Former White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah has joined Fox Corporation as a senior vice president, forming yet another link between President Donald Trump’s administration and the conservative media empire.
Fox Corp., the media conglomerate that formed in 2019 after being spun off from 21st Century Fox, owns and operates several networks, including Trump-friendly Fox News and the Fox Business Network.
Shah recently started at the company and is based in Washington, a Fox Corp. spokesperson told HuffPost in a statement Sunday. He follows in the footsteps of former White House communications director Hope Hicks, who joined Fox Corp. in October to run their public relations department.
Both Shah and Hicks report to Viet Dinh, chief legal and policy officer of Fox Corp. Dinh reports to Lachlan Murdoch, the company’s executive chairman and CEO and the son of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Shah left the White House in January to help launch and head media affairs firm Ballard Media Group with high-profile lobbyist Brian Ballard. He was the first Indian American to hold the position of White House principal deputy press secretary and previously served as deputy assistant to the president.
Prior to joining the Trump administration, he worked as research director and deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee until January 2017.
Several Trump administration staffers have worked as paid contributors for Fox in the past, including Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and National Security Adviser John Bolton. Several other staffers have left the White House and joined the network, including Sebastian Gorka, the former deputy assistant to the president, who was hired as a paid contributor in 2017. He has since left the position.
Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive, replaced Hicks as White House communications director in July 2018. He resigned the role in March to advise Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.