How Washington Post’s Shady New CEO Keeps Breaking Journalism Ethics

One of the primordial rules of running a newsroom sounds simple: Don’t mix editorial with business. And yet that’s exactly what The Washington Post’s publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, has done since taking the reins of the prestigious D.C. publication in January—over and over and over.

NPR’s David Folkenflik reported Thursday that the British tabloid journalist had offered him an unsavory exchange: an exclusive on the Post’s health if he promised to squash a story about Lewis’s involvement in a phone-hacking lawsuit filed by attorneys for Prince Harry, Guy Ritchie, and Hugh Grant. The suit named Lewis at the center of a cover-up at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK—accusing Lewis of “giving a green light” to erase millions of emails pertaining to the phone-hacking accusations, even after authorities had instructed the company to retain all of its records.

“In several conversations, Lewis repeatedly—and heatedly—offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations,” Folkenflik reported. “At that time, the same spokesperson, who works directly for Lewis from the U.K. and has advised him since his days at the Wall Street Journal—confirmed to me that an explicit offer was on the table: drop the story, get the interview.”

That’s on top of another scandal that seemingly fueled the unceremonious departure of the Post’s editor in chief Sally Buzbee on Sunday. Buzbee reportedly refused to cave to Lewis’s demands, in conversations about the paper’s own coverage of his legal battles in March and May, though the discussions left her “rattled.”

“When Ms. Buzbee said The Post would publish an article anyway, he said her decision represented a lapse in judgment and abruptly ended the conversation,” reported The New York Times.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case, may be in over her head due to a serious lack of experience, according to a new report from CNN.

The news outlet spoke to 10 attorneys who had cases before Cannon in the Southern District of Florida—and they painted a picture of a judge with limited trial experience, who’s prone to getting bogged down by irrelevant legal questions and struggles to manage her docket of cases efficiently.

Before Trump appointed her to the federal bench in 2020, Cannon was an attorney in the Justice Department for seven years and only took part in four criminal trials. In her four years as a judge, she hasn’t presided over many criminal cases either—and attorneys said it shows.

“She just seems overwhelmed by the process,” one lawyer told CNN. Other lawyers said that she lets small, marginal issues overwhelm the major details of cases. She also has rejected joint motions, agreed upon by both parties in a case with no dispute.

“You can’t assume that just because there’s agreement between the parties that she will go along,” one lawyer said, describing her as “incredibly hands on.”

“She wants to be the decision-maker of everything,” the lawyer said.

Defense attorneys that spoke to CNN described her as tough on defendants and notoriously strict on sentencing. But in Trump’s classified documents case, she has given him a long leash, which has not gone unnoticed.

“She’s certainly not sympathetic to most defendants, and she’s certainly playing a different game with the current defendant before her,” one lawyer told CNN regarding Trump.

Whether Cannon’s odd handling of Trump’s case is due to inexperience or a deliberate attempt to help Trump, he seems to be happy with her.

After a weekend full of crisis-actor-level tears from right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he has officially moved to liquidate all of his assets in order to pay the $1.5 billion he owes to the families of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary.

The “hoax”-pushing supplement hawker, who was found guilty of defamation in 2022, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 that same year, allowing him to maintain operations of his businesses and rely on reorganization to come up with the funds. But it wasn’t enough, with the families warning in 2023 that Jones’s plan fell “woefully short.”

In a filing on Thursday, Jones’s lawyers wrote that there was “no reasonable prospect for a successful reorganization” and that filing for liquidation under Chapter 7 was the massacre denier’s only option. This latest decision lays the groundwork for Alex Jones to lose his stake in InfoWars, the pulpit from which the podcaster has continued to spew misinformation.

Earlier this week, a judge prolonged Jones’s slow financial death and allowed him to continue running his media company Free Speech Systems until June 14. This newest move signals that Jones’s ownership will more than likely be sold, according to Avi Moshenberg, an attorney for the families, who spoke to CNN on Thursday. Free Speech Systems had nearly $4 million in cash on hand at the end of April.

The decision came after Jones posted several videos of himself in hysterics, in which he wailed over the prospect of selling his media company. “All we’re trying to do is save America, and they’re fucking us over, over and over again,” he sobbed in an “emergency broadcast” on Saturday. “And it’s just so sick—it’s sick, it’s sick. I want to leave—because it’s going to be over, folks.”

