How a former Fox News director landed in jail for pushing Putin propaganda.
The State Department denounced the boyish, bearded oligarch as “one of the main sources of financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea” and blasted his close ties to the then-prime-minister of the self-declared, breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. government called Malofeyev a threat to “the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”, Hanick didn’t heed the his government’s orders to halt business dealings with Malofeyev.
Hancik did not hide his activities. Tsargrad TV was filmed in an airy studio near the Kremlin, replete with faux columns and a cupola depicting a blue robed Jesus — a look Hanick touted to theOver the next several years, the federal indictment alleges, Hanick deepened his ties with the oligarch, engaging in subterfuge to hide Malofeyev’s financing of similar conservative TV ventures in Greece and Bulgaria.
Konstantin Malofeyev, Chairman of the Supervisory Board at the International Agency for Sovereign Development , speaks at a panel session at the 2019 RussiaAfrica Economic Forum at Sirius Art & Science Park.Jack Hanick was raised Cathlolic in Connecticut and studied anthropology at Harvard. He began his career as a documentary filmmaker, producing a sober exploration of life in Appalachia and a biography of the South African anti-Apartheid leader Desmond Tutu.
But by the mid-1990’s, Hanick had gone corporate, under the tutelage of the Republican campaign-operative-turned-media-mogul Roger Ailes, who was at the time president of CNBC. At that network, Hanick directed Ailes’s talk show, “Straight Forward with Roger Ailes.” Hanick also directed “Politics with Chris Matthews” — a precursor to the long-running “Hardball”.
When Rupert Murdoch tapped Ailes to build Fox News, Hanick made the jump as well, helping Ailes launch the right-wing network, coming on board as Staff Director, according to hisprofile. Hannick would be a fixture at the network for the next 15 years, directing daily news programming, as well as gauzy specials like “The Real Reagan.” On the side, Hanick also directed the syndicated Geraldo Rivera vehicle “Geraldo at Large.