Monica Crowley
Monica Crowley is the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. She has been a political commentator and lobbyist. She was a Fox News contributor, where she worked from 1996 to 2017. She is a former online opinion editor for The Washington Times and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In December 2016, the Donald Trump administration announced that Crowley would be appointed a deputy national security advisor for the National Security Council. She withdrew a month later following reports that she had plagiarized portions of her 2012 book What the Just Happened? and her 2000 Ph.D. dissertation. On July 16, 2019, Trump announced Crowley's appointment as spokesperson for the Treasury Department. On July 24, 2019, she was sworn into office.
Early life and education
Crowley was born at Fort Huachuca, an Army base located outside of Sierra Vista, Arizona, and grew up in Warren Township, New Jersey. Crowley graduated from Watchung Hills Regional High School in 1986. She holds a B.A. in political science from Colgate University and a Ph.D. in international relations from Columbia University. Parts of the dissertation were plagiarized.Career
As a student, Crowley began writing letters to former President Richard Nixon, who hired her as a research assistant in 1990 when she was 22 years old. She was an editorial adviser and consultant on Nixon's last two books, and following Nixon's death, she published two books about him: Nixon off the Record: His Candid Commentary on People and Politics and Nixon in Winter.In the mid-1990s Crowley wrote a regular column for the New York Post. She has also written for The New Yorker, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Baltimore Sun.
Radio
Crowley was a commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition in the mid-1990s. Since 2002, she has had her own nationally-syndicated radio show, The Monica Crowley Show, which is also available as a podcast on iTunes, and she is a regular contributor to The John Batchelor Show.Television
In 1996, Crowley joined Fox News Channel, where she was a foreign affairs and political analyst and occasionally substituted for Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel's Hannity. In 2004, she joined MSNBC's with co-host Ron Reagan. After a nine-month run, the last show aired on December 9, 2005. Crowley has also been a recurring guest on Imus in the Morning and has hosted the MSNBC broadcast The Best of Imus in the Morning. In 2007, she returned as a contributor to Fox News Channel. She was also a regular participant on The McLaughlin Group from late 2007 to 2011.Crowley is an occasional panelist on Fox News Channel's late-night satire show Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. Since 2009, she has been a guest host for Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor and his subsequent podcast and appeared opposite Alan Colmes on Tuesday's The O'Reilly Factor in a segment called "Barack and a Hard Place". She is also an occasional guest host on the daily Fox opinion show, The Five.
Crowley appeared in the Netflix original series of House of Cards, portraying herself.
In an election-day commentary in 2016 on Fox News, speaking of Republican candidate Donald Trump's impending upset victory, Crowley said, "This is a revolt of the unprotected class against the protected elite class." Following the election of President Donald Trump, it was announced in December 2016 that Crowley would join the Trump administration as a deputy national security advisor. Following this announcement, Fox News terminated her contract with the network at Crowley's request.
Consulting
In March 2017, Crowley joined the firm of Douglas Schoen as a part-time consultant, providing "outreach services" on behalf of Ukrainian industrialist and political figure Victor Pinchuk. Crowley registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.Treasury Department
On July 16, 2019, President Trump announced Crowley's appointment as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the Treasury Department. Crowley replaced Tony Sayegh, who left the position in May, as the top spokeswoman for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.Barack Obama conspiracy theories
Crowley has on multiple occasions spread conspiracy theories that President Barack Obama was a secret Muslim. In 2010, after Obama defended the right to build the Islamic community center Park51 in lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center, Crowley suggested he had dual loyalties to Islam and the United States, and asked, "How could he....support the enemy?" In 2013, she said that the Muslim Brotherhood had "found an ally" in Obama.In 2009, she noted that Obama used his full name during his swearing in as president, had early in his presidency ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and granted an interview to the media outlet Al Arabiya, saying this "tells you where his head is and, possibly, his sympathies. Just sayin'."
In 2011, Crowley said that birther conspiracy theories about Obama raised legitimate concerns.
In 2015, she shared an article which described Obama as an "Islamic community organizer" who was "conforming US policy to Islam and Sharia."
Journalistic plagiarism
In 1999, Crowley was accused of plagiarism related to a column on Richard Nixon she wrote for The Wall Street Journal which contained "striking similarities" to a piece written 11 years earlier by Paul Johnson. When contacted by The New York Times for comment, Crowley responded, "I did not, nor would I ever, use material from a source without citing it." On January 7, 2017, CNN published a report documenting numerous instances of plagiarism in Crowley's 2012 book, What the Just Happened? The book includes about 50 examples of copying freely from published sources with no attribution given, including from Wikipedia. In a statement, the Trump transition team called the plagiarism report "nothing more than a politically motivated attack" and stood by her.Two days later on January 9, 2017, Politico reported that a dozen additional instances of plagiarism were in Crowley's 2000 Ph.D. dissertation on international relations at Columbia University. In December 2019, an internal Columbia University investigation concluded that Crowley had engaged in “localized instances of plagiarism” but that the plagiarism did not meet the level of "research misconduct."
Shortly after reports emerged that she plagiarized the book What the Just Happened?, the publisher of the book, HarperCollins, announced:
On January 16, 2017, Crowley withdrew from consideration for the role of senior director of strategic communications at the National Security Council in the Trump administration. "I have decided to remain in New York to pursue other opportunities," she said in a statement. The Washington Times, where she served previously as online opinion editor, said the same day that it would be investigating her work at the paper for possible incidents of additional plagiarism by her.
Crowley subsequently told Fox News host Sean Hannity, "What happened to me was a despicable, straight-up, political hit job" and said that it had been "debunked." Andrew Kaczynski, the CNN reporter who first reported instances of plagiarism in Crowley's book, called her claims of innocence false and "complete BS," stating: "No one has yet to point out a single inaccuracy in our reporting or asked for a correction on it. Monica Crowley v. reality."