Ex-Fox News contributor: ‘There is a witch hunt, and it’s led by Fox against Mueller’

A former Fox News contributor is speaking out again against his past employer, saying that the network deliberately kept him away from segments that discussed Russia because he wasn’t a Trump supporter.

Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters made headlines earlier this month when he left the network with an angry resignation letter that went viral. In an op-ed published in The Washington Post this Friday, Peters says Fox “preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.”

Peters wrote that despite his misgivings, he remained at Fox because he felt he could make a difference by “speaking honestly.”

“I was wrong,” he wrote.

According to Peters, he was excluded from Russia segments because he’s “the one person on the Fox payroll who, trained in Russian studies and the Russian language, had been face to face with Russian intelligence officers in the Kremlin and in far-flung provinces.”

“Listening to political hacks with no knowledge of things Russian tell the vast Fox audience that the special counsel’s investigation was a ‘witch hunt,’ while I could not respond, became too much to bear,” he continued. “There is indeed a witch hunt, and it’s led by Fox against [special counsel] Robert Mueller.”

“With my Soviet-studies background, the cult of Trump unnerves me,” he wrote. “For our society’s health, no one, not even a president, can be above criticism — or the law.”

In a statement to The Hill, Fox News denied Peters claims, saying, “There is no truth to the notion that Ralph Peters was ‘blocked’ from appearing on the network to talk about the major headlines, including discussing Russia, North Korea and even gun control recently. In fact, he appeared across both networks multiple times in just the past three weeks.”

On March 20, Peters wrote an angry resignation letter saying Fox has become a “propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.”

“Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed,” Peters wrote.

“Four decades ago, I took an oath as a newly commissioned officer. I swore to ‘support and defend the Constitution,’ and that oath did not expire when I took off my uniform,” he continued. “Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers.”

Featured image via screen grab/YouTube

 

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.