Appearing on MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber, attorney Nancy Erika Smith suggested Congress should call her client, former Fox News reporter Diane Falzone, to testify about the circumstances in which Falzone’s 2016 reporting about Donald Trump having an affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels was shot down and canned. The decision to shelve the story couldn’t have come at a better time for Trump, who was dealing with negative press from the Access Hollywood recording. Like the National Enquirer’s efforts to “catch and kill” negative Trump stories and then bury them behind nondisclosure agreements, Smith suggested the efforts to suppress this negative Trump story could also amount to undisclosed campaign contributions.
Although former Fox News editor Ken LaCorte says he killed the story because it “wasn’t publishable,” Falzone has been prevented from telling her side of the story because of a nondisclosure agreement she signed as part of an unrelated discrimination settlement with Fox News. Falzone and her attorney have been publicly asking for Fox News to release her from that portion of the NDA so they can speak freely.
Thus far, Fox News executives have not released her, but the House Oversight Committee is going to hear from her anyway. Falzone didn’t just have details on the affair with Stormy Daniels; she reportedly had details on the illegal hush money scheme to hide those details from the public. In a letter to Falzone (which can be read in full below), committee Chair Elijah Cummings has asked her to provide the committee with all documents related to her report.
Smith appeared again on The Beat after receiving the request from Rep. Cummings, and she said Falzone will comply with the congressional inquiry. “The law requires that you be allowed to participate in any government investigation — and no NDA can stop that.”
While the letter from Rep. Cummings isn’t a congressional subpoena, a legal expert told NBC News the request may be enough.
Orly Lobel, an expert on employment law at the University of San Diego School of Law, said Falzone could “tell her story” without worry if she were responding to a lawful congressional request as this is a “matter of public concern.”
Cummings Letter Falzone on Scribd