Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News has garnered widespread attention for recent court filings suggesting Fox News anchors and high-ranking executives knew fraud claims after the 2020 election were false but pushed them anyway, as Dominion tries to force Fox to pay $1.6 billion in damages at a trial set to begin next month.
Fox Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch at the Herman Kahn Award Gala, Oct. 30, 2019, in New York.
Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Key Facts
Hundreds of pages of court documents have been unsealed as part of Dominion’s defamation suit, which accuses Fox News of pushing fraud claims involving its voting machines after the 2020 election despite knowing those claims were false.
Anchor Tucker Carlson, who’s now coming under fire for downplaying the January 6 attacks, said in court filings the Dominion fraud claims were “insane” and “absurd” and said far-right attorney Sidney Powell, who pushed the claims, was “poison,” an “unguided missile” and “dangerous as hell” and he “hope[s]
she’s punished.”
Carlson also said he “had to make” the Trump Administration disavow Powell’s comments, calling her a “nut,” and said in a text message, “Sidney Powell is lying” and called her a “f–king b-tch.”
Carlson called former President Donald Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer” and said, “What he’s good at is destroying things … He’s the undisputed world champion of that” when an unknown person Carlson was texting with brought up the ex-president’s failed business ventures in January 2021.
“I hate him passionately,” Carlson said about Trump, adding in a January 2021 text message, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights … I truly can’t wait.”
Host Sean Hannity testified he “did not believe … for one second” that Powell’s voter fraud claims were true and it was “obvious” Powell’s allegations were false when she appeared on his program, also saying far-right attorney Rudy Giuliani was “acting like an insane person” and calling the lawyers “f’ing lunatics.”
Anchor Laura Ingraham called Powell a “complete nut” and “ditto” with Giuliani, while Fox Corporation executive Raj Shah said the voter fraud claims were “mind blowingly nuts” and host Dana Perino said they were “total bs,” “insane” and “nonsense.”
Fox Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch testified he didn’t believe the election fraud claims, and while he didn’t think Fox had endorsed the election fraud claims as a company, “some of our commentators were endorsing it.”
Murdoch said about the fact that he could have forced the network to stop hosting election deniers: “I could have. But I didn’t.”
When asked about why Fox continued to air advertisements from MyPillow CEO and election denier Mike Lindell, Murdoch agreed with the statement, “It is not red or blue, it is green,” and that the company was motivated financially to keep airing the ads and hosting Lindell on the network.
Murdoch wrote in an email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott right after President Joe Biden’s inauguration that Fox was “still getting mud thrown at us” and said “maybe Sean and Laura went too far” in their post-election coverage, asking Scott if it was “unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th was an important chance to have the result overturned.”
Scott described Giuliani’s fraud claims as “terrible stuff damaging everybody” to Murdoch in a November 19 email, to which Murdoch responded, “yes Sean and even [Jeanine] Pirro agrees.”
Murdoch described the January 6 riot in an email as a “wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers,” and said the network was “very busy pivoting” after January 6 and “want[s] to make Trump a non person.”
Tangent
The documents also include other revelations about Fox News and its ties to the right. Murdoch helped Trump and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) defeat candidate Don Blankenship from winning the GOP nomination for West Virginia’s Senate seat in 2018, court records show, with Murdoch writing in an email to other executives, “Sean and Laura dumping on [Blankenship] hard might save the day.” Excerpts of Murdoch’s testimony also show he gave Trump advisor Jared Kushner a preview of Biden’s 2020 campaign ads before they were public, which experts have suggested could run afoul of campaign finance laws by counting as an “in-kind” donation to the Trump campaign.
What To Watch For
Dominion’s defamation case is set to go to trial on April 17 in Delaware state court, though a hearing will take place March 21 to determine whether a ruling can be issued by the judge instead. Dominion is asking Fox to pay $1.6 billion in damages if the court finds the network defamed the voting company, though that figure could ultimately end up higher or lower depending on how the case goes and what the jury decides. The case is one of two defamation suits Fox faces over its fraud claims following the 2020 election, as rival company Smartmatic is also suing the network and several of its anchors.
