Ken LaCorte

Ken LaCorte (born February 5, 1965^[1]) is an American YouTuber and former executive at Fox News. He owns several websites including Conservative Edition News, Liberal Edition News, and LaCorte News.^[2]

LaCorte's grandparents lived in a small village in Sicily.^[3] He was born in Alhambra, California on February 5, 1965.^[1]

He attended Claremont McKenna College^[4][5] and earned a bachelor's degree in government in 1987.^[1] He received a master’s degree in professional studies, in 1988 from the State University of New York.^[1]

LaCorte began his career as a communications specialist.^[4][5] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he worked as a media consultant for companies and political candidates in the United States and internationally, including presidential campaigns in Colombia, Guatemala and Venezuela. In 1997, he was the marketing manager for Healthline Medical.^[1] In 1998, he ran as a Republican primary candidate in California's 44th State Assembly District.^[1] The Los Angeles Times reported that he was a member of the National Rifle Association of America and opposed stricter gun control legislation with the exception of handguns for felons and automatic weapons.^[6]

In 1997, he challenged California law by publishing the state's Megan's Law list.^[7] Despite a warning from the state's Attorney General Dan Lungren, LaCorte hand copied the names of the state's high risk sex offenders and published them online. In 2004, California published the Megan's Law database on the internet.^[7]

LaCorte worked in senior management^[8] for Fox News for nearly two decades.^[2] He became the Bureau Chief for the western region at the Fox News Channel in 1998 and the Director of News Editorial in 2003.^[4] LaCorte was made the Vice President of Fox News Digital in 2006^[9] where he oversaw editorial content of the website.^[10] LaCorte was one of network chief Roger Ailes’ most trusted acolytes. LaCorte was a part of Ailes's “Black Room,” a secret unit which was then used to conduct surveillance on both Fox News employees and perceived rivals of the network. Websites were specifically set up to attack reporters. Private investigators were also dispatched to follow reporters and prepare dossiers that would be leaked to blogs such as "Cable Game" and news. LaCorte engaged in negative PR campaigns to promote Ailes’ personal grievances against journalists and Fox News critics.^[11] The network sent him to Gaza City in 2006 to press for the release of kidnapped journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig.^[12][13]

At end of 2016, LaCorte was pushed out of Fox News due to post-Ailes "corporate purge".^[8] With a $1 million investment, he partnered with John Moody, former Fox News executive and longtime ally of Roger Ailes, to form LaCorte News in 2018.^[14] LaCorte also recruited former NPR editorial director and New York Times editor Michael Oreskes to join him in LaCorte News with the stated goal of "restoring faith in media."^[15] John Moody, left Fox after posting a racially inflammatory column, and Michael Oreskes, was ousted from an executive position at NPR due to alleged sexual harassment.

In March 2019, Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker that Fox News reporter Diana Falzone had the story of the Stormy Daniels–Donald Trump scandal before the 2016 election, but that LaCorte told her, “Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert [Murdoch] wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go,” and the story was killed.^[8] LaCorte denied making the statement to Falzone and said he killed the story because the evidence was not there, saying, "I was the person who made the call. I didn’t run it upstairs to Roger Ailes or others...I didn’t do it to protect Donald Trump," adding "[Falzone] had put up a story that just wasn’t anywhere close to being something I was comfortable publishing” and pointed out numerous ways in which Falzone's article failed to meet his journalistic standards of verification.^[16] Nik Richie, who claimed to be one of the sources for the Falzone story, called LaCorte's account "complete bullshit," adding “Fox News was culpable. I voted for Trump, and I like Fox, but they did their own ‘catch and kill’ on the story to protect him.”^[8] Both Falzone and LaCorte argued Fox News to lift NDA so the full story can come out.^[17]

In 2022, he defended his decision by saying that Stormy and Falzone were not interested in publishing the scandal but instead were using the media to extort Trump. According to him, Daniels refused to go on record and after Trump paid up, she ghosted all the media outlets. He thinks that the criticism that he and Fox got was unjustified and pointed to other outlets that didn't cover this story. He went on to say that Trump was innocent and Stormy shuld be in prison.^[18]

In November 2019, a New York Times report alleged that LaCorte used "Russian tactics" to push inflammatory content on websites Conservative Edition News and Liberal Edition News which he controlled. LaCorte's ownership of the sites was not known until the NYT investigation, which was jointly conducted with the Virginia security firm Nisos.^[2] The sites push repeatedly pushed fake news and hyperbolic fearmongering to inflame political tensions. The investigation stated "The adoption of Russian tactics by profit-motivated Americans had made it much harder to track disinformation."

LaCorte defended himself, saying that he ran the politically-charged sites as a way to drive traffic to his centrist site LaCorte News.and raise revenue for his legitimate journalistic venture. LaCorte said “I wanted to try to find middle ground.”^[2] LaCorte admitted that he had been secretly operating the partisan websites and had hired Macedonian teenagers from Veles to write the content.^[10] Veles is known as the “home to a collection of writers who churned out disinformation during the 2016 presidential election in the United States."

In late November 2019, the Facebook pages for LaCorte's Conservative Edition News and Liberal Edition News were shut down for terms of service violations that included manipulation of site privileges and engagement with well-known Macedonian “troll farms”.^[19] This effectively ended LaCorde News.

In 2020, LaCorte was among the first to break the Hunter Biden Laptop controversy. Mac Isaac, the whistleblower, contacted LaCorte through his connections in Fox News. This contradicts Mac Isaac stated desire for law enforcement to look into potentially nefarious behavior and was done with the intent for this to surface publicly prior to the elections. On Oct 15, he revealed that he had primary documents. He then published 29 PDFs allegedly containing emails sent to Hunter Biden’s iCloud address. Zip file's metadata shows that the files were created on the evening of October 14.^[11]

In 2025, it was revealed that Rumen Naumovski used to work for LaCorte. Naumovski is a Macedonian citizen who was never been to US. He operates highly influential Twitter accounts - Defiant L’s and Resist the Mainstream - which has more than 2 million followers and has been retweeted by the likes of Elon Musk, Nancy Mace, Mike Lee, Ron Watkins and Eli Crane. Both accounts offer takes on American politics almost exclusively, often alleging corruption and election fraud by Democrats, and are a major player in the right-wing influencer space. LaCorte has written about Naumovski’s struggles to emigrate and is a dear friend of Naumovski.^[20]

As of 2026, LaCorte now runs a YouTube channel called Elephants in Rooms^[21] where he uploads content exploring a variety of controversial topics, including conspiracy theories, demographics, discrimination, cover-ups and social issues.

As of 2024, he is in a relationship with Claudia Cowan, Fox News's senior correspondent, and lives with her on a houseboat. Both are divorced with grown children.^[22]