Tag: Bill Shine

Bill Shine Departing White House Under Ethical Cloud

Bill Shine, the former president of Fox News, resigned from his position as White House communications director on Friday, the fifth person to leave that role under President Donald Trump. He will be joining the president’s re-election campaign, which is not an uncommon transition for a White House official to make mid-term.

But Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, pointed out that there’s an ominous cloud hanging over Shine’s White House tenure:

Walter Shaub

✔@waltshaub

While in government—

Shine receives $$ from Fox

Gives Hannity a high 5 at Trump event

Strips Fox competitor of WH credential

Ends regular press conferences, thereby giving Fox an advantage as to its access to POTUS + WH

Can’t get financial disclosure approved

Quits abruptly

Citizens for Ethics

✔@CREWcrew

Why did the government never certify Bill Shine’s financial disclosure?

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Indeed, New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer found in a bombshell article this week that Shine has been receiving a $7 million payout from Fox News while he’s been working at the White House. Some speculated it may even have been Mayer’s revelations that triggered Shine’s departure.

View the complete March 9 article by Cody Fenwick on the National Memo website here.

Bill Shine resigns from White House to advise Trump campaign

White House communications director Bill Shine has resigned and will serve as a senior adviser to President Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced Friday.

Details: The announcement didn’t give a reason for Shine’s departure. The bulk of Shine’s career was spent as a producer and executive at Fox News, most recently serving as the network’s co-president.

“Serving President Trump and this country has been the most rewarding experience of my entire life. To be a small part of all this President has done for the American people has truly been an honor. I’m looking forward to working on President Trump’s reelection campaign and spending more time with my family.”

View the complete March 8 post by Gigi Sukin on the Axios website here.

Why New York’s District Attorney Should Reopen That Fox News Investigation

The following article by Joe Conason was posted on the National Memo website August 28, 2018:

Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of Fox News and Fox Television Stations at the Television Critics Assn on July 24, 2006. Credit: Fred Prouser, Reuters,/File Photo

For well over three decades, Robert M. Morgenthau served as the Manhattan District Attorney. A law enforcement legend, Morgenthau became renowned for his zealous pursuit of white-collar offenders.

He believed that “crime in the suites” deserved to be punished just as consistently as crime in the streets — and as a former federal prosecutor, he ignored minor issues such as jurisdiction when he thought justice needed to be done. And he sought expansive interpretations of law wherever he saw the federal government failing to do justice.

Recently I asked a ranking federal prosecutor who once worked for D.A. Morgenthau whether his old boss would have allowed Fox News Channel executives to escape accountability for the crimes of Roger Ailes and their alleged concealment of those crimes from auditors and shareholders.

View the complete article here.

“Trump is nuts. This time really feels different”: Trump rejects “war council” intervention, goes it alone

The following article by Gabriel Sherman was posted on the Vanity Fair website August 27, 2018:

With his closest allies defecting, the president increasingly trusts only his instincts. He “got joy” from stripping former C.I.A. director John Brennan’s security clearance. And after betrayals by Allen Weisselberg and David Pecker, a former White House official says, Trump “spent the weekend calling people and screaming.”

After Michael Cohen’s plea deal last week, Donald Trump spiraled out of control, firing wildly in all directions. He railed against “flippers” in a rambling Fox & Friends interview, and lashed out on Twitter at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department, and Robert Mueller. In the wake of his outbursts, White House officials have discussed whether Trump would listen to his closest New York City friends in an effort to rein him in. Two sources briefed on the matter told me that senior officials talked about inviting Rudy Giuliani and a group of Trump’s New York real-estate friends including Tom Barrack, Richard LeFrak, and Howard Lorber to the White House to stage an “intervention” last week. “It was supposed to be a war council,” one source explained. But Trump refused to take the meeting, sources said. “You know Trump—he hates being lectured to,” the source added. (Spokespeople for LeFrak and Lorber say they have no knowledge of a meeting. A spokesperson for Barrack didn’t comment.) Continue reading ““Trump is nuts. This time really feels different”: Trump rejects “war council” intervention, goes it alone”

Bill Shine Backstory: Why Did The Federal Probe Of Fox News Go ‘Dormant’?

The following article by Joe Conason was posted on the National Memo website August 26, 2018:

Bill Shine

With national attention now directed toward state and federal law enforcement agencies in New York — which are reported to be investigating Donald Trump and his associates — perhaps we will learn at last what happened in another troubling investigation, involving Trump’s cronies at Fox News Channel.

Among those cronies is former Fox News vice president Bill Shine, who has since ascended to oversee White House communications as deputy chief of staff to the president. Shine served for years as the top deputy to Roger Ailes, the late Fox News chief fired over his horrific mistreatment of female employees at the network.

