Liberal watchdog retracts Heather Nauert story alleging payments from Fox while working as State Dept spox

Chuck Ross, DCNF

A liberal watchdog group removed a story from its website Wednesday that claimed former State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert received a six-figure salary from Fox News’s parent company while she worked in government.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) reported Wednesday in the now-deleted story that Nauert filed financial disclosure documents after she left the State Department on March 31 that showed she reported being paid $167,000 from 21st Century Fox between January 2018 and March 2019.

“Her disclosure as it currently reads suggests that she was representing the government in meetings with 21st Century Fox while continuing to receive a salary from the company,” wrote CREW, which called the payments “problematic.”

But CREW retracted the story after an aggressive pushback from Nauert, and after the State Department produced documents that undercut the core claim of the report.

“This is false,” Nauert wrote in a tweet directed at CREW.

“I NEVER received salary from 21st Century Fox while employed by State Dept,” she continued, adding that CREW’s story was based on a clerical error made on a preliminary draft of her financial disclosure report.

“The FINAL CERTIFIED report, available to anyone, makes it clear that I NEVER received salary from Fox while working for govt,” she said.

This is false.I NEVER received salary from 21st Century Fox while employed by State Dept.This story is based on a preliminary draft with a clerical error.The FINAL CERTIFIED report, available to anyone, makes it clear that I NEVER received salary from Fox while working for govt https://t.co/tAyeq7hkh8

— heather nauert (@HeatherNauert) July 3, 2019

“Correct your ‘story’ now,” she wrote in another tweet.

Nauert, who worked as a Fox News host before joining the State Department, also went after ThinkProgress, a website affiliated with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

“Hatchet job!” she wrote in a tweet directed at the site, which published a report based on CREW’s story. “You ignored final certified report from State/Ethics,which confirms I received NO FOX SALARY while working 4 govt.”

CREW said in a statement that it pulled the story after receiving additional information from the State Department.

“CREW’s post was written based on publicly available financial disclosure documents certified by Ms. Nauert,” the group said in a statement.

“At the time of publication, there was no other publicly available document,” it said. “Following publication, Ms. Nauert has made an amended version public. With the information provided in the new version, we have pulled the post down as it no longer reflects the information contained in the newest version of the report.”

CREW has been heavily critical of the Trump administration. One of its senior advisers is Walter Shaub, who served as director of the Office of Government Ethics during parts of the Obama and Trump administrations.

Trump chose Nauert in December to replace Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But Nauert pulled out of the running after she disclosed to the State Department that she once employed a nanny that was working illegally in the U.S.

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