Monica Elizabeth Crowley
(born September 19, 1968) was the
Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the
U.S. Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and t ...
.
She has been a political commentator and lobbyist. She was a
Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
contributor, where she worked (with a few breaks) from 1996 to 2017. She is a former online opinion editor for ''
The Washington Times
''The Washington Times'' is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout ...
'' and a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, mi ...
.
In December 2016, the
Donald Trump administration
Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory o ...
announced that Crowley would be appointed a deputy national security advisor for the
National Security Council
A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a na ...
. She withdrew a month later following reports that she had plagiarized portions of her 2012 book ''
What the (Bleep) 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
Fort Huachuca is a United States Army installation, established on 3 March 1877 as Camp Huachuca. The garrison is now under the command of the United States Army Installation Management Command. It is in Cochise County in southeast Arizona, appr ...
, an Army base located outside
Sierra Vista, Arizona
Sierra Vista is a city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States. According to the 2020 Census, the population of the city is 45,308, and is the 27th most populous city in Arizona. The city is part of the Sierra Vista-Douglas Metropolitan Are ...
, and grew up in
Warren Township, New Jersey. Crowley graduated from
Watchung Hills Regional High School in 1986. She holds a
BA in
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
from
Colgate University
Colgate University is a private liberal arts college in Hamilton, New York. The college was founded in 1819 as the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York and operated under that name until 1823, when it was renamed Hamilton Theologi ...
and a
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...
in
international relations
International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such as ...
from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
(2000). She allegedly plagiarized parts of her dissertation at Columbia.
Career
In the mid-1990s, Crowley wrote a regular column for the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
''. She has also written for ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', ''
The Washington Times
''The Washington Times'' is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout ...
'',
''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'',
the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', and the ''
Baltimore Sun
''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries.
Founded in 1837, it is currently owned by Tr ...
''.
Radio
Crowley was a commentator for
National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
's ''
Morning Edition
''Morning Edition'' is an American radio news program produced and distributed by NPR. It airs weekday mornings (Monday through Friday) and runs for two hours, and many stations repeat one or both hours. The show feeds live from 5:00 to 9:00 AM ...
'' in the mid-1990s. Since 2002, she hosts a nationally syndicated radio show, ''The Monica Crowley Show'', and she is a regular contributor to ''
The John Batchelor Show
John Calvin Batchelor (born April 29, 1948) is an American author and host of ''Eye on the World'' on the CBS Audio Network. His flagship station is New York's 710 WOR. The show is a hard-news-analysis radio program on current events, world his ...
''.
Television
In 1996, Crowley joined
Fox News Channel
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
, where she was a foreign affairs and political analyst and occasionally substituted for
Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel's ''
Hannity
''Hannity'' is an American conservative television political talk program on Fox News hosted by Sean Hannity. Episodes air live at 9:00 p.m. from Monday through Thursday, while episodes that air on Fridays are pre-recorded, with a repeat ...
''. In 2004, she joined
MSNBC
MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...
's ''Connected: Coast to Coast'' with co-host
Ron Reagan
Ronald Prescott Reagan (born May 20, 1958) is an American liberal political commentator, writer, radio personality, television host, and dancer. He is a former radio host and political analyst for KIRO and Air America Radio, where he hosted his ...
. 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 was 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 an episode of ''
The O'Reilly Factor'' in a segment called "Barack and a Hard Place". She is also an occasional guest host on the daily (5:00 pm ET) Fox opinion show, ''
The Five''.
Crowley appeared in the
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
original series ''
House of Cards'', portraying herself.
In an election-day commentary in 2016 on Fox News, speaking of Republican candidate
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
's impending upset victory, Crowley said, "This is a revolt of the unprotected class against the protected elite class."
Political career
As a student, Crowley began writing letters to former
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
, who hired her as a research assistant in 1990 when she was 22.
She was an editorial advisor 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 March 2017, Crowley joined the firm of
Douglas Schoen
Douglas Schoen (born June 27, 1953) is an American lawyer, political analyst, author, lobbyist, and commentator.
