Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday removed an article from his radio show’s website that claimed the official portrait of former President Barack Obama contained secret images of sperm.

“Controversy surrounding Kehinde Wiley’s wildly non-traditional portrait of the Commander-in-Chief broke out within minutes of its unveiling,” the article, written by “Hannity staff,” asserted, “with industry insiders claiming the artist secretly inserted his trademark technique -concealing images of sperm within his paintings.”

An archived version of the post can be read here.

The article included an excerpt from a 2008 New York Times profile, which claimed of Wiley: “His portraits initially depicted African-American men against rich textile or wallpaper backgrounds whose patterns he has likened to abstractions of sperm.”

Hours after the article’s deletion, Hannity said in a statement provided to TPM by a Fox News representative: “Earlier today my web staff posted content that was not reviewed by me before publication. It does not reflect my voice and message and, therefore, I had it taken down.”

Hannity’s post also included a close-up crop of the portrait, presumably showing the suspected sperm.

Dan Lavoie, a staffer for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, flagged that the baseless conspiracy had earlier appeared on the message board website 4Chan — by now a well-known hub for alt-right and white nationalist chatter.

Oh, wait. Here is where it's from. This dude popped this into a bunch of MSM replies 11 hours ago. Within an hour, a bunch of ppl with "Paul Nehlan" in their name tweeted it, too: https://t.co/V2DzG0m5ym — Dan Lavoie (@djlavoie) February 13, 2018

Oh, and here’s the 4Chan thread on it that arrived shortly after: https://t.co/EUUFxtyIHE — Dan Lavoie (@djlavoie) February 13, 2018

Look, I don't think y'all are getting this. The Hannity Sperm Portrait nonsense was started THIS MORNING by racist 4Chan trolls, w/ the express purpose of "getting it in the news." The post calls the Obamas "king and queen n****r." Hannity was writing it up by early afternoon. https://t.co/E5JOuMX9h9 — Dan Lavoie (@djlavoie) February 13, 2018

Hannity also reportedly deleted a tweet promoting the post:

sean hannity has deleted this tweet about how sexy he finds obama’s portrait pic.twitter.com/4nebyuyelk — David Mack (@davidmackau) February 13, 2018

This post has been updated.