Staff Reports
The journalist Timothy Burke has been hit with charges related to a cyber attack on Fox News. It’s alleged that he got his hands on some videos of Tucker Carlson, the former host, that didn’t exactly paint him in a flattering light. The clips reportedly showed Carlson making jokes about gender pronouns and getting a little too personal about a makeup artist at Fox. Yikes!
The videos caused quite a stir after Carlson got the boot from his long-held gig at the network. The Washington Post was first to report the indictment, which came after some digging into how the videos made their way into the public eye. Burke’s attorney is flat-out denying any involvement, claiming the videos were fair game for anyone to see when they were leaked.
Wow huge scandal. Leaked footage reveals that Tucker Carlson is funny and normal. https://t.co/17Zo7wIgbj
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 2, 2023
But hold on to your hats, folks, because the FBI decided to pay a visit to Burke’s Florida digs last May as part of their nosy investigation into the video leak. They’re really turning over every stone to get to the bottom of this.
Burke’s lawyer, Mark Rasch, is standing firm, saying, “He never hacked Fox News,” and boasting that his client is innocent as a newborn babe. Rasch is confident that when all the facts spill out, it’ll be crystal clear that Burke didn’t do anything sketchy and was just doing his job as a journalist.
Now, to make matters even more dramatic, an arraignment was scheduled for today at 5 pm Eastern time. Can you believe the nerve of it all?
Adding fuel to the fire, leaked videos from 2023 showed Carlson brushing off Media Matters with some choice language—an expletive-laden expression of his feelings towards the left-wing group. It seems like the guy can crack a joke or two, right? In another leaked video, he couldn’t resist taking a playful jab at his former colleague Bill O’Reilly. Oh, Tucker, you sly dog!
Burke, a digital media hotshot over at Deadspin, is known as a wiz when it comes to piecing together publicly available videos into must-see stories. His talent caught a lot of attention back in 2018 with a video on Sinclair Broadcast Group anchors parroting the same script about “biased and false news.”
But wait, there’s more! The plot thickens with the Justice Department apparently letting Media Matters and Vice off the hook for spreading the unauthorized footage. It looks like they won’t be facing any legal heat for letting the cat out of the bag. Angelo Carusone, the big cheese at Media Matters, is sticking to his guns, saying it’s crucial for journalists to cover leaked material. He’s not giving away the secret recipe for how they got their hands on those videos, though!
So, are these guys making a mountain out of a molehill? Is Burke just a journalist doing his thing, or is there some sneaky business going on behind the scenes? We’ll have to stay tuned to find out.
