Bartiromo responds to ex-producer’s claims

Fox host Maria Bartiromo is pushing back on claims made by an ex-producer on her show who alleges that she used her personal connections to former President Trump to protect herself at the network.

In an interview with TIME, Abby Grossberg, who was fired by Fox in March and is suing the network for workplace harassment, says Bartiromo was treated differently than her male colleagues and felt pressure to attain high ratings.

Grossberg worked with both Bartiromo and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“If they were marginalizing her, she could always say, ‘I can get the President of the United States on the phone,’” Grossberg said in the interview with TIME. “She had that power over Fox, and it protected her.”

Bartiromo, a longtime financial news host and pro-Trump commentator, remains one of Fox’s top-rated weekend personalities, with her “Sunday Morning Futures” program rating among the highest on cable television.

She, like several other high-profile hosts at Fox, have well-known personal connections with Trump and other leading political figures in both parties.

“I have interviewed four American presidents and several international heads of state during my distinguished career and have had rapports with leading figures across the world,” Bartiromo said through a spokesperson. “These allegations are absurd and patently false.”

In its most recent statement about Grossberg’s claims, the network said it “will vigorously defend Fox against all of her unmeritorious legal claims, which are riddled with false allegations against the network and our employees.”

On Grossberg’s claims about Bartiromo’s connections and the ratings pressure she faced, the network said “Maria Bartiromo has cultivated an extensive list of contacts over the course of 30 years that enable her to connect with numerous sources spanning business and politics. She does not need to rely on any one person or organization as her contacts reach far and wide, across Republican and Democrats, CEOs to analysts worldwide.”

Bartiromo is also central to a separate lawsuit Fox is facing from Smartmatic, a voting systems company that alleges the network knowingly aired false claims about its software being promoted by Trump and his allies. Fox last month agreed to pay $787 million in a settlement with Dominion, another voting systems company, over similar claims.

Grossberg recently shared audio recordings of Bartiromo with MSNBC, a competitor to Fox, showing the host discussing with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) the process by which Congress could stop the certification of President Biden’s electoral college victory.

Grossberg has said she has dozens more tapes taken from inside the network from around the time of 2020 election.