Maria Bartiromo defends reporting: ‘Keep trashing me, I’ll keep telling the truth’

Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday defended her reporting on a number of topics, telling critics, “Keep trashing me, I’ll keep telling the truth.”

Bartiromo, during an interview with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on “Sunday Morning Futures,” presented a list of what she called “the biggest lies of all,” which she said included the “Russia hoax based on a made-up dossier to try to take down Trump” and the impeachment of former President Trump “with absolutely no crimes attached to it.”

The list also included a number of allegations involving President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, accusations about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and questions about whether the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol qualified as an “armed insurrection.”

Bartiromo said she is “so incredibly proud” of her team for “telling every story.”

“We’ve been on the right side of it for seven years going. I’ve been trashed every day along the way. Keep trashing me, I’ll keep telling the truth,” Bartiromo said at the end of the interview.

Bartiromo’s comments reflect a number of common GOP talking points, which aim to downplay the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election while attempting to turn the public’s attention to Hunter Biden’s previous business ties and the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China.

Bartiromo, earlier in the interview, asked Johnson, “Armed insurrection is what Nancy Pelosi keeps calling Jan. 6. Senator, how many guns were actually taken up on that day, since she says it was armed?”

“I asked the FBI witness. Not one, not one gun was recovered either in the Capitol or on the Capitol grounds according to that FBI witness, so that’s just one of the latest big lies,” Johnson responded, referring to previous testimony from Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, who said the FBI did not confiscate any guns in the Capitol or on its ground on Jan. 6.

A fact check from USA Today, however, noted that the Department of Justice has pressed gun charges on at least three people connected to Jan. 6, including one who was allegedly found carrying a loaded handgun with an extra magazine.

Bartiromo is the target of a lawsuit by voting technology company Smartmatic, which accuses her and other Fox hosts of grievously harming the company by claiming it was involved in widespread election fraud.

Bartiromo and Fox News have moved to dismiss the lawsuit, calling it a “headline-seeking, multi-billion-dollar lawsuit thus should be seen—and rejected—for what it is: an unconstitutional attempt by a money-losing company … to try to refill its coffers at the expense of our constitutional traditions.”