Henry reported that the “key information,” according to the single anonymous administration official, was that the intelligence community inspector general “found that the whistleblower had, quote-unquote, ‘political bias’ in favor of a rival candidate of President Trump in 2020.” He went on to say that this contradicted the impression that the whistleblower is “just sort of down the middle and just trying to lay out the facts as they see them about President Trump.” He concluded, “I can guarantee you, based what I'm hearing tonight from this official, that we are going to be hearing a lot more about this tomorrow.” Hannity’s take was that Henry’s report was “huge news.”

It wasn’t. Contrary to Henry’s effort to undermine the whistleblower’s reliability, the intelligence community’s inspector general and top lawyers at the CIA and in the White House had all found his complaint credible.

Henry was teasing the administration’s pending release of a memorandum for the general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence about why the director was not required by statute to transmit the whistleblower’s complaint. But the actual document did little to undermine the whistleblower’s credibility. It stated (emphasis added): “Although the ICIG’s preliminary review found ‘some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate, the ICIG concluded that the complaint’s allegations nonetheless appeared credible.” Fox’s administration source had passed along the contention of the whistleblower’s “political bias,” while concealing the conclusion that his “allegations nonetheless appeared credible,” and Henry ran with that tidbit without challenge.

The New York Times subsequently reported that the whistleblower, a CIA officer who had been detailed to the White House at the time of the call, had also submitted an anonymous complaint to the CIA’s general counsel, Courtney Simmons Elwood. In investigating the complaint, the Times reported, Elwood “learned that multiple people had raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s call,” and she contacted deputy White House counsel John A. Eisenberg. Together they determined that “the accusations had a reasonable basis.”

Henry went on to report on Hannity that his source had reviewed the transcript of Trump’s call with Zelensky and told him that while there were “a few words in the transcript that are going to raise eyebrows and that are going to cause political headaches for the White House,” “there's absolutely no smoking gun in there that's going to prove anything incriminating or, of course, damaging.” Hannity agreed, saying, “My sources are saying absolutely no quid pro quo. It's like about three lines they were talking about corruption.”

That spin did not survive contact with the release of the incredibly damning call memorandum Wednesday morning, which “shows a commander in chief consumed by conspiracy theories, strong-arming a foreign government to help him politically, and marshaling the federal government in his schemes,” as The Atlantic’s David Graham put it.

Henry and Hannity went on to smear Joe Biden, with little distinction between the representatives of the purported “news” and “opinion” sides.

“I would like to demand that Joe Biden now release all of his conversations that he had when he was vice president with Ukraine, especially now in light of what we learned about Joe Biden bragging on tape about how he leveraged a billion U.S. dollars,” Hannity said. “Why would a vice president of the United States ever want a prosecutor in Ukraine fired?”

“Right,” Henry replied, later adding, “There are a lot of people raising questions about what did Vice President Joe Biden when he was in office, particularly because after he left the office, as you've known, you've played the clip, he boasted about getting that prosecutor fired at a time when the Obama administration, not the Trump administration, was holding aid and loans over the head of the Ukrainian government at that time.”

This attack on Biden has bubbled up from the president’s allies and media propagandists in recent months -- particularly on Hannity’s show -- but it’s been debunked time and again.

The White House got what it wanted from this story. By providing spin to the right-wing network ahead of time, the source ensured that Fox would blanket its airwaves with a message to the president’s base that he had done nothing wrong and the scandal had been overblown. But it’s hard to argue that Henry’s report has been vindicated as a piece of journalism.

And that “exclusive” aside, Fox’s newsroom has largely covered events as they happen rather than advancing the story in new directions. And its commentary has hewed to the White House’s talking points; Trump on Wednesday even tweeted out anchor Bret Baier’s conclusion that the call included no “direct quid pro quo.” Fox’s website -- overseen by Hannity’s former executive producer -- has meanwhile kept its focus on aspects of the story that buttress the president.

That’s how Fox operates. The “news” side is there to provide grist for the “opinion” side to rail against. And with impeachment proceedings underway, both of the network’s divisions are pivoting to preserve the president.