Anchor Maria Bartiromo lost her job at Fox News Media on Thursday, September 3, 2026, a break that closed out more than a decade at the conservative media company and set off an immediate scrubbing 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. The terse announcement offered no explanation and included no comment from Bartiromo. Within minutes, her Fox Business biography page vanished, and an error message saying the person could not be found stood in its place.
Fox Business Network aired the final edition carrying her name on Thursday morning. No Fox News Media program had featured Bartiromo herself since August 9, meaning she had disappeared from her own shows weeks before anyone announced the split.
Her Branding Erased From Three Shows
Three programs lost her name within hours, as the network pulled her name off them. “Mornings with Maria” (6-9 a.m. ET) becomes “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”; Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone took the desk on Friday, September 4, and rotating hosts follow her. Jason Chaffetz — a Fox contributor and former Utah congressman — anchored “Sunday Morning Futures” over on Fox News Channel. That broadcast aired 10-11 a.m. ET on Sunday, September 6, and the network will announce a permanent host later; pro-Trump viewers demanding Bartiromo’s return greeted his debut with an online backlash. A new weekday schedule will roll out in the coming weeks, Fox Business said.
Neither Side Explains the Break
Neither party said publicly why the relationship ended. A Fox spokesperson characterized the departure as a business decision. People with knowledge of the situation said the final rupture may have come when Bartiromo chose to hand Fox’s internal company texts to the Trump White House. Fox instructed senior employees to avoid covering Trump’s July primetime address, in which he made unproven and false claims about the 2020 election, and Bartiromo shared that guidance with the White House in violation of company policy; she was taken off the air shortly afterward. Sources have said the supposed leak was “not the only reason” for Bartiromo’s departure.
A different explanation has also been reported: sources said Bartiromo intended to pursue a story on election conspiracies in connection with China, prompting a Fox Business executive to tell producers the story couldn’t run.
Fox Corporation Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch had long favored Bartiromo, whose pay ran to roughly $6 million a year, even as her shows created legal trouble for the network. Patrick Ignozzi, her executive producer, was let go as well. Hollywood lawyer Bryan Freedman, who has represented Megyn Kelly and others in disputes with media employers, had earlier been consulted by her. Freedman went on the record as her attorney on Friday, September 4, disputing the whole premise of the split and 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.” Asked about the statement, a Fox News Media representative said the company’s announcement speaks for itself.
Freedman is threatening a legal showdown and declined to provide the proof he claims to have. The incident in question occurred in July after Trump’s primetime address claiming China interfered in the 2020 presidential election.
Voting-Machine Suits Shadow Her Departure
Fox’s expensive election-defamation cases turned on her programs. Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion suit in 2021, claiming the network knowingly broadcast false assertions that the company had rigged the 2020 presidential race, in part to avoid losing furious viewers. Fox paid $787.5 million to settle with the trial about to begin in 2023.
Another case remains open. Smartmatic, based in London, contends that Fox’s broadcast of bogus voter-fraud claims damaged its ability to grow in the United States; the company is asking for $2.7 billion, with trial set for 2027. Among the defendants is Bartiromo, who until Thursday was the last individual defendant still on Fox’s payroll. The network’s attorneys appeared at a hearing in that case on Thursday morning.
Unflattering episodes came to light through the lawsuits. One was a November 2020 segment in which Bartiromo and a guest asserted electoral fraud on the basis of a memo whose author had said the wind speaks to her and had conceded that her own allegations sounded far-fetched. Former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, in a separate interview, was allowed by Bartiromo to air unproven fraud claims without pushback. She has denied that she personally pressed then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate voter-fraud claims, saying she was simply doing a journalist’s job by asking follow-up questions.
Entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary had falsely asserted on her program that Chinese money was funding opposition to a data center he hoped to build in Utah; a month later, in June, Bartiromo delivered an on-air apology.
President Donald Trump, who has sat for numerous interviews with her, has described her as a great reporter, 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. His Truth Social post after the announcement 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, though he added that he had not talked with her and did not know the backstory. An unnamed source said she is not expected to take the vacant White House press secretary job.
From the NYSE Floor to Fox Stardom
A financial markets journalist and the channel’s global markets editor, Bartiromo joined Fox Business Network in 2014, and her workload eventually reached upward of 16 hours a week across Fox Business and Fox News. Nearly 21 years at CNBC preceded that, where she hosted “Closing Bell” and became the first person to report live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange; earlier still, she worked at CNN. A documentary she made about Google earned her an Emmy Award, 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.
Her exit lengthens a list of Fox departures tied to election-fraud coverage and other controversies. Her former Fox colleague Lou Dobbs, who has since died, lost his job one day after Smartmatic filed its suit in early 2021. Tucker Carlson, another former Fox host, was pushed out in 2023 on the heels of the Dominion settlement and within days of a lawsuit that former producer Abby Grossberg brought against him over workplace issues. Former Fox host Jeanine Pirro, a defendant in both voting-machine cases, was named U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., by Trump in 2025.