Kilmeade was filling in for “Tucker Carlson Tonight” when the fake image aired on Fox News. It showed an edited photo of Reinhart getting a foot massage from Maxwell. “So a picture of Bruce Reinhart. This is the judge in charge of the… warrant. We’ll see if he releases it next. He likes Oreos and whiskey,” Kilmeade said Thursday night. Now Kilmeade has released a statement on Twitter, telling viewers he wanted to make sure they knew it was “not real”. “Last night while we were nominating Tucker Carlson, we showed you a picture of Judge Bruce Reinhart with Ghislaine Maxwell that came up on the screen from a meme that came out of Twitter and it wasn’t real.” the post said. “This depiction was never done and we wanted to make it clear that we were showing a funny meme.” Republicans have sharply criticized Reinhart for signing the search warrant. And a barrage of online attacks have flooded right-wing message boards and social media platforms like 4Chan since Reinhart was identified as the judge who approved the FBI’s warrant to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. He was attacked for serving as a defense attorney representing employees of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and Reinhart is also facing a barrage of anti-Semitic attacks and threats online. Some of this rhetoric has also been aimed at the synagogue he belongs to. Trump and his allies have argued, without evidence, that the search warrant was politically motivated. Some conservative commentators, including Fox News, have floated unsubstantiated conspiracy theories suggesting that FBI agents planted the evidence.
