Fox News investigates claims insider leaked Trump questions to town hall | Fox News

Fox News has launched an investigation into allegations that an insider leaked questions to Donald Trump’s team minutes before a central Iowa town hall last January.

According to for a new book by Politico reporter Alex Isenstadt, Trump aides received text messages with the exact wording of questions and planned follow-ups minutes before the broadcast began. The town hall was moderated by network anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.

The leak, if confirmed, covered sensitive topics including Trump’s business entanglements, his many indictments and potential plans for political payback.

In a statement, the network said it had “no evidence” of the leak but would investigate any potential breach.

“We take these matters very seriously and plan to investigate should there be a breach in the network,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. A separate source familiar with Fox’s inner workings said that if there had been a leak, “it wasn’t from Bret (Baier) or Martha (MacCallum) or the upper editorial levels of the network”.

Isenstadt’s book, Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power, draws from more than 300 interviews and internal documents. It also reveals that Trump seriously considered picking Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo as his running mate before choosing JD Vance. Bartiromo had previously tipped Trump’s team about interview questions after the 2020 election, according to texts unearthed during the Jan. 6 congressional investigation.

Trump has not publicly responded to the allegation. His communications director, Steven Cheung, said it was a sign of Trump’s accessibility and argued it fueled his primary victory.

“President Trump was the most accessible and transparent candidate in American history,” Cheung said.

The alleged incident reflects a pattern of journalistic ethical breaches during major political interviews. CNN fired its contributor and former interim DNC chair Donna Brazile in 2016 for sharing of town hall topics with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, while WURD Radio in Pennsylvania cut ties with the host Andrea Lawful-Sanders last summer for conducting a Biden interview with campaign-supplied questions.

Isenstadt, who logged extensive time with Trump, including a June 2023 flight on his plane, told CNN that multiple direct sources confirmed the Town Hall account.

While standing by his reporting and procurement, Fox News’ statement quipped that Isenstadt had “conveniently refused to release the photos for fact-checking.”