Two high-risk security advisers who have worked for Fox News blame the network and journalist Benjamin Hall for the deaths of four people in Ukraine.
They’ve accused them of repeatedly ignoring warnings to stay away from an active war zone outside of Kyiv in March 2022, resulting in a Russian strike on the vehicle the team was traveling in. A Fox News producer and videographer were killed in the attack, along with two Ukrainian soldiers, and Hall was seriously injured.
But Hall, who published a book about the ordeal, has now been accused of endangering the others.
“If you took Benji out of the equation, this never would have happened,” Aaron King, one of the security advisers, told National Public Radio, according to a report published Sunday.
The report comes as the parents of slain journalist Oleksha “Sasha” Kuvshynova are locked in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Fox News, alleging the network engaged in “reckless and negligent conduct” that put their 24-year-old daughter’s life at risk. The second adviser who spoke to NPR, Shane Thomson, has joined the bereaved parents’ lawsuit, alleging the right-wing network scapegoated him for the tragedy that killed Kuvshynova, photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski, and two Ukrainian soldiers. Hall was the sole survivor of the group but lost his right leg below the knee, his left foot, and an eye.
Just weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the two advisers allege that Hall and the network repeatedly ignored warnings to stay away from the danger zone outside the city of Kyiv, where their car was hit by a Russian shell.
“This was a very avoidable danger that they were specifically warned about, as to [the] exact time and place that they could not go,” Stephen Humphreys, a lawyer for the Kuvshynovs and Thomson, told the outlet.
A Fox spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions from the Daily Beast on Sunday. A spokesperson for the network told NPR that “while we understand the grief and continue to mourn the loss of both Pierre Zakrzewski and Sasha Kuvshynova, we will respectfully defend against the inaccurate claims within this lawsuit,” saying that the safety of journalists has always been a priority for the network. It is the same statement, verbatim, that the network provided to the Daily Beast in 2024.
According to the complaint, the network is accused of pressuring its reporting team to travel into a hazardous region despite warnings from locals and security consultants, leaving the crew vulnerable to attack. Kuvshynova’s parents claim that Fox News attempted to cover up its culpability after the incident, alleging that the network launched “a campaign of material misrepresentations and omissions to hide its own accountability for the disaster and shift blame” to security adviser Shane Thomson, who has also joined the lawsuit.
Besides Fox News and its corporate and network executives, the complaint also names Hall as a defendant, claiming he “wrote or adopted a false account of the death” of Kuvshynova in his memoir Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission to Make It Home, which was published last year. “Though named as a party-defendant, Hall may, on information and belief, be more properly aligned in this litigation as a party-plaintiff victim of Fox Defendants’ wrongful conduct,” the lawsuit adds.
King implored Hall not to travel to Kyiv, he told NPR, warning of its dangers and asking him “what he believed that he would achieve that other teams haven’t already achieved at this point in time.”
“He kind of processed what I’d spoken to him about, for about 10 seconds, kind of shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Ah, I’ll go anyway,’” King said. “And that was the last I seen of Benjamin.”
