Fox News Media abruptly severed ties with anchor Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, September 3, 2026, closing out more than a decade at the conservative media company and prompting an immediate scrub of her name from its schedule and websites.
“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 in a terse announcement that gave no reason for the exit and carried no comment from Bartiromo. Almost immediately her Fox Business biography page was gone, replaced with an error message saying the person could not be found.
The last edition carrying her name aired Thursday morning on Fox Business Network. Bartiromo herself, though, had not appeared on any Fox News Media program since August 9, having vanished from her own shows weeks before the split was announced.
Fox Strips Her Name From Three Shows
Within hours the network pulled her name off three programs. “Mornings with Maria” (6-9 a.m. ET) turns into “Mornings with Fox Business” on 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.
On 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. Pro-Trump viewers hit his debut with an online backlash, demanding Bartiromo’s return. No permanent host had been named as of September 10, and the new weekday schedule Fox Business promised “in the coming weeks” has not been announced. Her executive producer, Patrick Ignozzi, was let go the same day she was.
Neither Side Explains the Break
Neither side offered a public explanation. A person familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to speak, characterized it as a business decision. People with knowledge of the situation said the rupture may have come down to Bartiromo passing an internal Fox directive to the Trump White House. The media newsletter Status reported on September 3 that Fox had told producers not to keep covering President Donald Trump’s July 16 primetime address, and that Bartiromo passed that guidance to the White House in violation of company policy. She was taken off the air shortly after. In the address, delivered from the East Room, Trump revived unproven claims about the 2020 election, among them that China had carried out what he called the largest compromise of election data in history and illicitly acquired 220 million U.S. voter files. Fact checks noted the underlying intelligence concerned attempted data collection years earlier, not interference in any vote count.
Puck’s Dylan Byers filled in how the directive travelled. On September 4 he reported that Ralph Giordano, Fox Business’s senior vice president of programming, told “Mornings with Maria” producers on July 15 not to cover the speech, and that Bartiromo screenshotted the message and sent it to Peter Navarro, the president’s senior counselor for trade, who passed it up to senior White House officials. CNN published the wording on September 8: “We don’t want to promote it or push to the speech at all. We don’t want to do 2020 election segments at all Thursday or Friday.” A Fox News spokesperson declined to comment.
Navarro went public on Newsmax on Tuesday, September 8. “Suzanne Scott got a call,” he said of the Fox News Media chief executive. “Basically, the White House let her know that that kind of thing is totally unacceptable. She didn’t accept that at all. She just went out and fired Maria Bartiromo. That place is out of control.” He added that people should “forget about anybody thinking that Fox is a conservative network that’s friendly to MAGA.”
Sources told Mediaite on September 3 that the leak was “not the only reason” for the exit, which they put down to “a confluence of factors” — among them Fox’s $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in 2023 over 2020 election claims aired on its programs, and Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion suit, filed in February 2021 and still pending with no trial date. Bartiromo was the last individual Smartmatic defendant still employed by Fox. She testified in a Smartmatic deposition that her Fox contracts would pay her more than $70 million from her 2014 arrival through her 2025 deal, and she had re-signed for three more years in February.
Her Lawyer Disputes the Premise
Bartiromo has not spoken publicly. Every statement has come through Bryan Freedman, the Hollywood lawyer whose clients have included Megyn Kelly in disputes with media employers. He went on the record as her attorney on September 4 and rejected the entire framing, calling reports that she had been fired or was no longer a Fox employee “absolutely and unequivocally false” and adding: “Make no mistake, we have the receipts and witnesses, and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise.” He declined to produce the proof he described. Asked about the statement, a Fox News Media representative said the company’s announcement speaks for itself. No lawsuit, arbitration demand or other filing had followed as of September 10.