The cable news channel regularly accuses Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation of being a ‘coup’ by a ‘criminal cabal’. What are they playing at?

On Saturday, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro began her weekly show by calling for a purge of the US justice department for the second week in a row.

Republicans accused of concocting email scandal against Robert Mueller Read more

There was, she said, “a criminal cabal” within federal law enforcement trying to undermine Donald Trump.

That followed her call last week for “a cleansing … in our FBI and Department of Justice. It needs to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in cuffs.”

She continued: “There were times in our history when corruption and lawlessness were so pervasive that examples had to be made. This is one of those times.”

Quick guide What are the dangers for Trump from the Russia investigations? Show Hide The 2020 election The most likely price Trump would pay, if he were perceived guilty of wrongdoing, would be a 2020 re-election loss. He can't afford to lose many supporters and expect to remain in office. Any disillusionment stemming from the Russian affair could make the difference. His average approval rating has hung in the mid-to-upper 30s. Every president to win re-election since the second world war did so with an approval rating in the 49%-50% range or better. Congress As long as Republicans are in charge, Trump is not likely to face impeachment proceedings or to be removed from office. A two-thirds majority in the Senate is required to remove a president from office through impeachment. Public opinion If public opinion swings precipitously against the president, however, his grip on power could slip. At some point, Republicans in Congress may, if their constituents will it, turn on Trump. Criminal charges Apart from impeachment, Trump could, perhaps, face criminal charges, which would (theoretically) play out in the court system as opposed to Congress. But it’s a matter of debate among scholars and prosecutors whether Trump, as a sitting president, may be prosecuted in this way. Other Robert Mueller is believed to have Trump’s tax returns, and to be looking at the Trump Organization as well as Jared Kushner’s real estate company. It’s possible that wrongdoing unrelated to the election could be uncovered and make trouble for Trump. The president, and Kushner, deny wrongdoing.



The same day, fellow Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested that the investigation was “a coup” to overthrow Trump.

Fox News hosts like Pirro, Watters, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity have been vocal detractors of the Russia inquiry, Mueller and the FBI and have instead insisted that the justice department conduct new investigations of Hillary Clinton as part of an attempt to protect Trump from the inquiries into his campaign

Fox News has long been considered an outlet friendly to conservatives, and its best-known hosts of opinion programs in the evening such as Hannity and former colleague Bill O’Reilly have long pushed rightwing issues. Owned by the Australian-born mogul Rupert Murdoch, the channel has a longtime viewer in Donald Trump, who often live-tweets its programming and has sat for 20 interviews with Fox News employees, far more than he has for any other outlet.

Fox has returned the favor by covering the Russia investigation in a positive light for the president. In recent weeks, it has focused on anti-Trump texts sent by Peter Strzok, an FBI agent involved in the investigations of both Trump and Clinton. Fox has focused on a text in which Strzok – who also sent derogatory texts about other political figures in both parties – referred to the Russia investigation as “an insurance policy” and interpreted that phrase to mean that the investigation was an alternative way to stop Trump’s presidency if Clinton lost.

Although the network had long dismissed the Russia investigation as an unnecessary distraction from what some Fox personalities viewed as the real scandals involving Hillary Clinton, the tone has changed in recent weeks with increased rhetoric about “a coup” and the threat to Trump posed by “the deep state”.

The growing criticism comes at a time when Mueller’s investigation has made further progress with the early December plea agreement by the former national security adviser Mike Flynn. However, with few exceptions, congressional Republicans have yet to join the attacks on Mueller.

And Fox News can play a critical role in how the investigation is perceived by supporters of Trump. It is predominantly watched by conservatives, and is a key source for much of Trump’s base. A July poll found that 33% of Republicans get their news only from Fox and indicated a deep distrust of mainstream news outlets among rightwing partisans.

“It reinforces the Trump base. It doesn’t get anybody outside the silo,” said Rick Wilson, a prominent conservative consultant and vocal “never-Trumper”. “Their purpose here is not to convince other Americans that Bob Mueller is corrupt and a Hillary Clinton supporter and needs to be fired.”

In his view, “the conservative media ecosystem has become a shield wall and a defense mechanism for Trump’s base rather than something that is changing everybody else’s opinions and attitudes.”

Although Trump’s counsel Ty Cobb has been urging calm inside the White House and has insisted the investigation will be over in the new year, outside advisers have been taking a different tack. Breitbart, the publication run by former top White House aide Steve Bannon, has been constantly hostile to Mueller, and Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Trump outside the administration, has been an active surrogate casting doubt on the investigation.

Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide, agreed. He told the Guardian: “The issue is Fox News and that echo chamber helps keep Republican opposition against the investigation high.” He noted this was also critical in the 1990s to bolstering conservative support for Ken Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton.