Chief Critic
Fox News has strongly denied Dominion’s defamation allegations, claiming the network was justified in reporting on newsworthy events like Trump’s election objections and comments made on its programs are protected under the First Amendment. The network has also strongly opposed Dominion’s court filings and portrayal of its officials’ comments, accusing the voting company of “mischaracteriz[ing] the record, cherry-pick[ing] quotes stripped of key context, and spill[ing] considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”
What We Don’t Know
Whether Dominion or Fox will win at trial. Defamation claims are subject to a high legal bar and Dominion must show that Fox made the statements about fraud with “actual malice” knowing they were false, which is often hard for defamation plaintiffs to prove. Legal experts have suggested Dominion could have a case given the significant evidence showing Fox officials knew the claims were false, however, which is particularly rare in defamation cases—though it still remains to be seen how the case will play out. “I do overall believe that this is one of the strongest plaintiff’s cases that I’ve ever seen,” First Amendment attorney Lee Levine told the Los Angeles Times. “I have a hard time envisioning a scenario in which Fox wins before a jury.”
Key Background
Dominion sued Fox in March 2021, accusing the network of defaming it by pushing fraud claims on-air for financial gain and to stop viewers from jumping ship to further-right Newsmax and One America News. That motivation has also been highlighted in the court documents, with Fox executives privately fretting in emails and other communications that viewers were turning away from the network after it was first to announce Biden won Arizona in the election and initially didn’t push the suspicions of fraud. The claims about Dominion machines allegedly aiding in election fraud and “flipping” votes from Trump to Biden gained significant traction on the right in the wake of the 2020 election, despite there being no substantive evidence in support of it, and the Fox case is one of approximately a dozen defamation lawsuits the company and Smartmatic have brought against right-wing defendants who pushed the claims.The case has gained significant public attention ahead of its trial in recent weeks in light of the court filings and their damaging claims about Fox News anchors. It has drawn Trump’s ire, as the ex-president has repeatedly attacked Murdoch on Truth Social for not believing there was widespread election fraud while praising the anchors who pushed the fraud claims.
Here Are The Most Explosive Comments Anchors And Rupert Murdoch Made About The 2020 Election Behind The Scenes
Topline
Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News has garnered widespread attention for recent court filings suggesting Fox News anchors and high-ranking executives knew fraud claims after the 2020 election were false but pushed them anyway, as Dominion tries to force Fox to pay $1.6 billion in damages at a trial set to begin next month.
Fox Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch at the Herman Kahn Award Gala, Oct. 30, 2019, in New York.
Key Facts
Hundreds of pages of court documents have been unsealed as part of Dominion’s defamation suit, which accuses Fox News of pushing fraud claims involving its voting machines after the 2020 election despite knowing those claims were false.
Anchor Tucker Carlson, who’s now coming under fire for downplaying the January 6 attacks, said in court filings the Dominion fraud claims were “insane” and “absurd” and said far-right attorney Sidney Powell, who pushed the claims, was “poison,” an “unguided missile” and “dangerous as hell” and he “hope[s]
she’s punished.”
Carlson also said he “had to make” the Trump Administration disavow Powell’s comments, calling her a “nut,” and said in a text message, “Sidney Powell is lying” and called her a “f–king b-tch.”
Carlson called former President Donald Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer” and said, “What he’s good at is destroying things … He’s the undisputed world champion of that” when an unknown person Carlson was texting with brought up the ex-president’s failed business ventures in January 2021.
“I hate him passionately,” Carlson said about Trump, adding in a January 2021 text message, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights … I truly can’t wait.”
Host Sean Hannity testified he “did not believe … for one second” that Powell’s voter fraud claims were true and it was “obvious” Powell’s allegations were false when she appeared on his program, also saying far-right attorney Rudy Giuliani was “acting like an insane person” and calling the lawyers “f’ing lunatics.”
Anchor Laura Ingraham called Powell a “complete nut” and “ditto” with Giuliani, while Fox Corporation executive Raj Shah said the voter fraud claims were “mind blowingly nuts” and host Dana Perino said they were “total bs,” “insane” and “nonsense.”
Fox Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch testified he didn’t believe the election fraud claims, and while he didn’t think Fox had endorsed the election fraud claims as a company, “some of our commentators were endorsing it.”
Murdoch said about the fact that he could have forced the network to stop hosting election deniers: “I could have. But I didn’t.”
When asked about why Fox continued to air advertisements from MyPillow CEO and election denier Mike Lindell, Murdoch agreed with the statement, “It is not red or blue, it is green,” and that the company was motivated financially to keep airing the ads and hosting Lindell on the network.