Education
Schoen attended Horace Mann School in New York City. While still a high school student, he canvassed the Upper West Side ...
as a part-time consultant, providing "outreach services" on behalf of Ukrainian industrialist and political figure
Victor Pinchuk
Victor Mykhailovych Pinchuk ( uk, Віктор Михайлович Пінчук, ''Viktor Mykhailovych Pinchuk''; born 14 December 1960) is a Ukrainian businessman and oligarch. As of January 2016, ''Forbes'' ranked him as 1,250th on the list o ...
. Crowley registered as a foreign agent as required by the
Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)2 U.S.C. § 611 ''et seq.'' is a United States law that imposes public disclosure obligations on persons representing foreign interests. .
[Short-Form Registration Statement Pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended](_blank)
received by United States Department of Justice National Security Division
The United States Department of Justice National Security Division (NSD) handles national security functions of the department. Created by the 2005 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization, the division consolidated all of the department's national securi ...
/FARA Registration Unit 03/10/2017 4:46:57 PM.
Following Trump's election victory, it was announced in December 2016 that Crowley would join the
Trump administration
Donald Trump's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican Party ...
as a deputy national security advisor. Following this announcement.
On July 16, 2019, Trump announced Crowley's appointment as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the
Treasury Department.
Crowley replaced
Tony Sayegh
Tony Sayegh (born October 29, 1976 in Brooklyn, New York) served as a White House Senior Advisor for Strategy until February 2020, and is a former Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, serving from March ...
, who left the position in May, as the top spokeswoman for
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Controversies
Barack Obama conspiracy theories
Crowley has on multiple occasions spread
conspiracy theories that President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim.
In 2010, after Obama defended the right to build the Islamic community center
Park51
Park51 (originally named Cordoba House) is a development originally envisioned as a 13-story Islamic community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The developers hoped to promote an interfaith dialogue within the greater comm ...
in
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...
near the
World Trade Center
World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association.
World Trade Center may refer to:
Buildings
* List of World Trade Centers
* World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...
, 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
The Society of the Muslim Brothers ( ar, جماعة الإخوان المسلمين'' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ', is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan ...
had "found an ally" in Obama.
In 2009, she noted that Obama used his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, during his swearing in as president (which presidents typically do), had early in his presidency ordered the closure of the
Guantánamo 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
Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the H ...
."
Journalistic plagiarism
In 1999, Crowley was accused of
plagiarism
Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...
related to a column on Richard Nixon she wrote for ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''
which contained "striking similarities" (according to the ''Journal'') to a piece written 11 years earlier by
Paul Johnson.
When contacted by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' for comment, Crowley responded, "I did not, nor would I ever, use material from a source without citing it."
[ On January 7, 2017, ]CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
published a report documenting numerous instances of plagiarism in Crowley's 2012 book, '' What the (Bleep) Just Happened?'' The book includes about 50 examples of copying freely from published sources with no attribution given, including from Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
. 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
''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...
'' 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 (Bleep) Just Happened?'', the publisher of the book, HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...
, 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
''The Washington Times'' is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout ...
'', 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."[Meera Jagannathan]
Monica Crowley claims plagiarism allegations were ‘a despicable, straight-up, political hit job'
''New York Daily News'' (March 8, 2017). 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."[Andrew Desiderio]
CNN Calls B.S. on Monica Crowley Claiming Her Plagiarism Was ;Debunked'
''Daily Beast'' (March 10, 2017).
Personal life
Crowley's brother-in-law was the late liberal political commentator Alan Colmes, who was married to Crowley's sister, Jocelyn Elise Crowley
Jocelyn Elise Crowley (born September 5, 1970) is a Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, where she specializes in family law in the United States.
Early life
Crowley was born on September 5, 1970, in Englewood, New Je ...
, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
.
Bibliography
*
*
*
References
External links
U.S. Department of the Treasury biography
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crowley, Monica
1968 births
Living people
21st-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American women writers
American biographers
American columnists
American conservative talk radio hosts
American political commentators
American political writers
American women biographers
American women columnists
Colgate University alumni
Fox News people
MSNBC people
New Jersey Republicans
People from Warren Township, New Jersey
People involved in plagiarism controversies
Richard Nixon
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University alumni
The Washington Times people
Trump administration personnel
United States Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury
Watchung Hills Regional High School alumni
American women radio presenters
Writers from New Jersey