Fox News brought back frequent guest Joe diGenova following a month-long hiatus from the network after he was accused of pushing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about liberal billionaire donor George Soros.
DiGenova, 74, and his wife Victoria Toensing, appeared on Fox Business prime-time show Lou Dobbs Tonight on Monday to discuss Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. The pair last appeared on the network during Dobbs’ show on Nov. 13. At the time, diGenova alleged that Soros played a role in the Trump-Ukraine scandal that prompted the articles of impeachment that could remove President Trump from office.
He accused Soros of “control[ing] a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department” and added that the liberal donor “controls the activities of FBI agents overseas who work for [non-governmental organizations].”
The insinuation that Soros controls big portions of government entities overseas was viewed as anti-Semitic by multiple groups. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called for Fox News to no longer book diGenova in a letter sent to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott.
“We have repeatedly called on Fox News to no longer book Joe diGenova, and others who traffic in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” ADL spokesperson Jake Hyman said in a statement to The Daily Beast regarding diGenova’s return. “In return, we have been greeted by silence from Fox, which is telling. The fact that diGenova returned to the airwaves last night is even more telling, and quite frankly, disturbing.”
Soros’s philanthropic organization, the Open Society Foundations, also took exception with diGenova’s comments and his subsequent return. Patrick Gaspard, the organization’s president, also sent a letter to Scott requesting the lawyer not be booked moving forward; however, he said she didn’t respond to his correspondence.
The reemergence on diGenova comes about a week after retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor accused Soros of having “funded or helped fund these massive migrations out of Central America.” That comment is nearly identical to remarks Chris Farrell made on Fox Business slightly more than a year ago, which resulted in him being banned from the network and elicited a public apology from the network. Both Greenblatt and Gaspard pointed to Farrell’s ban and asked for them to “follow its own precedent here.”
Fox News did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