Back in 2016, when the indefatigable Preet Bharara still served as the United States Attorney in Manhattan, his office opened a probe of secret and illicitly concealed financial payoffs to the women Ailes had abused. To protect the Fox News chief from the consequences of his own horrific misconduct, the network had paid out as much as $100 million in settlements to those women — and concealed those massive expenditures from its own stockholders.

View the complete article here.

White House drafts more clearance cancellations demanded by Trump

The following article by Karen DeYoung and Josh Dawsey was posted on the Washington Post website August 17, 2018:

President Trump on Aug. 17 defended his action toward ex-CIA director John Brennan, warning former associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr could be next. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The White House has drafted documents revoking the security clearances of current and former officials whom President Trump has demanded be punished for criticizing him or playing a role in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to senior administration officials.

Trump wants to sign “most if not all” of them, said one senior White House official, who indicated that communications aides, including press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Bill Shine, the newly named deputy chief of staff, have discussed the optimum times to release them as a distraction during unfavorable news cycles.

Some presidential aides echoed concerns raised by outside critics that the threatened revocations smack of a Nixonian enemies list, with little or no substantive national security justification. Particular worry has been expressed inside the White House about Trump’s statement Friday that he intends “very quickly” to strip the clearance of current Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

View the complete article here.

Report: White House is waiving ethics rules so former Fox co-President Bill Shine can talk to the network

The following article by Grace Bennett was posted on the MediaMatters.org website August 13, 2018:

An August 13 story in The Daily Beast reported that the Trump administration has chosen to waive ethics laws so that newly appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Bill Shine, who formerly served as co-president of Fox News, can communicate with his former colleagues at Fox. According to The Daily Beast, the administration claims that it is in “the public interest” for both Shine and economic adviser Larry Kudlow (who formerly worked at CNBC), to be “excused from provisions of the law, which seeks to prevent administration officials from advancing the financial interests of relatives or former employers.” The article continued:

“The Administration has an interest in you interacting with Covered Organizations such as Fox News,” wrote White House counsel Don McGahn in a July 13 memo granting an ethics waivers to Shine, a former Fox executive. “[T]he need for your services outweighs the concern that a reasonable person may question the integrity of the White House Office’s programs and operations.”

Kudlow, a former CNBC host, received a similar waiver allowing him to communicate with former colleagues.

View the complete article here.

‘Working for one guy’: Bill Shine’s journey from Ailes enforcer to Trump producer

The following article by Sarah Ellison and Philip Rucker was posted on the Washington Post website August 12, 2018:

Bill Shine Credit: Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post

The revolving door between Fox News and Republican political figures has turned steadily for years, with failed GOP candidates finding a home at the network.

But since Donald Trump was elected president, the door has provided a number of former Fox personnel with entree into a government now infused with the cable channel’s fiery sensibility. And with Bill Shine’s appointment this summer to a top job in the White House, the door may finally come to rest.

The two worlds have merged into one universe: the Fox News White House. If Donald Trump is running his own touch-and-go reality show from Pennsylvania Avenue, he has finally found in Shine his executive producer.

View the complete article here.

Bill Shine, Trump’s Top Communicator, Was Questioned by Federal Prosecutors

The following article by Elizabeth Williamson and Emily Steel was posted on the New York Times website July 20, 2018:

Bill Shine, White House deputy chief of staff for communications, arriving in London. He steered clear of any public role in mitigating the turmoil from the president’s trip through Europe. Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Bill Shine, a former co-president of Fox News hired this month as President Trump’s communications chief, brought conservative credentials and heavy baggage with him into the White House. President Trump embraced the former and ignored the latter.

Mr. Shine, now struggling to limit the damage from Mr. Trump’s performance on Monday with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was ousted from Fox News last year in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal at the network.

Mr. Shine was never publicly accused of harassment, but he was accused in multiple civil lawsuits of covering up misconduct by Roger E. Ailes, the founding chairman of Fox News, and dismissing concerns from colleagues who complained.

View the complete article here.

Tainted by Fox News scandals, Bill Shine now works for us all. No big deal, right?

The following article by Margaret Sullivan was posted on the Washington Post website July 15, 2018:

Bill Shine after a meeting with Donald Trump in 2016, at Trump Tower. Credit: Lucas Jackson Reuters

All the elements for a big-time Washington dust-up were there.

The former head of a cable-news giant — damaged by his association with a sexual-harassment scandal — named as a high-ranking White House adviser.

His wife’s social media posts, full of ugly commentary and crackpot theories, surreptitiously deleted.

View the complete post on the Washington Post website July 15, 2018.