On Thursday, a lawyer for the families, Chris Mattei, said that Jones’s decision to liquidate his assets “will hasten the end of these bankruptcies and facilitate the liquidation of Jones’s assets, which is the same reason we have moved to convert his company’s case to Chapter 7.”

Mattei had accused Jones in court Monday of “manufacturing a crisis.”

Last month, Jones was granted permission to sell his ranch, which is valued at $2.8 million, one large chunk of his approximate total $9 million in assets.

A unique detail of Jones’s case is that he can’t skirt payments by declaring bankruptcy. The judge who presided over Jones’s bankruptcy filing last year made his debt “non-dischargeable” through bankruptcy, meaning he has to continue paying the families until he has fully settled the $1.5 billion debt.

As a result, Jones will likely be “basically broke now for the rest of his life,” Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, told MSNBC at the time.

During an appearance Thursday on a web show hosted by Phil McGraw, also known as Dr. Phil, Donald Trump spoke of his recent conviction on 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial—and his appetite for revenge against his political rivals.

Dr. Phil McGraw—once an acclaimed talk show staple—now hosts a web show sympathetically interviewing far-right trolls and peddling extremist conspiracies, going the way of innumerable has-beens. McGraw griped that the country is in such shambles that Trump regaining office would be too busy to “have time to get even.”

“Well, revenge does take time,” Trump replied. “And sometimes revenge can be justified, Phil. I have to be honest. Sometimes it can.”

Trump has repeatedly spoken about his revenge fantasies after being convicted, at least three times alone this week. On Newsmax Tuesday, he suggested he may pursue charges against Biden in retaliation for his hush-money trial—an investigation that he blames on Biden but which began in 2018—more than a year before Biden announced his 2020 run for president.

“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to,” Trump said on Newsmax, framing his felony conviction by a New York jury as a dangerous precedent instead of a rare instance of the criminal justice system asserting that no one is above the law. “And it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them,” Trump added.

“Does that mean the next president does it to them? That’s really the question,” Trump continued.

On Wednesday, he repeated his promise for retribution, telling Fox’s Sean Hannity that he has the “right” to send the Department of Justice against his political enemies.

Aspiring to imprison political enemies is nothing new for Trump. He infamously led calls to “lock her up” while running against Hillary Clinton—a phrase Trump now claims he never said.

Two police officers who were injured by rioters during the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol were met with an appalling cacophony of boos and hisses from several Republicans during a visit to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Some lawmakers even stormed out of the hall.

Former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and former Sergeant Aquilino Gonell had been touring through Pennsylvania as part of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, but according to The Washington Post, several so-called conservative state lawmakers just couldn’t handle their presence Wednesday and threw a complete tantrum.

Dunn, who was pepper-sprayed and injured in hand-to-hand combat during the insurrection, said it was “sad though unsurprising that [Donald] Trump’s allies in the Pennsylvania state House followed his lead in mocking the January 6 attack.”

“The fact they’re scared to listen to those of us who were there and witnessed the political violence of January 6 firsthand speaks volumes,” he said Thursday in a statement.

Gonnell, who was battered during the riot three years ago, wrote in a post on X that Pennsylvania House Republicans had “abandoned the truth” and “sided with those who attacked us.”

Pennsylvania Democrats rallied to the former officers’ defense. Representative Arvind Venkat told the Post that he was “shocked and appalled” to see eight to 10 of his Republican colleagues walk out as the two were announced. Representative Mike Schlossberg said that a majority of Republicans did not stand and applaud the two men, who were introduced as “heroes” by House Speaker Joanna McClinton.

McClinton released a statement about the incident, saying, “The GOP members’ shameful behavior was unbecoming of our institution for any guest, let alone two of the men responsible for defending our democracy during a dark day in our nation’s history.”

Representative Jordan A. Harris, also a Democrat, criticized the Republican response to honoring members of law enforcement. “We talk about backing the blue, but people turned their backs on blue yesterday,” said Harris.

But Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler hit back at the criticism from Democrats, accusing them of “antagonizing members and inviting division and discord for their political and campaign purposes.” He insisted that he had stayed on the floor.

The shocking incident is a sign of how divisive the January 6 insurrection is, with many Republicans continuing to insist that rioters had not been in the wrong and that the 2020 election was rigged.