential election,” the book, which is due for release on Tuesday, states.
