Fox News host Laura Ingraham joins business venture with Donald Trump Jr

Fox News host Laura Ingraham is joining a business venture that includes Donald Trump Jr – after she repeatedly criticized the business dealings of another president’s son: Hunter Biden. Ingraham, Trump Jr and Chamath Palihapitiya, a business associate of Donald Trump’s eldest son and namesake, were all listed as board members of a new venture seeking to go public on the stock market, according to Bloomberg. It purports to “fund the next chapter of American Exceptionalism and help Make America Grow Again”. A filing for the company, Colombier Acquisition Corp III, has designated it as a special-purpose acquisition company, or Spac, which is a shell company that raises money on the stock market before merging with an existing company that isn’t on the market yet. The company is looking to raise $260m in its initial public offering (IPO). The announcement emphasizes the growing coziness between Fox and the Trump family. In February, Fox launched a weekend show featuring Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law who joined the network as a contributor in 2021. While the network, during Joe Biden’s Oval Office term, had appeared to grow cold toward Trump, it has fully embraced his second presidency. Ingraham, a longtime star of the network, was a vocal critic of Hunter Biden and his business dealings while his father was vice-president under Barack Obama. She argued that Biden utilized his dad’s political influence to carry out business deals. Media Matters, a liberal media watchdog group, estimated that Ingraham mentioned Hunter Biden in more than 150 episodes of her show in 2023 and 2024, in the second half of his father’s presidency. Last December, when Joe Biden pardoned his son, a move that was seen as controversial among liberals and conservatives, Ingraham compared the family to the Corleone mob family of the fictional Godfather movie franchise. “Given what we’ve learned about the long-term corruption and deception of the Biden family, the Corleones have nothing on them,” Ingraham said. Joe Biden had previously said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son. But, upon pardoning him, the then president said his son had become a political target. In addition to controversial links to foreign companies while his father was vice-president, Hunter Biden was also found guilty of felony charges related to a handgun purchase in 2018 and federal taxes. Last November, after his father won the election, Trump Jr announced his new role at 1789 Capital, an investment firm with close ties to conservative donors. The company’s website says that it funds “the next chapter of American exceptionalism”. So far, it has invested in companies in AI, energy, defense and three of billionaire Elon Musk’s companies. In September, the firm quietly passed $1bn in assets, according to Reuters. The company, in a statement to Reuters, said that it “maximizes transparency and compliance, even though no one at the fund has ever worked in government”. The White House, meanwhile, has insisted that Trump and his family have never engaged in conflicts of interest. Trump and his eldest sons were found guilty of civil fraud in 2024. In August, an appeals court threw out the $355m penalty a New York judge ordered Trump to pay after he was deemed guilty of fraud in his real estate business, though the appeals court affirmed the overall fraud verdict.