Nunberg noted: “From a practical point of view, this investigation is getting closer and closer not necessarily to the president but to [Jared] Kushner [the president’s son-in-law and adviser] and potentially damaging information. So they are taking the kill the messenger approach which is why you see all this loud hoopla over Mueller getting the emails” – a reference to a claim by Republicans that Mueller’s inquiry inappropriately gained access to messages from Trump’s transition team, which Mueller’s spokesman has denied.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro, perhaps the most public face of the effort to undermine Robert Mueller. Photograph: Andy Kropa/Andy Kropa /Invision/AP

Pirro has become perhaps the most public face of this effort to undermine Mueller and perk up partisan Republicans. She has long had a relationship with Trump. Her ex-husband represented Trump as a lawyer and Trump appeared on her television show even before his successful presidential bid. An ex-prosecutor who uses her former title as a local judge on her television show, Pirro mounted two unsuccessful bids for statewide office as a Republican in New York before going into television.

However, a number of other top Fox hosts have also joined in the campaign.

Ingraham, a longtime conservative radio host who was mooted as a potential White House press secretary, has also taken a leading role pushing this narrative and claimed that Muller was trying to “undo the 2016 election”. She has bashed Mueller’s team as “obvious partisans” and said “they should all resign”.

Hannity, the prominent Fox News host who has previously promoted conspiracy theories around the death of a former DNC staffer, has also actively attempted to discredit Mueller’s investigation. In a segment with Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, the FBI was compared to the “old KGB” by Jarrett. Hannity went on to make clear the comparison of a federal law enforcement agency to the Soviet secret police was “not hyperbole”. Jarrett labelled it “a shadow government”. Hannity has also called the Mueller investigation “a disgrace” and claimed that it “pose[s] a direct threat to you, the American people, and our American republic”.

Timeline The key events in the Trump-Russia investigation Show Hide

GCHQ warns US intelligence Britain’s spy agency GCHQ becomes aware of suspicious “interactions” between people with Trump ties and Russian intelligence operatives. In late 2015, GCHQ warns US intelligence. Hacking and 'influence campaign' The first phishing emails begin to hit Democratic individuals (the Democratic National Committee having been hacked months earlier). Hundreds or thousands of impostor accounts appear on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Trump foreign policy meeting Trump is told about the Russian contacts of at least one aide, and Jeff Sessions shoots down a possible Trump-Putin meeting, according to multiple people present. Later Trump and Sessions repeatedly deny there had ever been such contacts by anyone in the campaign with Russian operatives.

Trump tower meeting Top Trump campaign advisers including Donald Trump Jr meet at Trump Tower with Russian operatives, having been promised "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary." A Russian present says sanctions were discussed. Republican national convention The convention convenes in Cleveland, Ohio. Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak attends. Top Trump campaign aides vociferously deny contacts with Russian operatives. WikiLeaks releases 44,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee.

Publication of emails Across the Fall, outlets including WikiLeaks, Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks publish tens of thousands of emails stolen from Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The Facebook campaign As Russian impostor accounts spread divisive propaganda throughout social media over the Fall, the Trump campaign experiments aggressively with micro-targeting on Facebook, making on an "average day" 50,000-60,000 ads, according to former digital director Brad Parscale

Contacts and denials Top Trump campaign aides Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner and others have dozens of contacts with Russian operatives that are repeatedly denied in public across the Fall. "It never happened," a campaign spokeswoman said two days after the election. “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign."

Trump elected Donald Trump is elected president of the United States.

Presidential transition Trump aides keep up contacts with Russian operatives on matters of policy and appear to hide those conversations from the US government and public. Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about the conversations, then later admitted that Jared Kushner had directed him to seek certain policy commitments from the Russian ambassador.

James Comey fired Trump fires the FBI director. “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said 'you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story'," Trump tells an interviewer two days later.

Last Friday, as Trump prepared to make a speech at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia, the White House deputy press secretary, Hogan Gidley, went on Fox News to claim there was “extreme bias” in “high-up members” of Mueller’s team.

The question is whether Fox’s ardent defense of the president will have a political impact. Nunberg was skeptical. “First of all, if and when Jared is indicted, the president’s in a very precarious situation … I happen to believe there’s nothing Fox News or Rupert Murdoch can do about it.”

Wilson noted that Fox’s pushback also revolved around what he called “a daily bullshit tornado” whereby conservative media outlets “throw out every crazy conspiracy theory they can in hope something will hold together”. The result is that the stories become “completely over the top and crazy”.

As he put it: “It’s not just about opposing Hillary Clinton but Hillary Clinton, George Soros and al-Qaida combining to overthrow President Trump.”