The guy who ran a smear campaign against Marie Yovanovitch
The Hill
Upon leaving Circa, Solomon became executive vice president of digital video for The Hill.[1][16] Until May 2018, he worked on news and investigative pieces for The Hill.[16] According to the New York Times, Solomon tended to push narratives about alleged misdeeds by Trump's political enemies.[17]
In October 2017, Solomon published an article in The Hill about the Uranium One controversy where he insinuated that Russia made payments to the Clinton Foundation at the time when the Obama administration approved the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom.[18] Solomon's story also focused on the alleged failures of the Department of Justice to investigate and report on the controversy, suggesting a cover-up.[18] Subsequent to Solomon's reporting, the story "took off like wildfire in the right-wing media ecosystem," according to a 2018 study by scholars at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University.[18] No evidence of any quid pro quo or other wrongdoing has surfaced.[18]
In January 2018, it was reported that newsroom staffers at The Hill had complained about Solomon's reporting for the publication.[19][20][21] The staffers reportedly criticized Solomon's reporting as having a conservative bias and missing important context, and that this undermined The Hill's reputation.[19][20] They also expressed concerns over Solomon's close relationship with conservative Fox News personality Sean Hannity, on whose TV show Hannity he appeared on more than a dozen times over a span of three months.[19] In May 2018, the editor-in-chief of The Hill announced that Solomon would become an "opinion contributor" at The Hill while remaining executive vice president of digital video.[16] He frequently appeared on Fox News, which continued to describe him as an investigative reporter, even after he became an opinion contributor.[21]
Pro-Donald Trump opinion pieces
Solomon published a story alleging that women who had accused Trump of sexual assault had sought payments from partisan donors and tabloids.[21]
On June 19, 2019, The Hill published an opinion piece written by Solomon alleging that the FBI and Robert Mueller disregarded warnings that evidence used against Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort may have been faked.[22] His source was Nazar Kholodnytsky, a disgraced Ukrainian prosecutor, and Konstantin Kilimnik, who has been linked to Russian intelligence and who happens to be Manafort's former business partner.[23]
Solomon's part in the Trump–Ukraine scandal
In April 2019, The Hill published two opinion pieces by Solomon regarding allegations by Ukrainian officials that "American Democrats" and particularly former Vice-President Joe Biden of collaborating with "their allies in Kiev" in "wrongdoing...ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes."[24][25] Solomon's stories attracted attention in conservative media.[20] Fox News frequently covered Solomon's claims;[26] Solomon also promoted these allegations on Sean Hannity's Fox News show.[20] According to The Washington Post Solomon's pieces "played an important role in advancing a flawed, Trump-friendly tale of corruption in Ukraine, particularly involving Biden and his son Hunter", and inspired "the alleged effort by Trump and his allies to pressure Ukraine’s government into digging up dirt on Trump’s Democratic rivals."[20] On the same day that The Washington Post published its article, The Hill published another opinion piece by Solomon in which Solomon states that there are " (h)undreds of pages of never-released memos and documents...(that) conflict with Biden’s narrative."[27]
Solomon's stories had significant flaws.[20][17] Not only had the State Department dismissed the allegations presented by Solomon as "an outright fabrication", but the Ukrainian prosecutor who Solomon claimed made the allegations to him is not supporting Solomon's claim.[20][17] Foreign Policy noted that anti-corrupton activists in Ukraine had characterized the source behind Solomon's claims as an unreliable narrator who had hindered anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.[28] Solomon pushed allegations that Biden wanted to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to prevent an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian company that his son, Hunter Biden, served on; however, Western governments and anti-corruption activist wanted the prosecutor removed because he was reluctant to pursue corruption investigations.[17] By September 2019, Solomon said he still stood 100% by his stories.[20] There is no evidence of wrong-doing by Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, and no evidence that Hunter Biden was ever under investigation by Ukrainian authorities.[29] WNYC characterized Solomon's Ukraine stories as laundering of foreign propaganda.[30]
Prior to the publication of a story where Solomon alleged that the Obama administration had pressured the Ukrainian government to stop investigating a group funded by George Soros, Solomon sent the full text of his report to Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas and the two pro-Trump lawyers and conspiracy theorists Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing.[31] Solomon said he did so for fact-checking, but Parnas, DiGenova and Toensing were not mentioned in the text, nor did Solomon send individual items of the draft for vetting (but rather the whole draft).[31]
During October 2019 hearings for the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, two government officials experienced in Ukraine matters — Alexander Vindman and George Kent — testified that Ukraine-related articles Solomon had written and that were featured in conservative media circles contained a "false narrative" and in some cases were "entirely made up in full cloth."[32][33]
Solomon worked closely with Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani - Trump’s personal attorney – who was indicted for funneling foreign money into American political campaigns, to promote stories that Democrats colluded with a foreign power in the 2016 election (the U.S. intelligence community's assessment is that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to aid Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate). Parnas worked with Solomon on interviews and translation. Solomon defended his work with Parnas: "No one knew there was anything wrong with Lev Parnas at the time. Everybody who approaches me has an angle." Parnas helped to set Solomon up with the Ukrainian prosecutor who accused the Bidens of wrong-doing (before later retracting the claim).[2]
Solomon and the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump
Solomon has been mentioned in a draft report by the House Intelligence Committee pubished Dec. 3, 2019, documenting President Trump's alleged abuse of office for his personal and political gain by using congressionally approved military aid to induce Ukraine initiate investigations against Trump's domestic political rival. The report documented phone records showing Solomon was in frequent contact with Lev Parnas, a now indicted associate of Giuliani, exchanging "at least 10 calls" during the first week in April.[34]
Advertising controversy
Solomon was accused of breaking the traditional ethical "wall" that separated news stories from advertising at The Hill. In October 2017, Solomon negotiated a $160,000 deal with a conservative group called Job Creators Network to target ads in The Hill to business owners in Maine. He then had a quote from the group's director inserted into a news story about a Maine senator's key role in an upcoming vote on the Trump administration's tax bill. Solomon “pops by the advertising bullpen almost daily to discuss big deals he’s about to close," Johanna Derlega, then The Hill’s publisher, wrote in an internal memo at the time, according to Pro Publica. "If a media reporter gets ahold of this story, it could destroy us."[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Solomon_(political_commentator)
= new reply since forum marked as read
