Funny, Sean Hannity hasn’t said a word about one of his favorite subjects for more than a month. But that doesn't mean we should stop talking about his role in promoting what looks like Russian disinformation.
A Media Matters review found that the Hannity show last mentioned Republicans’ impeachment investigation on March 14. On that evening, Hannity told viewers, “Forget about the impeachment inquiry side of it, looks like they're moving now towards the criminal referral side of it.” He was referring to a reported Republican “exit strategy” from its probe, which pretty much imploded. (Sorry, not sorry, Greg Gutfeld!)
But I don’t think we should drop the subject, too. Hannity’s involvement in the whole phony scandal warrants further scrutiny. I explain below. But first...
Media Matters’ Matt Gertz writes:
Hannity promised his viewers that Comer and his congressional allies had the goods. He and his regular guests claimed they had uncovered “potentially the biggest bribery, money laundering scandal in American history,” one in which Joe Biden had been “very credibly accused of public corruption on a scale this country has never seen before,” was “compromised” by foreign governments, and may have committed crimes including “bribery and treason” in “a blockbuster scandal that could doom Biden's presidency.”
…
Hannity remained the impeachment probe’s biggest public supporter well into this year. He touted the “mountain of evidence” congressional investigators were supposedly uncovering, carried water for their most dubious allegations, and hyped years-old, rewarmed claims as “bombshell testimony” and “an unmitigated disaster for team Biden.” He kept doing damage control for the inquiry even after [“informant” Alexander] Smirnov’s arrest, describing the informant’s story as “only one tiny piece of the case against what I call the Biden family and the Biden family syndicate.”
“No one worked harder to turn Biden’s son into a political liability than Hannity,” Gertz also wrote. He also noted that Hannity could not have cared less about Donald Trump’s very real corruption scandals (not to mention Trump’s crimes).
But while it’s tempting to gloat over Hannity’s sudden silence, his role in this failed effort is no joke. It goes beyond partisan hypocrisy and into the realm of Russian propaganda.
More from Gertz:
[Hannity] started talking about Hunter Biden as early as 2018, and teamed up with Rudy Giuliani and other Trump cronies to kneecap Joe Biden’s presidential bid via the disinformation campaign that Biden, as vice president, corruptly interfered with U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine to benefit his son’s business interests.
In other words, Hannity was a significant player in the Trump/Giuliani attempt to try to smear Joe Biden that eventually resulted in Donald Trump’s first impeachment. A September 26, 2019 article by Gertz lays out in clear detail Hannity’s role:
[On May 1, 2019], The New York Times reported that Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, had been pressuring Ukrainian prosecutors to reopen [an investigation into Burisma, the company whose board Hunter Biden sat on]. Giuliani had reportedly become interested in the story the previous fall, when [Ukrainian former prosecutor Viktor] Shokin had told him he was fired because of the investigation into Burisma.
At every stage of the story, Fox News played a key role in amplifying these smears and providing a platform for [right-wing author and activist Peter] Schweizer, [right-wing “journalist” John] Solomon, and Giuliani to discuss them without facing critical questions. Fox host Sean Hannity, a close Trump ally who has been termed a “shadow” chief of staff by White House aides, has highlighted Biden’s purported malfeasance in forcing Shokin’s removal in regular segments. Even Trump himself pushed false claims about the story during a Fox interview.
On December 18, 2019, Trump was impeached for trying to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into providing dirt against Biden by threatening to withhold much needed aid.
On March 20, 2024, former Giuliani associate, and partner in the Ukraine smear effort, Lev Parnas testified before Congress that the only “dirt” on Biden came from Russian propaganda. “In nearly a year traveling the world and interviewing officials in different countries, I found precisely zero evidence of the Bidens' corruption in Ukraine,” he said in his opening statement. “The only information ever pushed on the Bidens in Ukraine has come from one source and one source only, Russia and Russian agents.”
Parnas went on to say that Trump allies in Congress as well as Sean Hannity and Fox News “used this narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 elections. Sadly, they are still doing this today as we approach the 2024 elections.”
This all dovetails with my previous post, about how Hannity and Paul Manafort, a central figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe were great texting buddies.
If you ask me, there should be an investigation into what role Hannity played in the whole mess and just how aware he was or wasn’t that his "big story" was nothing more than a Russian disinformation scheme, assuming Parnas is correct.
Hannity should not be allowed to change the subject just because he no longer wants to talk about it.
You can watch Hannity’s probable last mention of the impeachment inquiry, where he seems to have taken his own advice to former Congressman and current Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz to “forget the impeachment inquiry.” It's from the March 14, 2024 Hannity show, via Media Matters.