Media

Fox News host: MSNBC, CNN the ‘real agents of Putin’

by Justin Wise - 03/25/19 5:06 PM ET

Fox News host Steve Hilton on Monday accused a list of people and entities, including CNN and MSNBC, of being the “real agents” of Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Hilton, a former director of strategy for ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron, made the comments on Fox News while speaking about Attorney General William Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Hilton seized on an aspect of the summary in which Barr wrote that Mueller’s investigation found that Russian-affiliated individuals offered to assist Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“They tried to collude with the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign said no,” Hilton, the host of Fox News’s “The Next Revolution,” said. “But I tell you who did end up being an agent of Putin, an agent of Russia in his effort to divide America and to destabilize our democracy — it is all these people who have been pushing this story.”

“They’re the ones who have been dividing America,” Hilton continued, before naming former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Rep Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), MSNBC and CNN.

“They’re the real agents of Putin,” he said.

Barr said in a four-page summary released Sunday that the special counsel investigation did not uncover evidence to conclude the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.

Barr said in the letter that Mueller did not take a definitive stance on whether Trump obstructed justice. However, Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided they would not pursue an obstruction of justice charge against President Trump.

Trump celebrated the findings on Sunday, telling reporters that Barr’s summary represented a “complete and total exoneration.”

“This was an illegal takedown that failed, and hopefully somebody’s going is to be looking at the other side,” the president added. “So it’s complete exoneration. No collusion, no obstruction.”

The Trump campaign on Monday sent a memo to television producers asking them to challenge Democratic lawmakers’ past statements on collusion. Tim Murtaugh, the director of communications for Trump’s campaign, points to several statements people such as Schiff and Brennan made with regard to collusion.

“If these guests do reappear, you should replay the prior statements and challenge them to provide the evidence which prompted them to make the wild claims in the first place,” Murtaugh wrote.