Fox News has paid financial reporter and news anchor Maria Bartiromo a jaw-dropping $70 million since joining the network over a decade ago, according to new documents obtained by TheWrap.
The massive sum was disclosed as part of Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News — which saw tens of thousands of exhibits released on Sunday.
Bartiromo’s eight-figure pay was shared in the journalist’s deposition for the lawsuit, in which she has been named as a defendant by Smartmatic. (The company sued Fox News in 2021, alleging they knowingly spread false allegations about the 2020 election and, in turn, damaged their reputation. Fox News has denied the claims.)
During the deposition, Bartiromo was asked: “And so is it fair to say
that you, from when you first started working at Fox through sort of the upcoming contract in 2025, you would have stood to be compensated over $70 million?”
To which Bartiromo answered, “Yes.”
After a stint on CNBC, Bartiromo officially joined Fox Business and Fox News in 2014, where she became well-known for her softball interviews with President Donald Trump.
In fact, it was Bartiromo who first interviewed Trump after he lost the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden. During the interview, the president claimed, “This election was a fraud; it was a rigged election.”
He also stated: “We had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account.”
Trump’s voter fraud claims were disproven in the aftermath of the election, as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stated there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”
Bartiromo was also criticized at the time for not pushing back on these unsubstantiated claims.
In addition to Fox and Bartiromo, Smartmatic names Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Rudy Giuliani as defendants.
