The campaign by former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to regain that post in an election next week has sent an email to Fox News indicating its desire to “kill” a story about the campaign’s hiring of a Clinton-linked lawyer who specializes in challenging election results.

Fox News reported late Thursday on the email it apparently was not supposed to receive, but did.

It was reporter Tyler O’Neil who was working on a story about the report McAuliffe hired Marc Elias “potentially to challenge the election results” of next week’s faceoff with Republican Glenn Youngkin.

The response, which according to an email image posted online appears to have come from Christina Freundlich, said, “Can we try to kill this.”

O’Neill explained, “Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s campaign raised eyebrows by spending nearly $60,000 to hire a high-profile attorney known for masterminding election-related legal challenges. When Fox News sent the campaign a request for comment, the McAuliffe campaign scrambled to ‘kill’ the story, according to emails mistakenly sent to Fox News.”

He reported only weeks ago, McAuliffe’s campaign spent $53,680 at the Elias Law Group, which longtime Clinton lawyer Marc Elias created earlier this year.

O’Neill explained, “When Fox News reached out to the McAuliffe campaign for comment, McAuliffe spokesperson Christina Freundlich responded to the email with a message apparently meant for colleagues, not for Fox News.”

Freundlich wrote, “Can we try to kill this.”

O’Neill reported a clarification then arrived, “To dispute the challenges of the election.”

Elias formerly was with the Perkins Coie law firm in Washington, which was on Hillary Clinton’s payroll in 2016 and was involved in the infamous and debunked Christopher Steele dossier that made wildly unsupported claims about then-candidate Donald Trump.

That document was used during the Barack Obama administration to try to create federation investigations of Trump, and the fabricated claims of his campaign’s “collusion” with Russia.

Fox reported, “Republicans have accused Elias of lying to hide the Clinton campaign’s role in funding the dossier.”

He has argued on behalf of Democrats multiple times in contesting election results.

Constitutional expert and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote that McAuliffe hiring Elias was an “astonishing move.”

“There are a host of election lawyers but McAuliffe selected an attorney accused of lying to the media, advancing rejected conspiracy theories, and currently involved in a major federal investigation that has already led to the indictment of his former partner,” Turley explained.

McAuliffe, in fact, has adopted the idea of stolen elections by agreeing with the long-running claims made by Stacy Abrams that she actually won her governor’s race in Georgia, but the victory was stolen from her.

Get Citizensjournal.us Headlines free  SUBSCRIPTION. Keep us publishing – DONATE