We all know that The View routinely broadcasts claims that ABC attorneys have to force them to walk back. One show before the election featured four disclaimers read on-air, at least a couple by Sunny Hostin herself, which has to have set some sort of record. This legal exposure — in every sense of the word — might end up in the Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Or Shame. YMMV.
On the December 11 show, The View discussed the Left’s sexual fascination with back-shooting coward Luigi Mangione, who assassinated United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and had recently been captured. The hosts debated whether Mangione deserved any sympathy, and that’s when Hostin decided to add in her two cents. Or rather, her physician husband’s two cents, so to speak:
Sunny Hostin’s husband has been named in a massive insurance fraud RICO case. WACTH: Hostin implicates her husband in such a scheme: “[He] operates on someone even though they don’t have insurance and then has to sue health insurance companies to get paid for the work…” pic.twitter.com/P2ZvLdmhzt
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 7, 2025
SUNNY HOSTIN: I mean, I agree with mostly everything that’s been said. I mean, we know that, you know, only about 31 percent of Americans trust our healthcare system. We have a terrible healthcare system. And, you know, doctors suffer because of big corporations, as well. Doctors that want to do good like my husband, you know, operates on someone even though they don’t have insurance and then has to sue health insurance companies to get paid for the work that he’s been trained his whole life to do.
Fondacaro wrote at that time that Hostin’s claim sounded very strange. How could Dr. Hostin “sue health insurance companies” to pay bills for patients they don’t cover? “Judging by what she said,” Fondacaro concluded, “it appeared as though her husband was trying to bill insurance companies for people who were not their customers.”
Coincidentally or not, that’s exactly what New York prosecutors also concluded. Six days after that episode aired, but only revealed yesterday, Dr. Emmanuel Hostin got charged in a $450 million RICO prosecution, one of almost 200 defendants facing prison time for insurance fraud:
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Hostin is among nearly 200 defendants named in one of the largest RICO cases ever filed in New York.
He and many of the others are accused or getting kickbacks by performing surgery and fraudulently billing a company that insures taxi companies and Uber and Lyft drivers.
‘Hostin knowingly provided fraudulent medical and other healthcare services including arthroscopic surgeries,’ the lawsuit, filed on December 17, claims.
The insurance firm American Transit was then billed ‘in exchange for kickbacks and/or other compensation which were disguised as dividends or other cash distributions.’
The irony here is that Hostin is a former federal prosecutor herself. She specialized in antitrust cases and later child abuse crimes rather than fraud, but she certainly had to know that her explanation on air made no sense whatsoever except as a rationalization for insurance fraud. Of course, given the number of disclaimers that ABC’s attorneys have forced her to read on-air these days, it’s not clear whether her legal background does her much good in her current career.
Dr. Hostin hasn’t yet gone to trial, and perhaps the charges will be dropped at some point. Since his wife detailed his shady business practices on air, though, prosecutors might not be inclined to cut a deal with Sunny’s husband. They might be inclined to depose Sunny to see what else she can tell them about how her husband conducts his business, especially in attempting to force insurers to pay bills for people they don’t cover.
Given the timing and scope of the indictment, prosecutors have likely been building this case for months, and Hostin’s remarks probably had little impact on their decision to indict. But that raises another question: why would Hostin make this claim while prosecutors were finalizing an indictment? This couldn’t have come completely out of left field; investigators would have been interrogating witnesses, subpoenaing records, and presenting evidence to the grand jury. How could Sunny Hostin think that discussing her husband’s business practices on air would be a good idea while prosecutors were crawling all over these transactions?
