Gargoyle....

Fox News' Rupert Murdoch derided Kimberly Guilfoyle in leaked email

Eric Ting

Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch apparently doesn't think very highly of former Fox News employee Kimberly Guilfoyle.

That much is clear from an email Murdoch sent in the wake of the 2020 presidential election discussing rival Newsmax, which went to greater lengths than Fox News did in promoting debunked election conspiracy theories. A trove of texts, emails and other internal communications at Fox News have been made public amid a high-profile defamation lawsuit filed against the network by Dominion Voting Systems.

One of the claims Dominion makes in the lawsuit is that Fox News hosts and executives had doubts about 2020 election falsehoods, but promoted them anyway out of fear of losing audience to Newsmax or One America News Network, both of which were aggressively pushing claims of mass voter fraud.

In an email shared by Semafor media reporter Max Tani, Murdoch wrote of the conservative media landscape, "Newsmax not good people! Being advised by Don jr's girlfriend Kimberly Strassel who I insisted we fire for inappropriate behavior. Not one of our people will join her. Newsmax desperate for money. Scoured the world, so far without luck."

It's a safe assumption that Murdoch was referring to Kimberly Guilfoyle, not Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel. Strassel is not dating Donald Trump Jr., nor did she leave Fox News after allegedly showing co-workers pictures of male genitalia, among other bad things.

The Murdoch email adds a new wrinkle to the saga of Guilfoyle's departure. The email shows Murdoch "insisted" she be removed, or at the very least, told people that he did. In October 2020, the New Yorker's Jane Meyer reported that Fox News allegedly paid one of Guilfoyle's assistants more than $4 million to avoid having to face a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Guilfoyle, who had been at Fox News since leaving San Francisco in the mid-2000s, left the network in 2018 over allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior. She has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, and in the immediate wake of her departure, her attorneys sent letters to media organizations, including SFGATE, threatening legal action if journalists covered the claims.

Her Fox News tenure was recently discussed by ex-husband California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said she "fell prey" to the culture at the conservative network.

Guilfoyle was long gone from Fox by the time the 2020 election rolled around. She made appearances on Newsmax pushing claims of mass voter fraud, and her role in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots was probed by the House select committee investigating the day's events. That investigation, too, turned up unflattering written communications people sent about Guilfoyle behind her back.