U.S. Senator Josh Hawley came after a St. Louis TV reporter on Friday, accusing him of having been fired from a previous journalism job for unethical behavior. But the journalist’s former boss tells SLM that’s simply not true.
“I have a lot of respect for Mark,” says Andy Miller, who was the news director of WCIA when it employed Mark Maxwell, who is now the political editor at KSDK. “I didn’t fire him. When his contract expired with our television station, he departed.”
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The contretemps began when Maxwell fact-checked Hawley’s claim that he brought home $100 million in funding for new housing at the Fort Leonard Wood military base in the Ozarks. Contrary to Hawley’s assertions on the campaign trail, Maxwell reported, the senator voted against the 2024 Defense Authorization Act, which included the funding. Hawley’s campaign says that despite that vote, Hawley had sent the U.S. Army a letter urging them to make good on promised funds for the base. It was a very wonky back and forth, mixed up in the murky machinations of how money gets spent in the nation’s capital.
Then Hawley made a claim that is easier to verify. He wrote on X that Maxwell had been “fired from his last job with NexStar for unethical behavior.”
Miller, however, says otherwise. “I have a lot of respect for Mark,” he says of Maxwell. “He was a great journalist in our market for many years. I can’t say anything bad about the man.”
Prior to coming to KSDK, Maxwell worked as state capitol bureau chief for WCIA, and his content was regularly distributed to other NexStar-owned affiliates. There’s evidence even beyond Miller’s comments that he left on good terms: A copy of Maxwell’s resignation letter, dated March 29, 2022, says he’d be leaving the station in about a month’s time, lead time generally not given to people being terminated. And on April 17, 2022, Maxwell gave an extended on-air signoff, thanking the WCIA staff and announcing that he was headed to St. Louis to cover Illinois and Missouri politics.
Hawley’s campaign did not respond to several messages seeking comment or further information about the senator’s public allegation. The current management of WCIA said they could not comment on the matter due to privacy concerns.
The spat is just the latest chapter in Maxwell and Hawley’s bad bromance. Last year, Hawley released a video in which he took Maxwell to task for calling fans of Elon Musk “bootlickers.” Hawley reshared the video on Saturday, saying it shows him “exposing” Maxwell and claiming Maxwell “now shills full-time” for Democratic candidate Lucas Kunce.
Maxwell declined comment.
