Anchor Maria Bartiromo is out at Fox News Media, which announced the split on Thursday, September 3, 2026, closing a run of more than a decade at the conservative media company. Her name began coming off the schedule and the company’s websites almost immediately.
“We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 ½ years and wish her all the best on her next chapter,” the company said. The announcement was terse, gave no reason and carried no comment from Bartiromo. Minutes later her Fox Business biography page was gone, swapped out for an error message saying the person could not be found.
Fox Business Network aired the last edition bearing her name on Thursday morning. Bartiromo herself had been absent from every Fox News Media program since August 9, having disappeared from her own shows weeks before the break was made public.
Her Name Comes Off Three Shows
Within hours, the network stripped her branding from three programs. “Mornings with Maria” (6-9 a.m. ET) turns into “Mornings with Fox Business” on Friday, September 4, with rotating anchors. “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street” (Fridays, 7-7:30 p.m. ET) becomes “FBN’s Wall Street,” with Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone in the chair on Friday, September 4, and rotating hosts after that. At Fox News Channel, Jason Chaffetz, a Fox contributor and former Utah congressman, anchored “Sunday Morning Futures” (10-11 a.m. ET) on Sunday, September 6; a permanent host is to be announced later, and his debut drew an online backlash from pro-Trump viewers demanding Bartiromo’s return. A new weekday lineup is coming in the next few weeks, Fox Business said.
No Explanation From Either Side
Neither party said publicly what happened. A business decision was how one person familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to speak, characterized it. People with knowledge of the situation said the relationship may have finally ruptured over Bartiromo’s decision to pass Fox’s internal company texts along to the Trump White House.
The media newsletter Status reported on September 4 that Fox had told the executive producers of several shows not to keep covering President Donald Trump’s July 16 primetime address the day after it aired, and that Bartiromo passed that guidance to the White House in violation of company policy. She was taken off the air shortly afterward. In the address, Trump made unproven and false claims about the 2020 election, among them that China interfered in the 2020 presidential election.
Puck reporter Dylan Byers offered a different explanation on September 4, citing sources who said Bartiromo intended to pursue a story on election conspiracies in connection with China, prompting a Fox Business executive to tell producers the story could not run.
Sources told Mediaite that the supposed leak was “not the only reason” for Bartiromo’s exit, Daily Beast reporter Josh Fiallo reported on September 4.
Bartiromo drew pay of roughly $6 million a year and had long been a favorite of Fox Corporation Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch, even as her shows generated legal trouble for the network. Patrick Ignozzi, her executive producer, was let go as well. She had earlier consulted Hollywood lawyer Bryan Freedman, whose clients have included Megyn Kelly and others in disputes with media employers. Freedman went on the record as her attorney on Friday, September 4, and disputed the entire premise of the departure, calling reports that she had been fired or was no longer a Fox employee “absolutely and unequivocally false” and saying, “we have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise.” Freedman declined to provide the proof he claimed to have when he sent that statement to the Daily Beast, Fiallo reported. A Fox News Media representative, asked about the statement, replied that the company’s announcement speaks for itself.
Voting-Machine Lawsuits Shadow the Exit
Fox’s costly election-defamation litigation ran straight through her programs. Dominion Voting Systems sued in 2021 for $1.6 billion, claiming the network knowingly aired false assertions that the company had rigged the 2020 presidential race, in part to keep furious viewers from leaving. Fox settled for $787.5 million in 2023, with the trial about to begin.
One case is still live. Fox’s broadcast of bogus voter-fraud claims hurt its ability to grow in the United States, argues Smartmatic, which is based in London and is asking for $2.7 billion; no trial date has been set. Bartiromo is among the defendants and, until September 3, the last individual defendant still drawing a Fox paycheck. Attorneys for the network were in court for a hearing in that case that Thursday morning.
Unflattering episodes surfaced through the suits. In one November 2020 segment, Bartiromo and a guest asserted electoral fraud on the strength of a memo. Its author had said the wind speaks to her, and she had conceded that her own allegations sounded far-fetched. In another interview, Bartiromo let former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell air unproven fraud claims unchallenged. Asking follow-up questions was simply a journalist’s job, she has said, denying that she personally pressed then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate voter-fraud claims.
In June she apologized on air, a month after entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary falsely asserted on her program that Chinese money was funding opposition to a data center he hoped to build in Utah.
A great reporter is what Trump, who has sat for numerous interviews with her, has called her, and in July he posted praise on social media calling her fantastic; he also appointed her to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to Fiallo’s September 4 reporting. Once the announcement landed, his post on Truth Social said he could not believe she would no longer have her shows on Fox; he called her “a total professional, and a true warrior” and predicted that her many fans would not be happy. “I love Maria,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Thursday afternoon, September 3, while saying he had not talked with her and did not know the backstory. Karoline Leavitt announced on August 12 that she would step down as White House press secretary, and the administration has been hiring a replacement since, which fed speculation about Bartiromo. People familiar with the matter said her Fox exit had nothing to do with any White House discussions.
From the NYSE Floor to Cable Stardom
She joined Fox Business Network in 2014 as a financial markets journalist and the channel’s global markets editor, eventually anchoring upward of 16 hours a week across Fox Business and Fox News. Two decades at CNBC came first, where she hosted “Closing Bell” and became the first journalist to report live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on a daily basis; before that she worked at CNN. She won an Emmy Award for a documentary she made about Google, and she picked up the nickname “Money Honey,” a label she later said gave her misgivings. Joey Ramone of the Ramones recorded a song titled “Maria Bartiromo,” released on his posthumous 2002 album “Don’t Worry About Me,” and she played herself in the 2010 film “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” opposite Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko.
The list of Fox exits tied to election-fraud coverage and other controversies grows longer with hers. Lou Dobbs, a former Fox colleague who has since died, lost his job one day after Smartmatic filed its suit in early 2021. Fox pushed out another former host, Tucker Carlson, in 2023, on the heels of the Dominion settlement and within days of a lawsuit over workplace issues that former producer Abby Grossberg brought against him. Trump named former Fox host Jeanine Pirro, a defendant in both voting-machine cases, U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., in 2025.