Murdoch wrote in an email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott right after President Joe Biden’s inauguration that Fox was “still getting mud thrown at us” and said “maybe Sean and Laura went too far” in their post-election coverage, asking Scott if it was “unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th was an important chance to have the result overturned.”
Scott described Giuliani’s fraud claims as “terrible stuff damaging everybody” to Murdoch in a November 19 email, to which Murdoch responded, “yes Sean and even [Jeanine] Pirro agrees.”
Murdoch described the January 6 riot in an email as a “wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers,” and said the network was “very busy pivoting” after January 6 and “want[s] to make Trump a non person.”
Tangent
The documents also include other revelations about Fox News and its ties to the right. Murdoch helped Trump and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) defeat candidate Don Blankenship from winning the GOP nomination for West Virginia’s Senate seat in 2018, court records show, with Murdoch writing in an email to other executives, “Sean and Laura dumping on [Blankenship] hard might save the day.” Excerpts of Murdoch’s testimony also show he gave Trump advisor Jared Kushner a preview of Biden’s 2020 campaign ads before they were public, which experts have suggested could run afoul of campaign finance laws by counting as an “in-kind” donation to the Trump campaign.
What To Watch For
Dominion’s defamation case is set to go to trial on April 17 in Delaware state court, though a hearing will take place March 21 to determine whether a ruling can be issued by the judge instead. Dominion is asking Fox to pay $1.6 billion in damages if the court finds the network defamed the voting company, though that figure could ultimately end up higher or lower depending on how the case goes and what the jury decides. The case is one of two defamation suits Fox faces over its fraud claims following the 2020 election, as rival company Smartmatic is also suing the network and several of its anchors.
Chief Critic
Fox News has strongly denied Dominion’s defamation allegations, claiming the network was justified in reporting on newsworthy events like Trump’s election objections and comments made on its programs are protected under the First Amendment. The network has also strongly opposed Dominion’s court filings and portrayal of its officials’ comments, accusing the voting company of “mischaracteriz[ing] the record, cherry-pick[ing] quotes stripped of key context, and spill[ing] considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”
What We Don’t Know
Whether Dominion or Fox will win at trial. Defamation claims are subject to a high legal bar and Dominion must show that Fox made the statements about fraud with “actual malice” knowing they were false, which is often hard for defamation plaintiffs to prove. Legal experts have suggested Dominion could have a case given the significant evidence showing Fox officials knew the claims were false, however, which is particularly rare in defamation cases—though it still remains to be seen how the case will play out. “I do overall believe that this is one of the strongest plaintiff’s cases that I’ve ever seen,” First Amendment attorney Lee Levine told the Los Angeles Times. “I have a hard time envisioning a scenario in which Fox wins before a jury.”
Key Background
Dominion sued Fox in March 2021, accusing the network of defaming it by pushing fraud claims on-air for financial gain and to stop viewers from jumping ship to further-right Newsmax and One America News. That motivation has also been highlighted in the court documents, with Fox executives privately fretting in emails and other communications that viewers were turning away from the network after it was first to announce Biden won Arizona in the election and initially didn’t push the suspicions of fraud. The claims about Dominion machines allegedly aiding in election fraud and “flipping” votes from Trump to Biden gained significant traction on the right in the wake of the 2020 election, despite there being no substantive evidence in support of it, and the Fox case is one of approximately a dozen defamation lawsuits the company and Smartmatic have brought against right-wing defendants who pushed the claims.The case has gained significant public attention ahead of its trial in recent weeks in light of the court filings and their damaging claims about Fox News anchors. It has drawn Trump’s ire, as the ex-president has repeatedly attacked Murdoch on Truth Social for not believing there was widespread election fraud while praising the anchors who pushed the fraud claims.
Further Reading
‘Mind Blowingly Nuts’: Fox News Hosts And Execs Repeatedly Denounced 2020 Election Fraud Off-Air—Here Are Their Most Scathing Comments (Forbes)
New Fox News Documents Show Tucker Carlson, Murdoch And More Disputing 2020 Election Fraud—Here Are Their Most Explosive Comments (Forbes)
Fox Unlikely To Settle With Dominion Over Election Lies As High-Stakes Trial Nears, Experts Say (Forbes)
Murdoch Admits Fox News Hosts Pushed False Election Fraud Claims (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/03/10/dominion-v-fox-news-here-are-the-most-explosive-comments-anchors-and-rupert-murdoch-made-about-the-2020-election-behind-the-scenes/