Johnson communications director and Trump ally Shah to leave Capitol Hill
By Haley Talbot and Shania Shelton, CNN
(CNN) — House Speaker Mike Johnson’s communications director, Raj Shah, is expected to leave his role before the end of the summer, a source familiar with the matter tells CNN.
This was Shah’s first role on Capitol Hill. He has emerged as a top GOP official in the Trump era, earlier serving as deputy press secretary during the 45th president’s administration before departing for a job as senior vice president at Fox Corporation.
At Fox, Shah helped push the network in a more pro-Trump direction after the 2020 election before leaving the company last May in the wake of its settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. As part of Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox, several messages from Shah – most notably a “brand protection” report that Shah sent to senior executives which contained “threats” to Fox News’ reputation – were a part of the internal Fox communications brought to light.
In that report, Shah highlighted criticism that host Neil Cavuto was facing after his decision to cut away from a news conference in November 2020 by then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
In another message following Fox’s call that Joe Biden would win the presidency, Shah emailed Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and Fox Chief Legal Officer Viet Dinh, reporting “strong conservative and viewer backlash to Fox that we are working to track and mitigate.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
